Reasonable Precautions to Take Against the Barnhouse Effect?

[theprestige]

BPSCG's post in another thread reminded me of a conundrum I've actually been contemplating for a while now...

Spend ten million apiece to kill the ten worst dictators in the world. Kim, Mugabe, etc.

Then let the word go out that I have $9,900,000,000.00 left for any other heads of state who think that authoritarianism is a better form of government than liberal democracy, and that I'm ready, willing, and able to go out of this world as naked as I came into it.

Sort of a Barnhouse Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Report_on_the_Barnhouse_Effect).

Say you have someone like the fictional Barnhouse, who can trivially destroy nations, defeat armies, assassinate world leaders, etc. What are reasonable precautions to take against the possibility of the Barnhouse Effect being used against your own country?

Or, to put it another way... I first got thinking about this after watching the recent X-Men movies. If you'll forgive me for using comic book characters as thought experiments, let me present the following three.

Magneto: Immense power over magnetic fields. Can stop bullets in flight. Can throw tanks around like tennis balls. No bank vault in the world could keep him out. No bunker could defend its occupants against him. No merely human security service in the world could protect their country's leader from his merest whim. The only guarantee of safety he can offer is his own parole, from moment to moment, that he won't change his mind.

Professor X: Immense power over the mind. Can totally control the thoughts and actions of hundreds, or even thousands of people at once. Can trivially read the mind of anyone he likes, even at a distance. No secret can be kept from him. No one can choose their own path against his will. No merely human security service in the world could protect their country's leader from his merest whim. The only guarantee of safety he can offer is his own parole, from moment to moment, that he won't change his mind (and ours).

Nightcrawler: Immense power of teleportation. Can bypass any obstacle, any intervening distance. Can travel instantaneously from place to place, several times in as many seconds. No safe room is closed to him. No defensive cordon can keep him out. No merely human security service in the world could protect their country's leader from his merest whim. The only guarantee of safety he can offer is his own parole, from moment to moment, that he won't change his mind.

So. Say you're the Secret Service. You take all sorts of reasonable precautions each and every day, to protect the President of the United States from assassins and kidnappers: Security cordons. Armored cars. Protected vehicles. Armed escorts. Background checks. Monitoring and surveillance. Any merely human antagonist would be hard pressed to succeed in an attack against your charge. Sure, it's happened in the past, and will probably happen again. But it's rare, and you always have a good chance of defeating them.

You do an excellent job of protecting the president against the very real possiblity of a rogue human. What would you do to protect the president against the possibility of a rogue superhuman (if it were a real possibility)? What could you do?

[KoihimeNakamura]

Hire your own.

[gumboot]

1. Determine if said superhuman is a threat
2. Neutralise said superhuman

End.

[theprestige]

Hire your own.
How reliable would they be?

The men and women of the Secret Service presidential security detail are in an excellent position to kidnap or assassinate the president. Accordingly they must submit to extensive background checks, constant review, and strict protocols. One rogue bodyguard is unlikely, and would have to overwhelm his peers in order to succeed at his mission. And even then, it'd be a suicide mission.

What kind of checks and balances could you put on Professor X, to be able to trust him to protect the president? And given his powers, how would you even know if your checks and balances had failed?

[theprestige]

1. Determine if said superhuman is a threat
2. Neutralise said superhuman

End.
A human with a clear shot at the president isn't a threat, unless he has a gun.

What about a superhuman who not only has a gun, but always has a clear shot at the president?

[gumboot]

A human with a clear shot at the president isn't a threat, unless he has a gun.

What about a superhuman who not only has a gun, but always has a clear shot at the president?

Like I said, determine if they're a threat, and if they are, neutralise them.

I'm not a USSS agent so I wouldn't presume to know how they might go about assessing whether such a person is a threat. I would presume it would have something to do with determining what that individual's background is, their political attitudes, and so forth.

Some ideas for neutralising a threat, if determined:

Magneto: use non-metal materials for all security detachments and presidential vehicles.

Professor X: he can only gain complete control over one mind at a time, whilst in physical proximity to the individual. Thus he can be neutralised by including a remote robot in the security detail, which he could not control.

Nightcrawler: can only teleport into a place that he either is familiar with, or can see directly. He could be partially neutralised by keeping the president in an unfamiliar place. He could also be lured into an contained space that proved fatal.

[BPSCG]

Professor Barnhouse described himself as the world's first superweapon with a conscience. So you wouldn't have to worry about protecting yourself from him unless you were a despot, in which case, who cares what happens to you?

[KoihimeNakamura]

How reliable would they be?

The men and women of the Secret Service presidential security detail are in an excellent position to kidnap or assassinate the president. Accordingly they must submit to extensive background checks, constant review, and strict protocols. One rogue bodyguard is unlikely, and would have to overwhelm his peers in order to succeed at his mission. And even then, it'd be a suicide mission.

What kind of checks and balances could you put on Professor X, to be able to trust him to protect the president? And given his powers, how would you even know if your checks and balances had failed?

I .. think if you're that paranoid, you have other issues. The real problem with this is that if someone is a superhuman (let's say, Superman) you're screwed in large part if he goes rogue. So.. yeah, it's like a hurricane. You can only take some precautions, but..)

[theprestige]

Professor Barnhouse described himself as the world's first superweapon with a conscience. So you wouldn't have to worry about protecting yourself from him unless you were a despot, in which case, who cares what happens to you?

Calling yourself a good guy with a superweapon doesn't actually make you a good guy with a superweapon.

Most of us tend to view control of superweapons without checks and balances a bug, not a feature.

As long as you fall under Barnhouse's definition of "not a despot", then you're definitely safe. But what authority makes his decision binding? A vote of parliament? The will of the people? The ruling of a duly-constituted court of law? A constitutional amendment ratified by a supermajority of state legislatures? Any even remotely democratic system of checks and balances at all?

Or is it simply his inalienable possession of a superweapon that gives him the authority to sit as judge, jury, and executioner over anybody on earth who happens to get up his nose?

[theprestige]

I .. think if you're that paranoid, you have other issues. The real problem with this is that if someone is a superhuman (let's say, Superman) you're screwed in large part if he goes rogue. So.. yeah, it's like a hurricane. You can only take some precautions, but..)
I have no problem with taking precautions against hurricanes, and taking my chances.

But what about Hurricane Man? "Well, sure, he got up on the wrong side of bed this morning and devastated the Eastern Seaboard again, but hey, there's only so much you can do against hurricanes, right?"

[Alex Libman]

Um, authoritarianism and liberal democracy are the same political system at different levels of economic development.

[Chaos]

Professor Barnhouse described himself as the world's first superweapon with a conscience. So you wouldn't have to worry about protecting yourself from him unless you were a despot, in which case, who cares what happens to you?

Show me one insane villain who actually considers himself an insane villain.

And if you manage that, describe what you would do if it turned out that your "superweapon with a conscience" shares the definition of a despot that, for example, Tim McVeigh had.

[Dorian Gray]

How reliable would they be?

The men and women of the Secret Service presidential security detail are in an excellent position to kidnap or assassinate the president. Accordingly they must submit to extensive background checks, constant review, and strict protocols. One rogue bodyguard is unlikely, and would have to overwhelm his peers in order to succeed at his mission. And even then, it'd be a suicide mission.

What kind of checks and balances could you put on Professor X, to be able to trust him to protect the president? And given his powers, how would you even know if your checks and balances had failed? Dude, Magneto already has a helmet that prevents Prof X from reading his mind. They are also enemies more often than not. Just like with any group of people on the planet, some of them are good, and some of them are bad. That means you can hire people to protect or kill anyone, depending on their inclinations.

ETA: In other words, regardless of whatever else is going on, a person is either trustworthy or not.

[theprestige]

Dude, Magneto already has a helmet that prevents Prof X from reading his mind. They are also enemies more often than not. Just like with any group of people on the planet, some of them are good, and some of them are bad. That means you can hire people to protect or kill anyone, depending on their inclinations.

ETA: In other words, regardless of whatever else is going on, a person is either trustworthy or not.
Let's consider nuclear weapons in the US: In order to get your hands on a city-killer, you have to go through a serious background check, a psychological evaluation, and constant auditing. You have to submit to a rigorous and intrusive oversight protocol that closely monitors and strictly governs all your interactions with the nuke. And at any time, if you cause the least amount of suspicion as to your competence, loyalty, or sanity, you can be forcefully removed from any and all contact with the weapon, whether you like it or not.

Now, consider that I go out on the black market and acquire such a weapon with submitting to any checks and balances at all. Having acquired a nuke and stored it in an undisclosed location, I send an untraceable message to the UN: "I have a nuke. But don't worry; I won't use it, I promise. Unless you're a jerk. Then all bets are off. But seriously, trust me."

Would you wait for me to use it, before you decided whether or not I was trustworthy?