white noise is a random signal with equal power across 20Hz-20kHz (usually). the phenomenon of
'muffling other sounds" with an added sound is called "masking" and has nothing to with white noise specifically. "At high levels, LRADs can cause disorientation, deafness, nausea, and severe discomfort." is true for any sound, not just white noise.

there is also pink noise, brown/red noise, grey noise, plus other less commonly used varieties.

It seems that every news outlet characterizes it as white noise pumped through speakers. The whole LRAD angle apparently come from youtube, with this page being the top result for "LRAD Clinton".

Once you remove the element of it somehow being dangerous, I don't think it's any more unethical than holding a speech behind closed doors. But the use of technology does make it a bit creepy.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/clinton-team-blasts-reporters-with-noise-machine-during-hillary-fundraising-speech/article/2587996

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3530065/Clinton-campaign-blasts-reporters-white-noise-machine-t-hear-comments-outdoor-campaign-fundraiser.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-static-noise-speech_us_570930dae4b0836057a16748

There were many reports when I posted it, one including a picture of an LRAD mounted on a vehicle in front of the party (that was likely photo shopped), but this is all I can find now.

http://dailycaller.com/2016/04/07/clinton-campaign-uses-noise-machine-to-block-reporters-from-hearing-fundraiser-speech/#ixzz45CpOhToQ

Your video, Clinton Uses LRAD To Hide Fundraiser Speech From Reporters, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 78 Badge!

Was that an LRAD or just a siren, do British riot police use LRADS?

So... is he saying police shouldn't keep up with modern technology? I for one am glad that police are equipped with body armor - that way if a criminal shoots at them there is less chance of the police officer dying and a greater chance of the officer stopping the criminal from killing other people.

The same goes for better equipment to use against criminals. For one thing, most of the items he is showing are being used for SWAT or other counter-terrorism/hostage rescue teams. You don't see any officers dressed like that walking the streets as a beat cop. Complete strawman.

Also, he criticizes police forces for getting things like LRAD and Active Denial Systems. Considering these are "Less that Lethal" devices that are meant to be used instead of weapons that kill people I'm very glad police forces are investing in these. I'm not quite sure if this guy just didn't do his research or if he is just trying to scare people. His use of WACO makes me think the latter.

Then he asks, while showing a 'random checkpoint' and 'national I.D. cards' if "this is the type of country you want your kids to grow up in?" Well, I don't know about the US, but up here in Canada we already have "random checkpoints" pretty much every weekend to make sure people aren't driving drunk. We also have checkpoints at borders and sometimes if there is an Amber Alert, or for myriad other reasons. These seem perfectly reasonable. We also have drivers licences, passports and other government ID cards. OH NOES POLICE STATE!!1

Police need to adapt to deal with ever adapting criminals. Barney Fife would die in a gutter while a well-equipped, properly trained officer gets the job done.

No promblem. The G20, that LRAD and mysterious abduction really makes my tinfoil tingle. I think I'll go watch some Alex Jones now.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
Thanks for the promote, shhhhhhhhhhhmaaaallllweeeee.

In reply to this comment by schmawy:
*Promote

Alright, people. One of my best friends goes to the University of Pittsburgh and he was in the middle of the whole thing. Most of the "protesters" were just students curious about what was going on. He wrote this about it all:

"This note is for my friends who are not in Pittsburgh and have not yet been given a fairly comprehensive version of what has been going on here. If you have been seeing my wall posts, you'll know that something bad happened in Pittsburgh, but if you want my story, here it is...

On Thursday and Friday September 24-25, the G-20 World Leader's Summit occurred in Pittsburgh. The summit involved the leaders of the United States, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Russia, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. The purpose of the summit is to have a forum for the major world leaders about the global economic crisis. Pittsburgh was chosen to be the location for the summit in order to highlight its economic recovery after the city's manufacturing industry collapsed about 40 years ago.

The G-20 is always met with protesters for various causes, including global warming awareness, socialism, peoples' rights in other countries, anti-free-trade, and anti-war, and anarchy. The city of Pittsburgh was required to bring in police forces from all regions of the state of Pennsylvania and other nearby states.

On the evening of the 24th, the summit began with a dinner in the Phipps Conservatory, a plant exhibition hall (really quite a nice place) just under a mile from my dorm in the borough of Oakland. The University cancelled classes after 4:00 PM that day in order to ensure that students did not have to be outside if they did not wish to. During the day of the 24th, several protests had been broken up by riot police. At about 7:00 PM a small protest began at the Schenley Plaza. (from this point on, I will be referring to locations on campus, please refer to the map I posted at:< http://photos-b.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs209.snc1/7620_178174626232_559501232_4081545_8066324_n.jpg>)

I went there to investigate myself at about 8:00 PM. The protest itself was fairly small, only about a hundred or so people total, with only a handful of protesters. There was some live music and dancing, courtesy of the Hare Krishna. Despite the fact that the protest was fairly small and peaceful, there were several hundred police forming a perimeter around the plaza, which is under a quarter-mile from the Conservatory. All of the Police were in riot gear, which covered any form of identification they may have had; they were also all armed with lethal and non-lethal weapons.

Around 9:00, I decided to return to my dorm. At 10:15, I overheard someone saying that they saw fire on Forbes Avenue. I decided to go out and investigate. At this point, the street had been flooded by curious students, and would remain that way until the police removed them. Several dumpsters had been pushed into the intersection of Forbes and Atwood by anarchist protesters. The next intersection had a overturned dumpster with flaming garbage spilled on the street. Several shop windows had been broken by a protester from California, however the media initially implicated that it had been students who were responsible.

I reached the lawn of the Pitt Union, and at about 10:45 the police began to multiply rapidly. They also brought in several scary-looking trucks with large dish-shaped things on them. This turned out to be a Long-Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), which emits a loud, scary noise which is physically disabling within a certain radius. At 11:00 PM, the trucks began playing a pre-recorded message declaring that the people in the streets had become an "illegal gathering" and that the crowd was to disperse, or they could be subject to arrest or attack with "less lethal" weaponry (does that mean you're less dead when you get hit?)

At this, I decided to retreat to Forbes Hall. Other people were not fortunate enough to get out of there as quickly as I did, and became exposed to a hail of "OC" gas, rubber bullets, mace, LRAD blasts, and nightsticks. The University unfortunately decided to lock down the residence halls as the police approached, giving the retreating students nowhere to go to escape from the police. One of my friends was arrested while holding open the doors to the Litchfield Towers residence hall lobby so that escaping students had somewhere to go. She was dragged outside of the doorway, beaten to the ground, not given any rights, held for five hours, and released without any charge as of yet.

At the time, I was unaware of this, but I watched the police advance through the lower campus (residential area, mainly between Forbes and Fifth avenues) via the live feed on the local news. When I noticed that they were three blocks away from Forbes Hall, I went to the patio on the second floor of the hall (out of reach of anyone who didn't live there or have a friend there). At about midnight, the cops were in front of the hall, still chasing a small group of protesters despite being nearly a mile from the original protest ground and being practically at the end of the campus. Without any real warning, they threw several canisters of "OC" gas onto the patio. Unknown to me at the time, several also entered the lobby and threatened to mace several students who were unable to enter the hall due to the lockdown.

OC gas is for all intents and purposes the same as tear gas. When you inhale it, your lungs and throat itch and you can't do anything but cough. If it gets in your eyes, you become partially blind and it feels like your eyes are melting. I was several feet away from a grenade and was directly exposed to it for several seconds as my fellow students and I tried to escape. I ran to my bathroom on the sixth floor and flushed my eyes and choked for five minutes. The third floor had window open out of which the students had been looking, it was filled with gas, and the students living on the third floor became refugees for several hours while it cleared.

Shortly after passing Forbes hall, the police attack ended. They left Oakland with 42 arrests (most were let go that morning), and a large number of unfairly treated, assaulted, and pissed students. The university itself has yet to make any statement regarding Thursday night, but the Mayor of Pittsburgh and Chief of Police have stated that they are "proud of how well the police handled the situation". They are apparently not fans of students either.

I will save my personal commentary and descriptions of the aftermath for another note. However, here are a few links that you will find interesting.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNeD4rHUF4A> a compilation of student-made videos from 9/24.
The videos are of varying quality and contain some harsh language and violence. These will give you an idea of what the students here experienced (I know the person being dragged away at 2:35)
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6aRrQz7224> This video was not taken by me, but it was taken from my vantage point when Forbes Hall was attacked
<http://www.pittnews.com/> Pitt's student newspaper, featuring independent coverage of the G-20 (and some rather good photography, the ones I took came out terribly)
<http://www.pittbriefly.com/> A blog on which many videos of the G-20 'riot' have been posted. Some of these cannot be found on Youtube.

Thank you for reading this,
......."

Tags for this video have been changed from 'LRAD, protest, boot, stamping, face, forever' to 'LRAD, protest, boot, stamping, face, forever, jackboot' - edited by blankfist

Tags for this video have been changed from 'g20, sound trucks, police' to 'g20, sound trucks, police, lrad, sonic weapon, less lethal' - edited by joedirt

Their shield wall is terrible, they lack discipline. They never used the LRAD, just a really loud PA.

http://www.videosift.com/video/Foo-Fighters-The-Pretender

There will always be loads of money flowing into DARPA's hands. It's not all things that kill you know. A lot of the research is to help our troops. DARPA has all sorts of branches, not jusr weapons. And even a lot of those weapons are less-than-lethal, like the ADS or the LRAD.

In reply to this comment by bamdrew:
A lot of pretty million dollar toys.

As a young researcher looking at a career of dependence primarily on government funds I wonder if making things that kill better would be more fundable than what I'm currently doing... which is kind of the opposite. Growth in DARPA funds sure are kicking the NIBIB's ass in this administration.