Journalist Test Drives The Pain Ray Gun 818
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. "
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
The ones that already use Kalashnikovs for crowd control? I'll take the ray over stopping a round, thx.
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.
Re:Blimey! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Blimey! (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Blimey! (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:Much more versatile than bullets... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Much more versatile than bullets... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm starting to see things like this and tazers in the hands of police officers as maybe a mistake. The cops are more likely to use them in situations that don't warrent it because it doesn't leave any perminate damage. Even now we are starting to see cops using tazers just because someone didn't move fast enough for them. There have been instances where cops have used tazers on grade school kids.
We've removed the fear of weapons use. People think these things are better because they are non lethal or less lethal than real weapons. But I have my doubt that they are better, just different.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.waxahachiedailylight.com/articles/2007/05/20/dailylight/news/01-05-20-taser.txt [waxahachiedailylight.com]
The Sad Truth (Score:5, Insightful)
Because of its status as "less lethal", the Taser is supposed to be used by law enforcement as "an alternative to lethal force". In other words, as a way of stopping a person when the only other alternative is to shoot them with a gun. And it performs that function quite well. The Taser very seldom (but occasionally) results in permanent damage or death.
PROBLEM #1 is exactly that perception of non-lethality. To some, non-lethal or "less lethal" means safe or even sane. However, I would be willing to bet a large amount that if you compared the number of people in history who have been beaten with nightsticks, to the number of people who have been Tasered, you would find a higher lethality rate for the Taser. I am only guessing, but nobody so far has really done such a study, so the question is open. And as I mentioned, one died just recently in my own town. I do not think anyone in this town has ever died from beatings by nightsticks... and believe me, there have been some over the last couple of hundred years.
PROBLEM #2 is the conception that "no permanent harm" means "no harm". Bullshit. People hit with a Taser fall down hard, in unnatural positions, and hurt themselves. It is also excruciatingly painful. I believe most people who have been Tasered would rather have been hit with a nightstick, even though the latter would hurt for a much longer time.
Years ago, a popular interrogation (or control) device was a length of rubber hose, because it could be extremely painful but leave few marks and do "no permanent harm". Sound familiar? Strangely, the rubber hose is internationally vilified as a "torture device" while the Taser is not. Somebody please explain this to me!
PROBLEM #3 Police forces tend to attract the kind of people who like to bully and control other people. You could argue with me all you want about that but history supports that statement beyond dispute. I am not saying that all cops are bad, but a disproportionate percentage of them are, and always have been. Plain, simple truth. I wish it were otherwise.
PROBLEM #4 is actually just the consequences of 1, 2, and 3: Police forces (at least in the U.S.) have started using Tasers in ways that are completely inappropriate: to avoid physical confrontation at all; as an alternative to nightsticks (rather than as an alternative to guns, as it should be); and even just as a convenience, such as to avoid having to tell someone something one more time. I have seen video clips of police Tasering people for such things as talking back, not moving fast enough for the officer's taste, and other such "criminal" acts. That very recent video of the student getting Tasered at the Kerry speech is a classic case. The student might have been a mouthy ass, but he did not deserve the treatment he received.
People need to get together and demand that their state or city restrict the use of Tasers (again) to "an alternative to deadly force". Otherwise, their use will escalate and the public will surely regret it.
Even Sadder (Score:5, Informative)
A man (who was not under suspicion for a crime at the time) was beaten and eventually Tasered while he was having an epileptic seizure, because he was "not responding" to police orders. Of course he was not responding... he was twitching face down on the lawn in a seizure! Any idiot should have been able to see that something was amiss. Witnesses stated that the police were wantonly brutal and that he had never provoked anyone... he was simply not responding.
The man happened to be at a house (he did not live there) when the police went to arrest the resident on drug charges. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. There were no charges against him. An acquaintance of mine knew him. She said he was one of the nicest people she ever knew. Wouldn't hurt a fly.
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.
Re:Source (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
You, sir, are a moron and a liar (Score:5, Insightful)
Grand parent never claimed US was "worse" than USSR. That is pure invention on your part, because you lack the mental capabilities to read what he actually wrote. As long as you compensate for your long for your low intelligence by inventing stuff, you will never become smarter.
He claimed that in the US people are tasered for situations where more oppressive governments would not use a gun. You then counter by a Wikipedía quote, listing abuses done by USSR in situation where US police or guards would not use a taser. You don't use tasers to assassinate people, or to "subversion of foreign governments", once again demonstrating how access to Wikipedia is in no way a replacement for having a brain.
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Informative)
No, not worse.
But being better than the NKVD doesn't mean jack shit, really.
Comparing to something worse is lowering your standards.
I hope you hold up your police officers to better standards than comparing them to the NKVD
not even a police state (Score:5, Informative)
Funny how most of the people who say that the US is a police state are Americans who've never actually been to or met anyone who has lived in a real police states.
You're totally right. Those other repressive regimes operate secret prisons [time.com] where people are whisked away without being formally charged and then they're tortured [slate.com] for supposed information. Nobody even knows how many of those prisons exist or how many prisoners are in them. And then their own government completely monitors all their 'private' communications without warrants [usatoday.com] or any reasonable cause to suspect them of wrong-doing.
Fortunately, we've got a constitution that protects Americans from living under such a 'police state.'
Seth
Re:not even a police state (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is pretty much the US all over these days.
"USA - less nasty than the USSR!"
"USA - fewer human rights violations than Uzbekistan!"
"USA - not too nice, but hey, we're better than Burma!"
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats funny. I had the opportunity to attend a protest during a visit by the Prez to a city near me. There were over 1000 people there. It was a peaceful demonstration and things went well for awhile. (Although the trenchcoat/dark glasses guys taking pictures of everyone was a little disturbing.)
From down the road there approached a line of riot police, complete with helmets, shields and long clubs. They moved steadily toward the line of protesters. They were certainly not there to 'protect' us.
I'm sorry I can't tell you how it all ended, as I left at that point. I had my teenage daughter and her friend with me and I didn't want them getting hurt. The point is, your are kidding yourself if you think those guys were there for anything except breaking up a peaceful protest which was attracting some media attention.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
They are not stupid, as they are still in office with the lowest public opinion rating EVER.
Stupid people do not gain control of a first world country, no matter how much people want to believe that.
Stupid people flip burgers at McDonald's for a living, conniving and deviously smart people can retain control of an entire country after systematically removing huge swaths of the populous' rights.
The current administration is not stupid. Morally bereft maybe. Hugely self interested maybe. But not stupid.
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
Well it's a demonstratable fact that all the conflicts that the US is involved in today were started or exacerbated by small minded foreign policies of Republicans.
Look a the problems today with Iran. Iran used to be a democracy, however the Shaw dictatorship was put into place by the US government when the CIA overthrew the democratically elected Iranian government in 1953 because the US/Britain wanted to retain power of (can you guess??) the countrys oil. Eisenhower, a Republican, was in power at this time and authorized the overthrow. The democrat before him refused. This was the original catalyst for the future Iranian problems.
When the Islamists overthrew the Shaw they established a fundamentalist regime bent on the destruction of the 'great Satan' USA. Then of couse, Regan gave arms to the Iranians, then decided that was a bad idea and gave Saddam Hussein and the Iraqis more arms to fight the arms given to Iran. And don't forget the arming and training of the Taliban in Afghanistan by Regan to fight the 'evil' soviets.
So, todays big touble spots: Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, fighters all trained and supplied by US Republican foreign policy. Tell me there is no differnce.
Re:I guess nobody reading this post has cable... (Score:5, Informative)
John Titor Predicted it (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:John Titor Predicted it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But if you really think he's only "slightly" off, you're delusional. And if he's more than slightly off, then there's no point in trying to compare what's happening to any of his predictions. Because they have nothing to do with our reality, and don't and won't predict our future. What you're saying here is only a small step from the folks at the Weekly World News who pick their favorite translation of N
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But the really funny part is that that would also be the mark of a clever but fake time traveler. Because it's much easier for someone to be right about events in the near future, since things tend to change slowly and incrementally. Sure, most people will be wrong, but occasionally someone's guess will be right. But as they keep guessing further and further out,
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:4, Informative)
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?
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%.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Chilling... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Chilling... (Score:5, Funny)
We've got one that goes to 11.
(Sorry, had to be said.)
Re:Chilling... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? An officer that's shown to abuse people can't keep his job unless an elected official/body allows him/her to. There isn't a law enforcement officer of any type, working at any level in the US that doesn't answer to elected civilians. So, what you're 'afraid' of isn't police with riot control weapons that no longer risk putting out an eye with a rubber bullet, or burning/choking someone with tear gas cannisters - what you're afraid of is your inability to be persuasive enough to get elected a person that, at the muncipal, county, and state level, will prohibit abusive behavior by officers (and support consequences for it).
Why are you more afraid of a fleeting, non-damaging nerve stimulation than you are choking gas, or bruising clubs and water cannons, or agitated K-9 units? You shouldn't be - those are all simply tools. This isn't about the tool, it's about the policies and rules of engagement. And those are dictated by people you do, or don't vote for. Police have always been ABLE to use painful tactics as needed, but those methods generally caused damage.
I don't know anyone in my neighborhood that's more afraid of police than they used to be. There are only people that are frustrated that there aren't enough police to keep gangs like MS-13 from being as scary as THEY are. If you're concerned about the ability of law enforcement officers to judge when and how to use force, then campaign for the higher taxes needed to pay the much higher salaries needed to attract and retain the physically fit, dedicated, experienced, philosopher kings you think would be better in that career.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I though so too, but that's incorrect (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Chilling... (Score:4, Funny)
Have you ever been in agony? Okay, now imagine that feeling connected to an on/off switch that someone else's hand is on.
The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined that time travel is...not fair.
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.
Re:Chilling... (Score:4, Insightful)
What about police make them automatically the good guys? This is what I really don't understand.
Oh, BTW, my uncle was killed by a cop (actually it was probably a cop's wife) when I was 8, so I have a grudge.
What was my uncle's crime you ask? Oh, that was walking within a crosswalk WITH the traffic light's blessing but doing so too slow to not get hit by a drunken driver doing over 70 (according the the medical report on his pulverized (that's the word they used) pelvis) in a residential area.
My most RECENT incident with the police was punking one out with the threat of a video camera after he pulled my sister over for being the wrong color in a neighborhood she drove through on the way home from work.
Stop the sniveling authority worship, police are just people as susceptible to corruption (probably even moreso, remember the old maxim about power corrupting) as anyone else. Deferring to the shiny piece of tin on their chest makes you look weak and fearful.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Like I said, you're afraid of your inability to be persuasive enough. If you can't convince people there's a problem, then you're not being persuasive enough. The reason that so many people shrug off coverage of crowd control cops getting rough is because they also get annoyed at shrill, masked groups of people in chanting crowds that think that stopping traffic (or torching cars), trying to block access to a bus
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.
Re:Chilling... (Score:4, Insightful)
In addition, they have not tested it on volunteers for long periods (and, by the description, 'long periods' may well be as short as 30 seconds!) - simply because who would volunteer for it? Even hardened marines apparently flee within seconds. We have no idea what will happen to people that suffer this ray for more than a fleeting instant - for all we know it might lead to an epileptic seizure or brain damage. It might also cause local damage to the nerves - overstimulation of nerves can lead to their death; this is called excitotoxicity [wikipedia.org].
Sadly, I am sure that the developers of this weapon have barbarically tested it on animals for 'long periods'. This is still not enough to convince me that it does not permanent damage; human brains are not identical to animal ones. In addition there is a tremendous psychological element to torture - the belief that the pain will continue; this is less of an issue for some animals.
Sorry for the long rant, but this weapon is a horrible idea. It is like the nuclear bomb of supposedly nonlethal weapons - too powerful for anyone to have. It should be outlawed by international convention IMHO. Let's develop nonlethal methods that incapacitate, etc., not that can be used to bring torture to new levels.
Re:Chilling... (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Can we get a donttasemebro tag? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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)
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}
Pleasure Ray? (Score:3, Interesting)
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...
Sounds awful (Score:4, Funny)
...oh the pain.
Fact follows fiction (Score:5, Interesting)
U.S. Government social skills: (Score:3, Insightful)
The least sophisticated way of relating to other people is through violence.
President Eisenhower warned us! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So, when a crowd of people are smashing your store front and burning your car - a form of "relating" to you of which you would presumably disapprove - which is better: sending in people with choking tear gas, or clubs, or other techniques that essentialy guarantee injury for people across the board, or using a tool that more or less instantly puts a stop to the violence? Do you NOT want violent people to be stopped, using a mimimu
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A police "sniper" operating this from a rooftop would be hard to hold accountable.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I would like to see a show of proof that the threshold for the use of force has been lowered.
The Geek has no long-term memory - no sense of history - but the institutional memory of your local police force is likely to go back a century or more.
A good place to begin, if you want to gain some perspective, are
Ok, but is it eye safe? (Score:5, Interesting)
-dh
Re:Ok, but is it eye safe? (Score:4, Insightful)
Key is frequency, not power (Score:4, Insightful)
That said I was thinking that anything that sent this much pain coursing through you might well lead to more harmful effects than a tazer. That much pain would have to be quite a shock to your body which would probably trigger a lot of reactions as a result.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
After the test... (Score:5, Funny)
Prototype, my ass. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the table-top demonstration model is the one that's intended for use in the field. For values of "field" ranging towards "dark basements in former Soviet bloc countries, to whom we've paid good money for plausible deniability".
Unless the "production" model is composed of an array of those table-top demonstration models (and to give Raytheon the benefit of the doubt, it might be), there are very few military applications to even try to scale the device down to "trade-show booth" form factor.
Either way, I'm glad I'm long Raytheon. From WW2-era radar stations, to the microwave oven, to new and emerging markets including crowd control and individual torture, manipulation of RF energy has been a consistent profit generator.
My congrats (Score:5, Funny)
Can this be reflected ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Or take product competition. How little discomfor
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?
Re:...Cannot cause visible permanent injury? (Score:4, Funny)
"Now here is a video of a person crossing the street running into an invisible pain ray" as a video...
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Wait until the 1st time it's used at a stadium (Score:3, Insightful)
At a half mile away, police in Brooklyn (on one side of the East River) could do crowd control for the edge of Manhattan. One guy on the top of the Empire State Building co
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.
well, I'll be a tethered goat in atlas shrugged (Score:3, Funny)
The Grassy Knoll and Litmus Paper (Score:4, Interesting)
A tazer has to be held by the user in contact with the victim. The victim at least gets to see the person coming and witness them. This evil device leaves no evidence and can be operated at a great distance in full anonymity.
1/ What about severe misue of the device for assassination, by any number of conscienceless vermin across society:
1.1/ Target a plane's cockpit on takeoff. Dead. No evidence. Post mortem: Accident.
1.2/ Target a mountain climber hiking (unroped) up a steep mountainside. Dead. No evidence. Post mortem: Accident.
1.3/ Target a skydiver/BASE jumper after jumping and before opening their chute. Dead. No evidence. Post mortem: Accident.
1.4/ Targetting the driver of Xxxx Xx's Mercedes as it travels into a French tunnel at high speed. Massive accident, perhaps death, certain personal trauma. No evidence. Post mortem: Accident.
1.5/ Target Lewis Hamilton's Maclaren at the end of Spa's main straight, just before the braking zone. (precedent: Steffi Graf, Monica Seles, Gunter Parche) Massive accident, perhaps death, certain loss of race points. No evidence. Post mortem: Accident.
1.6/ Target that noisy motorcyclist who keeps riding up and down the road outside your retirement home. Massive accident, perhaps death, certain personal trauma. No evidence. Post mortem: Accident.
No evidence. No sound. Sniper-like secrecy. Uncontrollable pain. Certain or highly probable death.
2/ How can its premise of evidenceless be defeated? A vulnerable person may be unable to wear a full "tinfoil suit" (mountain climber), but perhaps they can carry a frequency recording device that can be manufactured and distrubuted cheaply that amounts to a piece of litmus-like paper that changes colour if subjected to this evil device's frequency at a threshold intensity, so that the person's body will at least carry a fragment of evidence that the magic frequeny was applied to the person, causing the pain (and death if so). Patentable? Hope not. I just put it into the public domain to try to block that usually bad outcome.
ANonCow
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Why? Does the US really need to do that much catching up?
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:An interesting thought experiment (Score:5, Funny)
Option A or Option B. . . Hmm. Let me think. . . (Score:4, Interesting)
C. "Don't run a country in such a way as to create the cause for giant protests."
If there are mass protests, then it means the elected (sic) government is doing something wrong and the appearance of masses of people on the Whitehouse lawn should inspire them not to control and disperse the people with force, but to stop raping them through corrupt law.
Yes, I like that idea a whole lot better than getting to choose which version of molestation I would prefer to be subjected to when I show up to haul my not-so-democratically elected official to prison for started wars and taking bribes and generally being a psychotic clown.
Oh. . , but I should be practical. We don't live in an ideal world. I HAVE to choose, because that's just how it is. The 'facts on the ground' as you say, (along with the genocidal Zionist psychotics who first coined the term), are such that riots exist and must be dealt with, and that we simply must be controlled by weapons of mass dispersal. It's the American way.
Bullllllshit. That's such bullshit, and I reject it outright! The monsters may attack us, but I absolutely refuse to give them my mind as well. --To believe that they are somehow right to fire poison and pain rays into crowds of people. They are not! They are wrong!
Michael Moore's "Sicko" is a good example of the discrepancy between reality and perceived reality. It was easily the best piece of work he's produced, and I would recommend it to anybody. It's hard to realize just how fascist and evil the U.S. Government really is until you get an outside perspective. 9-11 rescue workers injured in their efforts to help out on the day and utterly ignored by the U.S. system were given free medical care in Cuba ferchrisake. It brought them all to tears as their illusions of the outside world were shattered. --And France appears to be an excellent example of a government being effectively bullied by the people, the way it ought to be. French universal health care, long holidays, labor laws which make the U.S. by comparison look like Red Russia, and yet, amazingly, the country remains one of the richest in the EU. America is deeply, deeply messed up, and her inhabitants are for the most part not even aware of the fact for having been so lied to, so beaten, so controlled, so poisoned and so undereducated. When I see Bush on a news piece walking through a crowd, it's plain that he's looking at the people the way one might look at chickens in a factory farm; pathetic and stupid and not even aware of how badly they've been screwed. How can he respect the people for being so blind and so totally bled by him and his kind?
So, No thank-you. I won't choose between CS gas and Pain Guns. Neither should exist.
The day the gene for psychopathy is discovered, all who carry it need to be visibly branded and put away in a big, enclosed city and we should throw huge bags of money and guns over the walls for them to back-stab each other to control. They'll take care of the problem they represent all on their own.
-FL