Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia • Hacker News Board

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#491

Post by anal_reactor » Tue, Mar 18, 2025, 12:16 AM UTC

hayst4ck wrote: post #419

anal_reactor wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> e.g. if you know, with certainty, that heading out to a protest could lead to your instant termination from your job because a drone passed over and took a photo and identified all 100,000 people in the crowd instantly.. would you still go The funny thing is that most people see this as a feature rather than a bug. Before the 2024 election the policies of most surveillance platforms roughly matched the culture of u…

"If guns are used to shut down crime, I don't see a problem with that." Is kind of a cogent argument. In this philosophically exaggerated isomorphism, you seem to be implying that either criminals and crime fighters should both be equally armed or that crime is largely subjective and therefore enforcement is wrong. It seems like you're ultimately arguing for anarchy (nobody should have abusive technology -- guns), an…

Many events we celebrate as major achievements can be traced back to a group of people consciously violating the social contract, and succeeding to establish more rights for themselves using force.

I honestly don't know how to answer, because if you think long enough, you'll come to the conclusion that all rules are arbitrary, and everything could be questioned. Yet at the same time in practice we can agree on at least some basic principles of how the society should function. It's just incredibly difficult to formulate these principles in a manner that would be useful for logical reasoning.

I think what actually irked me was that many people say they believe in freedom of speech, but actually define it as "seeing others agree with me". I think that Reddit's "unpopular opinion" community is prime example of such attitude, where people say they value unpopular opinions, but actually promote popular ones.

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#492

Post by mmooss » Tue, Mar 18, 2025, 4:20 AM UTC

asdf6969 wrote: post #451

mmooss wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The operator who? > for this for what? > deserves to be killed Who are you to say? What if someone else disagrees, as they likely do? Should any one person have the authority to kill another? Maybe that's why someone is attacking you (in the hypothetical scenario).

Every reasonable person agrees with me. It’s obvious. Would you ever write a unit test to assert true is true? Sometimes you can just look at the problem and the right answer is so clear that everyone knows it

> Every reasonable person agrees with me.

It's exactly the opposite - you're spending too much time in the violent-ideology bubble.

Most of the world is law-abiding, avoids violence, and calls the police. Until recently in the US it was almost universal, afaik, that self-defense was the limit of legal violence, and you had a 'duty to retreat' if violence could be avoided. Only recently has the right wing passed 'castle doctrine' laws there. In other countries, people don't buy guns with the idea of meeting violence with violence; in the US, at least until recently, most people didn't have guns.

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#493

Post by fc417fc802 » Tue, Mar 18, 2025, 4:35 AM UTC

Philorandroid wrote: post #487

fc417fc802 wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your disagreement essentially amounts to "it's appropriate because it accomplishes my goal", or do I misunderstand? In a discussion of ethics that seems specious to me. > Those looking to escalate will use any police activity against them or their group as justification to do so. As I previously pointed out, once rioters escalate against the officers themselves most people are unlikely to raise objections to targeted…

> Your disagreement essentially amounts to "it's appropriate because it accomplishes my goal", or do I misunderstand? In a discussion of ethics that seems specious to me. My disagreement is that the ongoing or imminent unlawful destruction of property should be allowed to be met with _appropriate_ deterring force, whether by law enforcement or by the property owners. I argue that because in a system of individual rig…

> the position that an impassioned crowd has more right to that property than the owner

That is a blatant straw man. The original position is more or less that nonviolent enforcement action must precede use of force. You are arguing to start off with violence, and even to apply that to perceived precrime ("ongoing or imminent" in your words).

To be fair regarding your wording, depending on your definition of "imminent" and the crime in question I might be able to agree. But that doesn't appear to be the case here.

To the rest of your comment, you seem very politicized. Most of what you wrote is non sequitur to the point that it doesn't seem feasible or worthwhile to respond. An outraged minority on social media is not the "most people" I was referring to (indeed they are a clear minority). The mainstream media exhibiting an agenda about a particular event has approximately nothing to do with the general principles we were supposedly discussing here.

Why should your interest in asserting property rights be permitted to trump human rights and due process?

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#494

Post by _heimdall » Tue, Mar 18, 2025, 4:36 AM UTC

lazide wrote: post #444

_heimdall wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure, I agree with that. How does that link back to having exceptions allowing law enforcement to use tear gas on civilians though?

Because civilians don’t have WMD style chemical weapons, generally? So are not an ‘MAD’ type risk. Unlike potential enemy combatants. Morality has nothing to do with these scenarios (treaty/convention wise) near as I can tell.

It seems like you would agree then that the use of force should be acceptable as long as you know its asymmetric.

Am I misreading you there?

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#495

Post by ruined » Tue, Mar 18, 2025, 5:45 AM UTC

ruined wrote: post #333

orochimaaru wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have been used against US citizens in the United States? That is news to me. If they have been used in other countries against US diplomatic corps that is an act of war. Now if a US citizen uses a visit to a foreign country to protest against a government they’re on their own. I’m sorry, but US citizens shouldn’t be engaging in that and the US state department has no obligation to protect that condition.

it's actually quite common. i have personally experienced use of LRAD by police as a weapon. the first actual use of LRAD by police as a weapon in the united states was possibly in 2009 https://www.aclupa.org/news/2012/11/14/city-pittsburgh-settl... though it is known to have been deployed but not used as a weapon earlier than that.

but to clarify, i don't think the video posted by OP shows use of an LRAD. that is something else

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#496

Post by tonyhart7 » Tue, Mar 18, 2025, 8:02 AM UTC

propagandist wrote: post #469

tonyhart7 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but the problem is with mass movement people like this, there are good chance people that can take advantage of these protest (looting,rob etc) the point of these weapon is not "defeat" but mostly to crowd control right because you cant rule out if there is no crime even in peaceful protest, both things can be true at the same time also if such weapon is not permanently injure or harm people, I can see why this…

That's very charitable to those in power. Believe me when I tell you most don't give two hoots about looting and vandalism. You don't break up a gathering because there's the possibility of crimes occurring unless you live in an authoritarian society.

"most don't give two hoots about looting and vandalism."

of course who give a shit is the owner, its all sunshine until it happen on your neighbourhood

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#497

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Mar 18, 2025, 9:27 AM UTC

loeg wrote: post #483

pjc50 wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between a peaceful protest and a riot is usually just a matter of who's doing the reporting. Or whether the police have bothered to plant a provocateur in the crowd to throw the molotov that justifies the police violence. Famously: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-278930... - which side started the violence? Was the footage shown out of order? Was the state broadcaster complicit?

The idea that protest provocateurs are all 5th column police plants is, uh, wrong.

Where did the word "all" appear in my comment? How many r's are in strawberry?

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#498

Post by immibis » Tue, Mar 18, 2025, 9:53 AM UTC

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #390

energy123 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing is for sure. These technologies don't make protest or revolution any easier. They give asymmetric power to whoever wields them (the state) against whoever doesn't (a loose collection of angry people on the street without the same tools). This isn't the 1800s anymore where the most powerful tool was a gun, and you could distribute these symmetrically across state and people to keep the state in check. Survei…

The encryption gives asymmetric power to the people. Tor and Matrix for communications that can't be broken by the rich, no matter how powerful. Bitcoin for free transactions, vpn and torrent for the media etc.

Communication does not cause change. There are two factions at war. One has uncensored communication (but has been conditioned to only use censored forms) and the other has unlimited access to guns, bombs, and napalm, as well as uncensored communication on all platforms, including the most popular ones where it censors and gaslights the other faction. Which one wins the war?

It's a trick question. The former group have been made complacent. No war occurs. It was won before it started.

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#499

Post by immibis » Tue, Mar 18, 2025, 9:55 AM UTC

hayst4ck wrote: post #486

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I like in Telegram (though I don't use it), you can force delete messages on your interlocutor's device, at any time.

Telegram is Russian owned and run out of a monarchy. Telegram is not anyone's friend. "delete" is also not a black and white concept. There are many degrees of deletion.

Telegram used to be very hands-off with messages, no matter how criminal, unless they were hurting Telegram itself (spam). Then its owner got arrested for having actual knowledge of criminal activity and still not stopping it. Now it cares about reports, bans criminals and reports them to the police. There are rumours it uses keyword scans to find things that are not reported. Remember it has your phone number which is linked to your ID card.

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#500

Post by immibis » Tue, Mar 18, 2025, 9:57 AM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #294

jackyinger wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a pretty disingenuous quotation, you cut it mid sentence destroying the context: > It's the most important time in human history to protest/fight unchecked power because it's likely the last era of humanity that we are going to be able to.

I cut the context because the context doesn't matter. Anyone making the claim that this likely the last era of humanity that anything is just wrong. The future (even just the future of humanity) is longer and weirder and wilder and more filled with unknowns than anyone alive now can imagine. This is not the last era of humanity that anything . We should still be protesting/fighting unchecked power.

There have been many last eras of humanity of things. The last era of gas lighting (lighting powered by gas, not the manipulation tactic). The last era of information being passed down orally. The last era of monarchs. The last era of human computers. I understand that you are saying there are no last eras of anything so this can't be the last era of something, and that's incorrect.