Homeland Security Funds LED Light That Blinds, Disorients 455
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."
I'm sure... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I'm sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the operating rule with these less-than-lethals should be "If you didn't have one of these and you would otherwise be shooting them with a gun, that's when you use these. If you would never have resorted to the gun, stick with the nightstick."
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Sunglasses anyone (Score:2, Interesting)
Landmines and machine guns (Score:2)
Just in: (Score:3, Funny)
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Easily countered (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Easily countered (Score:5, Funny)
You forgot (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:Easily countered (Score:5, Interesting)
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It however would make for fun high speed photography images :P
So while sunglasses or other visual shields may help, you still have to overcome the effects of the strobe. http://www.eugeneciurana.com/musings/from_omni/sho pping.html [eugeneciurana.com] 'A technology under development by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermor
Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
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Although it has been a while since there have been any riots in the US. Maybe they know something we don't.
And here I thought Homeland Security was supposed to be worrying about terrorism.
Re:Nice (Score:4, Insightful)
a) rubber bullets
b) tear gas
c) water cannon
d) wall of shields and batons
e) bright lights
I know what I'd chose!
Of course we're missing the uber-overlord crowd-suppressor; the rubber bullet firing tear gas cannon super-bright torch baton.
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I'd say
d) If you're on a brick road, but dodging c) back trough their own ranks is also fun.
Re:Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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What are you, a
This is the USA. The police are always right. They never have bad intentions. So if they are subduing you, they have a good reason to. Be glad they're only blinding you, and not beating you or sodomizing you with a broomstick. If you immediately curl up in a ball and obey their orders, they might just let you live (in jail for the next 5 years, that is). It's really for your own good, what with all the
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I'm not a cop nor do I know any personally, but killing someone, no matter the cause, is something that would haunt anybody for the rest of their life. I would think that any cop would rather have, maybe in addition to their sidearm, a non-leth
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(ST:TNG - Chain of Command, Part II)
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Subdue: verb: 1 : to conquer and bring into subjection.
I don't think I want to be subdued at all, thank you.
Re:Nice (Score:4, Insightful)
Since I'm not a USAian (Score:4, Funny)
... 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??)
Mandatory MST3K quote, plus scepticism (Score:4, Funny)
"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.
Not New (Score:3, Informative)
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 [defense-update.com]
blinding purposes (Score:2)
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Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Sure! (Score:2)
I wonder if those [millerwelds.com] would do any good?
Epilepsy warning? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Oh, that doesn't matter. In case of epileptic seizure, the police officer can reasonably feel threatened and shoot the guy. Problem solved !
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Many LED bicycle lights also flash at 9-12 Hz. As technology improves and light output increases this is likely to become a problem.
It's not only guilty people that get arrested... (Score:3, Insightful)
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
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But even law-breakers have rights, and if an epileptic dies from this, that's 'lethal force', whether the cop knew it or not. If someone has brittle bone disease and a cop tackles them, that's excessive force as well. Epileptics don't deserve to die any more than normal people do, breaking the law or not.
With aobut 300 million Americans, and 2.5 mill
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Re:No guarantee of safety when breaking the law (Score:5, Insightful)
A better term would, in my opinion, be "minimal force". At least that doesn't expect police men to be reasoning beings.
Regards,
--
*Art
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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
Re:No guarantee of safety when breaking the law (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:No guarantee of safety when breaking the law (Score:5, Informative)
The gunning down of a 92-year-old grandmother in a botched drug raid [wikipedia.org] 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 [cato.org] 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".
This isn't new (Score:2)
Mirror. (Score:2)
Re:Mirror. (Score:5, Funny)
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Fashion gets in the way (Score:2)
Looker (Score:2)
There's a rather underrated 80s film called Looker [amazon.com] which uses this sort of device as a subplot. The gun in the film freezes people for an hour or two, and obviously can be used for nefarious purposes by the baddies.
Rich.
The next step... (Score:2)
Move along ... (Score:5, Funny)
How to deal with Johnny Foreigner (Score:5, Funny)
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!
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Universal Language (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah yes, the universal language of violence.
Decapacitating crowds... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm thinking.. (Score:2)
This would put to use by protesters, border jumpers, assorted criminals, etc... for the purpose of blinding cops and/or their victims.
After all, if you're blind, how could you identify the suspect?
I find it kind of scary that our government thinks it is somehow morally acceptable to develop weapons which blind people. Sure, it's temporary - now - but how long will it be before someone figures out a way to make the blindness permanent? Or, worse, what if it causes *permanent* damage in only a small
"The Evil Colour" (Score:2)
There is also a back audio weapon they're working on, apparently it don't incapacitate the offender it just really takes the fight out of them
Apparently it emits a tone that gets "everyone", Vlad calls this one "The Brown note"
Defense procurement address anyone? (Score:2)
Wow, Tom Clancy predicts the future again (Score:3, Interesting)
This is against Geneva or Hague convention (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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Is that permanent and intentional blinding only? Is a specific method of blinding prohibited? Is the prohibition only for using such weapons on soldiers of recognized nations who are signatories themselves? Those questions of course assume that the US still cares enough about the forms of obeying international law to bother looking at such technicalities.
I'm sure that this thing will permanently blind people, but mo
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Is the prohibition only for using such weapons on soldiers of recognized nations who are signatories themselves?
As I understand it, things like the Geneva convention are binding on the signatory regardless of who they are fighting against. Wasn't the whole idea to minimise the horrors of war to some degree and to guarantee that the "war crimes" perpetrated in the past would not be perpetrated in the future? On top of that I would have thought that applying a standard to war fighting would ensure that your actions are morally justifiable, if a given action is not justifiable (and you have agreed that is it not by si
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The freedom fighters from Iraq, or the ones from Afghanistan, or others, are not technically protected by those regulations - they are not uniformed, and they are not fighting for their country (the government recognized at the international level).
So, the Geneva convention is not perfect
Re:This is against Geneva or Hague convention (Score:5, Funny)
It's called "Cable Television".
Re:This is against Geneva or Hague convention (Score:5, Funny)
You certainly can find all manner of amazingly useful things on google these days
Re:This is against Geneva or Hague convention (Score:5, Funny)
The GOGGLES THEY DO NOTHING!!!!
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I think you meant to say
The GOOGLES THEY DO NOTHING!!!!
Re:This is against Geneva or Hague convention (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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and
The tool could be scaled up to make a light bazooka that could subdue a crowd
I assumed that the weapon will be used against US citizens from reading those lines in TFA, and not just the from first noun of the summary.
This has apparently confused you a little bit.
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From TFA:
My guess is part of that distance info would be used to determine the strength required.
Re:This is against Geneva or Hague convention (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Say the homeland security is equipping itself with C4 and nerve gas to quench riots, and you get public pressure down on you, from the ACLU to the media. And if you use it in anything but the most severe cases or in any case against US citizens, step down from your office.
Say it's getting equipped with "harmless", non-lethal strobe lights that temporarily blinds and generally just subdues the rioter, you'll have a lot more acceptance. Should he find out that the temporary blindn
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Hey...this sounds like that weapon they used in that old 80's movie Looker [imdb.com] . I always wanted one of those guns...
Susan Dey was pretty hot back in the day in that movie too!
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Re:This is against Geneva or Hague convention (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sorry, but I have to call BS on this one. While I realize that it's oh so fashionable amongst the intelligentsia so make all sorts of wild accusations against the United States as the very incarnation of Cthulu, it just rings hollow here.
First of all, what causes people to go blind while looking at Lasers? well, let's check Wikipedia shall we? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasers#Laser_safety [wikipedia.org]
the money quote is here:
(emphasis mine)
The reason lasers can blind is due to the nature of the laser itself, being a highly coherent and concentrated beam of light, which the cornea can further concentrate to dangerous levels. LED's, while very bright, are of a highly INcoherent and diffuse nature. Now, there may be some TEMPORARY blindness caused by the overall light intensity, also known as Flash Blindness ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_blindness [wikipedia.org] ) but nothing permanently damaging. Also, as someone else mentioned above, there is a range-finder on the thing designed to adjust the intensity based on the range of the target.
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. Frankly, that sounds like three things to me:
a) A good overall idea
b) Something the UN would really go for (why kill when you can humanely capture?)
c) NOT something that an Eeeevil entity would do, unlike the way the US is commonly characterized on
Remember, calm logical thinking is your friend, knee-jerk reactions are not.
Re:This is against Geneva or Hague convention (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is against Geneva or Hague convention (Score:4, Insightful)
Well gee, that pretty much describes the modern history of the Taser (and before that, pepper spray), doesn't it? "It doesn't kill, so we can aim directly for the balls and fire away over and over". Completely passive student giving you lip? Zap the motherfucker. Some damned hippies refusing to clear the way for the bulldozers? Hold 'em down and apply pepper spray directly to their eyes with a q-tip. Some punk won't pull over? Blind him from the helicopter ("oops, how could we have known he'd hit that bridge truss doing a buck-ten?")
Keep in mind that the folks who decide to work as cops (not necessarily talking about detectives here) don't usually do so due to their extensive education. They look physically intimidating (most places have minimum height requirements) and generally got off on beating random people up in their youth (ie, bullies). Give these guys a weapon that doesn't automatically result in an inquiry when used, and they'll use it as often and at the highest intensity (including "improvised" higher-than-normal settings) possible.
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Long story short, after about the fifth time asking for the rest of the story, "no reason" became "I had just gotten out of rehab, trashed my parents bathroom with a shower rod, kicked in their windsheild, attacked the first officer on the scene, continued to fight with other who arrived until restrained, and then began spitting at them until incapcitated".
I'm not going to
Re:This is against Geneva or Hague convention (Score:5, Informative)
Doctors said that it's a fairly common reaction on very bright light. I was lucky to recover almost completely. Not all are.
LEDs count as Laser's now too (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Read your sources (Score:4, Informative)
Even considering using devices that could cause permanent blindness is evil. Sometimes the US is characterised correctly.
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US hasn't adopted Protocol I, therefore "terrorist" prisoners do not gain POW status
Under the Third Geneva Convention a fighter or belligerent in an international armed conflict who wanted lawful combatant status (and therefore prisoner of war status if captured), would have to meet certain criteria including:
(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) That of
Re:Vlad calls it the evil color (Score:4, Interesting)
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...
Re:Vlad calls it the evil color (Score:5, Informative)
"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. [wikipedia.org] Or better yet, Peril Sensitive Sunglasses. [hhgproject.org]
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!
Re:Close your eyes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Close your eyes. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Great idea. Take a moment what a crowd of Mexicans running frantically North with their eyes closed and their arms in front feeling their way.
It illustrates the problem having to outright declare war on that nation to stop them. Nothing like 150000+ people outfitted with the finest in US military hardware defending the border that Corporate America doesnt want defended.
first thing to check: are they zombies ? (Score:2)
Unless you are blonde and dumb you'll have no problem at all since the brain is missing.
Re:Does it work if... (Score:5, Funny)
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From the FA:
Though it would be nice to find a real news source on this (note: Wired is not a real news source, not even close) which might cover if such countermeasures would work. I would think the fact that it is flashing might make it still effective against a person wearing sunglasses; even if they have some protection, their eyes will still need to be able to adjust to con
Re:How 'bout... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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That's beside the point. If you don't want people to have these weapons, or a chance to use them on you, you should fight it. Otherwise, you'll soon find yourself fighting a criminal charge for wearing sunglasses on all but the sunniest days, or without being on a designated sunbathing spot.
mod parent down: racist trolling (Score:2)
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You played up the race relations aspect of the story, despite the fact that the true thrust of it should have been the alleged police and state confinement and eviction of the residents. Your poor excuse that "Youtube is blocked fo
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Very clever, those Mexicans.
Re:Yes, but ... (Score:5, Funny)
yes, but it would have to be a light distribution.