San Francisco lawmakers approve lethal robots – but they can't carry guns San Francisco police can deploy so-called "killer robots" following a Board of Supervisors' vote on Tuesday, clearing the cops to use robots equipped with explosives in extreme situations. The robots primarily will be used to neutralize and dispose of bombs, and provide video reconnaissance, according to San Francisco …
Except San Francisco is a first world democratic socialist city/county, with delusions of grandeur. And party members (whatever THAT means in this context!) have no rights. Only the connected and the criminals have rights, with the homeless and the GLBT+57 being used as pawns in the games of the wealthy.
It is a shithole, though. I'll give you that.
These aren't autonomous robots. They are remote controlled devices, controlled by cops. They do not pull the trigger themselves, rather a cop decides to push the button. And cop supervisors decide when and where to deploy them. They are expensive, and will never be used on a mere whim.
Why San Francisco wimped out on this obvious enabling of longer reach of the long arm of the law, WITHOUT putting anyone but the perp into danger, is beyond me.
Well, not really beyond me. San Francisco is the single most fucked up of all US cities, bar none. It has gotten to the the point where criminals are far more important than mere citizens, and this is yet another symptom of that foul policy.
"I think estimates form Ukraine are that an unguided 155mm round is $300-500, surely that's a cost effective way of dealing with miscreants ?"
I can see that it would be cost effective to reduce graffiti but perhaps repairing the wall/building/train car would run the costs up too much.
NB: I am not commenting on the overall use of remote controlled devices for law enforcement, just on the choice of ordnance.
So, explosives are in, firearms are out (for now). Well, I can kind of see that. The proximity to the target required for explosives vs remote firearm use. And if, prior to deployment, the operators of said device screw up, they're at some risk themselves. So pay attention, eh!
I guess the choice is about ensuring the target is completely deleted and overwritten with zeroes. Non-lethal? Nah, we're not ready to reveal our latest microwave technology, thank you.
"We sent in the robot, armed with guns. Upon entering the premises, we lost contact with the robot, which switched over into its automation mode, and due to a glitch in the programming, fired indiscriminately into the group of hostages. We're looking at additional training for the operators to not have this happen anymore." - spox, SFPD
This kind of thing happened back in the day in Chad, IIRC (or was it Djibouti?)
French embassy school bus hijacked with the diplomatic personnel's children inside. The GIGN was sent to deal with the situation. To the GIGN's horror, at the same time some bright spark minister noticed that the legion were close by and ordered them sent over "to assist". They just killed about everyone: kidnappers, children, the bus driver, …
I also recall 6–7 years ago when it was en vogue to have military patrols in public spaces in France (because "terrorism") and someone decided that the legion should do their bit too.
They got pulled out after one day.
I was listening to the radio and there was this guy who apparently walked up to a legionnaire to ask for directions. The response, in a thick foreign accent:
— On n'est pas ici pour renseigner. On est ici pour tuer.
>ordered them sent over "to assist". They just killed about everyone: kidnappers, children, the bus driver, …
I believe the US military equivalent is to ask a unit to "secure" a building:
The Marines will storm the building and shoot everyone.
The Army will mount a guard
The Navy will fit a padlock
The USAF will take out a 20 year lease on the property with a buyout option index linked to bond yields.
> The Marines will storm the building and shoot everyone.
For some definition of "storm" and only after the air force have bombed the place into oblivion.
The difference though is that the Americans do it out of incompetence and/or cowardice. The legion are just trained that way.
(I had the displeasure of working with the former and the discomfort of working with the latter.)
On at least a few occasions, people who were too dangerous to approach directly have been contacted by sending in a robot carrying something they needed or demanded or just a phone. This starts the process of attempting to end the situation peacefully, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. I wonder if this law will lead to paranoia from hostage takers or similar people that every robot is armed with explosives. On the other hand, anyone insane enough to take hostages in the first place is probably not thinking too clearly, so even if any weaponized robots were illegal, they might assume whatever they wanted about any attempt to communicate. It's hard to legislate on the basis of what crazy people will think, but possibly worth considering whether there is an increased risk and whether that would outweigh the benefits they imagine.
A bot can be useful for certain things that might put an officer in danger. They can have a camera on a stick to look around corners or in windows. I can remember plenty of times when the perp offed himself and police stood by for hours as they didn't know and didn't want to risk an officer getting shot. If the bot isn't armed, who cares if it has expensive and twitchy encrypted data link? Just stick the thing together with off the shelf RC components. A bot could be fitted with a really bright strobe to act as a diversion. Put some really loud speakers on it too for that matter. The idea is to have something that is so cheap that a PD can have a few of them and so simple to repair with common parts that they can go in harms way, get banged up and be back in a car boot the next day or so. While I'd really dig seeing an ED-209 stomping around, only a big city PD would have them and then only one along with a special operator that always seems to be on overtime when called out.
"Go see what Boston Dynamics is doing ... particularly Big Dog and Spot."
What you won't get to see are the projects that companies such as Foster-Miller are working on. BD's projects are very benign, but that police departments and militaries will be interested in are much harder to find information about. There are lots of them too. I think the number of drone development companies is starting to contract, but for some time there were all sorts gunning for (pun) police and military contracts and living on investor money.
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