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

I'm sure...

[robo_mojo]

that this will never get into the wrong hands. Oh, wait.

Re:Easily countered

[Anonymous Coward]

Right! They'll never suspect a thing if i walk into the airport with welder goggles on. Never i say!

Nice

[okinawa_hdr]

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

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?

This is against Geneva or Hague convention

[coder111]

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

Re:This is against Geneva or Hague convention

[somersault]

"Of course there are precautions that can be used against this weapon, propper googles should do it, but not everyone will have them."

You certainly can find all manner of amazingly useful things on google these days :)

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:This is against Geneva or Hague convention

[NVP_Radical_Dreamer]

Let me be the first to say

The GOGGLES THEY DO NOTHING!!!!

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:This is against Geneva or Hague convention

[mikael]

There was a tactic developed by James Maskelyne towards the end of World War II, that allowed the Suez Canal to be defended against German fighter pilots. He basically took a searchlight and placed a set of tin reflectors on top of the search light, which were then made to rotate rapidly. This had the effect of creating rotating cartwheels of dark and bright patches of light in the area around the searchlight. Any pilot who flew above this area would become disorientated due to the mismatch between the perceived motion from the brains centres of balance and the visual cues seen through the aircraft windscreen (optic flow).

I would guess that this portable system creates enough glare in the eye to make moving bands of light appear on the retina. With a wide enough beam, this will disorientate an entire crowd.

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.

Epilepsy warning?

[ParaShoot]

The LED Incapacitator uses a range-finder to measure the distance to a target's eyes and then unleashes continually changing, multi-color light pulses that both blind and disorient the person. How long until this triggers an epileptic seizure in some poor unfortunate - and worse still, would whoever's wielding it be able to tell the difference between the potentially life-threatening seizure and the normal reaction?

Move along ...

[MarkoNo5]

... there's nothing to see here.

Re:Mirror.

[Legion303]

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.

How to deal with Johnny Foreigner

[fantomas]

"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!