The system in question is basically just a directed microwave emitter. It is designed to heat up the first ~0.5mm of your skin.<p>It's safety is basically completely a function of the operator. Since the beam will keep depositing energy (ie heating), if the beam is held on a target, it will incur more and more heating (and potentially harm).<p>In proper usage, safety is ensured through the combination of operator training, selection of proper settings, and induced compliance. If you have a shitty operator, risk of over exposure increases. The nature of this device means that it's not a barrier, it's a beam.<p>During earlier testing, they were able to induce second degree burns on a test subject due to incorrect power and duration settings.
for certain types of tools (and I'd certainly class weapons as this type) you have to assume that a certain number of operators will be, as you put it, "shitty". Whether it's because they're having a bad day, are genuinely incompetent, are malicious, whatever the reason---some percentage of the operators will be using your tool in a way you'd discourage for PR reasons.<p>Maybe I am too cynical, but I don't think the people making these tools actually care about this either, not beyond the potential for bad publicity.
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Most people fleeing across the border have braved significantly worse, this is just another way to harm people we see as lesser for the accident of where they were born.
Every individual has their own risk tradeoff calculation. People already risk death to cross the border, so it's not clear how much this would move the needle.
knowing the kind of people who sign up for ICE/CBP enforcement, I have no hope that a trained or decent operator will be behind this machine.<p>I expect a lot of severely traumatized people from this device
Oh goody. Let's give cops another toy before we have tamed the use of pain compliance tools already in their hands. We are breeding a class of casual torturers.
Also try not to think about contact lenses, piercings, jewelry, pacemakers, etc.
> The system in question is basically just a directed microwave emitter. It is designed to heat up the first ~0.5mm of your skin.<p>So what happens when it's shot at someone's eyes?
It is "non-lethal"!<p>Be happy you are just blind for the rest of your life.<p>Such a shitty government you have today in the USA, it boggles
the mind.
The Business Plot people who want to tear down the United States, the rebel faction trying to destroy democracy and the nation from within has really figured out how to keep driving fear and conspiracy into our hearts (the less mind the better). They're just such amazing aggitants, able to make people so willing and ready to throw this whole nation in the wood chipper.<p>I wish we could identify, grapple with how bad what a terror America has become against itself. Against its history. Against in so many cases reality. There doesn't seem to be any regulating functions in red America, anything other than ever increasing war drums against democracy, against union, again the constitution, the declaration of rights, reason, kindness, and possibility. To make itself the foe of the nation has been the only thing this political faction has been able to lead by, and we are so far past the unhinging, never to come back seemingly, never to be able to have any learning moments, never to recognize a loyal opposition again, never to compromise. Just shrill shrieking bedlam and din forever.
The innate blink reflex is supposed to be enough to limit risk of damage: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130216134111/http://jnlwp.defense.gov/pdf/heap.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20130216134111/http://jnlwp.defe...</a> (go to page 14/28).
So if I can't keep my eyes closed (because of a riot situation, or friends in trouble) am I risking permanent eye damage, with no government responsibility for it, because some cop shouted something into a bullhorn that I couldn't make out ?
Possibly yes.<p>The device works through line of sight, so blocking line of sight from the emitter to your open eyes (for example, by looking away and shielding with your arms) may be helpful.<p>Testing indicates that test subjects reached their pain threshold in ~5 seconds (typically reacting within 3). Proper application of this device in a riot situation likely involves pulsed application, at sufficient standoff range (between targets and a barrier or your riot police/troops), precisely to reduce the risk of operators feeling that they need to dwell, with the standoff range providing enough buffer to allow operators to feel like they can illuminate, wait for initial reaction, shut off, and then read the full reaction.<p>In your general scenario, you can replace this weapon with any other riot control tool, and get basically the same shitty situation. Once the government/police/whatever have decided that you are in a riot/mob, then you're not going to be treated as an individual, you're going to be treated as an element of a threat. This is true of dudes with shields and batons, beanbags, water cannons, tear gas, horses, whatever.
> <i>It is designed to heat up the first ~0.5mm of your skin.</i><p>Oh, is that all?<p>> <i>US officials had also considered deploying the system during moments of domestic unrest, including at the end of President Donald Trump’s first term when protests erupted over the murder of George Floyd, according to a former US official familiar with those discussions.</i><p>This is for "the border" (because you know we should be able to torture people there), but really this will imperial boomerang back to US citizens in the blink of an eye.
And that's exactly the problem. We (and users) have known for decades that you can kill someone with a rubber bullet. And they have been used to intentionally kill on many different occasions.
Rubber bullets are supposed to be aimed at the ground, but we've seen (pun sadly intended) plenty of officers aiming at faces/eyes of protestors. This can kill, and if it doesn't kill it maims.<p>They're trained to not maim or kill. More training won't fix it. More money and more resources won't fix that systemic rot.<p>40%, after all.
There's no way I'd trust this in the hands of <i>anyone</i>, <i>especially</i> those operating in the service of the current administration. They say they want to use it to "protect the border" but there are reports that they'd used it domestically already.<p>Considering the non-tolerance of public protest and the "promise" of non-lethality, I could imagine this becoming a regular tool in population control if things don't change.
...and one need only watch videos of "trained officers" hosing people with pepper spray to envision how that will turn out.
> If you have a shitty operator, risk of over exposure increases.<p>Good thing border control isn't full of rejects and nonhackers from the military and real law enforcement \s
> If you have a shitty operator<p>Well, we are talking about US border patrol folks. Trust me, they are the nicest guys around /s.
Brother, so the ai bots will literally microwave us, what a time to be alive<p>First the border, I don't see why they would stop there with the tech
It's my understanding that this tool is for crowd control and area denial. While I can understand how this may useful along the border in fantasy, it appears to be literal atomic flyswatter to unreal problem.
This is a weapon that will be deployed primarily against their own citizens.
Surely the border patrol will not use it to torture a trespasser?
And suddenly, there was a market for body-sized Bragg reflectors in the microwave region.
Wasn't there a relatively high-profile case of a journalist dying of "nothing" after whistleblowing recently? I only remember that a directed energy weapon was one of the proposed methods of their assasination.
just a hop step and jump to being used on (completely legal) protestors<p>there are already several recorded incidents of LRADs being used on crowds which do permanent damage but invisible so very handy for authoritarian governments<p>* <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmK-KZOiT-c" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmK-KZOiT-c</a><p>* <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-range_acoustic_device" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-range_acoustic_device</a>
> The heat ray, officially known as the Active Denial System, is a nonlethal weapon that shoots an invisible beam of electromagnetic waves that can reach a little more than half a mile away, according to the US military.<p>Stun gun and electro shocks are also advertised as non-lethal. But the name is wrong; it should be called less-lethal at best.
Sadistic
what the actual fuck.<p>edit: okay, first reaction, obviously not contributing to any conversation. This is barbaric and if I paid US taxes I'd be writing my government.
If that worked, we wouldn’t have been in this situation in the first place.
I write them constantly. I've tried calling, emailing, faxing, snail mail. I've only ever received a handful of generic form letter responses.<p>The lobby is louder.
This administration only accepts adulation, not criticism.
I read DHH, and started wondering if he is ok :D
the actual problem is that the 'pentagon' has zero authority to grant some jumped upp 3 letter agency the go ahead to test what is basicly an electronic flame thrower on civilian refugees, you know ,scared, hungry, tired, women carrying infants with absolutly no idea what is happening to them, and this by an organisation with a solid record of publicly executing american citizens and walking away saying 'fucking bitch'
put the pieces on one page and it looks full on gestapo high tech kill squad times.