Mechanized Warfare against U.S. Citizens on Domestic Soil?

Robots are a great idea. I'd like to see a remote controlled robot used during a traffic stop. A cop using a robot might not be so quick to shoot if they didn't think they were in immediate danger of being killed themselves.

 

We're one step closer to Robocop

 

/thread

 

I was gonna post this but thought nobody would get the reference. Remember watching Gundam Wing as a kid and the whole war with Treze because of Mobile Dolls and how it would take the human element out of everything.

 

1) It has been and will continue to be questioned. The FBI will have a field day with this guy's history. However, what has led you to believe that he was mentally unstable?

2) "All the attention"? It's a footnote as far as I can tell.

3) Yes, he's a terrorist. Violence for political aims and all that.

 

Require a judge(s) issued warrant to use the device and i'm okay with it. It is a slippery slope but a tools to save LEOs and civilians are a good thing. But it shouldn't be up to the LEOs to decide when to use it, should have input but not final say.

 

Nah. That would be like requiring LEO's to have a warrant to use deadly force. When you have a heavily armed terrorist that is threatening the possession of and the use of bombs if you come in and get them it's appropriate to use the bomb robot if you can't convince them to give themselves up peacefully. Blow enough of those guys up and I'd bet they become more willing to come peacefully.

 

Agree it is just like a drone, where a human still really makes the decision.

To me: club, gun, smart bomb, drone, robot bomb, all a continuum.

When a machine makes an automated kill decision, we have another issue.

 

You people are ****ing nuts.

 

Please don't breed.

 

He's a Trump supporter, not much chance of that.

 

In this specific case, was there that urgency to execute the robot bomb? Or could they have taken the 15 min to an hour to get a judge sign off when they came to the conclusion that he was going to go down shooting?

 

I see no reason to require a warrant so it's not that they couldn't have taken 15 minutes to get one, it's that there's no reason to get a warrant to stop a terrorist.

 

Yeah, it's a drone. But, it seems to have been used appropriately so I don't have a problem with it. I think there should be some rules around their deployment which should be carefully considered. Things like:

1. Is deadly force necessary and warranted?
2. Is there any risk of collateral damage? (in the 70s, they dropped a bomb on a black power HQ and ended up burning down the whole block)
3. Does use of the drone give significant safety benefits to LEO without sacrificing police control of the interaction?
4. Is there any risk that control of the drone can be defeated by the target or otherwise lost?

In this case, it looks like deadly force was warranted and that the risks to the public were minimal. I wouldn't want to see police in the future use drones flippantly 'out of an abundance of caution' and end up putting even more risk on the suspects. But, if every use looks like this one, I'm fine with it.

 

Why do we get so worked up in the way someone is killed? As a fiscal conservative, my only complaint would be that a pound of explosives probably costs more than a box of bullets. Throw a flash grenade and light his ass up. Give me a joy stick or a keyboard and I'll show these cops how it's done!

 

I mean, it's an issue for some, but most Americans can't care about rights at the moment. As soon as one of these things kills a Muslim and the networks retweet each other, everyone will be fine with it. Pretty much like any weapon you might develop.

 

UI listened to the Dallas PD guy who was in charge of the decision (the PD chief?) discuss it, and I'm not too thrilled with the way he talked about the way it went down. It seemed like a very haphazard and arbitrary spur of the moment decision process.

Sort of like a couple of rednecks tying a bunch of fireworks together on the spur of the moment on the 4th of July to see what would happen. It didn't sound like it was very well thought out and was kind of an off the cuff "this guy's pissing me off. Let's blow his ass up" kind of decision. No sort of systematic analysis of all the things that might go wrong, for instance. When he discussed the explosives, he said they grabbed "about a pound" of C4, for instance. I sure as hell would like an engineer to exactly measure the amount of explodives, and look it over to make sure they weren't going to structurally damage the parking structure, for instance. Maybe consult the city's lawyers first, or something when you are basically setting out to kill him with such a destructive method, in a way never used before. For instance, I don't get the idea that the guy even though about cost/benefit, like how many millions the robot he decided to blow up might have cost.

I felt better about it before I heard him explain the way it went down. Maybe he just wasn't particularly good at explaining himself.

 

The problem is not the weapon. That's a tool.

The problem is similar to Iran and nukes, it's about who's hands it's in. I have no problem with a democratic Iran having nuclear weapons, but not with these people who are running Iran these days.

Same thing with the US and these weapons. Actually to be fair, the US can kill way more people with these weapons than Iran can with a nuke. The people using these weapons would hide every bad thing about it, test it in real war on real people, pump up the positives, manipulate the stats, invent pretty words, expanding at home, cover up the mental issues the operators will develop, etc. It's just what they do, they don't do things any other way. Then when the new version comes out, they'll sell the tech to tyrants to forcefully oppress people into accepting America's interests as superior to their own.

 

We started down this road in Houston with red light cameras. Don't have to pull people over and risk an encounter at all. Just take a picture and send a bill. Camera isn't prejudiced. But we outlawed them because white people didn't like the idea of being held accountable for running red lights.