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Headline: The Painful Truth of Exactly How ICE’s New Shock Gloves Work

Publisher: Wired

Archive link: https://archive.ph/O7TKI

Date published: 13 August 2026

Selected text from article:

With the revelation that ICE will spend up to $20 million by March on gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks to subdue an individual, according to a notice published earlier this week by the Department of Homeland Security, it's worth looking at how this apparel, designated as a nonlethal tool for law enforcement, actually works.

When activated via a one-second press on a wrist switch, conductive pads embedded on the palm and undersides of the fingers of the gloves can transmit high-frequency electrical pulses directly to the wearer’s point of contact on a subject. A rechargeable battery and microprocessor module tucked inside a zippered pouch on the cuff powers the entire system.

The electrical pulse overstimulates nerve endings in the subject's peripheral nervous system, resulting in pain that inhibits coordinated muscle movement, but without causing systemic muscle lockup. The pain induced is localized to just the area touched by the glove's conductive pads. The manufacturer claims the gloves result in a subject's compliance in less than three seconds and leave no burns, marks, or scars.

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Crucially, the GLOVE has limitations, chief among them that for the device to work effectively and deliver its restraining pain shock, it must come into contact with the subject's bare skin. According to Compliant Technologies, the gloves won't work through dry clothing or thick hair. The gloves will work, however, if the subject is wearing thin, wet clothing, such as soaked T-shirts or blouses. The GLOVE also does not like being dunked in water and will likely be rendered inoperable if this happens.

Michael Crowley, a senior researcher at Omega Research Foundation—an organization that tracks human rights abuses committed across the world by people using police, security, and military equipment—is concerned that the GLOVE is seemingly designed not to restrain or incapacitate, but to hurt.

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