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Journalist Test Drives The Pain Ray Gun
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Sep 19, 2007 04:42 PM
from the set-phasers-to-ooooooooowwwwwwwwwwww dept.
from the set-phasers-to-ooooooooowwwwwwwwwwww dept.
Fantastic Lad writes to tell us that journalist Michael Hanlon recently got the opportunity to experience the Army's new not-so-secret weapon, dubbed "Silent Guardian". The Silent Guardian is essentially (even though the creators prefer you not refer to it as such) a ray gun, emitting a focused beam of radiation similar to your microwave tuned to a specific frequency to stimulate human nerve endings. "It can throw a wave of agony nearly half a mile. Because the beam penetrates skin only to a depth of 1/64th of an inch, it cannot, says Raytheon, cause visible, permanent injury. But anyone in the beam's path will feel, over their entire body, the agonizing sensation I've just felt on my fingertip. The prospect doesn't bear thinking about. "
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Blimey! (Score:5, Funny)
Arr! This be a popular thing to consider against terrorists, insurgents and other bilge, but what of when a swab asks Sen. Kerry one too many questions?
"Blow me down, Senator, but why did ye let the scallywag take Ohio uncontested?"
"Belay the questioning, ye poxy bilge-bellied picaroon!"
*FFFNNZZZZZOOWWNT*
"Yaaaarrr!"
Sounds funny, do ye think? But by Davy Jone's locker, it doesn't bode us at all well when bloomin' cops be using it on the populace for crowd control or to force lubbers to obey their commands.
"Arr, get out of the vehicle and make way for boardin', swabbie!"
"Aye, but what of me constitutional rights against unreasonable looting and pillaging?"
*FFFNNZZZZZOOWWNT*
"Yaaaarrr!"
Aye a sobering thought. And will yer video camera help ye then? And what of the other wrong people layin' their mitts on this terrible new technology by way of the interweb -- ye don't like how a match is going? Give the swab in goal an itch he'd claw out with his own hook for just a second for the ball to pass into the net. Aye. People already are misusing lasers, what of these? No visible injury, sounds perfect for torture.
What next, use this on pirates? Well I'll be scuppered!
Re:Blimey! (Score:5, Funny)
The ones that already use Kalashnikovs for crowd control? I'll take the ray over stopping a round, thx.
Aye, but do ye think they'd have less reservations usin' one o' these devices knowin' they would leave no visible wounds? Aye see these bein' used often and with far more room for abuse.
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Re:Blimey! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Much more versatile than bullets... (Score:5, Insightful)
You are missing the point. For such regimes, this device would not be so attractive for crowd control as it would be for torture. Let's see...cheap and easy to reproduce, causes agony, doesn't leave marks. Perfect for extracting confessions and discrediting dissidents!
Come to think of it, considering how trigger-happy some cops around here seem to be with tasers, I'd hate to see what they would do with a device like this if they ever got someone they didn't like (accused rapist, molester, cop killer, smart-mouthed teenager) in the lock-up.
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Re:Much more versatile than bullets... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Much more versatile than bullets... (Score:5, Insightful)
As a reference, your 45 kW is just about 64 HP, and any contractor's white van is large enough to house all the equipment, and the engine is powerful enough to feed the generator until the gas tank runs dry. But if you consider that the police can use far larger trucks (with water cannons etc.) the whole question of technical constraints is moot.
In terms of precision, 100 GHz is high, which means that a small antenna can have the main beam not wider than a couple of degrees. You don't even need that high a precision. If you don't want to zap TV people ... don't aim at them. Besides, your goal (as a police zapper) is not to annoy people but to control people - those are two different goals. So you zap some people but not the other, and they run where you want them to be. You don't want to do the Blackwater incident in Times Square, people should always have an escape route. If they don't have any escape they are highly likely to attack you, close and personal; then you only need to kill them all, in self-defense, regardless of how many thousands of them there are.
Parent
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Compare it to the neverending stream of Taser stories from the USA. People got tasered occasionally as torture (people which had _already_ been restrained) or because a cop got a chip on his shoulder, for reasons as ridiculous as:
- asking too many questions at a political rally (see the recent story)
- being at a library without their library card (guy got tasered _repeatedly_ after he had already accepted to leave)
- diabetic guy in a medical emergency calls 911 for an ambulance, cops show up first and taser him in his bed (apparently one guy sick enough to be stuck in bed was considered dangerous enough to the cops to warrant use of the taser)
Etc, etc, etc.
Dearie, get this: even China, and even the fucking NKVD under Stalin, wouldn't have used a gun in _those_ situation. Yes, China did shoot some of the people demonstrating in Tiananmen square against the government, but not even in their darkest hour would they consider shooting a sick guy for calling an ambulance.
Effectively the idea that a taser is "non-lethal" has lowered the bar to ludicriously low extremes. It's not replacing the use of guns, as if you were to do something that warrants shooting at you, they'll _still_ shoot at you. (E.g., if you pulled a gun at a cop, I do believe they won't draw the tasers.) It just created a whole new possibility to inflict pain (again, sometimes repeatedly) on someone for minor misdemeanors or just for disliking him or just for fun. It's not replacing guns, it's _in_ _addition_ to guns, for stuff where you previously wouldn't even _think_ of drawing a gun.
Sadder still: for stuff where even China or the USSR wouldn't have even dreamed of using a gun on someone.
So the question isn't whether you'd rather get the ray or a round. For any stuff that would previously warrant getting a round, you'll still get a round. Only now you'll get the ray for everything else. Whop-de-do, big improvement there.
Parent
Source (Score:5, Interesting)
Here is the video on YouTube [youtube.com], which is as close to a primary source as you can get. Basically the guy got asked to leave when he couldn't produce a student ID, and started arguing (maybe, allegedly) with the cops, who repeatedly tasered him. The tasering was less for not having the ID than it was for being 'uppity,' at least IMO. That's how they tend to get used; you shoot your mouth off? That's a taserin'. Don't do what you're told? That's a taserin'. Look at a cop the wrong way? Well, you get the idea.
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Re:Source (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
The UCLA tasering was not a public library in the same sense, since it belongs to the school rather than the community at large, so they were within their rights to demand an ID and ask people who couldn't show that they were using the library with the school's authorization to leave.
What happened after that I find horrific, and I don't in any way mean this post to excuse it, I just wanted to clarify that the ID requirement doesn't cover general public libraries, and in fact pretty much all of the universities I'm familiar with voluntarily keep their libraries open to the public and just require an ID to check out books, or in many cases now to use the internet, due to new federal legislation which requires them to monitor activity and keep extensive backups if they allow open public use of the network.
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Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I guess nobody reading this post has cable... (Score:5, Informative)
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John Titor Predicted it (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:John Titor Predicted it (Score:5, Insightful)
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Chilling... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is something wrong when the general population begins to fear the police, and I think that is starting to happen in the United States.
Re:Chilling... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Chilling... (Score:5, Funny)
We've got one that goes to 11.
(Sorry, had to be said.)
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Re:Chilling... (Score:5, Insightful)
Its an invisible beam and it leaves no evidence. No one ever has to justify using it, because they can instead just deny using it any time that the use is controversial.
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Re:Chilling... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Chilling... (Score:5, Interesting)
What always ticks me off is police always associate nervousness or evasiveness with guilt. After hundreds of publicized police beatings and shootings, they don't realize people are nervous because of police reputation, not because they're guilty of something.
I avoid the police whenever I can. I don't trust them and I don't like them. They would paint me a criminal for that, but I consider it self preservation. There are many like me who are targeted by police for harassment and abuse.
Parent
This is gun is meant to be used on citizens (Score:5, Insightful)
This weapon is designed to work not against invading armies, but against angry citizens. Through most of recent history, governments have been wary of angering their own populations for fear of triggering citizen revolutions. A government cannot effectively use lethal weapons on its own population in any widespread way, because those citizens make the state function. Thus, there are some things that governments simply will not do, because of the risk of a popular uprising.
With weapons like this pain gun, the balance of power is tipped sharply in favor of governments. Governments will be able to use weapons like this against their own people, without creating rebel martyrs. The immediate effects of this gun on an individual are horrible, but temporary. No disfiguring injuries to point to as proof of the government's inhumanity. Just a fleeting moment of pain, that will continue to exist only in a person's memory. These pain guns are a far more effective tool of subjugation than machine guns.
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Re:Chilling... (Score:5, Insightful)
Errr. . .doesn't such a low approval rating demonstrate not that people are disinterested in government, but rather that they are very interested and yet powerless to do anything about a government gone awry?
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Approval of Congress (Score:5, Informative)
Nah, it's the one-two combo. Some care but are powerless, whereas the others don't care--ironically making those that do care powerless!
More seriously, it's very easy for a person to off-handedly say to a pollster that they don't approve of Congress; it's quite another for that person to know what Congress is doing in the first place. That disapproval is more probably an expression of general malaise, distrust, or cynicism towards the government in general than it is any sort of appraisal of Congress as an acting body. I'd say of those polled (if past stats hold up) barely a third of respondents even know who their reps in Congress are, probably barely a half could name any rep. Most Americans would be hard pressed to name one piece of legislation passed in the last session, and even fewer to correlate that piece of legislation with its supporters and detractors correctly. Those that care are outnumbered by those that don't, and in that circumstance it is awfully difficult to take statistics that purport to show a true measure of the American people's approval or disapproval of Congress with any more than a grain of salt.
More evidence--in case you needed it--even when Congress' approval rating drops into the doldrums, as it has on several occasions, re-election rates for seated members rarely drops below 90%.
Parent
Re:Chilling... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your argument would be persuasive except for one detail that you overlook.
For all practical purposes, elected officials aren't elected by the general poplace anymore. Sure, we get to vote for candidate A or B, but A and B are both pre-selected by corporate contributions and the entrenched power elite, who are the real interests represented by the elected officials.
Thus, the general populace are not represented by the officials any longer, especially at the Federal level. Compounding that, the differences between our interests and those of the corporate/elite are becoming greater in both degree and kind.
It's not a universal truism, but it is a valid concern these days, at a time when we are much closer to a society where the average citizen fears the police than we ever have been the past. Your argument ignores - implicitly rejects - that concern, in the face of increasingly frequent evidence to the contrary.
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Corporatism (Score:5, Informative)
See the Wiki [wikipedia.org]
Mussolini's "corporatism" meant a sort of negotiating council comprising representatives of government, organised labour and industrial capital, which is a fascist/Third Way kind of idea for overcoming the at that time hugely destabilising tension between capital and labour (verging on literal civil war). On the face of it, not actually that bad, except that in practice it was unelected and unresponsive to democracy, the governmental elements tended to end up calling all the shots, and labour particularly suffered. And mixed with the ultranationalist and militarist elements of the weird soup that was Fascism in reality as opposed to in its initial conception, it turned out to be really really bad. But it's arguable that the bad parts of Fascism didn't all derive from that initial idea.
I'm as aware as the next person that commercial corporations are antidemocratic in internal structure, but the scary thing is that many people arguing loudest that "corporatism is fascism" tend to be unaware that the kind of political system they *would* prefer in its place is closer to the initial forms of actual historical Fascism.
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Re:Chilling... (Score:5, Insightful)
Tasers had a similar justification for their implementation and yet we see them misused on a daily basis.
Why do you love the police state so god damned much?Quite simply because i can stand more than a second of those kinds of punishment? The guy in the article said even hardened military men could only last a few seconds. That, and technology like say, a wet cotton shirt, or a two by 4 can combat those sorts of attacks.
They are gonna come for you gun one day scenty, and at that time they will bombard your household with devices such as these. Can your 9mm slugs make it a mile and a half? Can you get to your gun and lay down the precise aim needed before you fall to the ground screaming in pain? The worst part is that you are gonna be on your own on that day, because everyone else will have already been rounded up.
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Re:Chilling... (Score:5, Insightful)
and there isn't an elected civilain in the US that wants to look 'soft on crime' by firing a cop based solely on the word of someone without a mark on them.
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Re:Chilling... (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you ever been in agony? Okay, now imagine that feeling connected to an on/off switch that someone else's hand is on. That someone doesn't have your best interests at heart (rather, another set of interests, ranging from maintaining order to getting their rocks off). That someone can legally detain you and hold you immobile, take you into their custody, whose orders under most circumstances you are required to obey, and whose word in a court of law is more readily believed than yours. Guess what, when there are no marks, its their word against yours...and theirs always wins.
Are you getting the picture yet?
Read about the Stanford Prison experiment in case you still maintained rosy notions of the human nature of those given authority.
Parent
Re:Chilling... (Score:5, Interesting)
your attitude would likely change. Pain teaches very very quickly. It is likely you will
not simply stand there and let it happen again if you have been exposed to it's effects
already.
If I walked up and hit you with a Taser on a daily basis for a few days, would you simply
stand there and let me do it again knowing what was about to happen ? Doubtful. After one
or two applications, it would be likely we would be fighting the moment you saw the device
from that point on.
You may find yourself doing whatever it took to keep it from happening again. If that meant
resorting to deadly force and / or using a firearm, so be it.
Parent
no way this will work (Score:5, Funny)
1/64th inch of skin (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:1/64th inch of skin (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Relatively hard (Score:5, Insightful)
Corrupt lobby to pass law declaring it illegal to wear metallic micro-wave reflecting clothes in
Common, they already made it illegal to wear a gaz-mask during manifestations in some countries. What do you expect ?
{Insert your favorite "if-you-have-nothing-to-hide-you-have-no-reason-to-wear-one" excuse hehe}
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Re:It does not stack up (Score:5, Insightful)
With any luck, it'll coaggulate and turn opaque, so the police won't need to use blindfolds on the protesters.
With even more luck, it'll stay that way forever...
Parent
Fact follows fiction (Score:5, Interesting)
Forget the tin foil hat (Score:5, Funny)
The taser problem (Score:5, Insightful)
With a gun, a trained operator understands that the person he's shooting at will probably die, so everything better be absolutely correct before employing it or he's going to jail.
With a Tazer, the trained operator will use it more casually than a gun because the price of being wrong is so much lower.
With the pain ray, it's even lower. Our current legal environment suggests that this will end up being used to break up unpopular demonstrations or groupings even more casually than tear gas, specifically because the physical evidence and chance of permanent injury is so much lower.
What effect will this have on the democratic process? Used in conjunction with modern artifacts like "designated free speech zones", this could be crippling. There's no way to prevent an advance, our duty as citizens is to be aware of the dangers and be ready to speak out against them if they transpire.
Ok, but is it eye safe? (Score:5, Interesting)
-dh
Forget the cornea -- retina==NERVE! (Score:5, Interesting)
True.. But if this is radio/microwave based the cornea is probably NOT going to absorb much....
I would expect much of the waves would directly heat the retina of the eye (if aimed toward it).
Which would seem to cause one of two possibilities:
1) Your retina gets cooked, you go permanently blind instantly (upon a direct pulse to the eye).
2) I'm guessing the retina has no pain receptors.... Overstimuling the retina might cause (painless) damage and probably very strange visual sensations. This can't be good....
Losing a few nerves on arm/leg skin is one thing... Eye/brain damage is a bit different and probably difficult to prove. (No, your eyesight was never as good as you claim (20/20), we the raygun didn't damage it).
I've only had 3-4 physicals, and I've never seen an optomitrist (bad spelling, eye doctor). Since my eyesight was better than the minimum for 20/20 it would be difficult for me to pr ove any degradation. Plus I don't have the health records anymore or know who the doctors were (its been a while). I suspect many people are like me in this regard.
And what about people who have metal implants as a result of surgery? (e.g. from broken bone, etc)...
If they really want to convince us that this thing is safe, they should do the following:
1) Sedate the CEO and CFO of Raytheon, and possibly pain-blocking drugs.
2) Fire the full-size raygun at them for 5 minutes continously.
3) See what happens to them over the next few years/months.
Parent
After the test... (Score:5, Funny)
My congrats (Score:5, Funny)
Can this be reflected ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Naivete? (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that they were created in one.
...Cannot cause visible permanent injury? (Score:5, Insightful)
That seems an awfully calculated thing to say... so that means they have found it to cause INVISIBLE permanent injury then?
Crowd Control (Score:5, Informative)
Same with this... they'll say its a less lethal way of incapacitating enemy troops, or maybe quelling a riot. But eventually since its "safe," they'll start using it on peaceful protests that got out of the "free speech zone" and dangerously close to coming within cable news camera range.
But a little PAIN has never HURT anyone, right? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. 1/64th of an inch seems sufficient to cause serious and possibly permanent eye damage. This is an area-wide weapon, it is not selective about its targets or which body part it is targeting.
2. Exposure to extreme levels of pain (especially suddenly) can also lead to a seizure or heart attack. If the pain is extremely strong, it may incapacitate the target (ever hurt yourself so badly you can't do ANYTHING except perhaps scream?), meaning the people can't escape the target zone, exposing themselves to even more pain.
3. If the authorities decide to use the weapon against a crowd, it is natural to presume some have a higher pain tolerance then others, and if the weapons is used until all or the majority of the crowd is quelled, the weaker-tolerance people will be exposed to unnecessary (and with potential serious consequences) levels and duration of pain.
4. I'm not even going to the legal definitions of physical torture in and by itself...
I'm not saying it shouldn't be used under any circumstances whatsoever, but it seems that it should be classified as deadly or almost deadly force ("deadly" in most jurisdictions includes "capable of producing grievous bodily harm).
Even the story the other day about the use of a Taser (which is also an almost-deadly-force weapon, with documented fatalities) being used where the suspect posed absolutely no danger and could have been subdued without it). This device can lead to the same consequences of a Taser, but instead of being used on one person, it affects hundreds, with no way to observe the effects on each single person and adjust the device power accordingly.
Are there cases where use of this device is legitimate? Maybe, for example if you are rushed by an angry mob and you legitimately feel your life to be in danger if you don't take immediate action. But given our record for indiscriminate and excessive use of next-to-lethal force (rubber bullets, Tasers, etc.) against peaceful demonstrations, non-violent action, cases where safer alternatives are available, and with "just for kicks" being a legitimate reason, I certainly wouldn't bet on this device to be safe in the hands of those who use it. This device is NOT a valid substitute for a water cannon or tear gas, and if in a given situation you are not justified to use live firearms, you also shouldn't be justified to use something like this.
If (or, sadly speaking, when) it will be classified as a "safe, non-lethal" weapon (just as the Taser already has been) well, we will be one mile higher up Shit Creek.
Torture Applications (Score:5, Interesting)
But this is not true. Torture relies just as much on fear of death or permanent injury as it does on pain. I do not believe a pain-only device would make an effective torture device. Read a book like Bravo-Two-Zero, for an idea of what the torture was like practiced by Iraqis against coalition POW's in the first Iraq war; and more importantly, what the men who are able to resist it are like. They said they tested it on "hardened marines," and they couldn't withstand it more than a couple seconds. I'd like to see how Delta or SAS guys would do against it.
President Eisenhower warned us! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:bad writeup (Score:5, Insightful)
If these become commonplace the problem will snowball. Pain begets one of two things:
1) Compliance
2) Ultra-Violence
As a result, when hit with one of these things folks are either going to crawl up into
a ball and hope it goes away, or come out guns blazing to destroy the device causing the
pain to begin with. ( and likely the wielder with it )
If I were to attend a demonstration where it is known the police would likely use such
a device on the crowd I would either:
1) Re-consider my attendance
or
2) Setup similar devices to aim at the police or resort to current tech ( read that firearms )
You cannot use what would be considered an electronic torture device on me and expect me
to be ok with it. The operators of such a device would be the FIRST targets I went after.
Since it's unlikely the citizens would have similar tech in their hands for use, firearms will
put a stop to it just as quickly.
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Re:An interesting thought experiment (Score:5, Funny)
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