It seems like NPR has changed the title to "Military Police Leaders Weighed Deploying 'Heat Ray' Against D.C. Protesters"
EDIT: Also, why is this on HN? I'd understand it if the article were discussing the technology, but as it stands it's just a (valid) political piece. Sadly, the comments already resemble an ugly trainwreck.
What do you expect them to use instead? Rubber bullets blind people and tear gas is very damaging to people with asthma. They can't let riots run free like in Portland because they have to protect the essential government buildings. Should the military beat protesters with nightsticks? What should they do when words are insufficient?
I was thinking about ultrasound or infrasound, but that's dangerous too. A better idea is some kind of organic dirt: about as dangerous as rain, but also disgusting enough to stop all but the most determined types.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
Things I've seen police do at the protests: Tackle calm non-violent citizens and then repeatedly punch them in the head while on top of them, fire teargas into traffic and then slash the tires of vehicles stuck in the protest, severely maim civilians holding signs via impact munitions to the head.. just a few things I've witnessed.
Generally, the US has been so focused on concentrating wealth and power upwards that I would say give it [the free shoes] to them so long as its a universal program.
"That worked great"- what's "that", here? It sounds like you're implying that he tried to listen to protestors and address their grievances, and so was driven out of his home- is that roughly what you meant?
If so, what are some of the ways he tried to address those grievances?
This is not the same thing as me saying "that is good and I'm glad it happened", to be clear! Just ... if he didn't actually do what the parent post suggested, I don't see how that response is relevant.
For example, he banned tear gas and chokeholds, redirected substantial funding (I think close to 10 million?) from the police budget to community initiatives, removed police officers from city schools, and eliminated specific police teams like the gun violence squad which activists believed had a culture of racial discrimination.
The main criticism is that it is not enough or not fast enough. The bigger frustration is the fear that current policy changes are only to appease and not to fix the root issues.
I'm just not sure that "demands" is the right framing here. This site is outlining a large series of policy initiatives, ranging from police reforms to housing and transportation policy to specific legislative process details. Such complicated changes need to be subject to civic debate, and compromises might have to be made to account for factors the organizers didn't think of or other groups with similarly strong beliefs.
You are correct that these policies are all subject to debate and compromise, but I think "demands" is the perfect way to frame these things.
The small picture of these protests is that an unarmed black man died while handcuffed, on his stomach, pleading for his life, with a police officer's knee to the back of his neck.
The bigger picture is that systemic racism has been an ongoing issue for decades (but since the country's founding, actually). Oregon itself has quite the history with systemic racism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Oregon
So the frustration isn't necessarily that policies are subject to debate or that compromises have to be made; the frustration lies in elected officials that help maintain a level of systemic racism via inaction and non-enforcement. Hence, the particularly aggressive use of "demands" which is also framed around ongoing protests in Portland and elsewhere.
This, I think, is far more clear in the use of the phrase "defund the police." A lot of people have issue with this phrase because they think it means entirely eliminating the police force. And yes, some percentage of those who say "defund the police" do mean completely eliminating the police force, but the majority actually mean "divert significant funding from the police department to social programs and health workers." However, there are two issues with that; 1, it's not very succint. 2, it does not adequately express the frustration people have with police.
He went to one of the protests to listen to their grievances and ended up getting heckled.
Fast forward a few weeks, they started protesting in front of his condo building - shining lasers in the windows, trashing the lobby and shooting fireworks. The mayor said he will be moving out.
Neither method works, you antagonize them, they fight back, you appease them, they ask for more or say its to late. Honestly nuclear option might have been only option for many situations of "mostly peaceful" protests. They ordered dispersal in most of these cases too due to looting and riots.
Just because you say you're "press" doesn't absolve you from the law due to riots and damages from looters; for example.
The interesting thing about this argument is it's independent from whether or not the protests are justified. If there's riots, well, only option is to start moving in and dispersing the crowd. If you appease them, they'll just ask for more.
In light of this, would you say the same thing about the treatment of protestors in Hong Kong? If not, why not?
It's comments like this that make me wonder if teaching multiple generations of people of a certain social class that 'violence is never the answer' was a mistake...
No, I should have never commented in the first place, but I guess what I meant to say is the media keeps making Portland out to be some sort of BLM free-for-all. Your NY Post article is a great example of propaganda: "Black Lives Matter militants." It was a BLM protest, not necessarily everyone there or inciting violence was associated with BLM.
There are some media organizations which imply that all of Portland is constantly a free-for-all, and that's certainly not true. But I think it's hard to look at many of the videos (the most recent example I've seen is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2CCeFlxIiU) and not conclude that there's a localized, temporary free-for-all. I think anyone would be terrified if this were happening just outside their window.
No government buildings in DC were damaged. Small groups, in some cases as small as three people, destroying private property in the first few nights were a major problem because they were moving across the city and MPD couldn’t be everywhere at once.
You are correct, there’s no such thing as a safe way to use indiscriminate force on a crowd. But you’re also mischaracterizing the situation on the ground here.
It's a classic tactic of online trolls to construct a straw-man argument and then direct their efforts towards attributing their argument to you. It works because they twist your words into something inflammatory and you waste time/energy defending yourself and trying to discriminate between your point and the point they paint you as making.
Meanwhile to a casual observer you get made to look like the extremist.
In this case, asking "how will you protect government buildings?" is like asking "how will you prevent protesters from leaking classified military secrets?". Nobody said that classified military secrets were being leaked, only that they should be protected.
The question isn't whether the violence actually happened, but whether it was a reasonable possibility to plan for. It's not good for anyone if riot control tactics can only be discussed once a riot is in full heat - everyone involved will surely overreact if they don't know what the plan is.
>What do you expect them to use instead? Rubber bullets blind people and tear gas is very damaging to people with asthma. They can't let riots run free like in Portland because they have to protect the essential government buildings. Should the military beat protesters with nightsticks? What should they do when words are insufficient?
I can tell you're fishing for the answer "go ahead and microwave the protesters en masse" but instead: How about stop murdering black people?
Great solution. Go tell the DC National Guard that they just need to stop murdering black people and that will keep the essential government buildings safe. Why even have police at that point?
>> The ADS was developed by the military some twenty years ago as a way to disperse crowds. There have been questions about whether it worked, or should be deployed in the first place. It uses millimeter wave technology to essentially heat the skin of people targeted by its invisible ray.
I remember reading about that years ago. The new name is misleading. It's not some kind of infrared beam, its microwaves. Cooking protesters doesnt sound good though.
What about through windows? Screen doors? Front yards?
Microwaving the plants and animals in my front yard seems like a violation of personal property. But laws are abstract and regularly unenforced so who knows.
I'm not sure how these particular devices work, "microwave" is anything from a meter to a millimeter which is a pretty broad range (300 MHz to 300 GHz.) Certainly some lengths of microwaves go through glass though, otherwise microwave ovens wouldn't have that metal mesh behind the glass window.
Also I know that microwave ovens normally don't heat glass, which suggests to me they're either very reflective or very transparent to microwaves in the low GHz range. I've cooked enough food in glassware to think it must be the later. (Interestingly if you heat a small portion of glass to red hot with a torch before microwaving it, you can melt the entire piece of glass as the oven heats and spreads the hot spot.)
So these operate around 95ghz, roughly, from what I can gather. Sure you’ll get some window penetration but I still take issue with the “but the kids” tone of the OPs argument.
I don’t agree with use of these weapons, having been on the receiving end of RF burns accidentally myself, but pretending it’s because you care about kids is sick and seems to be a default go-to for most things.
If I’m not being charitable in my interpretation of OP, then roast me, but I get the feeling the sentiment isn’t particular about caring for kids and using it as a “but... but... but...” argument.
If the walls are metal, sure, but wood or glass isn’t likely to attenuate microwaves that much.
Example: WiFi signals are transmitted on a microwave frequency (at low power compared to this device), and the signal propagates through ceilings and walls without much issue
I take issue with that only due to the fact that WiFi doesn’t actually travel that well. If you are aiming one of these weapons at a wall, behind which there are people, from a distance of say 100 feet it isn’t very likely to penetrate and cause harm.
Seeing as how these weapons operate at 95ghz, their penetration capability is basically nil. Attenuation is a real issue with that frequency and those distances. WiFi works on 2.4 and 5ghz which already have some issues with penetration.
This is a common misconception, but the reason that they're war crime weapons isn't that they have some particularly dastardly effect. For example, police agencies across the world use hollow-point ammunition that's banned in warfare - not because they're trying to inflict unnecessary pain, but because the context of policing requires hollow-points to avoid collateral damage.
Quite right. Don’t know why the downvotes.
Ammo is a good example... as absurd as it sounds, the intent in warfare is not to kill the enemy; merely to wound them. Consequently, full metal jackets are used as these increase the likelihood of survival.
Police, on the other hand, shoot to kill. Not to wound. Hence, hollow-points. (In addition, the rounds won’t penetrate and keep traveling after impact with the perp and kill bystanders as military wounds are apt to do.)
How you just brushed over that police shoot to kill and the military in a war shoots to wound completely baffled me. How is that a defensible position?
To the best of my knowledge, that claim is not accurate. Police are issued hollow points because over-penetration is a much bigger concern in an urban, civilian area. In a military context, over-penetration is less of a concern, FMJ ammo is much cheaper, and the 1899 Hague Convention (which the US did not actually sign, but most other major powers did) technically forbid it. Special forces have been using hollow points for a while though, and they were adopted for general use by the US Army in 2015 along with the new M17 (Sig Sauer P320) sidearm.
The ‘Laws of War’ serve different purposes than the law of policing.
Feigning outrage that soldiers are prohibited from something police are not, or vice versa, is silly.
Some — but not all — of the differences arise from a general principle that the use of weapons in war is to remove enemy soldiers from the battlefield. A wounded enemy soldier requires far more enemy resources than a dead enemy soldier.
Police are different. If they are going to shoot it should be in circumstances where there is an immediate threat to their own (or another’s) life. The threat should be so imminent and deadly that multiple shots without consideration of whether the perp will likely die or merely be injured is the rule. Stated differently, if a cop has the time and presence of mind to ‘shoot at a leg’, he shouldn’t be taking the shot in the first place.
You hand-wave the reasoning of war crimes, yet never provide an explanation. Why are they war crimes? Tear gas is an abortifacient, can be lethal, and can cause fires. What is your definition of "dastardly effect"?
From what I've read a concern about using these kn larger crowds is that if it causes a panic of people feeling, it could easily turn into a stampede like event where people are knocked down, stuck only to have longer, dangerous exposure to the microwaves.
79 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 145 ms ] threadEDIT: Also, why is this on HN? I'd understand it if the article were discussing the technology, but as it stands it's just a (valid) political piece. Sadly, the comments already resemble an ugly trainwreck.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
Lawless murder and intimidation by the police is a violently oppressive grievance I would consider warranted.
Instead citizens who demand justice are met with surprise more injustice by the police.
If so, what are some of the ways he tried to address those grievances?
This is not the same thing as me saying "that is good and I'm glad it happened", to be clear! Just ... if he didn't actually do what the parent post suggested, I don't see how that response is relevant.
The main criticism is that it is not enough or not fast enough. The bigger frustration is the fear that current policy changes are only to appease and not to fix the root issues.
For example, Wheeler only recently banned the use of tear gas: https://www.portland.gov/wheeler/news/2020/9/10/mayor-wheele... (note the date--6 days ago).
Another example, funding cuts were not seen as enough: https://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-police-budget-15-m...
The most comprehensive list of demands, including updates to their status, can be seen here: https://www.reimagineoregon.org/policydemands
The small picture of these protests is that an unarmed black man died while handcuffed, on his stomach, pleading for his life, with a police officer's knee to the back of his neck.
The bigger picture is that systemic racism has been an ongoing issue for decades (but since the country's founding, actually). Oregon itself has quite the history with systemic racism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Oregon
So the frustration isn't necessarily that policies are subject to debate or that compromises have to be made; the frustration lies in elected officials that help maintain a level of systemic racism via inaction and non-enforcement. Hence, the particularly aggressive use of "demands" which is also framed around ongoing protests in Portland and elsewhere.
This, I think, is far more clear in the use of the phrase "defund the police." A lot of people have issue with this phrase because they think it means entirely eliminating the police force. And yes, some percentage of those who say "defund the police" do mean completely eliminating the police force, but the majority actually mean "divert significant funding from the police department to social programs and health workers." However, there are two issues with that; 1, it's not very succint. 2, it does not adequately express the frustration people have with police.
Fast forward a few weeks, they started protesting in front of his condo building - shining lasers in the windows, trashing the lobby and shooting fireworks. The mayor said he will be moving out.
Just because you say you're "press" doesn't absolve you from the law due to riots and damages from looters; for example.
In light of this, would you say the same thing about the treatment of protestors in Hong Kong? If not, why not?
1. https://nypost.com/2020/08/24/blm-protesters-set-portland-po...
2. https://youtu.be/4XSlXVgHYok
You are correct, there’s no such thing as a safe way to use indiscriminate force on a crowd. But you’re also mischaracterizing the situation on the ground here.
Meanwhile to a casual observer you get made to look like the extremist.
In this case, asking "how will you protect government buildings?" is like asking "how will you prevent protesters from leaking classified military secrets?". Nobody said that classified military secrets were being leaked, only that they should be protected.
I can tell you're fishing for the answer "go ahead and microwave the protesters en masse" but instead: How about stop murdering black people?
Please stop perpetuating flamewars also.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I remember reading about that years ago. The new name is misleading. It's not some kind of infrared beam, its microwaves. Cooking protesters doesnt sound good though.
Using war crime weapons on US soil (tear gas is one) is something political leaders have no problem with.
Microwaving the plants and animals in my front yard seems like a violation of personal property. But laws are abstract and regularly unenforced so who knows.
Also I know that microwave ovens normally don't heat glass, which suggests to me they're either very reflective or very transparent to microwaves in the low GHz range. I've cooked enough food in glassware to think it must be the later. (Interestingly if you heat a small portion of glass to red hot with a torch before microwaving it, you can melt the entire piece of glass as the oven heats and spreads the hot spot.)
I don’t agree with use of these weapons, having been on the receiving end of RF burns accidentally myself, but pretending it’s because you care about kids is sick and seems to be a default go-to for most things.
If I’m not being charitable in my interpretation of OP, then roast me, but I get the feeling the sentiment isn’t particular about caring for kids and using it as a “but... but... but...” argument.
Example: WiFi signals are transmitted on a microwave frequency (at low power compared to this device), and the signal propagates through ceilings and walls without much issue
Seeing as how these weapons operate at 95ghz, their penetration capability is basically nil. Attenuation is a real issue with that frequency and those distances. WiFi works on 2.4 and 5ghz which already have some issues with penetration.
Some — but not all — of the differences arise from a general principle that the use of weapons in war is to remove enemy soldiers from the battlefield. A wounded enemy soldier requires far more enemy resources than a dead enemy soldier.
Police are different. If they are going to shoot it should be in circumstances where there is an immediate threat to their own (or another’s) life. The threat should be so imminent and deadly that multiple shots without consideration of whether the perp will likely die or merely be injured is the rule. Stated differently, if a cop has the time and presence of mind to ‘shoot at a leg’, he shouldn’t be taking the shot in the first place.
Source: https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-07-31/tear-gas-has-been-ban...
Would that be a good thing? In a way, it sounds scarier than a gun.
0. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FIU8WZR9DNA