Would you rather they just do crowd control the old fashioned way, with billy clubs, dogs, water hoses, baton rounds and shotguns?
Would you like to bet that somebody turns this on an entire neighborhood, torturing hundreds at one time, until somebody confesses/squeals on a political dissenter?
In, say…El Salvador?
Sure, once it’s out there and in widespread use, of course someone will figure out how to put it to nefarious uses, and do so with gusto. After all, the maker of woodchippers did not build them so some druglord or dictator could feed his enemies into one feet first.
But like Reply said, it’s what people do with it that is the problem, not what it is.
Woah, somebody actually agrees with me. But even simpler, people are the problem. We are our own worst enemy. In fact, technology shall be our savior… one day soon, we’ll have the ability to self-extinctify and, in doing so, finally free ourselves from ourselves. Woot.
I bet it’ll be one hell of a fireworks show, too.
Moving this from IMHO to Military’s Powerful Toys I Must Play With.
Or rambling pointless stories that don’t go anywhere.
Many would squeal with a plain old gattling gun pointed at them. But with the gattling gun you might have to shoot a couple before you get to the guy you want to kill (to convince them you mean it), while as with the super-duper sunburn device you’ll only be killing the dissenter.
This still wouldn’t be a “good thing ™”, but if bad guys start using more humanitarian means, I’m not complaining.
Well, as usual I have to clarify an OP. :smack:
(Though I’m kind of amused by it being forum-bumped)
I was trying to point out that the US military has lately (in the last 60 years) come up with the some of the best tech ever known to man, most of it somehow integrated into civilian life to make all our lives better/easier.
Not all of it, mind you, but we all have some neat shit that was originally formed by the US military.
The reason I put it in IMHO was I was hoping some non-US Dopers would show off some tech advances their countries were working on. (Still looking! Post 'em if you got 'em) 
This wasn’t intended to become a debate or flame on the tech of the device I started it on. I wasn’t looking for wars on what the tech could be used for. It was just a thread on tech going beyond what anyone thought could be done. And giving props to the country that seems to always lead in new “toys”.
Hm, well Japan certainly does have the most buttons on a toilet of any country I know.
Actually the coolest military thing I read about recently was a British company’s passive cellphone radar. Instead of pinging the area about you, you just track the movement of cellphone and other radio waves through the air to detect objects and track their movement. Takes a lot more math, but since it is passive it requires less energy and no one knows you are doing it. Just reusing what is already there (in a modern day setting.)
They were talking about using it for tracking traffic on freeways and such besides military use.
I was mostly just impressed with the amount of calculations that would have to be required to do processing like that from random waves going through the air.
During the 2004 Republican Convention in NYC, large groups of nonviolent protesters were quickly surrounded by steel barricades, handcuffed and taken away to holding pens. Innocent passersby were lumped in with them. There was no “Disperse or else,” just a mass arrest for walking down the sidewalk carrying signs. Most were released without ever being charged. Am I glad the police didn’t use “the coolest toy” to give them microwave burns? I sure am.
I have seen films of police beating protestors and press with clubs. Do you think those officers, caught up in the adrenaline of the moment, wouldn’t hit the button again, giving the crowd twice the safe dose? Think of 300 people going from sunburn to brain-damaging fever in a second.