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

Nice

[okinawa_hdr]

"subduing crowds"...I don't like the sound of that.

Re:Nice

[CmdrGravy]

I like the fact that it can be used for subduing crowds without having to talk to them, everythings much simpler when you don't have to engage in any dialouge with enemy.

Re:Nice

[badfish99]

I wouldn't like to be subdued by any of them, thank you very much.

But, if you're going to give the police a weapon, there's an argument that a gun is better than any of these. Everyone knows that a gun is lethal, so a policeman is going to think carefully before using it on anyone who is not immediately threatening his life.
But if the policeman has got a simple non-lethal weapon like this, he's got a strong motivation for "subduing" anyone who happens to disagree with him or who doesn't instantly obey his orders. What better instrument of oppression than a police force that is always instantly obeyed for fear of something like this?

Re:Close your eyes.

[PopeRatzo]

Great idea. Take a moment what a crowd of Mexicans running frantically North with their eyes closed and their arms in front feeling their way.

I don't know about you, but the way I'm imagining it would look is freakin' hilarious.

When you think about it for more than a moment, it's really not all that funny.

Re:This is against Geneva or Hague convention

[MrMr]

As far as I remember, intrenational laws of war forbid using weapons that blind beople.

No problem there: The US has not (yet) officially declared war on itself, so using this on US citizens is perfectly fine for the time being.

Re:No guarantee of safety when breaking the law

[arth1]

Yes, but "reasonable force" is a fluid term. In the UK, it apparently means shooting an unarmed guy, then when he's on the floor, step on his arms and shoot him in the head, over and over again.
A better term would, in my opinion, be "minimal force". At least that doesn't expect police men to be reasoning beings.

Regards,
--
*Art

Re:This is against Geneva or Hague convention

[yani]

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. You are completely missing the point. Your last comment completely describes what the Taser is meant to be, but the whole point is that once someone in authority has a means to "subdue" a person with what they think is a method that cannot result in any permanent physical damage, they lose control, and inevitably cause more damage than would have been done with a lethal weapon which has clear and serious consequences. We've seen this with Tasers already.

Picture it, one crowd is protesting with a police force armed with lethal weapons, and non-lethal weapons that leave bruises, the other is protesting with a police force armed with LEDs. The first is not going to fire on a crowd except in self-defense, to do otherwise would be crazy, it would also be a bit difficult to go around and give everyone a bashing. The second is getting impatient and gets out an LED bazooka, and decides to put the brightness up a bit because it's a bright day, oh and they aren't sure if everyone had their eyes open the first time, so they fire it a few times just to be sure.

Or more likely, a middle-eastern looking youth is spotted in a library on a university campus, when asked for his student ID he says he doesn't have it, and won't leave. Someone calls security, security approaches him and tells him to leave. The youth says he won't leave, the security personnel get pissed off and pull out their handy LED weapon, and hold it a centimeter or so from his eye. They repeatedly flash him as he shouts out at them.

As for your claim that a very bright light source with a relatively high divergence from a large distance can not cause permanent damage, I think you need to look directly at the Sun a bit more.

Re:I'm sure...

[jollyreaper]

Why is it that the introduction of a non-lethal, safer-than-shooting-a-gun method of subduing a suspected criminal considered such a bad thing? If I were as paranoid of the government as you obviously are, I'd rather have them weilding a temporarily blinding light than to just save batteries and cram a load of C4 up my rear. Seriously, what's up with you people? The problem with less-than-lethals is that they were designed with the idea of "at least now there's an option other than shooting someone." That's fair. But the way they're used is "I don't feel like wrestling you to the ground and cuffing you, have some taser." The assumption is because it's called non-lethal (although it should be called less-than-lethal, most of the time) is that the cops don't think there's any risk associated with it. You're not as likely to kill someone with a taser than a gun, but you're still running more of a risk than if you subdued them the old-fashioned way.

I think the operating rule with these less-than-lethals should be "If you didn't have one of these and you would otherwise be shooting them with a gun, that's when you use these. If you would never have resorted to the gun, stick with the nightstick."

LEDs count as Laser's now too

[Cassini2]

I think you are missing the point that the laser safety regulations are busily being modified to include LED light sources. LED's, while non-coherent, can be focused sufficiently to create similar effects. It is all about how much light energy is hitting a person's retina. The effect can be created with any light source of sufficient intensity. Both a very bright focused LED and a laser can (temporarily) blind people.

Re:This is against Geneva or Hague convention

[yani]

See how it works now? Some police are good, some are bad, and you can generally tell which are which by the societies they live in. I wish I lived in your world. In the real one there is no such distinction and psychology tells us that in a position of authority often the worst comes out in even the best people, the Stanford prison experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_expe riment) is one of the more famous examples of this.

Oh, and let's not get into the differences between THE SUN, a gigantic nuclear blast-furnace bright enough to light up the entire damn SOLARSYSTEM and be seen from BILLIONS of miles away, and an LED light about the size of a pea that runs off a AA battery. Just like the "pointing a laser at your eye" argument the OP made, it's an apples and oranges comparison that is neither germane nor logical. It's an extreme example, but your post implies that only a laser can permanently blind, while this is obviously not true.

There really should be a down-mod for "stupid, illogical thinking" I think it would apply well to your post.
What a logical and clever thought. Thanks.