Slashdot Mirror
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."
But seriously, I predict if they make them look like guns, there is a chance for success. They are trying to sell them to guys who like guns. Also, you don't want users to accidentally confused this with a normal flashlight.
that this will never get into the wrong hands. Oh, wait.
So I'll have to remember to bring my sunglasses too now if I want to cross into the USA illegally, as well as the tinfoil suit to ward off their microwave guns http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg187250 95.600
Would sunglasses block this? Don't laugh, I'm being serious!
This sig left intentionally blank.
In Mexico, welding helmet demands have gone through the roof.
Self-dimming welder's goggles should be enough to render this weapon useles.
All rites reversed 2010
the victim is already blind?
"subduing crowds"...I don't like the sound of that.
okinawa japan
Close your eyes, problem solved!
Some cheap $5 fake sunglasses made in mexico probably defeat these things.
... nor have plans to "become" one, let me be the first to say:
You should welcome your light-bearing overlords.
(Hmmmm, isn't that something like "luciferian" in Latin??)
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
As far as I remember, intrenational laws of war forbid using weapons that blind beople.
And this WILL blind people. If used from too far away, it won't be efficient so they'll make it more powerful, then used from close range it will make permanent injuries to the eyes. Similar like tasers aren't supposed to kill people, but they do.
As far as I remember, there was a project in the military to make a similar weapon, using UV laser, but it was scrapped because it was against the international law.
Of course there are precautions that can be used against this weapon, propper googles should do it, but not everyone will have them.
--Coder
I want a bazooka one
As long as it's based on LED technology, so that it doesn't waste power when not in use (as in, blinding people).
--You see? Black really is better!
"ARGGGHHH! Light just slightly brighter than what we're accustomed to!"
No, seriously, this sounds really lame. SWAT teams already do this, successfully, with "flash-bang" grenades. Or you could use a big-ol' magnesium flashbulb. No need for new yet wimpy LED's.
This is not a new concept. I recall hearing about this class of device twenty years ago when I worked the door at a couple of bars - always wished I had one (it's a hard way to make cash to fund your education, letting people beat on your head so you can learn to make a living with self-same head). Never saw one though.
Here's a reference from 2005 to such a device, with a different name. I don't know if it is the same company, or a different development: http://www.defense-update.com/products/s/sabershot .htm
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
I'll stick to my surefire tactical light. Its nice small, and is actually effective as a bludgeon if need be.
You mad
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I wonder if those would do any good?
These have been in use in prisons for a while. They're even on a Modern Marvels episode about new police equipment.
I gotta wear shades.
Hey, what if I wear mirrored shades? If I amd and the owner is too, do we get some sort of laser effect going between us? Cool!
Anyone on a plane wearing mirror shades is going to get some suspicious looks.
It's the return of the First Earth Battalion!
Is there anything to stop me getting a reasonable sized mirror to bounce this back and make the police the ones that puke?
"Won't someone PLEASE think of the poor epileptics! BULLSHIT!!! We're under no obligation to coddle people caught in the act of breaking the law."
Brilliant! Because we all know that everybody who's arrested is guilty, don't we? After all, it's only guilty people that get arrested, right? Innocent people never get stopped and detained, do they?
Idiot.
Why do you think courts exist? Law enforcement officers, in the heat of the action, aren't judge and jury. They don't determine if someone has broken the law or not. A court does that.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
To me the "don't need english to comply" is the funniest quote ("Vlad calls it the evil color" is a close second). Seriously, when you know you are breaking the law to enter a foriegn country, do you need to know english to understand what the uniformed man who is holding a gun and yelling wants? I don't know if I can take this story seriously. Is it a joke? Was Helga, the evil-torture-doctor-lady, unavailable for comment?
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
MUAHAHAHAHA!
Best Slashdot Co
"Officer, as I understand it, you had an alternate method of subduing him, did you not?"
"Uh, well, yes. I could have shot him."
It's going to have to be one hell of a beam to get past the current fashion of wearing sunglasses. And with mirror effect there could be amusing side effects..
Insert
That's why we need to let people with homes on the US border put in landmines and machine guns. Sometimes you just have to have old trusty to stop those wiley mexicans!
This is my sig.
There's a rather underrated 80s film called Looker which uses this sort of device as a subplot. The gun in the film freezes people for an hour or two, and obviously can be used for nefarious purposes by the baddies.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
I think the point everyone is trying to make is that this will be used against people who are NOT breaking the law, as well. Those people -do- need coddling.
n th2004/mythsstats.cfm ) that means just under 1% are epileptic. That's a pretty big number, and enough that they need to take that into consideration when firing this weapon.
But even law-breakers have rights, and if an epileptic dies from this, that's 'lethal force', whether the cop knew it or not. If someone has brittle bone disease and a cop tackles them, that's excessive force as well. Epileptics don't deserve to die any more than normal people do, breaking the law or not.
With aobut 300 million Americans, and 2.5 million of them being epileptic ( http://www.epilepsyfoundation.org/epilepsyusa/emo
I'm not against the weapon, just improper use of it. Guns, nightsticks, tazers, etc can all be misused and police are trained to use them properly and responsibly. No, they don't always do so, but they are trained for it. It doesn't matter what weapon you give them, even just their bare hands, SOME of them will abuse it.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
...will be the little flashlight that alters memory, like in MiB. Nothing to see here. Move along.
If they run around with their hands forwards yelling braaaaaaiiiins all the time; the LED light will be the least of your concerns;
Unless you are blonde and dumb you'll have no problem at all since the brain is missing.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
... there's nothing to see here.
"With this, they don't need to know English to comply"
My word sir, you Yankees are becoming more like the true heirs to the British Empire as every day passes! Well said sir, Johnny Foreigner is a semi-savage, and can't speak a word of the King's English (or President, or whatever you colonists have these days). Don't be fooled by his suit, you'll find it's a cheap imitation and close examination will prove that the buttons on the cuffs are fake and the pockets have been cut at the wrong angle. Shine a torch in their faces, and shout in God's own language NICE and LOUD and SLOWLY. They'll understand then, by George!
Ah yes, the universal language of violence.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
Mod parent down, racist BS trolling. No references. Poster has read about this in some comic and believes it without visiting Europe themselves.
Because crowds need to be subdued, obviously... If they ain't happy, it's the govt's obligation to find out what it's doing wrong!
This would put to use by protesters, border jumpers, assorted criminals, etc... for the purpose of blinding cops and/or their victims.
After all, if you're blind, how could you identify the suspect?
I find it kind of scary that our government thinks it is somehow morally acceptable to develop weapons which blind people. Sure, it's temporary - now - but how long will it be before someone figures out a way to make the blindness permanent? Or, worse, what if it causes *permanent* damage in only a small portion of the population?
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Just put an airport beacon on a strobe.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
"There's one wavelength that gets everybody," Lieberman said, according to the newsletter. "Vlad calls it the evil color."
:-P
There is also a back audio weapon they're working on, apparently it don't incapacitate the offender it just really takes the fight out of them
Apparently it emits a tone that gets "everyone", Vlad calls this one "The Brown note"
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
In the UK, the Police can only use "reasonable" force to subdue suspects. I would expect there to be similar legislation or legal precedence in most countries.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
Can someone tell me who arranges purchasing for these sorts of contracts? Because they can have every unnecessary blue LED off all my tech kit from the last few years - that should be enough for the Mexican border...
You played up the race relations aspect of the story, despite the fact that the true thrust of it should have been the alleged police and state confinement and eviction of the residents. Your poor excuse that "Youtube is blocked form work" is hardly sufficient to prevent you from at least naming the incident. I've spent quite a bit of time Googling for this alleged incident, also adding a "France" keyword as this seems the most likely location. However, nothing has come up.
You have not even established that the incident in question ever took place. Plus, the story is only remotely related to the submission, and your are posting as an AC. In all likelihood, you fabricated the entire incident, and are trolling the board. In short, Cite, or be modded down.
May the Maths Be with you!
This device disorients, but doesn't permanently burn your retinas to useless pulp like lasers would. See the difference ?
The US has repeatedly demonstrated that such conventions mean nothing to them. International law is a complete non-issue to American authorities.
-1 not first post
> In the UK, the Police can only use "reasonable" force to subdue suspects.
The UK police have regular firearms as well as Tazers and wooden clubs - I don't see a `special torch` having trouble passing the `reasonable` test, do you?
We have so many terrorists running around these days, it's wonderful that someone has invented something to blind them all.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
Alas no, never heard of it. I'm in the UK. I take it you're in the USA.
s ion_in_the_United_States_in_1990s_and_2000s
"I speculate that Fantomas knows about the incident very well - because otherwise he would not know that it can be portrayed, and has been, in a racist way. This does not change that it was a real incident.
If this is true then it is FUD on his part, to obscure a real and factual incident."
I'm afraid you're wrong. I hadn't heard about it, so I guess that means by your logic, my statement wasn't FUD. Your posting supports my position, as you made the comment that this incident hadn't been reported in national newspapers. If it wasn't in a national newspaper, and by implication, in online national newsfeeds, how would I have known about it? I see there was a riot in Ondiep and somebody died. Thank you for the reference.
Alas we also have riots in Europe, and police also shoot people dead here as well on occasion. Improvements are definitely required. As a European I know this.
I'm also aware that all media has a bias - it looks like the only articles written about this incident seem to be by the right wing press, so I am reading it through their viewpoints. It would be nice to read a variety of reports, and particularly the police/authority reports, to get some sense of balance. I am afraid to say that in the UK we have a range of biased journalists and it is wise not to believe everything they say, or at least to understand their perspective. I am guessing this is universally true. Without doing some research, I find it hard to understand the perspective of the people writing about this incident you report. Perhaps you can help by providing background information on the resources. Some of them are explicitly anti-immigration and anti-Islam so I'd expect a certain angle to be taken.
Trust me, I am in the UK, I understand the idea of people being concerned about the concept of a police state. Thankfully we still have Habeas Corpus here, something, alas, not guaranteed in the US Constitution. My bias is that I think that Habeas Corpus is a good thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus#Suspen
Why stop at just making 'them' puke!
This program was made possible by a grant from the Ultra-Humanite, and viewers like you.
This and many others are valid scenarios. But to be a little more realistic, that would be like yelling movie in firehouse.
Interesting.
Just in case anyone is interested (and doesn't want to explore the reply tree), the incident described occured in Ondiep, Utrecht, Netherlands, on the 11th of March, 2007. While a quick search reveals that it was broadly reported in blogs, there does appear to be a somewhat disturbing lack of reporting amongst the professional media.
First he did it with some of the methods the terrorists used on 9/11 in Debt of Honor, now he's done it with this new weapon. I think his anti-terrorist characters John Clark and Ding Chavez used the same weapon in, oh what was it -- Executive Orders? Anyway, that book came out about 14 years ago.
I am not left-handed, either!
most cops there only have regular firearms when they REALLY need it! (they have to go call for a truck with guns to drive there, or for a quasi swat unit to show up)
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
exactly! I mean it is not like the police should say to the criminal "oh yeah by the way do you have any medical reasons why I should not use this instrument on you"? I think the person doing criminal things forfeited his rights when he did what ever he did. But then I have never been in trouble before.
Can't speak for looters, but rioters and angry mobs often have a good reason to be angry, and repressing them will just cause things to blow up completely eventually. Keep in mind that without "angry mobs" and "rioters" most of Eastern Europe would still be crying under the Russian boot.
I'm betting that this technology will be sold by us to some of our most repressive so-called friends.
-b.
"Now, if you'll just follow me, we have one more test to administer, an eye exam."
Furthermore, not everyone who happens to be in the street (or looking out of their flat window at a commotion) is even necessarily involved in what's going on with the police. But, yeah, the presumption of guilt just because someone gets arrested is rather appalling.
-b.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yep, Western European countries can be pretty bad. See also, preemptive arrests of suspected "football hooligans" before matches. No charges, no trials, just hold them until the match is over and they can no longer do damage. Much of eastern Europe is, IMHO, still better, if only because (a) they have memories of repressive dictatorships and DON'T want to go back to that and (b) there's not enough money to maintain strong police forces.
-b.
The UK police have regular firearms as well as Tazers and wooden clubs - I don't see a `special torch` having trouble passing the `reasonable` test, do you?
Very few British police officers are armed. I'd guess that less than 5 percent have received firearms training and, of those that are trained, most will not carry any weaponry on their person.
Currently, only around 7 percent of officers in London are authorised to use firearms, so nationwide I'd expect the number to be much lower. After all, London has a disproportionately high number of anti-terrorist, diplomatic protection and other such specialist officers.
Tasers are in the exactly the same category: only trained firearms officers are permitted to use them and they're not regularly carried. Additionally, I can't think of a single time that I've read about a taser actually being used to detain anybody.
Lastly, police batons aren't wooden these days. Those were phased out some time ago. Telescopic batons are standard issue these days, and while I don't have any proof that I can readily provide, I do believe that these are slightly less dangerous to those on the receiving end than the batons that they replaced.
Clearly your image of the average British cop is distorted. For more information on what they do and don't carry, and how it's regulated, read the relevant Wikipedia entry.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
In a combat situation, bright lights are often referred to as "targets".
Lieberman was quoted as saying by a DHS newsletter. "With this, they don't need to know English to comply." United States Border Patrol Agents speak spainish, language aptitude testing is part of the hiring process and spainish is part of the training.
Actually, I'd prefer if the US worked on the Swiss system. A citizens' militia in which service is mandatory, designed to defend the country against invasion and attack. Every citizen (or at least a large proportion) should be alert, vigilant and trained. Alternatives to military service like disaster cleanup, teaching, and police work should also be allowed. This military should be strictly defensive -- we should cease our abuse of countries outside our borders (which would go a long way towards preventing terrorism in itself!).
-b.
Hope that helped.
Those little blue lights are fucking bright! I don't even have a lamp. Pioneers read their books by candlelight, I read mine by ledlight.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
The inventor describes the device in technical detail here:
P TO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch- adv.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=Rubtsov.IN.&OS=in/ Rubtsov&RS=IN/Rubtsov
u rl=http%3A%2F%2Fappft1.uspto.gov%2Fnetacgi%2Fnph-P arser%3FSect1%3DPTO2%2526Sect2%3DHITOFF%2526p%3D1% 2526u%3D%25252Fnetahtml%25252FPTO%25252Fsearch-adv .html%2526r%3D1%2526f%3DG%2526l%3D50%2526d%3DPG01% 2526S1%3DRubtsov.IN.%2526OS%3Din%2FRubtsov%2526RS% 3DIN%2FRubtsov&PageNum=&Rtype=&SectionNum=&idkey=7 688A41C1A69
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=
If you have a TIFF plugin, you can see the images showing a cool looking ray gun:
http://aiw2.uspto.gov/.aiw?Docid=20060119483&home
your gravity fails and negativity don't pull you through
Sounds like something out of Hollywood. Ever see the movie
"Looker" ?
Nothing like taking a single isolated incident - which occured just weeks after four suicide bombers killed 52 and injured 700, and days after another four tried but failed to repeat the attack, and in which the officers concerned were told that they were tracking a known terrorist suspected (and later confirmed) as being part of the threat - and blowing it out of proportion.
Jean Charles de Menezes died because many things wen't wrong that shouldn't have been allowed to go wrong. And while I'm not excusing either the commanding officers that misinformed their subordinates in the field, or the officers that delivered the killing shots themselves, it's unreasonable to suggest that this single isolated incident is a typical police response.
Nor, not that it needs to be said, has anybody attempted to defend what happened with a "reasonable force" defence.
If you're going to use an example then at least use one that's typical rather than one that's unique, or at least put the example in context and provide the reader with some facts rather than sensationalism for sensationalism's sake.
Did de Menezes die as a result of a police overreaction? Yes. Was it in any way a normal reaction to a normal incident? No.
For those that would prefer some facts: Wikipedia article on Jean Charles de Menezes.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Wrong.
Never argue with a man carrying a water buffalo
can you run Linux on it?
yes, but it would have to be a light distribution.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Depends on the law. Can you be certain that the law remains in the spirit of freedom of speech and freedom of tought, freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom to go where you please?
Blind obedience of the law is just as much a horror scenario for me as blind disobedience. Both lead to a world I don't want to live in.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
My main concern is that it could trigger seizures in some people due to the bright pulsing light and either give the assailant a chance to do whatever he wanted while they turned their attention to the victim, or if they ignored the seizure victim they would most surely have caused their death. Not to mention the fact that it *could* cause eye damage in the hands of poorly trained staff.
At the end of the day its just an older generation of illegal immigrants policing the border against a newer generation of illegal immigrants. A bit like CTF really...
~Pev
Probably because you don't look black or middle-eastern enough.
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.
Paris, 2005?
And afaik it was reported for 2-3 days, then suddenly there was nothing but silence. Especially how it was resolved remains a mystery.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
True, the de Menezes incident was not typical, even for the police in the United States. However, whenever deciding about new weapons for the police arsenal, the fact that atypical incidents do occur means that you have to take edge cases into account in the decision process. If, for example, the police officers were not issued guns, shooting de Menezes would not have even been an option.
Now, before flaming me on this, keep in mind that I'm not saying we should take guns away from the cops. What I'm saying is we must keep in mind that the police will use the weapons they have, and they won't always stop to think about the "reasonableness" of their actions, so we must consider this before giving them more.
This sounds all too familiar: Light Ocular-Oriented Kinetic Emotive Responses.
Dekker Dreyer
Night-ops gladius: http://night-ops.com/ledhandheld.html
Soon anyone wearing dark glasses in an airplane will be immediately "subdued" by the air marshal because they are suspected terrorists. The reasoning: obviously anyone wearing sun glasses does this to avoid potential blinding by LED tasers. This is suspect and people will be held in Guantanamo for up to 5 years until their alleged terrorist nature can be proven or disproved.
Rubies and Pearls are not what you think.
I remember how batman defeated this one...
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
These are well intentioned devices however it will probably live the same fate as the taser. Now poorly trained police officers get these devices and use them excessively because they are deemed safe. Every device like this from tasers & beanbags to rubber bullets are intended to lower casualties. Hopefully this will prevent more border agents from being arrested & prosecuted. That is a difficult job I wouldn't want.
Whether these things are appropriate for the authorities to use is an interesting discussion. But what happens, and it will, when these "flashlights" leak out to the public? Great for home defense! Also, they will be great for every petty thief. "Victimless" robberies the easy way. I wonder if short term memory loss goes along with the experience, so that the flashee won't even remember what the assailant looked like...
Ignignokt: "Nice try, in fact it is very cute. We mooninites have advanced FAR BEYOND the primitive uses of LED technology. We no longer need to use LEDs to impose terror. All we have to do is just show up and we immediately strike fear into the hearts of the most masculine men. What? You don't believe us? Ship, come in. We've had enough of these privitive cavemen." *flips the bird*
01-31-07: NEVER FORGET!
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
Even considering using devices that could cause permanent blindness is evil. Sometimes the US is characterised correctly.
Tasers are no match for a Mooninite Quad Laser. :-)
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
(IANAL)
From wikipedia:
Between June 2001 and June 2007, there were at least 245 cases of deaths of subjects soon after having been shocked using Tasers [6]. Of these cases:
* In 7 cases, medical examiners said Tasers were a cause or a contributing factor or could not be ruled out as a cause of death.
* In 16 cases coroners and other officials stated that a taser was a secondary or contributory factor of death.
* In most of the cases, the victims had been using drugs including cocaine, methamphetamine or PCP.
* In dozens of cases, coroners cited excited delirium as cause of death. Excited delirium has been questioned as a medical diagnosis [7].
* Several deaths occurred as a result of injuries sustained in struggles. In a few of these cases head injury due to falling after being shocked contributed to later death. Some police departments, like that of Clearwater, Florida, have tried to eradicate such incidents by prohibiting taser use when the suspect is in danger of falling [8].
These incidents form a very small percentage of many tens of thousands of operational uses of tasers.[15]
\u262D = \u5350
Meanwhile, back in the REAL world, where there are REAL threats, other REAL government agencies that are in charge of REAL solutions for REAL problems, have had to cut back.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
Won't someone PLEASE think of the poor epileptics! BULLSHIT!!! We're under no obligation to coddle people caught in the act of breaking the law.
I have occipital lobe epilepsy. If light reflects, then one of these things could trigger a seizure in a bystander, not just the person arrested.
Some of you have a latent predisposition to these seizures and don't know it. As cops start to find this out for themselves, they'll go back to shooting people.
These things have been around for ages. See http://www.surefire.com/
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
There were actually two main incidents.
1) the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes
2) the lying and cover up of 1) by the british authorities (which to me is a bigger danger to everyone else in the UK).
While you can try to claim 1) to be an isolated incident, I don't think you can consider 2) to be one since there is no assurance that such lying and cover ups will not happen again, and so that makes incidents like 1) more likely.
There was no repentance, there was no real coming clean. The police continued trying to justify/defend what they did.
It's just like the CxOs of a company getting caught doing the wrong thing, then issuing a statement "Oh, we made a mistake, we're sorry, BUT actually blahblahblah", then later on your find out that blahblahblah was a lie, then they say "oh we're sorry, but actually blahblahblah2". Where blahblahblah2 is also a lie. So on and so forth.
If you do not know the truth about something, you don't make false statements publicly for nothing.
That sure does not bring to mind "isolated incident".
I do have a higher opinion of the UK police than other police forces around the world that I'm aware of, but that's not saying much nowadays. If they continue as is, they'll just be like the cops elsewhere i.e. lesser/necessary _evils_.
To those who are about to defend the other police forces (there are good cops etc etc). Don't waste time trying to convince me, go find and jail the bad cops. Clean your hands or it'll be hard to use those hands to clean other stuff.
I wonder if this is like the Nintendo effect. Rapidly flashing red and blue colors apparently sicken, and also trigger epileptic attacks (in anime it is way faster than 3 per second which IIRC is epileptic trigger threshold too).
It doesn't sound so much like optical flow as mentioned by someone else, since it doesn't mention whirling lights. Also not sureif this is optical flow but the nauseating effect felt by viewers when someone clueless ran a highway driving sim in a planetarium here some years ago - making rushing graphics at the corner of your vision - would not work from a handheld device. So it may be the red/blue flashing of the Nintendo effect, also seen in film with very fast cuts.
This is why they say don't watch it in the dark before some of these. The new movie Babel also flopped in Japan due to people being sickened and leaving the theater because of very fast cuts. One anime company got in a lot of trouble IIRC for the same reason in Japan and broadcasts emphasized you must not watch the TV closeup or in the dark.
So my expectation is that this creates a quickly (perhaps 20 times/second) flashing of red and blue lights. Might include a full RGB set of 3 leds so that many colors can be created. It probably fans out to cover much of your field of vision. It seems highly likely that this will cause epileptic attacks in people who do not know they have epilepsy (those who do wouldn't be present I presume), nausea in the general public not wearing sunglasses, and possibly distress in people with bad hearts or close to heat prostration/dehydration. IANA doctor but the scary thing to me is that these things are probably so simple that they will probably become quite common, possibly like pepper spray or for use by homeowners. Could even be car mounted, by headlights or where police cars keep red and blue lights on top already. They probably also will not include photographic recording of their use like police guns do I think. Should be quite cost effective though I don't know that a cop would prefer it over a taser.
"It later emerged that hollow point bullets had been employed and a senior police source said that de Menezes' body had been "unrecognisable." The bullets are illegal in warfare, but are widely used in law enforcement where it may often be necessary to quickly stop an armed assailant."
.50 caliber depleted uranium.
If the Brits are up to that, I fully expect the Metro PD in Washington to be firing
What do you think all those kewl blue LEDs are for on otherwise worthless products?
Have gnu, will travel.
What about the technologist developing this weapon?
Should they protest this use of their knowledge?
Should they quit?
One of my old professor once developed a ball bearing to spec.
Later on, he found out to his regret that they were being used
in component of a bomb as shrapnels. While he did not know
how his product was being used, the technologists for this LED
company certainly do.
How might he feel when the CIA and Gitmo start using his work product?
Dude, try "Cool Hand Luke" (look it up on IMDB).
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Pepper Spray - Counter with 1:1 ratio of water to Maalox sprayed into the eyes
Teargas - Counter with rags soaked in vinegar over the mouth
Lightgun - Sunglasses?
We can only hope that crowd control technologies continue to be this easy to circumvent
They bought the same fan controller i did with the LED indicator lights eh? I knew there had to be another use for this besides putting in my desktop to blind ME...
For Christmas 2006, I built my very own blinking LED Christmas lights for my little tree. Got a nice Digi-Key power supply and a bunch of powerful blinking LEDS from various suppliers.
First attempt was WAY OVERPOWERED. Especially the blinking blue. The net effect was like a police light bar - in your own room right in front of you. On an 24" tree. Way too many photons. Instead of gentle blinking there were all these blasts of light. Not all my LEDs were this way but the blasters were the superbright LEDs that were indeed the brightest.
I used LEDs that are clear yet generate different colors. These are the neat ones over the old fashioned colored plastic ones. Helps to have a LED tester to see what color you have.
And the light was a bit disorienting. I saw blue spots for quite a while. It does no good really to close your eyes. your thin eyelid cannot hold back all those eager photons.
Thanks,
Jim
...a way to disband those pesky peaceful protesters.
This sig only exists because you are observing it.
'With this, they don't need to know English to comply.'
Heh. The wonderful world of Homeland Security where being incapacitated by a bright flashing light is 'compliance'.
I'm just using these dark glasses to conceal my identity from Tenma-chan!
> Clearly your image of the average British cop is distorted.
I live in London. I travel internationally a lot. Consequently, I see armed police all the time. You're taking my statement out of context, which is, given that the police (as a whole) is armed with things manifestly more deadly than a torch, they would meet no credible opposition if they decided they wanted to be armed with them.
The Blackhawk Gladius is designed to do that, and has been available for a few years. Built like a normal medium-sized flashlight, VERY bright, features a strobe tuned and intended to disorient people.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Personally I wonder why we have a Department of Homeland Security in the first place and I wonder if the Democrats will have the balls to dismantle it if and when they finally retake office. It's not that I'm totally anti-government but between the FBI and the CIA I just see this as a somewhat bizarre power play that will only further fracture these institutions. And what ever happened to the end of big government?
Quack, quack.
I'm guessing it's an array of LEDs. I've got a tri-LED penlight and I can make people squint from a good 50 feet away. Can LEDs get much brighter anyways?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Do I smell a ra(n)t? Is that you, Maddox?
Lemme see, "evil wavelengths" can be blocked by dichroic or peril-sensitive sunglasses...
And any disorientation and nausea caused by the flash pattern can be stopped with These Amiga X-Specs You'd just need to synchronize the LCD blanking with the "evil" patten of flashes.
Or... you could just get the bad guys to wear the X-Specs and then attack them with a nauseating 200 inch LCD projection TV image of frogger '87 or maybe the 3D version of Michael Jackson's super-bowl 27 half-time show
I'm thinking bullet-proof, completely armored helmet, with pinhole cameras feeding visual to the interior via a hi-res OLED, one for each eye for depth perception. Unlike the viewscreen in Star Trek TOS, it won't feed your retinas blinding light. Shoot it, zap it, try to blind it, hit it with a club, the protestor's friend takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'. Slated to become illegal within one week of introduction, 'cause it's ILLEGAL to not feel agony on your lords' and masters' demand. Kneel, slave.
The problem with coherent light (i.e. LASERs) is that you have to aim them directly at your target. With super high intensity LEDs, you just point in the general direction for the effect. All the range you need is probably 25 feet or less. Remember, this isn't supposed to be a tactical long-range weapon, but something to be used just outside the range of engaging in physical contact with the subject. I'll agree with you that something like this will eventually get folded into a recycled Discovery Channel show at some point if it is adopted.
The idea doesn't surprise me much. Having put together several machine vision systems with high intensity LED lighting, I know the effect that makes this work. The LEDs in the dome lights that I use are quite bright and they are configured only to come on when the camera is capturing an image, thus the LEDs produce a rather fast strobe light (15 - 30 times per second) effect. If you stare at the reflection dome for a moment, it can be quite dizzying.
The LED lights that I use are just as bright as a Xenon strobe, but being solid state, the on/off is _much_ crisper. A Xenon stobe's output graphed looks like a ramp or sawtooth wave, whereas the LEDs make a nearly perfect pulse/square wave. Something tells me it's that very sharp off-to-on AND on-to-off action that makes the difference.
It's not intrinsically a bad thing, but it's something that must be approached with great concern for policies regarding use. The problem is, psychologically speaking non-lethal weapons have a much lower threshold for use. This greatly raises the possibility of non-lethal weapons being used on the innocent and those who are NOT engaged in criminal activity.
We have already seen this with things such as tasers and rubber bullets. For example, see police firing at crowds of peaceful protesters in LA and chasing them down the street. There are apparently insufficient safeguards in place to prevent police from using non-lethal weapons on peaceful protesters, and thus the freedom of assembly, which should be protected by the constitution, has been severely violated.
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".
It goes without saying that this will be used, not on illegal immigrants, but on people who are peacefully protesting, as per their democratic right to do so.
Police departments across the country have probably put in hundreds of orders already, with a view towards subduing ordinary citizens engaging in "subversive" activities which "disturb the peace".
The right to protest, and by extension to publicly voice disagreement, just became a lot more difficult.
*FLASH*
You did not see men in black suits bearing shiny weapons. You did not see Cheney mooning at an alien spaceship. You will peacefully disperse to the homes of your loved ones and take them out for a nice picnic. At night you will see what appears to be alien laser blasts, these are actually fourth of July fireworks. We're the government and we are here to help you. And you will faithfully pay your taxes on time and without debate. Thank you.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Not so fast. It probably never was implemented, as explained on the same website.
Yeah, you remember it too. You just need a little memory jogging. The only protection you have against this Memory Rebuilder, if I recall the educational film Men In Black correctly, is a pair of sunglasses.
Let's see...
the "Rodney King" riots
Chicago trashing itself after the Bulls won
Soccer match riots
Watts riot (along with a bunch of others that year)
the riots in France in 2005
any prison riot
Some of these do have a reasonable starting point, some don't. The problem is that even though the original cause may be righteous, the ensuing damage in lives and property generally vastly outweighs the original reason for the protest. I think the point were I stopped thinking that rioting had any useful purpose was when a truck driver got pulled from his truck during the "Rodney King" riots and was brained with a brick a couple of times. I think I remember people calling it racially motivated, but the real point is that some random guy was hurt (or was he killed?) because a mob was pissed off at someone/thing totally unrelated.
I think that, for the most part, useful riots are a thing of the past, though I'm not well versed in current global affairs so I admit I could be totally ignorant about this. Though with the way the US is going, I wouldn't be surprised to see another revolution in the next 100-200 years.
I guess my point is that riots in general cause far more harm than good, kind of like the US in the middle east.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
"Of course there are precautions that can be used against this weapon, propper googles should do it, but not everyone will have them."
How about, oh, EYELIDS?
paintball
1. Can technology like this be modified to screw up cameras and video cameras? American and British police seem to be getting more and more bashful about having their actions in public places recorded. Current methods of seizing or disabling recording equipment are a lot more obvious than an "accidental" flashing of a camera sensor. It seems unlikely from how the article describes this weapon but it may be possible.
2. What happens if you are looking through a viewfinder at the crowd when one of these is fired? The rangefinder idea sounds good for a single target, but seems impractical for the "bazooka" crowd control version. A crowd control version might be a good way to knock out any potential press coverage of the people doing the crowd control.
All they need to do is buy a Dell XPS box...
(Mumbling in my grumpy old man voice while shuffling through my house with tissue boxes on my feet)
"f**king kids and their fancy blue LEDs...."
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
You may well live in London yet you still thought that British policemen and -women were still armed with wooden truncheons, and you also gave the impression that firearms and tasers were a standard part of their equipment, as well.
As I said, you seem to have a distorted view of what weaponry the average police officer carries. And with a less than accurate knowledge of what they usually carry (Uzis? RPGs? Cut flowers?) you don't really have a proper frame of reference when comparing a potential new addition to their arsenal to their existing options.
And, as others have pointed out, aimed at the wrong person the "torch" that you refer to could well be fatal. I doubt few police officers are personally sufficiently-trained and well-equipped to deal with an epileptic fit, especially a life-threatening one. In that regard, your special torch is potentially the most deadly item that you've mentioned.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I swear I first read the title as "Homeland Security Funds FUD Light That Blinds, Disorients"
Whassat? The figure of speech (verging on cliche) is "to all intents and purposes". Perhaps your speech recognition device needs tuning.
This has got to be the Ultimate Slashdotter's Dilemma. Should you love it or hate it? On the one hand, Homeland Security developed it. On the other hand it uses LEDs. Left-wing nerd brains are exploding across the globe.
The number of people who die in the UK as a result of police action or activity is a well documented fact and is usually in the order of about 2-3 people a year.
Granted, that's 2-3 people too much but that hardly sounds like it's a case of gross and wide-spread abuse of the definition of "reasonable force".
The person to whom I initially replied to on that point painted a picture of such a thing being nearer the norm that barely registers as an event rather than a freak occurence that caused wide-scale public outrage.
Your other examples are in the US: can you find any similar evidence to suggest that the police in the UK are just as guilty of fatally mis-applying "reasonable force" as their American brethren?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Why not force the military industrial complex to all take 1 level of pure caster and learn colorspray?!
They can subdue 1d4+1 HD of illegals!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (mobs)
That gives quite a different story from the one you originally reported - a lot of what you claim in your original post isn't declared here in your reference.
Simply prohibit the wearing of any indentity concealing device in a 'security interest' area.
Remember, not all religions are religions.
Submission as evidence constitutes plaintiff and/or prosecutorial misconduct.
Reasonable force applies to everybody, police included. It's a test for the jury: in the circumstances, do you think that the defendant's reaction was in proportion to the accused's attack? If the test "minimal force" was used, I think you'd see an equal amount of problematic decisions. "Minimal force" requires the defendant to work out what minimal force is, and we would all have differing opinions in the circumstances.
It's not so much the test that is at fault, it's the reasoning that goes on behind it, the cultural conditions that determine whether or not the police get treated in a special way. I give you the Rodney King case in the USA as an example: clearly, the video showed a man being cruelly and unfairly beaten. What wasn't shown was his resistance to arrest prior to the beating; even given this, the bias towards the police's POV was clearly shown in the transcripts of the case. What goes on, too, is the number of medical retirements of officers who have been accused of crimes. Then there's the speicial pleading from the police that goes on.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious