Police Taser Drones? North Dakota Can Weaponize Drones With Non-Lethal Guns [Video]

When it comes to the controversial idea of police taser drones, North Dakota is leading the charge in implementing new laws that would allow weaponized drones to carry pepper spray, rubber bullets, and taser weapons. But the odd part about the police taser drones is that the law originally intended to ban weaponized drones completely.

In a related report by the Inquisitr, Stephen Hawking is warning that we should not develop autonomous weapons which use artificial intelligence.

Drones are capable of many things. A drone can conceivably protect little girls while they walk to school, or they could deliver pizzas or packages from across a city. They are also fully capable of delivering 80,000 volts of electricity to a human target.

Last year, the design firm Chaotic Moon demoed the concept of taser drones with CUPID, which stood for “Chaotic Unmanned Personal Intercept Drone.” Needless to say, CUPID’s arrows stung just about as horribly as a bad breakup with a girlfriend.

When it comes to the recent police taser drones, North Dakota’s laws were originally developed to prevent weaponized drones in the first place. House Bill 1328, which was sponsored by Rick Becker, aimed to ban all weapons on police drones, but the North Dakota Peace Officer’s Association amended the bill to prohibit only lethal weapons. This action left the door wide open for police drones, never mind gun drones carrying rubber bullets or shotguns with beanbags.

Becker said North Dakota’s taser drones should never have been allowed.

“This is one I’m not in full agreement with,” he said. “I wish it was any weapon… In my opinion there should be a nice, red line: Drones should not be weaponized. Period.”

Unfortunately, even less than lethal weapons can be fairly harmful, perhaps even lethal. A recent video showed police taking down a hostile man with less-than-lethal force, but he was still injured during the process. According to the Guardian, 39 people have been killed by police Tasers in 2015 alone.

The question is whether police taser drones in North Dakota will give rise to fully weaponized drones. In 2010, the United Nations predicted the rise of gun drones being used for targeted killing.

“The appeal of armed drones is clear: especially in hostile terrain, they permit targeted killings at little to no risk to the State personnel carrying them out, and they can be operated remotely from the home State. It is also conceivable that non-state armed groups could obtain this technology.”

The United Nations notes that the “precision, accuracy and legality of a drone strike depend on the human intelligence upon which the targeting decision is based,” and they fear that operators who are sitting far from the action may suffer from a “greater human intelligence gathering disadvantage than ground forces.”

In addition, they fear the missile and gun drone operators who “undertake operations entirely through computer screens and remote audiofeed” may risk “developing a PlayStation mentality to killing.” Some fear the same could apply to the police taser drones in North Dakota, which could conceivably be used in quelling riots like those in Ferguson and Baltimore.

What do you think?

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