Neuroscience could mean soldiers controlling weapons with minds

Medevac troops from the American 451st air expeditionary wing look out from their Pavehawk helicopter while heading to pick up casualties in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Photograph: Sean Smith for the Guardian

Neuroscience breakthroughs could be harnessed by military and law enforcers, says Royal Society report

Guardian | Feb 6, 2012

by Ian Sample

Soldiers could have their minds plugged directly into weapons systems, undergo brain scans during recruitment and take courses of neural stimulation to boost their learning, if the armed forces embrace the latest developments in neuroscience to hone the performance of their troops.

These scenarios are described in a report into the military and law enforcement uses of neuroscience, published on Tuesday, which also highlights a raft of legal and ethical concerns that innovations in the field may bring.

The report by the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of science, says that while the rapid advance of neuroscience is expected to benefit society and improve treatments for brain disease and mental illness, it also has substantial security applications that should be carefully analysed.

The report’s authors also anticipate new designer drugs that boost performance, make captives more talkative and make enemy troops fall asleep.

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• Brain WavesNeuroscience, conflict and security
• Britain: Royal Society Report Discusses Development Neural Interface for Weapons Systems

“Neuroscience will have more of an impact in the future,” said Rod Flower, chair of the report’s working group.

“People can see a lot of possibilities, but so far very few have made their way through to actual use.

“All leaps forward start out this way. You have a groundswell of ideas and suddenly you get a step change.”

The authors argue that while hostile uses of neuroscience and related technologies are ever more likely, scientists remain almost oblivious to the dual uses of their research.

The report calls for a fresh effort to educate neuroscientists about such uses of the work early in their careers.

Some techniques used widely in neuroscience are on the brink of being adopted by the military to improve the training of soldiers, pilots and other personnel.

A growing body of research suggests that passing weak electrical signals through the skull, using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), can improve people’s performance in some tasks.

One study cited by the report described how US neuroscientists employed tDCS to improve people’s ability to spot roadside bombs, snipers and other hidden threats in a virtual reality training programme used by US troops bound for the Middle East.

“Those who had tDCS learned to spot the targets much quicker,” said Vince Clark, a cognitive neuroscientist and lead author on the study at the University of New Mexico. “Their accuracy increased twice as fast as those who had minimal brain stimulation. I was shocked that the effect was so large.”

Clark, whose wider research on tDCS could lead to radical therapies for those with dementia, psychiatric disorders and learning difficulties, admits to a tension in knowing that neuroscience will be used by the military.

“As a scientist I dislike that someone might be hurt by my work. I want to reduce suffering, to make the world a better place, but there are people in the world with different intentions, and I don’t know how to deal with that.

“If I stop my work, the people who might be helped won’t be helped. Almost any technology has a defence application.”

Research with tDCS is in its infancy, but work so far suggests it might help people by boosting their attention and memory. According to the Royal Society report, when used with brain imaging systems, tDCS “may prove to be the much sought-after tool to enhance learning in a military context”.

One of the report’s most striking scenarios involves the use of devices called brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) to connect people’s brains directly to military technology, including drones and other weapons systems.

The work builds on research that has enabled people to control cursors and artificial limbs through BMIs that read their brain signals.

“Since the human brain can process images, such as targets, much faster than the subject is consciously aware of, a neurally interfaced weapons system could provide significant advantages over other system control methods in terms of speed and accuracy,” the report states.

The authors go on to stress the ethical and legal concerns that surround the use of BMIs by the military. Flower, a professor of pharmacology at the William Harvey Research Institute at Barts and the London hospital, said: “If you are controlling a drone and you shoot the wrong target or bomb a wedding party, who is responsible for that action? Is it you or the BMI?

“There’s a blurring of the line between individual responsibility and the functioning of the machine. Where do you stop and the machine begin?”

Another tool expected to enter military use is the EEG (electroencephalogram), which uses a hairnet of electrodes to record brainwaves through the skull. Used with a system called “neurofeedback”, people can learn to control their brainwaves and improve their skills.

According to the report, the technique has been shown to improve training in golfers and archers.

The US military research organisation, Darpa, has already used EEG to help spot targets in satellite images that were missed by the person screening them. The EEG traces revealed that the brain sometimes noticed targets but failed to make them conscious thoughts. Staff used the EEG traces to select a group of images for closer inspection and improved their target detection threefold, the report notes.

Work on brain connectivity has already raised the prospect of using scans to select fast learners during recruitment drives.

Research last year by Scott Grafton at the University of California, Santa Barbara, drew on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans to measure the flexibility of brain networks. They found that a person’s flexibility helped predict how quickly they would learn a new task.

Other studies suggest neuroscience could help distinguish risk-takers from more conservative decision-makers, and so help with assessments of whether they are better suited to peacekeeping missions or special forces, the report states.

“Informal assessment occurs routinely throughout the military community. The issue is whether adopting more formal techniques based on the results of research in neuroeconomics, neuropsychology and other neuroscience disciplines confers an advantage in decision-making.”

Ice age Europe: Big freeze temperatures as low as MINUS 40C

All white: The cyan areas on this aerial image shows the vast parts of Europe that have been blanketed in snow as the cold snap continues across the continent

Hundreds of Eastern European villages cut off as temperatures plummet to -40C

European crisis commissioner says ‘the worst is yet to come’

Daily Mail | Feb 7, 2012

By Lee Moran

Europe continues to be blanketed in snow as the cold snap which has so far killed hundreds across the continent shows no signs of stopping.

Hundreds of villages across Eastern Europe were today completely cut off as temperatures plummeted in some places to -40C.

Rescue teams struggled to evacuate southern Bulgarians where villages flooded after rain and melting snow broke damn walls.

Residents were also warned that there was more snow to come – which would be followed by severe floods when the temperature finally starts to rise and the snow melts.

Meanwhile temperatures in Britain are due to plummet to as low as -13C, with the big freeze due to last well into the weekend.

Around 146 towns and villages in Romania were isolated with no road or train connections because of blizzards.

Up to 174 villages had no electricity, said Alin Maghiar, spokeman for Romania’s emergency department.

Electricity was also cut off to 300 towns and villages in Bulgaria, roads were closed and several border checkpoints with Romania and Turkey were shut, the Interior Ministry said.

Melting snow caused a dam wall to break and flood an entire village in southern Bulgaria yesterday. Four people drowned and more than 50 were evacuated.

Four more people died when their cars were swept away by high waters.

Iliyan Todorov, from the village of Biser, told Trud newspaper: ‘It was terrifying. We were warned that the tsunami was coming only five minutes before the wave came. We survived by a miracle.’

A man enjoys the ice the typically Dutch way, on a bicycle, while others skate and walk on Prinsengracht canal, Amsterdam, Netherlands

European Commissioner for Crisis Response Kristalina Georgieva added that ‘the worst is yet to come’ after visiting the village.

She told bTV: ‘The next two weeks may be really hard. The warmer weather will cause melting of the snow and the situation will most probably worsen.’

Ukraine has been hardest hit, with 135 people confirmed dead so far and forecasters saying bitter temperatures, as low as -30C, would continue for at least another eight days.

The Black Sea ports of Varna and Burgas have been forced to close due to strong winds, and Romania’s main port of Constanta was also shut.

Authorities in Serbia said they were preparing to use explosives to break ice on the rivers Ibar and Danube.

Predrag Maric, head of the Interior Ministry’s emergencies department, said: ‘An ice cap half a metre deep has formed on the Ibar near Kraljevo and there is a real danger that it could cause the river to overflow into the city.’

He said 62miles of the Danube were freezing over and that it would also be mined.

Eleven people have died so far from the cold and snow in Serbia, with the latest victims a 62-year-old man found dead close to his home near Arilje, and a woman killed by falling ice in the capital Belgrade.

Serbian power provider TENT, which provides more than 60 per cent of the country’s electricity, said it was managing to maintain supplies but was working at full capacity in ‘extreme’ conditions.

To the south in Albania, the Kukes lake on the border with Kosovo – supplying a hydropower plant at Fierze – was frozen over for the first time in more than a decade, putting more pressure on already strained power supplies.

The cold weather has increased demand for gas in many European countries.

Italy took emergency measures yesterday to deal with what it called critical shortages of Russian gas.

Supplies to other members of the European Union mostly improved at the weekend but remained below normal.

Russia, which supplies about a quarter of Europe’s natural gas, reduced westward flows through pipelines across Ukraine last week citing greater domestic demand because of the extreme weather.

‘Robocop’ CCTV cameras barking orders have sound switched off after being blasted as machines of the ‘police state’

Big Brother: Jim Jepps, resident of Walker House in Camden, north London, filmed this CCTV camera in his communal garden barking orders at him

Daily Mail | Feb 7, 2012

By Amy Oliver

A council has been forced to deactivate the voice function from CCTV cameras after residents complained about ‘machines of the police state’ ordering them out of the area’.

One of the offending cameras, situated outside a block of flats in Camden, North London, was filmed barking orders at a resident, ordering him to leave in a ‘Robocop-style voice’.

Jim Jepps, who lives in the block, filmed the camera which was heard saying: ”Stop, this is a restricted area and your photograph is being taken.It will be sent for processing if you don’t leave the area now.’

His video became a YouTube hit, racking up 50,000 views.

Mr Jepps, 41, told MailOnline the temporary flash camera had been installed in September, but he had been alerted to its sinister message last week by a neighbour walking her dog.

‘It started barking orders at me in an American accent,’ Mr Jepps said.

‘But this is a residential area, 10 feet from our front door, 99 per cent of people who get snapped and shouted at by this thing are residents going about their business, having a smoke or walking their dogs,’ he added.

Camden Council said it had installed the camera in response to complaints of anti-social behaviour on the estate.

But Home Office crime maps show no crimes were recorded on the estate in 2011.

The council also revealed that all flash cameras ‘have the capacity to deliver voice messages when activated’.

It said the voice function of the Walker House camera must have been ‘inadvertently activated’ when the batteries were replaced ‘four to five weeks ago’.

‘We do not want to stop residents from enjoying their open spaces and communal areas and under no circumstances would we want voice messages to be used in areas where they may be disturbed,’ the council said.

A spokesman for the council said the camera was ‘deactivated first thing this morning.’

Nick Pickles of pressure group Big Brother Watch said: ‘This kind of technology may be acceptable in a police state or a science fiction film, but it is absolutely not in modern Britain.

‘The idea that a Robocop recording will tackle anti-social behaviour and crime is as laughable as it is a total invasion of privacy.

‘Who knew councils had the authority to take your photograph simply because you walked into a communal garden?’

Around two million CCTV camera are believed to be installed across the country.

Models like the Walker House camera with voice functions were first used in Middlesbrough in 2007.

Undercover cop ‘chased himself’ under surveillance cameras for 20 minutes

As the probationary officer from Sussex Police searched the area for suspects, the camera operator radioed that he had seen someone ‘acting suspiciously’ in the area Photo: ALAMY

“Hot on his heels”.

An undercover police officer “chased himself round the streets” for 20 minutes after a CCTV operator mistook him for suspect.

Telegraph | Feb 7, 2012

By Andrew Hough

The junior officer, who has not been named, was monitoring an area hit by a series of burglaries in an unnamed market town in the country’s south.

As the probationary officer from Sussex Police searched for suspects, the camera operator radioed that he had seen someone “acting suspiciously” in the area.

But he failed to realise that it was actually the plain-clothed officer he was watching on the screen, according to details leaked to an industry magazine.

The operator directed the officer, who was on foot patrol, as he followed the “suspect” on camera last month, telling his colleague on the ground that he was “hot on his heels”.

The officer spent around 20 minutes giving chase before a sergeant came into the CCTV control room, recognised the “suspect” and laughed hysterically at the mistake.

The details of the operation blunder were leaked to Police magazine, which is published by the Police Federation, this week by a senior officer who witnessed the embarrassing incident.

Sussex police were unable to provide further details of the incident, the officers involved or where it occurred.

The anonymous officer, believed to be the PC’s sergeant, told the monthly magazine: “An officer who joined a team in Sussex as a new probationary officer was soon very keen to do any plain-clothes operations and be as proactive as possible.

“He would be waiting at the end of his shift hoping to be unleashed for a further couple of hours of plain-clothes duties.

“On one such occasion in a little market town in Sussex which has suffered a spate of town centre shop break-ins, officers were on plain-clothed foot patrol when a report was received of a suspect male in one of the side roads.”

“The CCTV operator soon had the suspect on camera and everywhere he saw the male the keen PC was on his heels – radioing in to say he was in the same street.”

He added: “Every time the man darted in to another side alleyway, the PC was turning immediately into the same alleyway, but every time the CCTV operator asked what he could see there was no trace.”

It was at this point that the sergeant entered the control room where he recognised the junior officer.

“With the sergeant’s sides aching from laughter he pointed out to the PC that the operator had been watching him unaware that he was a pain-clothes officer – thus the PC had been chasing himself round the streets.”

A police source told The Daily Telegraph: “We’ve had a couple of funnies lately, but all taken in good spirit.”

On Tuesday night a spokesman for the force, which has about 3000 officers, could not provide any further details on the operation due to a lack of information.

He added: “Policing is often a serious business, so we all enjoy moments of light relief.

“This story was shared anonymously with the Police Federation magazine, so unfortunately without the date or location, confirming the details and locating the officer is harder for us than it was for the CCTV operator.”

Death toll from Europe’s cold snap hits 400 as explosive experts called in to break up Serbian ice

A group of children cross the frozen Vistula River between Poniatowski and Lazienkowski Bridge in the centre of Warsaw February 5, 2012

Agence France-Presse | Feb 7, 2012

by Stephanie van den Berg

BELGRADE — Authorities used explosives, icebreakers and tractors Tuesday in the battle to overcome Europe’s big freeze, as dozens more died of hypothermia and tens of thousands remained cut off by snow.

Around 400 people have now died from the cold weather in Europe since the cold snap began 11 days ago.

While there was some respite for people in Ukraine — where more than 130 deaths have been recorded — the mercury plunged overnight to minus 39.4 degrees Celsius in the Kvilda region of the Czech Republic.

More bodies were found either on the streets, in their cars or in their homes in Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Hungary and across the Balkans.

Authorities in Serbia said that 70,000 people were trapped in snow-bound villages in the south as officials declared an “emergency situation.”

In a dramatic effort to prevent two of the country’s main waterways from becoming completely blocked, officials called up army explosive experts.

As ice layers threatened to cause widespread floods on the Ibar, Alexander Prodanovic, the country’s top water official, said dynamite would be detonated to break up the huge blocks which had formed.

Authorities also hired icebreaking ships from Hungary to ease the flow on the Danube, the main waterway for all commercial shipping in Serbia. The port authority said the Danube was navigable around Belgrade but with difficulty.

There was similar chaos elsewhere in the Balkans with train linking Croatia’s central coastal town of Split and the capital Zagreb derailing as a result of a snow drift. There were no reports of injuries.

The army, firefighters and rescue services were trying to get food and medicine to the population in several hundred villages in southern Croatia where snow up to 1.4 metres high was piled up.

“This is a disaster, we have been cut off from the rest of the world … Snowploughs cannot reach us, so we have to walk to get some bread and basic things,” Marko Ancic told the Slobodna Dalmacija daily after trekking some 17 kilometres from his village to reach the nearest town.

Large parts of eastern and southern Bosnia were also cut off by the snow and avalanches. There has been no contact since Friday with the hamlet of Zijemlje, some 30 kilometres from the town of Mostar.

“We don’t know what is going on there. They have not had electricity since Friday and phone lines are cut, they have no running water,” Radovan Palavestra, the mayor of Mostar, told AFP.

“There are elderly people who are very fragile and children including a baby of two months.”

A helicopter which should have flown in aid to Zijemlje was unable to take off Tuesday morning because of heavy snowfall.

In Romania, two heavily pregnant women had to be flown out by helicopter in the eastern area of Iasi after their villages were completely cut off. Another pregnant woman had to be ferried to hospital by tractor in the eastern Paltinis area after her ambulance became stuck in the snow.

Schools were shut in large parts of the country, including Bucharest, while many train services were cancelled. Around 40% of roads were also closed, although flights did resume from Bucharest airport.

Snowstorms lashed Bulgaria, a day after eight people drowned in raging rivers and the icy waters from a broken dam that submerged a whole village to the southeast.

Officials on Tuesday warned of flooding when temperatures go up and snow melts.

European Commissioner for Crisis Response Kristalina Georgieva said “the worst is yet to come” after she visited Biser, which was worst hit by the flooding from the broken dam.

“The next two weeks may be really hard. The warmer weather will cause melting of the snow and the situation will most probably worsen,” private broadcaster bTV quoted her as saying.

A Briton living on the Greek island of Symi drowned in a river which had been swollen by heavy rains as he tried to move his moped to safety.

Eleven people have died so far from the cold and snow in Serbia, with the latest victim a 62-year-old man found dead a kilometre from his home near Arilje in western Serbia and a woman killed by falling ice in the capital Belgrade.

In the central city of Kragujevac, authorities took inmates from a local jail to help clear snow, local media said.

To the south in Albania, the Kukes lake on the border with Kosovo – supplying a hydropower plant at Fierze – was frozen over for the first time in more than a decade, putting more pressure on already strained power supplies.

The numbers killed by hypothermia in Poland rose to 68 after the authorities there recorded another six deaths in the last 24 hours. The majority of those who have died were homeless, many of whom had been drinking heavily.

The cold snap has also seen a sharp rise in the number of people being killed by carbon monoxide poisoning from faulty gas heaters.

According to the state weather forecaster in Ukraine, temperatures there could rise to a relatively modest minus six degrees. But the respite will be short-lived with temperatures expected to plunge to minus 30 by the weekend.

The UN weather service said temperatures would remain low until March.

“We might expect the change in the current cold wave to to start easing from the start of next week up to the end of the month,” Omar Baddour, a scientist at the World Meteorological Organization, told reporters.

It was a similar message from Britain where forecasters said the cold spell could last for two more weeks and heavy snow at the weekend.

And in France, authorities appealed to households to save power where possible as they predicted electricity use could hit a record high.

The cold weather has increased demand for gas in many European countries.

Italy took emergency measures on Monday to deal with what it called critical shortages of Russian gas following the icy weather, while supplies to other members of the European Union mostly improved at the weekend but remained below normal.

Russia, which supplies about a quarter of Europe’s natural gas, reduced westward flows through pipelines across Ukraine last week citing greater domestic demand because of the extreme weather.

Ice-breakers battle Europe’s big chill

The bow of a ship laying at the port of Constance, southern Germany, is surrounded by sheets of ice (AFP/DPA, Tobias Kleinschmidt)

AFP | Feb 7, 2012

By Stephanie van den Berg

BELGRADE — Ice-breakers Tuesday battled Europe’s big chill as the Danube river froze over more than 100 miles (170 kilometres), and dozens died of cold on a continent gripped by some of the lowest temperatures in decades.

The overall death toll from the cold snap that began 11 days ago edged past 400 while forecasters warned there would be no early let-up to the freezing weather.

In Serbia, ice-breakers were summoned from Hungary in an attempt to keep the Danube flowing, while army demolition experts sought to dynamite ice barriers that threatened to provoke flooding on tributary rivers, including the Ibar.

The Danube, one of Europe’s main rivers and a crucial transportation hub for eastern Europe, was barely navigable around Belgrade, and the port authority in Veliko Gradiste, near the Romanian and Bulgarian border, said river traffic was blocked along a 170-kilometre (105-mile) long stretch, from Kostolac to the Djerdap I hydropower plant.

“I have some 30 vessels blocked in Veliko Gradiste,” an official said.

Other countries linked by the Danube, including Austria, Bulgaria and Romania, also threw their forces into the battle as temperatures remained well below freezing.

In Bulgaria the Danube exploration agency said icing was at 20 percent near the Serbian border and up to 80 percent along a 220-kilometre stretch between the ports of Nikopol and Silistra further down river.

Navigation was impossible, the agency said, adding that the Danube delta leading into the Black Sea in Romania was completely frozen.

Upstream in Hungary, 13 icebreakers went into action but only managed to clear the ports of Baja and Gyor.

Ships were still moving in the area, but the ice was slowing traffic considerably, Hungary said.

“If the temperatures continue to be this low the ice could solidify on the Danube during next week as is already the case for smaller rivers,” Istvan Land, director of Hungary’s government water and environment agency OMIT.

In Austria, several river locks on the Danube were closed and river traffic was interrupted between southern Germany and parts of upper Austria.

Meanwhile, snow blanketed much of the Balkans with Serbia reporting 70,000 people trapped in villages in the south of the country where officials declared an “emergency situation”.

A train linking Croatia’s central coastal town of Split to the capital Zagreb derailed as a result of a snow drift. There were no reports of injuries.

The army, firefighters and rescue services attempted to get food and medicine to several hundred villages in southern Croatia as snow reached 1.4 metres (4.6 feet) in height.

“This is a disaster, we have been cut off from the rest of the world … Snowploughs cannot reach us, so we have to walk to get some bread and basic things,” Marko Ancic told the Slobodna Dalmacija daily after trekking some 17 kilometres (10 miles) from his village to the nearest town.

Large parts of eastern and southern Bosnia were also cut off by the snow and avalanches. There has been no contact since Friday with the hamlet of Zijemlje, some 30 kilometres from the town of Mostar.

“We don’t know what is going on there. They have not had electricity since Friday and phone lines are cut, they have no running water,” Radovan Palavestra, the mayor of Mostar, told AFP.

A helicopter which should have flown in aid to Zijemlje was unable to take off Tuesday morning because of heavy snowfall.

Schools were shut in large parts of Romania, including Bucharest, while many train services were cancelled. Around 40 percent of roads were also closed, although flights did resume from Bucharest airport.

Snowstorms lashed Bulgaria, a day after eight people drowned in raging rivers and the icy waters from a broken dam that submerged a whole village to the southeast.

Ukraine remained the country worst affected with a death toll standing at 136, but more bodies were found either on the streets, in cars or in homes in Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Hungary and across the Balkans.

The coldest place overnight was the Kvilda region of the Czech Republic where the mercury plunged to minus 39.4 degrees Celsius (-38.9 Fahrenheit).

The numbers killed by hypothermia in Poland rose to 68 after the authorities there recorded another six deaths in the last 24 hours. The majority of those who have died were homeless, many of whom had been drinking heavily.

The cold snap has also seen a sharp rise in the number of people being killed by carbon monoxide poisoning from faulty gas heaters or in fires, with 50 such cases in Poland alone.

The UN weather service said temperatures would remain low until March.

“We might expect the change in the current cold wave to to start easing from the start of next week up to the end of the month,” Omar Baddour, a scientist at the World Meteorological Organization, told reporters.

It was a similar message from Britain where forecasters said the cold spell could last for two more weeks and heavy snow at the weekend.

And in France, authorities appealed to households to save power where possible as they predicted electricity use could hit a record high.

In the Netherlands, rail traffic was slowed and a 55-year-old man drowned when ice gave way in Rijpwetering, in the west of the country, officials said.

Full-body scans rolled out at all Australian international airports after trial

HAND UP: An airport employee in the US raises her hands as she is scanned by a TSA full body scanner.

Sunday Mail | Feb 5, 2012

by Linda Silmalis

PASSENGERS at airports across Australia will be forced to undergo full-body scans or be banned from flying under new laws to be introduced into Federal Parliament this week.

In a radical $28 million security overhaul, the scanners will be installed at all international airports from July and follows trials at Sydney and Melbourne in August and September last year.

The Government is touting the technology as the most advanced available, with the equipment able to detect metallic and non-metallic items beneath clothing.

It’s also keen to allay concerns raised on travel online forums that passengers would appear nude on security screens as they had when similar scanners were introduced at US airports.

The technology will show passengers on a screen as stick figures of neither sex.

The system has approval from the Privacy Commission.

The images will also be discarded after each passenger has been cleared.

TSA Help Wanted (satire)

The proposed Aviation Security Amendment (Screening) Bill 2012 will make it mandatory for any passenger selected to participate in undergoing a body scan.

The “no scan, no fly” amendment closes a loophole in the legislation, which allows passengers to request a pat-down instead of having to pass through a metal detector.

Transport Minister Anthony Albanese said mandatory body scans were necessary to ensure the safety of airports.

“I think the public understands that we live in a world where there are threats to our security and experience shows they want the peace of mind that comes with knowing government is doing all it can,” he said.

The Government has compared the strength of the radio waves emitted from the body scanners as the same as those from a regular mobile phone used several metres away.

Only passengers with serious medical conditions will be exempted from a scan.

More than 23,000 passengers took part in the body scanning trials from August 2-19 in Sydney and September 5-30 in Melbourne.

The scanners will be rolled out at eight international gateway airports in Adelaide, Brisbane, Cairns, Gold Coast, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney.

The Government has enlisted the same company, L-3 Communications, used in the US to supply the scanners.

Government ‘may sanction nerve-agent use on rioters’, scientists fear

Independent | Feb 7, 2012

by Steve Connor

Leading neuroscientists believe that the UK Government may be about to sanction the development of nerve agents for British police that would be banned in warfare under an international treaty on chemical weapons.

A high-level group of experts has asked the Government to clarify its position on whether it intends to develop “incapacitating chemical agents” for a range of domestic uses that go beyond the limited use of chemical irritants such as CS gas for riot control.

The experts were commissioned by the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences, to investigate new developments in neuroscience that could be of use to the military. They concluded that the Government may be preparing to exploit a loophole in the Chemical Weapons Convention allowing the use of incapacitating chemical agents for domestic law enforcement.

The 1993 convention bans the development, stockpiling and use of nerve agents and other toxic chemicals by the military but there is an exemption for certain chemical agents that could be used for “peaceful” domestic purposes such as policing and riot control.

The British Government has traditionally taken the view that only a relatively mild class of irritant chemical agents that affect the eyes and respiratory tissues, such as CS gas, are exempt from the treaty, and then only strictly for use in riot control.

But the Royal Society working group says the Government shifted its position to allow the development of more severe chemical agents, such as the type of potentially dangerous nerve gases used by Russian security forces to end hostage sieges. “The development of incapacitating chemical agents, ostensibly for law-enforcement purposes, raises a number of concerns in the context of humanitarian and human-rights law, as well as the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC),” the report says.

“The UK Government should publish a statement on the reasons for its apparent recent shift in position on the interpretation of the CWC’s law enforcement position.” The Royal Society group points to a 1992 statement by Douglas Hogg, the then Foreign Office Minister, who indicated that riot-control agents were the only toxic chemicals that the UK considered to be permitted for law-enforcement purposes. But in 2009 ministers gave a less-restrictive definition suggesting the use of “incapacitating” chemical agents would be permitted for law-enforcement purposes as long as they were in the categories and quantities consistent with that permitted purpose.

Professor Rod Flower, a biochemical pharmacologist at Queen Mary University of London, said the latest scientific insights into human brain is leading to novel ways of degrading human performance using chemicals.