Consumer tasers and criminals with murderous intent

Taser is really pushing for consumers to have tasers. See TNT [LINK]. Short-term gain, long-term disaster for everyone (even Taser).

The consumer model offers a 30-second mode where the unit will pulse for 30 continuous seconds (ostensibly to allow the owner time to get a head-start, before the pissed-off assailant is able to get up, run them down and beat them to death - instead of just robbing them as they had intended). Now, if a police officer shocks someone for 30-seconds, they might even get suspended for five days.

And everyone is now becoming worried about the absolute safety of multiple and/or long duration shocks.

If you're awake - you can probably see exactly where this is headed...

Guaranteed that these consumer tasers will fall into criminal hands in large numbers. The hackers will almost certainly bypass the criminal checks and/or activation procedures. There is zero probability that a thick-headed schmuck of a company such as Taser can design an activation feature that hackers would not be able to bypass. Microsoft, Apple, DirecTV, Dish Network, and many more - they've all been hacked six ways from Sunday). Taser's scheme, whatever the details, hasn't got a snowball's chance in hell in the long term. (Just my informed opinion from having monitored the technology news for the past decade or more.)

The interesting thing will be when a criminal (or even a average citizen having a bad day) uses a taser as a murder weapon, and then Taser is then forced to defend the smirking murderer because as we all know [sic], tasers are safer than Tylenol [sic] and couldn't possibly be causally linked to a death in any manner [sic].


See also Gendanken [LINK] (theory).

And (Non-)Armed Robbery [LINK] (reality).