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Why does this make me feel LESS safe?

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Imagine you are a proud citizen of the glorious empire. Unfortunately, the Emperor was found guilty of war crimes (authorizing the torture of war detainees, launching preemptive strikes against other countries, toppling foreign heads of state, maintaining secret prisons holding unidentified persons of interest in countries with less strict human rights practices, etc.) and then knowingly giving false information to the empire’s citizens to justify his actions. Not being much of a muckraker, you try to avoid the organized peace march planned for the capital plaza. Sure, you don’t agree with the Emperor’s policies, but you’re no Jedi Knight–you’re not even a Martin Luther King, Jr. or a Rosa Parks. You’re just an ordinary person trying to make your way through the growing crowd to your car so you can attend your little niece’s birthday party.

Someone from the crowd steps onto the edge of a fountain in the square. You try not to listen as the guy makes a few good points about the state of the Empire and the wrongdoings of the Emperor. You continue moving quickly through the crowd to where your car is parked. The crowd starts cheering, applauding, and even stamping their feet to signify their approval of what the speaker is saying. You reach your car, as a helicopter appears overhead. You fumble for your keys as a voice booming from overhead informs the crowd that their “unruly behavior is in violation of the Emperor’s emergency domestic terror prevention plan”. The voice is so loud you drop your keys as you clap your hands over your ears to protect your hearing. After the voice stops, a piercing noise louder than a jet engine replaces it. People scream (not that you can hear them) and start running from the square. An old man raises his cane, shaking it at the helicopter to express his anger. A moment later, he collapses. Then, you feel the air suddenly prickling like there is about to be a lightning storm nearby. Next thing you know, a 50,000-volt charge of electricity jolts you to the ground. All around you, people are stunned and in pain, though most are starting to pick themselves up to hobble away.

Amazingly, your keys are still on the ground beside your car. You open the door, slouch painfully into the seat, and turn the key in the ignition. Nothing. You try again, and again. Dead. Your less than a month old $32,000 car was completely disabled in the electrical blast. You grab your $200 cell phone with all the latest gadgets to call your sister and let her know you will not be able to attend your niece’s birthday. Unfortunately, the cell phone is fried, too. So is your watch, your PDA, your calculator, your iPod, and your laptop computer. Nearly $35,000 of loss from that one “nonlethal” weapon burst, and you were just innocent “collateral damage”.

Obviously sitting in the car is not going to help. Worst of all, you see an anti-terror squad goon walking your direction. You know you don’t want to be anywhere near him. He’s carrying one of those “nonlethal” microwave emitters. As you get out of the car, you notice the old man with the cane is still crumpled, unmoving on the ground where he fell–a surprised look frozen on his face. Poor guy probably had a pacemaker that got fried. Didn’t he know better than to be near a demonstration these days? You stared at the guy for too long. A searing pain rakes across your back and side. You scream in pain as it feels like your body is suddenly on fire. A second later, the pain is gone (but certainly not the memory or your still-screaming nerve endings). You look behind you. Yeah. It was the anti-terror squad goon with his “nonlethal” microwave. Somehow, the fact that the thing is “nonlethal” doesn’t make you feel any better. You quickly sneak away, trying to avoid the other goons in the area.

Several hours later (no car after all), you walk up to your front door. There is an official looking envelope stuck to it. You break into a cold sweat as you tear it open. Inside is a warrant demanding you to turn yourself in to any nearby Office of Empire Security for questioning and possible arrest within the next three days. Not only that, a closed circuit camera photo of you in the crowded square falls out. The photo also shows a positive biometric scan confirmation, which means that all your documents (driver’s license, passport, credit cards, transit pass, library card, and probably your work ID) are probably already flagged with your “violation.” What are you going to do? You don’t have enough money to hire an attorney–not the kind that actually has a chance to keep you from being questioned (a politically correct term for interrogation with more of the same type of “nonlethal” weapons you just faced). Moreover, once you’re questioned, it’s only a matter of time before you confess to whatever they want you to confess to, just to get them to stop the torture. You irrationally curse your niece for having a birthday so that you had to enter that square today. Then you curse yourself for having parked there in the first place. You decide to fix something to eat before you go turn yourself in. It might be the last good meal you get for a long, long time.

The story above is, fortunately, a work of fiction. If it sounds eerily familiar, though, it’s probably because that is the future many people around the world are sensing might be the future just around the corner if we continue down the path we are walking, no — running, toward.

The current Bush administration (or “Bush Regime” as the World Can’t Wait movement1 calls it) is guilty of everything of which the evil Emperor in this story is guilty. As I have already blogged, “Benjamin Ferenccz, a chief war crimes prosecutor at Nuremberg, claimed that Bush should stand trial for starting an aggressive war.”2.

The sonic weapon, which can cause hearing loss3 due to excessively loud noise (that’s 10db louder than the sound of a jet at take off!)4 is already a reality5, and U.S.6 and European governments are likely to purchase them soon, if they have not done so already7.

The other “nonlethal” weapons described also loom on the horizon.

The field weapon could be one of several types of wireless Taser-type weapons being developed by DARPA (the U.S. Department of Defense’s research division) and private companies. One model uses “a small explosive charge to squirt a stream of tiny conductive fibres through the air at the victim”8. Another model uses ionized gases to “be able to fire a stream of electricity like water out of a hose at one or many targets in a single sweep”3. And a third type sounds even scarier3:

The laser pulse must be very intense, but can be brief. So the makers of the weapons plan to use a UV laser to fire a 5-joule pulse lasting just 0.4 picoseconds – equating to a momentary power of more than 10 million megawatts.

This intense pulse – which is said not to harm the eyes – ionises the air, producing long, thread-like filaments of glowing plasma that can be sustained by repeating the pulse every few milliseconds. This plasma channel is then used to deliver a shock to the victims similar to a Taser’s 50,000-volt, 26-watt shock.

[…]

But the advent of wireless stun weapons has horrified human rights groups. Robin Coupland of the Red Cross says they risk becoming a new instrument of torture. And Brian Wood of Amnesty International says the long-range stun guns could “inflict pain and other suffering on innocent bystanders”.

And there are safety concerns. Of the 30,000 times US police officers have fired Tasers, in 40 instances people stunned by them later died. The deaths have been attributed to factors such as overdoses of drugs and alcohol, or fighting with officers, rather than the electric shock.

In a statement, Taser International chief Rick Smith said: “In every single case the medical examiner has attributed the direct cause of death to causes other than the Taser.” Amnesty is not convinced, however, and wants an independent study of the effects of all existing and emerging electric-shock weapons.

This type of technology “exploits the body’s natural defense mechanism that induces pain as a warning to help protect it from injury. It uses a transmitter producing energy at a frequency of 95Ghz and an antenna to direct a focused, invisible beam to a subject at the speed of light and penetrate the skin to a depth of less than 1/64 of an inch. This produces an escalating heating sensation that becomes intolerable in seconds, and forces the subject to flee. The sensation immediately ceases when the individual moves out of the beam or when the system operator turns it off.”6

So, do these things sound like something you want to see used for dispersing a crowd in your community? There certainly can be times when “riot control” is worth considering, but from a free speech point of view and an historical one, most of the dramatic changes in history can be traced back to some “riot” or confrontation. At what point would these “nonlethal” weapons be used against protesting citizens? Is it at the point that a speaker starts saying things against the government (the U.S. first amendment right of freedom of speech should clearly state no here at least)? Maybe it’s when the riot squad feels threatened because an unidentified individual (the old guy) points a threatening object (shakes his cane) in the direction of the riot squad? Maybe it’s when people are already fleeing the scene (after their car and other electronics have been ruined), because the riot squad does not want the rioters to reassemble and extend the riot. Also, stupid college parties gone very, very badly can evolve into riots, but is that any reason for police to scorch drunken students with microwave blasts? I’d love to know from someone from a SWAT team or other group in charge of riot control how and when the determination is made to use different types of resistance, and how devices like these might come into play. Would they be a first choice or a last resort?

Really, it would seem like these devices should be tested on a battlefield first. After all, anything less dangerous than a bullet (supposedly at least) and remains highly effective sounds like a good military option to me. Perhaps the military could get an entire troop of soldiers to surrender without killing a single person. In fact, you might expect the military to embrace this technology.

Guess again.

CNN.com reports9that Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne stated that “nonlethal” weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before being used on the battlefield. If these supposedly “nonlethal” weapons are so darn safe that they only “generally … weaken people”9 and “also can be effective in disabling some electronic devices”9, then why is the military scared to use them overseas?

Supposedly, it’s all about building up good public relations with the international community. It proves that we feel so confident in the safety of these weapons that we are willing to put our own citizens at risk to prove it to our allies overseas (and any war crimes trials that may be convened later). Is this another case of the oxymoron of “military intelligence”? Don’t get me wrong, I greatly respect the men and women putting their lives in danger every day in the military, and I am sure that real military intelligence is an incredibly difficult and challenging job, which by its nature cannot be discussed or defended without jeopardizing safety. It’s just that when military officials put forth idiotic statements like Secretary Wynne did, it makes one question the competency of those leaders.

The rest of the story–truth of fiction? If you have paid attention to the news during botched London bombings, you wouldn’t have to ask if cameras identifying you and recording incriminating evidence is a reality or fiction. CIO reports:10

In the eyes of the British public, CCTV has become the police’s first port of call and a high-tech crime-fighting tool. In London, the average person can expect to be caught on surveillance video hundreds of times daily, and Britons are accustomed to seeing CCTV footage of suspects and victims in high-profile crimes.

As to the linking of your warrant information to all your documents, I just heard on the radio yesterday that around the end of this year all new U.S. passports will contain microchips (presumably RFIDs) and biometric information. Since passports will now be required even for travel into Canada and Mexico (the only two countries they let U.S. citizens slide–unless you looked possibly Mexican), it’s much more likely that the average American will carry a passport. Some state drivers’ licenses and ID cards already have RFID technology (or will very soon); California is considering that very issue now. How much longer will it be before all documents are reduced to one or two ID cards you carry everywhere? And how long until those cards are linked to police computers that can track when and where someone with a warrant is using his or her card? Is that part fiction? Not for very long. The “grid” is getting very personal.

What about the “Emperor’s emergency domestic terror prevention plan”? Provisions of it are already in place in the USA. It’s called The PATRIOT Act. There are several other pieces of legislation that tie in with it. Just a few more tweaks by conservative lawmakers, and the plan will be complete. A bunch of rubber stamp legislative acts, further rubber stamped by a handpicked Supreme Court, will practically eliminate our vital Constitutional protections. If you don’t want to see that happen, tell the government so on election day. And pray. And blog. And protest (peacefully). And hope they don’t have any of these nasty “nonlethal” weapons handy.

Probably the three biggest pieces of fiction in this story are (1) that the police would have an arrest warrant on your door that quickly (maybe they subcontracted it to a third party paid on commission?), (2) possibly the fact that you have a sister and a niece, and (3) that you are such a gadget freak that you would have a cell, PDA, iPod, and laptop all with you.

Welcome to the 21st Century, soon to be remembered as the next Dark Ages — unless we work very hard to prevent that from happening RIGHT NOW.

References (each opens in a single new window):
1 World Can’t Wait: Drive Out the Bush Regime
2 Furth & Fortune blog: “But it’s not my fight.” Oh, yes it is.
3 New Scientist: Sweeping stun guns to target crowds
4 BoingBoing: Sound of War
5 Press Release: Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRAD™)
6 Defense Industry Daily: $7.5M for Directed Energy ADS2 Riot-Breaker
7 CNN.com: Troops get high-tech noisemaker
8 New Scientist: Print edition, 24 May 2003
9 CNN.com: Air Force chief: Test weapons on testy U.S. mobs
10 CIO Magazine: London’s Cameras

Related items for sale:

The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq (Paperback), Sheldon Rampton, John Stauber The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power (Hardcover), by James Moore, Wayne Slater One Party Country: The Republican Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century (Hardcover), by Tom Hamburger, Peter Wallsten


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