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."
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
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
"subduing crowds"...I don't like the sound of that.
okinawa japan
... 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
"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.
Actually the opposite.
Guns can be detected even if they are disguised. It is difficult to hide a chamber, rounds, etc from an X-Ray (not impssible, just difficult). Now this will be trivial to disguise like anything you want starting from a mobile phone and finishing with accessories normally sold in Ann Somers or Agent Provocateur.
So while the "good" guys (quotes quite intentional actually) may want to have this look like a gun...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
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
You are welcome on my lawn.
"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!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes, it would work, but it wouldn't have much effect on the victim.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
"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
MUAHAHAHAHA!
Best Slashdot Co
... there's nothing to see here.
We're glad you asked. Mirrors will soon be banned for private use by the "Anti-Terrorism Mirror" amendment to the Patriot Act this fall.
"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
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!
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!
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
Most good welding helmets now use auto-darkening glass. The tint is light enough to see the piece being worked on until the arc is struck, then it darkens enough to protect the eyes.
I have a relatively cheap one, but it has adjustable darkening, adjustable delay, and goes from light to full dark in 1/10,000th of a second. Some of the better ones have can tell if the light is from an arc or a grinding wheel and adjust their tint accordingly. Pretty cool stuff.
I;m a good test case for incapacitating light as I am kind of a fan of high powered flashlights, and my eyes are on the photosensitive side. If I'm dark adjusted and I accidentally shine a Surefire M6 at my face I almost immediately become sick to my stomach. My cheap welding helmet can cut that beam down to pretty much nothing though.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
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
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
Oh don't worry, there will be exceptions for industries, as usual. Just you, citizen, have to abide to the law.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
Even considering using devices that could cause permanent blindness is evil. Sometimes the US is characterised correctly.
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.
...a way to disband those pesky peaceful protesters.
This sig only exists because you are observing it.
Dude, seriously. Do you not understand what the original poster was saying?
They're not blinded by some eye-burning laser or something, the whole joke was that they were running across the border with their eyes closed so they couldn't be zapped by this thing.
This isn't a joke about blinding people, its not a joke about injuring people or burning their eyes out. Its a joke about a bunch of people running around committing a felony with their eyes closed.
And if you've never seen a bugs bunny cartoon with rake gags, then perhaps the entire thing from the beginning to the end went over your head.
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".