JOURNAL: Protest as National Security Threat

CNN video:  Sonic weapons used against a small group of protestors in Pittsburgh G20

In general, governments worldwide are losing control over all of the classical forms of national power from borders to finances to communication to media to economic activity to security to trade flows (of all types).  The upshot of this accelerating weakness is a tendency to view any and all forms of public protest as a security threat.  To counter this perceived  threat, an ever increasing number of countries have opted to 

• militarize their police forces (from the 5 fold increase in US SWAT teams over the past decade to China's new million man paramilitary force), 
• establish rules to neuter expression of dissent (i.e. establishment of "free speech zones" etc.),
• and the immediate/early application non-lethal weapons (sonic weapons, tasers, tear gas, etc.) to disperse crowds.      

This effort will almost undoubtedly generate unintended consequences (we can already see protest groups learning to counter this by using flash mob mobility via cell phones).