Pitts­burgh police demon­strated the lat­est in crowd con­trol tech­niques on pro­test­ers when they used “sound can­nons” to blast the ears of cit­i­zens near the G-20 meet­ing of world eco­nomic lead­ers. City offi­cials said this was the first time such sound blasters, also known as “sound weapons,” were used publicly.

Lavon­nie Bick­er­staff of the Pitts­burgh Bureau of Police uses benign lan­guage like “sound ampli­fiers,” and “long-range acoustic device” to explain the new weapons in an attempt to san­i­tize what is essen­tially a painful weapon that leaves no vis­i­ble marks on its vic­tims. The mob uti­lized a sim­i­lar tac­tic on snitches when they would beat every­where except the face. If vic­tims have no out­ward bruises to show, the world is less likely to believe their sto­ries of assault and harassment.

Unlike aerosol hand-grenades, pep­per spray, and rub­ber bul­lets (all tra­di­tional meth­ods of protest sup­pres­sion also used at the G-20 protests,) the dam­age from sound can­nons is entirely inter­nal, and can only be pre­served on video, but even then, the deaf­en­ing noise can­not be fully appre­ci­ated unless one hears it in person.

(Footage of the sound can­nons in action can be seen/heard below. It’s clear from these videos that the extremely loud, high-pitched noise causes pain.)

The “long range acoustic device (LRAD)” is designed for long-range com­mu­ni­ca­tion and acts as an “unmis­tak­able warn­ing,” accord­ing to the Amer­i­can Tech­nol­ogy Cor­po­ra­tion (ATC,) which devel­ops the instru­ments. “The LRAD basi­cally is the abil­ity to com­mu­ni­cate clearly from 300 meters to 3 kilo­me­ters” (nearly 2 miles), said Robert Put­nam of Amer­i­can Technology’s media and investor rela­tions dur­ing an inter­view with MSNBC. “It’s a focused out­put. What dis­tin­guishes it from other com­mu­ni­ca­tions tools out there is its abil­ity to be heard clearly and intel­li­gi­bly at a dis­tance, unlike bullhorns.”

Except, police aren’t try­ing to send a dis­tress call to allies 2 miles away. They’re lit­er­ally blast­ing this extreme deci­bel of noise directly into the ears of pro­test­ers (or any unwit­ting cit­i­zens) stand­ing mere feet from the can­nons. Depend­ing on the mode of LRAD, it can blast a max­i­mum sound of 145 to 151 deci­bels — equal to a gun­shot — within a 3-foot (one meter) range, accord­ing to ATC. The National Insti­tutes of Health (NIH) reports that per­ma­nent hear­ing loss can result from sounds at about 110 to 120 deci­bels in short bursts or even just 75 deci­bels if expo­sure lasts for long periods.

But there is a vol­ume knob, Put­nam notes, so its out­put can be less than max, pur­port­edly to give us com­fort in the knowl­edge that deaf­en­ing cit­i­zens is left to the dis­cre­tion of power-hungry police. On the deci­bel scale, an increase of 10 (say, from 70 to 80) means that a sound is 10 times more intense. Nor­mal traf­fic noise can reach 85 deci­bels, reports MSNBC, but these sound can­nons can­not be com­pared to stand­ing beside a busy New York City road.

The BBC reported in 2005 that the “shrill sound of an LRAD at its loud­est sounds some­thing like a domes­tic smoke alarm, ATC says, but at 150 deci­bels, it is the aural equiv­a­lent to stand­ing 30m away from a roar­ing jet engine and can cause major hear­ing dam­age if misused.”

This tech­nol­ogy has been deployed in Iraq as an “anti-insurgent weapon,” and the sonic weaponry is also being used on pro­test­ers in Hon­duras. Seat­tle Weekly reports that this weapon could eas­ily be used as a tor­ture tool if one doesn’t already think this is its only use.
Sonic weaponry is now being deployed domes­ti­cally to put a chill on free speech. We’re told this is the “humane” way to deal with pro­test­ers, but it’s really just a con­ve­nient way to sup­press cit­i­zens with­out the messy after­ef­fects of hav­ing to explain bul­let holes to reporters. A bunch of pro­test­ers com­plain­ing about rup­tured ear drums doesn’t make for dra­matic news.