How Governments Are Getting Around the UN's Ban On Blinding Laser Weapons

Lasrick writes Despite the UN's 1995 Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons, the world is moving closer to laser weapons in both military and law enforcement situations that can cause temporary and even permanent blindness. Military-funded research in this area continues to be conducted by the Optical Radiation Bioeffects and Safety program, and already "dazzlers" have been in use in Afghanistan. Domestic versions of these weapons are intended for use by law enforcement agencies and in theory cause motion-sickness type illness but not blindness. "But something bright enough to dazzle at 300 meters can cause permanent eye damage at 50 meters, and these devices can be set to deliver a narrow (and more intense) beam."

Comments

Not much different than the fire starting lasers

[Anonymous Coward]

Used on Navy boats. They manual says "for starting fires", but, of course, anyone that looks towards the fire at the reflected beam is most likely blinded, and anyone can walk in front of it. This is no different. The manual says for dazzling at long distance. "Improper use" or "unintended circumstances" will be the excuse when people start to go blind with any of these weapons.

Last time I mentioned tens of kw fire starting lasers potentially leading to blindness from primary or even greater reflections...people down voted me here.

Rules don't apply to America

[Anonymous Coward]

They only expect these rules enforced on other nations.

Re:Rules don't apply to America

[TheCarp]

That is, unless its a rule that our leaders want to be bound by. Ask them about ending marijuana prohibition and, if you manage to get past everything else, they will happily fall back on "but the treaties we have at the UN wont let us do that, so see, we can't".

Its nice to be able to be selective in what rules apply to you and what ones don't, its almost like not having rules at all, except better, because you still get to use them as an excuse when you don't want to do something.

Re:Not much different than the fire starting laser

[MitchDev]

Does anyone give two shits what the UN says, I mean really?

Re:Not much different than the fire starting laser

[Anonymous Coward]

How is blinding someone with a laser worse than killing or maiming them with a bullet?

Re:One of those strange rules of war.

[bluefoxlucid]

We want dead bodies and stories about the war and trauma and your buddies dying at the hands of krauts and sand-niggers, not living proof of the pain and suffering of war.

War is a far-away thing: your daddy went off and didn't come back, or he came back with mental problems because he is a pussy. We don't want war sitting in our houses, in our day-to-day lives. We might stop worshiping veterans and start questioning if all the wars we're in are necessary or if we should only take to arms under more scrutiny.

Re:One of those strange rules of war.

[TheCarp]

> 1. It is respecting veterans. They do not decide which wars are just and which are not the voters and elected
> officials do.

Yes they do. They decided to join, they decided to follow orders. Sorry, I don't believe anyone has the right to ceede is own moral reasoning to others. They are equally guilty as the people who gave the orders, the elected officials and "voters" (for as much as their opinion matters when their opinion is just picking between the offerings put before them by the colluding parties)

They decided when they joined, they decided when they got up in the morning and didn't refuse to go fight. No exceptions.

Re:Preferable to shooting?

[PPH]

Right. But being non-lethal, there is less to discourage cops from using this technology against the "$15 per hour now" marches instead of potentially violent confrontations.

Police are there to protect the public order, not your civil rights. And public order is often defined by the upper classes as not wanting to see a bunch of dirty hippies marching with signs.

Re:This is just fucked

[HeckRuler]

You think that 1 out 2 protesting hippies in the 1960's went on to start a management career or entered politics?

I think your memory is about as good as your sense of statistics.

Long story short, the hippies were right. There really WERE communist spies infiltrating our government and society. But it didn't matter, because our system was better than the communist one. We didn't have to go off on pointless wars and trod on the necks of foreigners because, given time, our system won out, their collapsed, and all the satellite nations that they held sway over converted to our system. We didn't have to keep black and whites from marrying. We didn't have to dissolve Turing's nuts. We didn't have to hand guns to the contras just because the leader wanted to think about socialism. And we didn't have to have rebels invade Cuba. These are things that, with 20/20 hindsight, were bloody fucking stupid to support at the time. And the people protesting them, the hippies getting tear-gassed, were right. They had a more accurate world-view.

Sadly, the allure of being authoritarian jackboot-thugs never really went away, and it's coming back. Cops are decked out in military gear, our leaders are defending torture and assassinations, and widespread dragnets aren't being shot down.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. I think we need another wave of hippies. Unfortunately, their tent-camp was dispersed.