UK Commissioner Seeks To Ban Ultrasonic Anti-Teen Device 552
mikesd81 points out a Times Online article that discusses the legality of the Mosquito sound device, which is used to annoy and drive off younger people with sounds that are too high-pitched for most adults to hear. We discussed how annoying this device can be a couple years ago. From Times Online:
"Sir Albert Aynsley-Green, the Children's Commissioner for England appointed to represent the views of the country's 11 million children, has set up a campaign — called Buzz Off — that is calling for the Mosquito to be banned on grounds that it infringes the rights of young people. 'These devices are indiscriminate and target all children and young people, including babies, regardless of whether they are behaving or misbehaving,' Sir Al told the BBC. 'The use of measures such as these are simply demonizing children and young people, creating a dangerous and widening divide between the young and the old.'"
Re:Heh. (Score:5, Informative)
1: The tone is compressed with mp3. 25kHz isnt supposed to be even representable with that format. MP3 drops frequencies at 16kHz and above, right?
2: You cant properly represent a 25kHz tone with 44.1kHz sampling without distrotion. For all we know the real tone may sound like Mozart.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
I find that statement extremely unnerving. So a group of people of a certain age getting together is always a bad thing? Is it possible that other age groups also would not have the ability to assembly (wrong side of the pond, I know)? What ever happened to just posting signs and asking people to leave and finally contacting the police if there was still a problem. Could teenagers respond by playing their heavy metal "music" at the same level wherever they are. I'm sure there are other noises that can be created that are within noise pollution laws that annoy older folk too. That way everyone is annoyed and nothing is solved. How convenient technology can be, why interact with other people at all when you can just drive them off using a device that exploits a statistical correlation with the group you don't like. Best Idea Ever.
</angry-sarcasm>Ok then, glad to see someone sensible is leading the charge
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Heh. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
That's essentially the problem. I've been watching the coverage of this device in recent news with interest, and initially I was pretty furious that some politically correct hand-wringer was once again poking their nose in, but I must confess that there are always two sides to the story and I'm beginning to see that the device really does need some serious improvements and/or regulation or, ideally, the root problem being dealt with and the device being made unnecessary. And that's the real issue that this device is highlighting, to my mind - that there is a problem with the behaviour of certain groups of kids that we need to deal with.
A typical example is just down the road from my house. There's a small shop, video rental place, takeaway, and a pub in a small patch surrounded by houses. During the day, it's fine. At night, it's a disaster area.
The kids who gather there are an effing nuisance, they insist on playing football right in front of the cars trying to use the car park, they harrass people and treat adults there like crap, they've smashed the windows of the shops dozens of times, they throw rubbish everywhere... The list goes on and on, they're just out of control and their parents are nowhere to be seen. Nobody dares deal with it because if they do, *they* will be the ones who get punished for taking the law into their own hands, or they'll be on the receiving end of reprisals.
The police response is this: Several yellow signs have been put up on the lamp posts that have bizarre txt-speak drivel on them. A typical example is "If ur bad we'll tell ur olds."
And that's it.
You never, ever see the police turn up. They do *nothing*. The parents of the kids do *nothing*. For the reasons listed above, everyone else does *nothing*. The kids, meanwhile, go mental. It's a total failure of control.
No plans for legislation (Score:1, Informative)
Thankfully it won't be banned (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Heh. (Score:4, Informative)
Just to give a baseline - I happened to visit the science museum in Balboa Park, CA, in 2002. I was 20 years old at the time, and I had excellent hearing (both then and now). They had a booth set up (with specially-purpose equipment) for testing the range of your hearing. I could hear up to about 16,500 hz, and I was able to perceive sounds up to about 17,500 hz. (Note: TV flyback, the high-pitched whine your TV gives off, is about 14,000 hz) This is probably about the upper limit for someone post-adolescence.
Re:Heh. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Our locals are slightly brighter. We have kids riding quad bikes over some open land nearby (illegally) so they put up signs saying to stop. They tore down the signs. They put up signs saying why it was illegal, mentioned insurance, their personal liability etc. they tore them down. The police then spoke to dozens of people who walked their dogs there and asked if they could keep and eye out and photograph anything they saw. They put up new signs warning that anyone could be recording what goes on there. Surprise! Almost no problem there now.
Re:Typical. (Score:4, Informative)
No, that simply isn't true. There is something known as the British Crime Survey [homeoffice.gov.uk] which consists of tens of thousands of interviews with the public annually. These results are factored into crime statistics all the time specifically to avoid the reporting biases you complain about. Straight from the source:
The Facts vs Global Media Reporting. (Score:5, Informative)
They are not emitting this sound on a constant basis, and are just fired for very short periods of time as required.
As many others have said, the UK has a very serious problem with gangs of youths causing trouble, and we're not just talking a little petty crime, there have been a number of recent cases where individuals, often adults, have actually being kicked to death or stabbed by such groups. In some areas, entire communities will not leave their homes at night, because the streets aren't safe. We're not just talking about the stereotypical elderly couple here, we're talking about regular families, it really is that bad.
It's a similar situation in shopping centres and other retail areas, where these groups of what are essentially just kids, are either actively or just by their presence stopping people from entering shops, and it is these shops who are investing in the devices. If it weren't such a major problem (and it is) and they weren't generally very effective (which they) then you could guarantee that people wouldn't be spending money on them to protect their property and business, which is actually all they are doing here. The devices are fixed in position, and people aren't just wandering around finding groups to disperse.
Many of the recordings people are listening to on the web have been processed to make them audiable to pretty much everyone. The intention is to give people an idea what it sounds like to kids, I doubt any of the the people commenting on the sound itself have every actually heard it "live" as it were. There is plenty of evidence that in the vast majority of people, by the age of around 25 their hearing has deteriorated to the extent that they cannot hear this, or if they can, it's more of a background noise that a serious annoyance. Not everyone's hearing deteriorates at the same rate, but 25 is apparently the average age for people to no longer find it annoying, but of course some 20 years olds won't be able to hear it properly, and there will be people in their 30s for whom it will be irritating.
Granted, the long term causes of these issues need to be addressed, but the fact remains that these gangs of "young people" are causing criminal damage and are at best a serious concern and in some cases a genuine threat to the safety and liberties of regular members of the public. When people talk about the rights of children, they always think of the relatively innocent ones, the ones who are probably more like we were when we were young (and this is an image that those who are anti-Mosquito are trying to foster) but the truth of the matter is that the kids this device is being used on, have little in common with the British kids of the 80s. They are the sort who have no regard for other people's property or civil rights. They are the sort for whom a night out involves underage binge drinking and for whom violent behaviour is part of the fun, so forget about being idealistic, and taking the moral high ground here. You'll notice that those people who have posted who actually live in the UK are supporting the use of this device. There's a reason for this.
I should also point out that in response to this campaign, the British Government said a couple of days ago that they will not be banning the use of the Mosquito. There is overwhelming public support for the devices, because there is a genuine need for them. I suspect a good percentage of the people who are adding their voice to the supposed "public outcry" about their use (and in truth it's a very, very small number of people relative to the population) are not fully aware of the manner and situations in which these devices are actually used. From some of the nonsense I've seen written (and I don't particularly mean here on Slashdot) that certainly seems to be the case.
Re:Heh. (Score:2, Informative)
"I had to use DJ-style headphones to isolate it enough"
I'm 27, I can sometimes here it, as can my sound engineer colleague (about 30). It's not a problem, and what people are REALLY missing the point on here is that they aren't active 24/7, they're used at night and on demand.
Re:Heh. (Score:3, Informative)
Please don't do that.. Radio Shack used to sell an "ultrasonic" anti dog device and believe me I can hear those (or at least I could 10 years ago).. I can't be the only one. Those things HURT and I can't be the only person who can hear them.
Re:Typical. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Heh. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, the whine is from horizontal output stage flyback transformer - 15,734Hz for NTSC.