Night Vision Contact Lenses: Great News for the Military, Law Enforcement and Stalkers Alike

Researchers have created  a one atom thick, infrared light detector that can run at room temperature. University of Michigan professor Zhaihui Zhong said the design can be built so thin…

…it can be stacked on a contact lens or integrated with a cell phone. The challenge for the current generation of graphene-based detectors is that their sensitivity is typically very poor. It’s a hundred to a thousand times lower than what a commercial device would require.”

The team looked for a new way of generating the signal, and came up with “a new way to detect light”.

The article, in the Independent hails the breakthrough that will allow “night vision for all” but you have to ask yourself how many people would be willing to walk around seeing everything in a green glow?

The military and law enforcement uses of the design is obvious. Being able to pop in contacts and see things in the dark that Joe Public can’t see will be lauded as a major advance in the fight against crime, and there is little doubt that it could be of assistance.

Having said that, we currently have law enforcement officers across the country who are not playing by the rules. They beat people to death on camera and walk away without penalty. They shoot people that were too far away from them to do them harm. They kill pets and shoot unarmed individuals on a regular basis.

The thought of people like this having the technology that will allow them to shoot an individual taking out the garbage late at night leaves me cold. The homeless will literally have no place to hide as cops seeking easy pray wander through parks and the hills surrounding our towns and cities.

Coupled with other surveillence technology, even the darkness will not give us any privacy from the prying eyes that seek to know what we are doing every minute of every day. The technology will of course “get out” eventually.

• Imagine the joy sicko’s will get from being able to see into their quarrys’ darkened home.
• The mugger who can see at a distance his/her next target.
• The rapist who can be sure that there’s no one else arround before he strikes.

Technology is a double-edged sword. Researchers and scientists need to realize that what seems like a great leap forward today could easily become a curtailment of freedom tomorrow.