Thursday, January 19, 2012

New Tech Tested for Gun Detection

First high tech undies, now this.

This could take the concealed out of concealed carry.

From the HuffPoNYPD Testing Long-Distance Gun Detection Device
The New York Police Department, with assistance from the Pentagon, is testing a scanning device that can remotely detect concealed firearms, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Tuesday.
The device measures natural radiation emitted by people and can detect when this flow of energy is impeded by an object, such as a gun.
"This technology has shown a great deal of promise as a way of detecting weapons without a physical search," Kelly said in a speech before a police group in Manhattan.
Known as terahertz imaging detection, the technology functions similarly to night-vision goggles, which detect infrared radiation. But unlike much infrared radiation, the terahertz wavelength is not blocked by clothing.
"With terahertz, you will be able to identify a gun as a gun," said John Federici, a physics professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
The device is being developed in conjunction with a Department of Defense counter-terrorism unit, which has expressed interest in the technology to thwart suicide bombers and similar threats. The device could be mounted in a squad car or placed in an area with a high number of shootings.
A prototype is being tested at a police shooting range in the Bronx and has proven effective at distances up to 16 feet, Paul J. Browne, an NYPD spokesman, told The New York Times. The department hopes to increase the detection's effective distance to around 80 feet, Browne said.
Kelly did not specify when it would be ready for the streets. "The development work is moving forward and we hope to utilize the sensor as soon as it meets our requirements," he said.
Civil libertarians took a cautious stance on the technology, which Kelly said would only be used under "reasonably suspicious circumstances." "We find this proposal both intriguing and worrisome," Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.
If effective, Lieberman said, the device could essentially bring to an end the NYPD's controversial "stop-and-frisk" campaign, which subjects more than half-a-million New Yorkers per year to largely random search by the police. Police officials have defended the searches as necessary to remove illegal guns from the streets, but civil liberties groups have decried them as a racially biased and unconstitutional invasion of privacy.
Yet the scanners could themselves be considered a breach of privacy. "The ability to walk down the street free from a virtual police pat-down is a matter of privacy," Liberman said.
"If the NYPD is moving forward with this, the public needs more information about this technology, how it works and the dangers it presents," she said.
Some terahertz detection devices, particularly those designed to work at long distances, emit radiation when scanning an object or person. But that radiation would not be at a high enough level to cause harm, according to Federici, the physicist.
"This is a lot different than nuclear radiation or X-rays," he said. "It doesn't really cause any damage."

17 comments:

  1. What a surprise--people who don't like private ownereship and carry of guns also don't like privacy.

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  2. This sounds like the perfect gift for all the pro-defenselessness, anti-gunloonz here. They can cross the street, duck into an alley, and hide in a dumpster until the person with defensive protection passes by.

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  3. Greg once again proves that he is the king of idiotic unsupported statements here--most "anti-gun" people do like their freedom.

    Unfortunately, that freedom is infringed upon by checkpoints of various types meant to keep weaponry OUT.

    Of course, Greg and anonymous, want the weaponry out there since they believe they can be heroes once the shit hits the fan.

    Although, with more people legally carrying, this would cause the police to have far more work trying to figure out who should and shouldn't be carrying--until its too late.

    And I would not want to count on Greg or anonymous to save my life.

    They would probably piss himself, drop the gun, or just shoot a bystander by mistake.

    Thanks, but no thanks. I chose to leave the war zone behind me.

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  4. Laci the Dog,

    Exactly how is my comment idiotic? New York City does its best to prevent anyone from legally having a gun. Now it wants to add peeking under people's clothes. That looks like an action arising from the same basic motivation: control.

    Would I try to help you if your life were in danger? It all depends on the circumstances, but I might, if I were able to do so. Of course, I'd probably not know you in real life, since you don't bother to show your face. But then, given your attitude here, you'd be likely to mouth off to a goblin, and I'd exercise the better part of valor and allow nature to take its course.

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  5. Gc writesThat looks like an action arising from the same basic motivation: control.

    NYC is working in conjunction with the Pentagon.

    In both cases this is about risk assessment and saving lives. Clearly this could be useful in hot spot policing in gang situations. In military situations, it could avoid a terrible challenge that is faced with detecting women who might be carrying guns in muslim countries where t is extremely sensitive regarding searches.

    Those are just two examples of where this might be useful that come to mind. It might be a better way to deal with you gun nuts who insist on illegally carrying firearms on airplanes, as we've seen here periodically.

    Only your weird take on such things could twist it into anything else.

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  6. Dog Gone,

    Only my supernatural (that's what weird means) take on things? I don't see any safeguards in this. I don't see any statement that this will be used only in combat, where the rules of privacy are different. This is being discussed by the New York Police Department. That's downtown America. It's only your obsessive need to conform to authority that sees no concerns here.

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  7. Poor Greg Camp, he's afraid that the state of Arkansas might get oneathem things and find out that he DOESN'T leave teh 1911 in this glove compartment or under the seat when he comes to his cushy, benefit rich, state job. That would be so sad! :(

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  8. This thing will get quite busy once HR822 is passed and New York gets hit with a wave of common sense.

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  9. As the technology gets cheaper and more available, maybe all guns should have a microchip in them instead of the seriel number. This could fit right in with licensing and registration schemes. What do you think?

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  10. Mikeb302000,

    How about no schemes whatsoever? No tracking, no licensing, no registry--that's a better idea.

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  11. Soooo...a cop needs PC to stop and search me, but if he/she uses a device that will indicate whether I have something on my person that MIGHT be a gun, he/she can then stop and search me? For a gun that could very well be legally concealed for all he/she knows?
    This'll hold up in the courts. Suuuure it will. LOL
    I'll admit, I'm a 2A guy. But I'm pretty fond of the others too....like the 4th.

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  12. Anonymous said...

    Soooo...a cop needs PC to stop and search me, but if he/she uses a device that will indicate whether I have something on my person that MIGHT be a gun, he/she can then stop and search me?


    What???????????????

    Are you retarded? Mentally deficient? On drugs?

    Or did you learn your critical thinking from Greg or some of the other fuckwit gunners?

    If you are a prohibited person, say a felon, who is legally not allowed to own or carry a firearm, maybe it would be grounds for stopping you, but I don't see how this would operate to do that in any other situation. What it could do is to better inform a police officer as to the potential danger of a suspect versus guessing, if that LEO has to pull you over for speeding, or perhaps approach you for a domestic dispute, etc.

    There is NOTHING in what was reported here that throws out search and seizure provisions / protections of the 4th Amendment.

    That you would leap to such an unwarranted conclusion is on a par with the hilarious assumption that in order to get a hair sample, someone would have to get naked and have pubic hair yanked - yanked, not cut - for drug testing. Very vivid, just totally inaccurate, stupid, implausible, extreme.

    It is because you lot operate with such poor reasoning that we distrust your decision making ability in a crisis.

    You don't think well when there isn't time pressures, or other stress pressure.

    This provides potential information that could make law enforcement safer in a variety of applications.

    IF it works.

    Period.

    Your flights of fantasy are just that; you lot clearly love to scare yourselves with improbable scenarios, while missing the reasonable, sane, sensible applications.

    You shouldn't be trusted with something as sharp as a marshmallow; you might hurt yourselves and others.

    Law enforcement, and the military, have a legitimate interest in whether or not someone is armed. Their job requires them to put their lives at risk to protect other people.

    You know - from the nuts with guns.

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  13. sorry - that last should have read from the PARANOID nuts with guns.

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  14. LOL worked up much there Dog Gone? The fact is, using a device like this is fraught with danger to civil-liberties. If you can't see that, I don't know what to tell you.

    You can jump to conclusions about, call me names again now.

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  15. Oh and BTW, the tech was cited in your op as a possible replacement for "stop and frisk". That's where one might get the idea that one would be scanned without PC, then be searched for the offending firearm.
    Of course, not being black, like with "stop and frisk" I probably have nothing to worry about.
    Carry on.

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  16. Dog Gone,

    A lot of people carry cell phones or i-Gadgets on their belts. I often have a Swiss Army knife in a pouch on mine. A device like this will generate a lot of false positives. Besides, unless you've adopted Scalia's approach to the Constitution, how can you say that giving the police the ability to peer under my clothing isn't a violation of the Fourth Amendment? A device such as this will allow cops to perform a warrantless search of anyone they wish to scan. That doesn't trouble you?

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  17. 1. We don't know if this works or will work; it is being tested.

    2. No, it doesn't bother me that the potential to use this exists.

    3. IF we have a problem with the police using this inappropriately THEN we can deal with it, but for it simply to exist does not bother me. It has a clear useful and necessary purpose. I think the cops have a lot more important things to do by choice than play with this.

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