Government Accidentally Releases Documents On 'Psycho-Electric' Weapons (popularmechanics.com)

schwit1 shares a report from Popular Mechanics: The government has all kinds of secrets, but only a true conspiracy theorist might suspect that "psycho-electric weapons" are one of them. So it's odd that MuckRock, a news organization that specializes in filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with state and federal government bodies, received mysterious documents about mind control, seemingly by accident. Journalist Curtis Waltman was writing to the Washington State Fusion Center (WSFC), a joint operation between Washington State law enforcement and the federal government to request information about Antifa and white supremacist groups. He got responses to the questions he asked, but also a file titled "EM effects on human body.zip." At least some of the images appear to be part of an article in Nexus magazine describing a 1992 lawsuit brought by one John St. Clair Akewi against the NSA. Akewi claimed that the NSA had the "ability to assassinate U.S. citizens covertly or run covert psychological control operations to cause subjects to be diagnosed with ill mental health" and was documenting their alleged methods.

Comments

"Only a true conspiracy theorist"

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's time to bury that anticonspiracy theorist mindset.

Sure, there are theories out there, that are just nuts.

But it always bothered me, that the pro-state/corporate nutters get to believe the most black-eyed kind of insane bullshit possible, and attack anyone who disagrees with the thought-terminating "conspiracy theorist" clichee, and have the audience on their side.
At some point, the polarity does not matter. If you believe that the NSA are good guys and don't do all the psychopathic evil shit they can du with their huge budget, you're just as willfully ignorant and delusional and nuts than the time cube / flat earther / ... idiots.

Oh, and does anyone here remember that the Snowden leaks detailed that the main strategy to bring down opposing voices/groups was to inject moles who act as agents provocateurs and discredit the group with their actions?
E.g. take a good criticism, spice it up with insane theories, and post that shit

Re:"Only a true conspiracy theorist"

[fazig]

It's not only that there are 'theories' out there that are just nuts. It's that most of them rely on non sequitur like circular logic or arguments from ignorance while riding a thin line of plausibility. For example when there's no evidence for something that doesn't make the absence of evidence evidence of a suppression of evidence.
Yeah, yeah, I know that someone is probably going to throw that Carl Sagan quote my way that states "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". I do agree with his statement, but you have to keep in mind that this does not override the principle of burden of proof. You make a claim that something exists and it's your job to prove that it exists, not the job of others to disprove that it exists.

The thing to take away from here is that both state and private institutions will investigate any kind of shit that may give them an advantage if it works, whether it is rooted in hard science of science fiction/fantasy. However, whether or not they are successful proving the concept or furthermore are successful in developing an actual application is an entirely different story.
For example NASA is also investigating warp drive technology. They don't make a big secret out of it since it's nothing as scary as possible mind control. That does not mean that you should to plan your next holiday trip to Barnard's Loop quite yet.

That strategy Snowden detailed there has been used for a long time. Take the Cold War for example where you had both the US and the Soviet Union (mostly Russia) using that kind of tactics to control their own people and sow distrust among the enemy. And as far as I can see, this kind of information warfare has never stopped.


So if you want to hear my conspiracy hypothesis here. We don't need something like acoustic or electromagnetic mind control technology. The human need for approval and the way this can be exploited through social media has already proven to be a very effective tool in modifying human behaviour to at least some degree. And the really scary part here is that most people seem do it not only voluntarily but are actually happy to do it (ignoring a correlation between social media use and mental health problems here for the moment). And here you probably also have heard that the Chinese are taking it a even a step further by introducing a social credit system, where the state rates the actions of their citizens.

Re:"Only a true conspiracy theorist"

[rtb61]

If the could, they would and that is just reality. Plenty of straight up psychopaths in the US government, getting the sexual jollies by torturing people, so if could do any of that stuff, they would not be waterboarding people, threatening to murder their children, beat them to death, shoved hoses up their anuses (although there is a likelihood they would do those things anyhow even when they have better methods for interrogation, just because they are sick bastards).

Of course not being able to, is not the same as trying and they probably still are. They have no qualms about lying to the voters even legislating to allow it and that insane. Idiots even accept 'they had to lie to us for our own good'. They had not qualms about experimenting on citizens with chemical and biological weapons either, so you know if they could they would and they are still trying.

... continued (part 2)

[Anonymous Coward]

[Because /. mobile does not support previewing and the end of my comment is missing.] ... until everyone who does, including only posting the original good criticism, gets ridiculed instantly, so that the good criticism is effectively poisoned with the insane bullshit.

It was documented, that it was used on Occupy (successfully destroyed), Anonymous (by the time it became a "group", despite the whe point being that is is not a group), Wikilieaks (nearly destroyed, they got to Assange's second man), and even the Tea Party (to my surprise). 43 groups in total were mentioned.

So if you ever wonder why nobody tries to change anything, or overthrow the rulers ... *they are* ... there are a lot of groups trying to change things in a big way. But they all get destroyed, until you and me laugh at them too. And many of them were definitely and provably not nuts before the TLAs fucked with them.

Re:Cuba?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Have they trialed this in any other countries, by chance?

The Cuba caused painful headaches. But what if such a system could also provide pleasure . . . ?

I was reminded of an ancient post-apocalypse Science Fiction film titled Genesis II, staring ubiquitous, universal actor John Saxon.

The folks in the future had cattle-prod sticks that could either cause pain or pleasure if you zapped someone with them.

Hey, Taser . . . get your heads out of your asses, and produce a pleasure Taser!

Such a device could be used to treat fentanyl addicts.

. . . or folks will start killing each other for batteries for the sticks.