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DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

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Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#181

Post by jackpirate »

handelaar wrote: post #23
jstanley wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If police are unable to control the crowd, at what point is that simply because the crowd is so large that the police should be unable to control them? If the DDR had this sort of technology, would the Berlin wall still be standing? And, if so, would that be a good thing?

As someone who used to organise large demonstrations in London for CND [a UK anti-nuclear org] a long time ago -- there is no point that the crowd is ever so large that a combination of the organasition itself with the police where the crowd "should" be unable to control it. In fact when you're putting together a demo in London you meet the Met police and meeting that requirement is one of the things you discuss with…

Did you close off the bridge because the bridge wouldn't be able to support the weight of so many people marching? Or for some other reason?

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#182

Post by aalleavitch »

belorn wrote: post #161
heartbreak wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once upon a time (like, three [thirteen] months ago), "fake news" had a precise meaning. It referred to total fabrications — made-up stories about Donald Trump suffering a heart attack or earning the pope's endorsement — and the phrase burst into the political lexicon as Facebook and Google vowed to clean up some of the garbage that had polluted the Internet during the presidential election. https://www.washingtonp…

Researchers at Harvard made a study on which news paper focused on which candidate and was used by followers by each side ( https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/33759251/2017-08... ). The washingtonpost had, like many others, a very clear bias in both which candidate they promoted and their intended reader demographic. I don't trust anyone marked clearly blue or red to make a trustworthy description about even…

The Washington Post has existed for 140 years and has won 47 Pulitzer Prizes. It's the newspaper that broke Watergate.

You can acknowledge a news source for its editorial bias and still trust it not to print outright falsehoods on a regular basis. The Wall Street Journal is editorially right-leaning but that doesn't mean I think it prints lies, I will trust it regarding statements of objective fact up to the point that you can trust any news source (of course both WaPo and WSJ flub stories and have to make retractions from time to time, journalists are humans).

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#183

Post by vinay427 »

emodendroket wrote: post #169
daveFNbuck wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These countries all have at least 10x the population density of the US. I'm not sure about healthcare, but the rest of your list gets cheaper as population density increases.

In the case of healthcare it's because the US is alone in the degree to which its system is privatized.

I agree that this is a major factor for the US, but as a point of clarification, empirically (based on other countries) there seems to be a degree of privatization that increases efficiency.

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#184

Post by aalleavitch »

jochung wrote: post #162
ajmurmann wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm shocked that yours is the only comment on here that actually remembers what happened. The actual "fake news" that was entirely fabricated as click bate was discussed for a few weeks even on This American Life if I recall correctly. There was even an interview with a guy from Georgia (the country) who made a mint making up stories that appealed to Trump supporters and now nobody remembers how that important concep…

Fake news was an own goal by the left wing press. After selling a fable to their readers about a Clinton landslide, they tried to deflect by blaming the election outcome on fabricated stories. But there was never any evidence these stories had more reach and influence than what mainstream outlets were peddling. Same way there is no evidence Russian Facebook ads and social media postings eclipsed the millions e.g. the…

You really don't know, do you?

> Following the 2016 election, a specific concern has been the effect of false stories—“fake news,” as it has been dubbed—circulated on social media. Recent evidence shows that: 1) 62 percent of US adults get news on social media (Gottfried and Shearer 2016); 2) the most popular fake news stories were more widely shared on Facebook than the most popular mainstream news stories (Silverman 2016); 3) many people who see fake news stories report that they believe them (Silverman and Singer-Vine 2016); and 4) the most discussed fake news stories tended to favor Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton (Silverman 2016). Putting these facts together, a number of commentators have suggested that Donald Trump would not have been elected president were it not for the influence of fake news (for examples, see Parkinson 2016; Read 2016; Dewey 2016).

https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/fakenews.pdf

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#185

Post by jsz0 »

wallace_f wrote: post #83
godzillabrennus wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’ll take some high dollar lawsuits getting paid out before any regulation around these will happen.

Ah, one of the remaining only ways "doing the right thing" ever gets done in the States these days. Why can countries like South Korea, Taiwan or Japan provide public services like roads, internet infrastructure, police and healthcare at an incredibly small fraction of the cost that is lightyeaes ahead in quality and competency (for the 99%)?

The US government is like old legacy software. It's not as good as modern software but it's too difficult and expensive to replace.

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#186

Post by Broken_Hippo »

fencepost wrote: post #105

Before I'm willing to condemn this I'd want to know a lot more about how it was actually used. Was it used as a weapon or simply as an available bullhorn or announcement/PA system? I don't recall any press at the time about serious crowd control problems or the "weapon" use of LRADs, and a quick bit of searching now also doesn't show anything like that. Even the article notes "military grade versions that can send vo…

The very next section if the article describes what the police version can do:

"There are various models of LRAD, with military grade versions that can send voice communications up to 5.5 miles away, and slightly less powerful versions like the LRAD 500X or 300X which are what police departments generally use. All can produce a sound somewhat akin to a high-powered car alarm that can cause intense headaches, nausea, loss of balance, and potentially permanent hearing loss."

Now, their particular model might not have that last capability or it might have options to avoid it, I don't know.

But I don't know if I trust police to use it after less violent methods have been tried, including simple conflict resolution and non-combative crowd control. This is the same reason I dislike police departments to have military weapons - most states aren't training their police in basic interpersonal communication with mentally ill citizens - How can we trust the training on this?

Doesn't matter to me what version of the weapon they have or how they are using it - to me, anyway. I'm more worried about the potential harm, regulations on use, and the training the cops receive so they can be trusted with such a thing.

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#187

Post by daveFNbuck »

louithethrid wrote: post #128
daveFNbuck wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These countries all have at least 10x the population density of the US. I'm not sure about healthcare, but the rest of your list gets cheaper as population density increases.

Fine, we are talking about the trhee main urban centers of the US here - not the whole country. Now that this strawman is out of the way- are we allowed to continue?

I don't think that's a strawman. Roads and internet have to reach everyone in the country, not just major urban areas. The money for these projects comes from people in major urban areas too.

You make a good point about policing. Density wouldn't explain why policing in Tokyo is better and cheaper than in New York.

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#188

Post by mr_spothawk »

omegaworks wrote: post #58

Hacker News, can we come up with clever ways to undermine this growing trend toward authoritarianism? How effective are ear plugs as a countermeasure? Parabolic mirrors? How can we divest from organizations employing these anti-populist, anti-democratic measures?

DM me?

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#189

Post by e40 »

emodendroket wrote: post #168
sschueller wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the incident in Cuba I would think we would be a bit more reluctant to use such devices on civilians.

Why?

Because the hypothesis is that people in Cuba have brain damage due to devices like these.

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#190

Post by gandhium »

nostrademons wrote: post #55
djsumdog wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

becoming? It's been this way for a very long time. Very few major media outlets cover the Democrat/Republican National Conventions, but you can watch videos online of the protests from past years going back quite a bit. Rage Against the Machine use to do protests at both the DNC and RNC which I thought was hilarious. It's very common for protesters to be smoke bombed, herded, arrested and detained. There are several…

Little known fact: 1984 is based on WW2 and immediate post-war Britain. Orwell was a propaganda correspondent for the BBC; his wife worked for the Censorship Department. 1984 was based on his experiences then, and the disillusionment of the Cold War immediately following WW2. He had initially intended to title it 1948 . Actually, this is not that little-known: it's in the Wikipedia page for George Orwell and easily a…

> 1984 is based on WW2 and immediate post-war Britain

and Stalin's USSR.

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