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US Police Consider Flying Drones Armed With Stun Guns (digitaltrends.com)
Slashdot reader Presto Vivace tipped us off to news reports that U.S. police officials are considering the use of flying drones to taser their suspects. From Digital Trends:
Talks have recently taken place between police officials and Taser International, a company that makes stun guns and body cameras for use by law enforcement, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. While no decision has yet been made on whether to strap stun guns to remotely controlled quadcopters, Taser spokesman Steve Tuttle said his team were discussing the idea with officials as part of broader talks about "various future concepts."
Tuttle told the Journal that such technology could be deployed in "high-risk scenarios such as terrorist barricades" to incapacitate the suspect rather than kill them outright... However, critics are likely to fear that such a plan would ultimately lead to the police loading up drones with guns and other weapons. Portland police department's Pete Simpson told the Journal that while a Taser drone could be useful in some circumstances, getting the public "to accept an unmanned vehicle that's got some sort of weapon on it might be a hurdle to overcome."
The article points out that there's already a police force in India with flying drones equipped with pepper spray.
Tuttle told the Journal that such technology could be deployed in "high-risk scenarios such as terrorist barricades" to incapacitate the suspect rather than kill them outright... However, critics are likely to fear that such a plan would ultimately lead to the police loading up drones with guns and other weapons. Portland police department's Pete Simpson told the Journal that while a Taser drone could be useful in some circumstances, getting the public "to accept an unmanned vehicle that's got some sort of weapon on it might be a hurdle to overcome."
The article points out that there's already a police force in India with flying drones equipped with pepper spray.
of law enforcement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
when they get hacked and stun the cops
First people whine when police shoot criminals, now they're whining when police want to use less lethal methods to stop criminals.
Maybe we should give the police pillows. Or would they be too hard on the criminals?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Then moves to gun.
Controlled much?
Social media have made elections redundant. All that's missing now for the new world is these robots to keep the peace.
How encrypted is that link?
How much computer power in a parked van with carefully designed antennas is needed to build up a picture of the command and control link in a suburban setting per device?
It really, really frequency hops and has super encryption?
After that all that a device that sends a default return code or induces an error to make the drone stop and return.
A bit like whats done to mil grade drones but as a production line in a city.
A race to offer counter measures to the inner city and secure the drones again, more upgrades per drone.
Up sell the police on new electronic warfare equipment to protect their drone? To track any passive collection attempts when the drone is in use?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
As a black man, I'll take a drone with a stun gun over an actual cop with an actual gun.
I was told that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun was a good guy with a gun. Now you're telling me there's other ways to stop them?
If these drones can accurately stun someone, why not make them autonomous, feed their video to an AI familiar with the law and then stun anyone who breaks a law? Oh, wait, because that's pure fucking insanity. But, it's also the direction we are rapidly heading. It will start with drones as backup/expendable less-than-lethal devices and progress pretty quickly to autonomous law enforcement drones. I keep hearing that the average person breaks the law several times a day so, it should make for a really exciting society!
I'd be more afraid of cops loading up drones with pepper spray and using them to spray peaceful protestors just because they're non-whites.
Been predicting this for some time along with others. This is the first signs along with the robot blowing up a gunman with a bomb.
Not really a revelation, more of an inevitability. And certainly not a conspiracy theory - governments worldwide are already discussing this future openly...and assumedly otherwise.
The apologists will, as always, talk only about the benefits and how it will help against the "bad guys" (i.e. not them) until it is too late as per usual.
And I'm considering anti drone and anti police state countermeasures
only fair if the coast guard gets sharks with lasers.
ôó
Last time I checked FAA rules it was illegal to fire projectiles from aircraft. Military excepted.
As predicted by Larry Niven in 1972 short story, Cloak of Anarchy.
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/...
Someone at police headquarters had expected that. Twice the usual number of copseyes floated overhead, waiting. Gold dots against blue, basketball-sized, twelve feet up. Each a television eye and a sonic stunner, each a hookup to police headquarters, they were there to enforce the law of the Park...
Within King's Free Park was an orderly approximation of anarchy. People were searched at the entrances. There were no weapons inside. The copseyes, floating overhead and out of reach were the next best thing to no law at all.
http://www.larryniven.net/stor...
Why do they have to use flying drones? Flying drones generate so much noise as it approaches the criminal. They can be easily discovered, and destroyed.
Yeah, they'll be used for barricaded hostages and terrorists and such. Just like SWAT teams.
Do you have ESP?
Armed, mobile, networked drones. Typical government low-bid contracts...
Skynet is coming. Skynet is coming.
to track runaway vehicles instead of chasing them.
Meh. Welcome to yesterday. Dallas police have already used a robot with a pound of C-4 to blow up a sniper in July 2016. This ain't no cheesy science Fiction.... http://www.nbcnews.com/storyli...
This is the first signs along with the robot blowing up a gunman with a bomb.
The robot didn't do anything. The police controlling the robot used it to deal with the guy remotely so they didn't have to lose any more lives approaching a guy who was promising to do more killing. How is that a single bit different than shooting him from 500 yards away? It's not. Not a bit.
The apologists will, as always, talk only about the benefits and how it will help against the "bad guys"
Why should someone apologize for telling the truth? If it was your job to deal with an armed, violent person, and you were handed a tool that allows you to do that with less of a chance of you being killed while doing your job, are you really saying you wouldn't use that tool? Let me guess, you think it's unfair for the police to wear body armor, right? Yeah. Right.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Whilst it does sound a bit Monty Python and Who Watches the Watchers esque, there is a very good reason to start to take this stance.
It could be funded by a tax on only the police, and it should contain people who have never been employed by Government.
First off it would weed out all the bad cops, if you are in it for the money then no way should they be employed as police, it has to be for real justice.
It would also push laws through a filter, if the police have concerns about being policed then I think that would carry some more weight to get better laws and have better policing.
Instead of attempting to train the incarcerated in computer programming - which is a hiding to nothing on many levels - offer training to train to be police that only police the police.
If people have a complaint against the police then they can go there, all the other so called 'independent' overseers of the police, tend to get staffed with ex-police and government making it pointless and potentially dangerous to even complain about the police.
Would the police want to be policed with remote drones? I am betting no they wouldn't. Pretty much every argument the police have used, could be used to show that they too should be policed. The police just do not, and cannot police their own - it is too tribal - they just close rank.
And on that note, it could well be that the indigenous tribes of the land before the Spaniards called it America, would make excellent law enforcement for this, it has been after all their ancestral home for thousands of years, before they got occupied by Europeans and their slaves. They have far more of a legitimate say in how the land and society should be on that particular continent. Something to think about as we approach Thanks Giving.
If it means less dead black teenagers I am in favor of it.
stun guns people, stun guns. this is perfect for those idiots who want to blame the police for shootingthe "unarmed guy".
The only way to combat taser-creep is to introduce a less effective/lethal equivalent and insist that police switch over to it.
Automated "peacekeeper" drones are like the most iconic representation you can get for scifi/cyber distopia. They're the poster boy, easily.
So if you want us feeling (even more) like everything is turning into 1984, Fahrenheit 451, etc. by all means carry on.
I dunno, about the rest of you guys but I'm looking forward to the police force giving away pricey new drones when they start using these for everyday policing. :)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I expect to see criminals starting to wear chain mail. I'm sure modern techniques could make it quite light and easy to use, especially since it doesn't need to stop bullets or blades. All it needs to do is prevent the taser darts from penetrating so deeply that the chain mail can no longer short them out. Then most of the taser current should pass through the armour instead of the victim's flesh. I suspect victims might feel some pain, and perhaps even a lot of pain, because of the imperfect electrical connections between links in the mail; but I think enough current would be diverted around nerves and muscles to prevent the truly debilitating effects normally associated with electroshock weapons.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
I'd trust a bezerk drone over a cop.
Whatever soldiers use in the middle east will be used against American citizens by cops. That's what happens in a Security State.
Militarization of police always leads to escalation on both sides, mistrust and inability for police to function, as evidenced lately.
10 seconds to comply!
A big swarm of those along "pain rays" and bingo, no more protests! No more assemblies or rallies!
Just a thought here, but since every 12 year old with google can hijack wifi/bluetooth and disrupt radio signals, who excactly is going to make sure ALL of those things get "for real" secured before they go flying them around ... and in ALL states.
Not to talk shit on every state, but there are PLENTY that HALF ASS do anything because they simply don't care about doing things well or using a method that is feesable (Obamacare websites rolled out by many states were rediculously hard or shitty as an example). Letting law enforcement fly around gold prize craft that can easily be disrupted sounds like a REALLY bad idea. And when they crash by going out of range or around the corner of a "secured" building that has signal blocking, what is the process going to be for retrieval: shoot the first 8 year old child who picks it up?
Will the officers manning them be as immune to the law as the body cam police now are in PA? (just voted that body cam data is not public at all)
Sorry, but we don't have a very good track record of rolling out new toys / technology using anything related to safety measures or sane though behind it! (body scanners that dont catch guns, laptops in cop cards that can be jammed, traffic lights that ticket the innocent, ...)
Don't Kid yourself, this is for riot kontrol.
Taser armed drones are actually less worrying to me than the fellow they killed with the robot bomb. In the latter case, killing a suspect is justified when the police are under deadly threat. Arguably, if the sniper is contained and they can take their time jerry rigging a drone bomb, they could also take their time to come up with something that doesn't circumvent due process. I don't know enough details about that situation to say they weren't justified, but it is easy to see how the implications are a little troubling. However, if they had been able to taser that fellow with drones then he'd have been able to stand trial.
In this regard they were correct
It's all I got, I don'tknow what else to say.
Don't you think that the cops are just friggen weird. It's just one budget busting whack job idea after another. There is too much policing in this country. Rolling them back hard and fast. Enough of this nonsense.
How long it would take before we could play Halflife 2 IRL
After seeing this and reading the related links, it is clearly time for an xrobocop tag.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
they could have put anything on the robot.
they chose to use a bomb, instead of CS (tear) gas or any of a number of other options that would have ended the situation without further loss of life.
by that logic of yours, we should replace all police with robots as in Elysium or any of a number of other scifi stories.
why risk anyone's lives? lets just use robots to decide everyone's fate and enforce the laws.
the reason is because putting humans in the mix, putting them at risk, is part of the safeguard against abuse of power.
your logic is the logic that justifies saving police lives at the cost of all others.
being a police officer is dangerous, though not in the top 10. and it should be. it is by nature a risky profession. some days you interact with normal everyday citizens who just went a lil too fast. others you interact with actual dangerous criminals. that's the nature of the job when it comes to enforcing the law in relation to the nations citizens...all of them, normal or dangerous.
there are far too many police who think they're supposed to be warriors.
THEY ARE NOT.
that flawed mindset largely comes from ex-military who transitioned but forgot they aren't at war with America's citizens.
I've actually been told by various officers that the view of them as guardians is dangerous and emperils theyre safety.
that is garbage.
police are not warriors.
they absolutely ARE guardians.
and part of being a guardian of the public is protecting ALL OF THE PUBLIC, including the dangerous ones, to the best of your ability.
and if that doesn't sit well with you, then don't become one.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Chaotic Moon did this in Austin a couple years ago.
https://youtu.be/B0n-eoSNRQ8
Is it time to discuss 3 Laws Safe?
Yeah, with mistrust of police at an all time high, weaponinzed drones in the cops' hands, how could that go wrong?
"and if that doesn't sit well with you, then don't become one."
But then how else can I legally bully people?
How effective can it be when you can take it out with a stick or a rock?
police are not warriors.
they absolutely ARE guardians.
No, they are not guardians. They generally are asked to gather evidence and start the process of prosecution after someone has violated the law. They aren't, and can't be "guardians" without being everywhere, all the time, and able to stop everything that might threaten you. That's not even close to their mandate or their capability. If an ongoing violent event happens to occur for long enough to allow them to arrive on the scene while it's still in progress (or, by luck, they happen to be there when something starts), then they become warriors if the circumstances require that. Which is why they carry weapons.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
If police can have them, then so can we. This is a 2nd Amendment issue, and no "registration" or "permit", or "license" can be required and should be ignored.
The job of the police is to control the people.
The job of the military is to destroy the enemy
But when the military become the police, the people become the enemy.
We don't care what it's for. If police can have it as a weapon, then so can we. It a 2nd Amendment issue, and there will be no permit, no license, no registration.
We don't care what it's for. If police can have it as a weapon, then so can we. It a 2nd Amendment issue, and there will be no permit, no license, no registration.
Yeah, right. And I'm sure that you're prodly excercizing your 2nd amendment right to keep and bear thermonuclear armaments, too.
Partly because of the paralysis and partly because of the sellout in Congress, laws governing the use of technology in law enforcement have fallen way behind. My knee-jerk reaction is to say "no weaponized UAVs within our borders", but that's just not realistic. LE won't just standby while bad guys weaponize theirs, nor should they. But so far we haven't even gotten control of handheld Tasers. Instead of being used in place of deadly force, they're being used in place of physical restraint or even passive noncompliance, as if they never result in injury or death, which they most certainly occasionally do. I'd say a starting point would be to create federal legislation specifying when Tasers can be used, and it should be pretty restrictive. Then that can be extended to included remote-controlled vehicles. Will such laws preclude the unwanted use of weapons on drones? Of course not. But those doing so may be caught, fired, and prosecuted.
Close, but Adama said it better.
Sadists, sadists would like that, like anyone would taser someone while they are already down.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Screw ED209, just equip the drone with a submachine gun! Already been done and demonstrated by our friends over at FPSRussia... ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
Free stun guns for anyone with a backyard and a shotgun.
Drones with stun guns as apposed to cutting down doughnut intake a spend a few weekends a month at the gym.
Become a politician.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Well, what's your alternative? Send more human cops in so they can get shot dead by a terrorist who's heavily armed? Sending in a robot with a bomb was a bit extreme, but under those circumstances, it was warranted. If they had had a flying Taser drone, that would have been preferable (maybe, depending on your POV), as it's less-than-lethal and most likely would have incapacitated the shooter instead of killing him.
For extreme situations, I don't see what the problem is here, and a flying Taser makes perfect sense as something to have for such cases. Police have had special weapons for a long, long time: SWAT teams ("SW" is for "special weapons") have been around since the early 1980s, and they're normally only brought out in extreme cases. The fact that they've been overused in recent years in some localities is a failure of governance, but the answer isn't to take all the guns away from all police because then you'll have really serious criminality problems and no police at all; the answer is to get some better politicians, namely at the local levels where they have direct oversight over police departments.
That's a stupid argument. The police do not have nuclear weapons.
If you had said something about private citizens having MRAPs and grenade launchers, you'd have a point.
Much prefer someone fly their drone in, than run into a building shooting, or getting shot.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Local government can barely patrol in automobiles without fucking up their gear. Federal government can't even properly deploy a website. We see our overseers ass up project after project, while ever eyeing more expensive projects and tech.
This will be a colossal fuck up. Politicians and police are expecting turnkey aircraft. That just aint how its going to go. Aircraft in general is pretty onerous to maintain, autonomous stuff even more-so. Shit goes wrong all the time. I bet they wind up keeping a ton of overpriced plastic shapes on hand as replacement parts, and I bet they will be to afraid of breaking it to even change a prop.
You're not ready to fly after a 10 minute power-point presentation, but you can bet your freedoms that's how they will try to roll. Good thing our police departments are known for such intelligent staff.....
Imagine the circus when the first drone is caught on camera tazing some dunk and disorderly college kid? Or the video of the one crashing into the historic monument? Or the inevitable hacking?
Enjoy the show folks.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
>killed with the robot bomb
#1 As opposed to other techniques which they could do at a distance such as: grenades or ricocheting bullets off the ceiling onto his head? Despite the sci-fy fantasies of armed killer robots, this 'robot' was just a way to accurately place a grenade, (as mentioned above), so it didn't bounce around randomly. This 'robot' is a remote control tractor-treaded gadget. Not really a combat robot. They just used an accurate delivery option, instead of getting even closer. Which brings us up to your inaccurate point #2
#2 >killing a suspect is justified when the police are under deadly threat. Arguably, if the sniper is contained and they can take their time jerry rigging a drone bomb, they could also take their time to come up with something that doesn't circumvent due process.
He was not 'contained'. He was actively shooting the whole time. Sure he 'cornered himself' behind cover, because he got outnumbered. But he did not surrender-> *Even after demanding & getting a black negotiator to talk with. He continued to shoot while yelling obscenities, and had expressly said he would not come out without a fight.* Read those last two sentences between the *'s again and tell us that the poor assassin was taken advantage of.
#3 >However, if they had been able to taser that fellow with drones then he'd have been able to stand trial.
That fellow would have shot the drones out, and besides he did not want to stand trial- he was totally prepared for death and said as much in person as well as notes at his apartment. Even lamenting he could not properly create his own boom-device.
In summary, he was not surrendering. Nor out of bullets. Nor out of actively seeking lethal advantage over others. But he was painted into a corner where he put himself, and during negotiations announced his intentions to continue violently.
Hover Drone
I'm surprised that no one has thought of the real reason police desperately want armed drones. You see, once they get their Taser drones past the public it will only be a matter of time before they start demand 9mm armed ones.
They simply want their anonymity back. Back in the old days the police could shoot whoever they wanted, whenever they wanted, for whatever reason they wanted. With ubiquitous cell phone cameras, more and more of them are getting caught shooting people they really shouldn't. But with armed drones there will once again be no way to tell who actually pulled the trigger on someone. Why do you think SWAT teams wear those masks?
Watchbird by Robert Sheckley: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebook... these are autonomous and finally capable of killing. But, everything proceeds via a frog-boiling process, step by step.
I'm a 65 year old Brit and the rot seemed to start when the police were removed from the street (and stuck into Q-cars) because it was 'more efficient'. A person in a remote control room does not have the local knowledge to know that the 'threat' is someone is eccentric but harmless and has a heart problem. Result is judicial manslaughter.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
So if you're a criminal, you could wear some chainmail to short out the taser!
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
#DroneLivesMatter
If drones have Facial recognition software they'll become ultimate killing machines; wh.gov/iyhMK
Casteism
It was hardly the first time police deployed a bomb but at least they didn't burn down a few blocks of housing in Dallas. And of course that was not the first or last time the FBI was involved in such an operation.
I suspect the Dallas police were so enraged that they just looked for the most creative way to execute the guy and had no intention of capturing him alive.
Why should someone apologize for telling the truth? If it was your job to deal with an armed, violent person, and you were handed a tool that allows you to do that with less of a chance of you being killed while doing your job, are you really saying you wouldn't use that tool? Let me guess, you think it's unfair for the police to wear body armor, right? Yeah. Right.
Yep. Exactly right. If I'm the Cop I want it. Which is exactly why it is up to the civilian government to remind the Police that they ARE expected to risk their lives in the performance of their duties, and that laws WILL BE enforced by the actions of human beings who WILL BE responsible in their own persons for the physical risks of said actions, instead of allowing Robots to employ terrorist methods of intimidation upon the civilian population.
Fascist.