If Your Noise Is Loud Enough To Make Me Deaf, Is It A Weapon Or A Warning?
MayorBob.
Posted to SciTech on Sat Jun 07, 2008 at 05:14:41 PM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.
Although the US and China are major trading partners, there is one sort of commerce officially forbidden. Anything appearing on the State Department's US Munitions List is considered a no-no, and has been ever since the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989. But, virtually anything else made in this country can be exported to China. But, what happens when something not technically considered a weapon which is okayed for sale to China might be put to questionable uses? Does the US government say, "nope it's still not a weapon, so go ahead and sell more of them." Or does the US reclassify the item and shut off a potentially lucrative market for American companies? Such is the case of the case of the Sonic Blaster.
San Diego-based American Technology Corporation (ACT) manufactures the Long-Range Acoustic Device (LRAD). Developed in the wake of the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, the LRAD is considered a "warning device." It's stated purpose is "to hail, notify, and warn approaching vessels at extended ranges with clear voice or prerecorded messages in almost any language." It does this by generating a 150 decibel (anything above 140 decibels can result in permanent damage) sound signal at designated targets. ACT had the LRAD on display at a trade exposition in Beijing last month. The company is not offering any information on the numbers (if any) sold to the Chinese but, in a filing with the Security and Exchange Commission, ACT said that, going back to Fiscal Year 2007 "we expanded our international marketing activities and shipped LRAD orders to Australia, Singapore, Korea and China."
Now, with the Olympics just a few months away, the US Commerce Department is conducting a review of the LRAD and a few other non-lethal security devices. The biggest concern is that the Chinese government might turn an LRAD on a peaceful group of protestors while the world watches to see the painful effect of good old, made-in-the-USA technology. It would be too late to do anything about the LRADs already in Chinese government hands, but a quick modification to the Munitions List and voila the Chinese market has just dried up for ACT. You might ask would an LRAD be used in such a fashion to cause pain and injury. You'll likely not get an answer from Chinese State Police. But the device was used by Georgian police to disperse a crowd in Tblisi last year. And it was used to repel pirates from a cruise ship off the coast of Somalia in 2005.
Thus, we have evidence of the good use (anti-piracy) and the questionable use (crowd dispersal) of the device. Because the LRAD emits a warning blast of sound, a spokesperson for ACT prefers to describe it as a "communications system" designed to "influence behavior and determine intent." German physicist Dr. Jόrgen Altmann says it's "a gray area" in that when it's used for crowd control, it easily qualifies as a weapon. Theresa Harris of the World Organization for Human Rights USA believes the gray area is just dark enough to ban sales of items like LRADs to China:"The US Government is obligated under international law and federal statutes to prevent US companies from exporting the tools of torture to police and security agencies that have a documented record of human rights violations."
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