Invisible Weapon: How the Active Denial System Can Silence Protests and Control Crowds
The ADS is more colloquially known as a microwave radiation weapon. It was developed for crowd control purposes, using non-lethal means. While it promises an enlightened solution to handle great groups without fatal injuries, this technology raises big concerns about probable misuse in political repressions and mass surveillance. It further looks into the dark realities and theories thrown up by the ADS, with particular emphasis on its possible use to silence protests and implications for civil rights in democratic societies.
The Intrusive Nature of the Active Denial System
One new type of weapon is the ADS, which focuses microwave radiation in such a way as to penetrate the skin and create an extremely burning sensation. The resultant pain would lead people to move rapidly away, even though the apparent injury could not be permanent.
This is a highly intrusive weapon that easily exceeds physical discomfort into extreme zones without visible injury.
Unlike other methods of crowd control, such as tear gas or rubber bullets, the ADS invades a person's body directly, bypassing traditional physical barriers. This level of intrusion is very serious and raises crucial ethical concerns. While not actually projected to cause injury, the ADS is so painful that people believe they are burning; this is another area where extreme, even abusive, power is exerted over the human body by authorities in dispersing protesters or suppressing civil unrest with no accountability.
This, in the wrong hands, merely serves as an excuse to lay down the path to excessive and unchecked force that easily transforms peaceful protests into chaotic dispersals.