Homeland Security Funds LED Light That Blinds, Disorients

katzmeow writes "Ryand Singel's Wired blog notes that Homeland security has developed an LED flashlight that uses 'powerful flashes of light to temporarily blind, disorient and incapacitate people.' The idea is to use it to incapacitate people — 'arrest them' — on airlines, borders, etc. without using traditional weapons. The company's president Bob Lieberman says the tool is perfect for confronting 'border jumpers.' 'You don't want to hurt or kill them, just take them into custody,' says Lieberman. 'With this, they don't need to know English to comply.' The 'light saber' can even be scaled up to bazooka size for subduing crowds."

Comments

Re:Vlad calls it the evil color

[An dochasac]

"There's one wavelength that gets everybody," Lieberman said, according to the newsletter. "Vlad calls it the evil color."

And if the psychophysical effects are limited to a single or range of wavelengths, these effects are easily blocked with Dichroic Filter Sunglasses. Or better yet, Peril Sensitive Sunglasses.

The good news if the DOD is again looking for creative ways of wasting money, this obviously means they are nearly finished with the cleanup from two wars. Couple hundred billion here, couple hundred billion there and pretty soon you're talking about real money!

/me darkens peril sensitive shades.

Re:This is against Geneva or Hague convention

[d3ac0n]

And this WILL blind people.

I'm sorry, but I have to call BS on this one. While I realize that it's oh so fashionable amongst the intelligentsia so make all sorts of wild accusations against the United States as the very incarnation of Cthulu, it just rings hollow here.

First of all, what causes people to go blind while looking at Lasers? well, let's check Wikipedia shall we? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasers#Laser_safety

the money quote is here:

At wavelengths which the cornea and the lens can focus well, the coherence and low divergence of laser light means that it can be focused by the eye into an extremely small spot on the retina, resulting in localized burning and permanent damage in seconds or even less time.

(emphasis mine)

The reason lasers can blind is due to the nature of the laser itself, being a highly coherent and concentrated beam of light, which the cornea can further concentrate to dangerous levels. LED's, while very bright, are of a highly INcoherent and diffuse nature. Now, there may be some TEMPORARY blindness caused by the overall light intensity, also known as Flash Blindness ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_blindness ) but nothing permanently damaging. Also, as someone else mentioned above, there is a range-finder on the thing designed to adjust the intensity based on the range of the target.

So what we have here is a non-lethal weapon designed to harmlessly incapacitate an individual, allowing law enforcement to take them into custody without exchanging gunfire or risking serious injury or loss of life. Frankly, that sounds like three things to me:

a) A good overall idea
b) Something the UN would really go for (why kill when you can humanely capture?)
c) NOT something that an Eeeevil entity would do, unlike the way the US is commonly characterized on /. and other places. (Maybe the US isn't so evil after all?)

Remember, calm logical thinking is your friend, knee-jerk reactions are not.

Re:This is against Geneva or Hague convention

[Cyberax]

Just for your reference: I've spent once about 2 months blindfolded after I got by a powerful search floodlight (we were sailing in canoe down the river and accidentally came too close to a military base).

Doctors said that it's a fairly common reaction on very bright light. I was lucky to recover almost completely. Not all are.

Read your sources

[Nazlfrag]

You first quote wikipedia stating how coherent light can damage eyes. Agreed, by all accounts it does. You then incorrectly infer that this means incoherent light is safe. You missed the other money quote:

Some sources such as NATO and the U.S. Department of Defense state that "flash blindness" can be temporary or permanent.[2]

Even considering using devices that could cause permanent blindness is evil. Sometimes the US is characterised correctly.

Re:No guarantee of safety when breaking the law

[soren100]

Jean Charles de Menezes died because many things wen't wrong that shouldn't have been allowed to go wrong. No, he died because police officers jumped on top of him and fired 7 bulllets into his head. Then they lied about the details to make the actions seem much more reasonable. The only reason that the horrifying truth came out was because outraged individuals risked their jobs and their freedom to make the truth known. The police still claim that the multiple CCTV cameras covering the incident were all malfunctioning at the time.

If you're going to use an example then at least use one that's typical rather than one that's unique. Unfortunately police brutality and consequent coverups to avoid the consequences of the brutality is unfortunately very typical. Each case is unique, but the overall pattern is far too predictable.

The gunning down of a 92-year-old grandmother in a botched drug raid was also a unique case, and so were the accompanying lies attempting to justify the actions and make them seem reasonable.

Here's a map of the details of all the "unique" botched paramilitary raids in America.

The original claim stands true. "Reasonable force" is a fluid term, and far too many innocent people die from police mis-application of "reasonable force".