An article by the AP suggests that Texas border controls did not prevent a new ant from arriving by cargo ship. Now the Raspberry Ant (named after one of the first American exterminators to battle them) is showing an amazing resilience and a taste for electronics:

They have ruined pumps at sewage pumping stations, fouled computers and at least one homeowner’s gas meter, and caused fire alarms to malfunction. They have been spotted at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and close to Hobby Airport, though they haven’t caused any major problems there yet.

Exterminators say calls from frustrated homeowners and businesses are increasing because the ants – which are starting to emerge by the billions with the onset of the warm, humid season – appear to be resistant to over-the-counter ant killers.

“The population built up so high that typical ant controls simply did no good,” said Jason Meyers, an A&M doctoral student who is writing his dissertation on the one-eighth-inch-long ant.

It’s not enough just to kill the queen. Experts say each colony has multiple queens that have to be taken out.

At the same time, the ants aren’t taking the bait usually left out in traps, according to exterminators, who want the Environmental Protection Agency to loosen restrictions on the use of more powerful pesticides.

And when you do kill these ants, the survivors turn it to their advantage: They pile up the dead, sometimes using them as a bridge to cross safely over surfaces treated with pesticide.

One would think this natural evasion to chemicals might make people think twice before unleashing more pesticide, but I guess we will see. The EPA, Texas Department of Agriculture and A&M entomologists are apparently researching solutions. Perhaps the Bush administration instead should fly in and just declare “mission accomplished”.

PoliceOne says that a 60% percent success rate is far (20%) below expectations:

Los Angeles’ $15 million high-tech camera system designed to catch red-light runners let four in 10 violators off the hook last year because the drivers couldn’t be identified, according to police data.

In other words, the cameras are highlighting another control gap — 40% of drivers suspected of violating a traffic law also operate without proper registration:

Police say they have made progress in the past few months in finding the drivers and ticketing them. They also note that glare from windshields and license plates interferes with about 2 percent of the images.

But they emphasize it’s not the technology that is allowing violators to get away with running red lights. By far the biggest obstacle to ticketing violators, they say, has been outdated or unidentifiable car registrations.

Security metrics are funny that way. You might find 40% of your suspects are getting away because they are using bogus identities, but this is not just a 40% failure. Knowing that bogus identities are prevalent is far better than not knowing and so the system is actually performing an important detection role where none existed prior. This is not a positive spin as much as an example of surveillance systems giving better information about identity controls and weaknesses.