Slashdot Mirror
Laser Painting Could Lead to 25-Year Prison Term
lowy writes "According to this USA Today article, a New Jersey man was charged under federal anti-terrorism laws with shining a laser beam at a jet flying over his home. The Feds arrested him after he flashed a police helicopter searching for the source of the beam. He now faces up to 25 years in prison under Patriot Act charges." It seems to be happening around the country, as our earlier post makes clear.
There are two possibilities. One is that there was intent to blind pilots and cause aircraft to crash, in which case 25 years sounds pretty light to me. Life imprisonment would be appropriate for attempted, premeditated mass murder.
The other possibility is that it was a stupid, stupid person who wasn't really thinking about the consequences of what they were doing at the time and there was no premeditated intent to cause a plane to crash. If that is the case, I think 25 years is a bit extreme.
In any case, hopefully a jury will figure out what the case was - as long as it doesn't go before a secret court with hearings closed to the public, then I'm happy.
I think it is high-time that the "Your Rights Online" section be renamed to "Paranoid Rantings About The Eeeevilness Of Organized Government By Slashdot's Editors." Although michael is almost always the culprit behind such stories, I guess timothy is now just as guilty.
It is amazing how often the stories in this section have little, if anything, to do with rights "online." What's even more interesting is how incredibly infrequently the alleged "rights" being violated in these stories are ever anything of the sort - namely "rights."
If you truly believe that you have some sort of God-given/Constitutionally-mandated right to shine a high-powered laser into the cockpit of a 747, then you truly need a reality check.
-Matt
Duke '05
This says it all::
Back on 9/11, one of my biggest fears was not that terrorists would somehow feel that I was worth picking out of a crowd, but that my government would joyously tear up what remained of the Bill of Rights in an overzealous, misguided attempt to appear to be "doin' sumthin' about terrorism".
I am very sad to see myself proved right.. almost on a daily basis.
The Digital Sorceress
OK, I can see giving him more time. He was trying to do something that could have had a very dangerous outcome if he succeeded.
But they're talking now about outlawing lasers to the general public?!?! Huh? Because they can be used for this?
OK, outlaw them. They have the slight chance of maybe blinding one of the pilots on approach. (again, another Tom Clancy scenario in a book about using an ultra bright light to bring down an approaching airliner...just like in the same book a 747 pilot crashed his plane into the Capital building in Washington...but I digress......)
But if they could do this, why not outlaw all guns and rifles in the US! I mean, couldn't THESE be used on approaching and departing airliners? A 460 Weatherby Magnum rifle could do some serious damage...maybe bust open a fuel tank if aimed with any degree of accuracy. I mean, if you're going to outlaw a 10 dollar laser pointer, shouldn't a high-powered rifle be in the same boat?
But no no...can't do that can we! We have the NRA...there is no National Laser Association lobby group in Washington looking out for our right to keep and bear lasers!
(is it bear or bare...I can never remember)
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Please read this very informative article entitled "Lasers Aimed At Airliners: Overreaction?"
My only complaint with this article is that the author does not realize that $500 or so will buy you a VERY powerful laser that is easily capable of damaging the eyes in a heartbeat. But otherwise, a good read.
I am getting very discouraged at the sheer amount of paranoia in our society. Everybody is overreacting to everything and is afraid of their own shadow. My wife is afraid for me to even pull out my Leatherman in public, because she is afraid that other people might thing that I might be a terrorist or some other type of bad guy. Riiiight. Like I could really kill 100 people in a mall with only a 2-1/2 inch blade and a pair of pliers. Except for special circumstances (like on an airplane), you cannot kill 100 people with a pocket knife unless your name is Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris, in which case you don't even need the knife.
Remember: if you walk around in fear, then the terrorists have already won. Think long and hard about where the term "terrorist" came from. I refuse to give them the satisfaction of being afraid.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
This is not saying that this sort of behavior shouldn't be punished, what it is saying is that it should be done under existing laws. There's no reason to charge someone with "terrorism" when their conduct is more accurately described as "reckless endangerment", "malicious mischeif", or "interfering with an aircrew".
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
The kicker in this case is two-fold: a) he did it more than once; b) he knew the laser he was using could cause eye damage. So this isn't a case of Joe Sixpack getting a laser-pointer from his girlfriend, ripping the package open and heading outside while hollerin' "Hey y'all, watch this!" Nope, Doofus here pointed his fiber-optic test equipment (which he warned the attorneys about being dangerous) at more than one aircraft on more than one occasion. He can try to plead with the judge that he didn't know there would be any people on the aircraft, or that he didn't think that there would be danger beyond X distance from the source, but I don't think anyone is going to fall for it. There's no doubt that the lawyers are going to publicly crucify him, but this guy's actions were clearly negligent.
2) It is virtually impossible to track a laser on a cockpit from 15 miles way, or even from 2 miles away.
So what's going on?
From TFA:
They've found some guy who was playing with his laser pointer and they're going to fry him. Doesn't matter whether he was the one they were looking for, doesn't matter whether the guy they were looking for could have done any harm this way if he'd been trying.Christie is going to ``do something about terrorism'', and he doesn't care how many of us he has to kill or imprison to make the rest of us feel safer by advancing his career.
If we're going to start sending people to jail for shining lights at airplanes, maybe we'd be better off without the airplanes. Thanks to these same ``public servants'', it's getting too dangerous to travel by air anymore, anyway.
See what I've been reading.
Okay everybody, get out your laser pointers, it's time for an exercise.
Try to shine that laser at a target the size of a grape. Easy? Okay, make that grape move. Harder, huh? Now make the grape move at 600 miles per hour. Can you still hit it? Now, try doing the same thing to a grape hurtling through space at 600 miles per hour about half a mile away from you. Do you still think you can hit it?
That grape represents the pilot's eye.
Now, try holding your laser on that target for a couple minutes - as long as it takes to blind a person.
Now repeat the exercise to blind the pilot's OTHER eye.
Now do it two more times to blind the co-pilot's eyes.
And you'd better hope that the pilots don't respond to the agony of their retinas sizzling away by putting on sunglasses, or ducking or moving in any way!
This, friends, is the terrorist threat of the week. Please be frightened.
You can run but you can't hide, except, apparently, along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
Remember: if you walk around in fear, then the terrorists have already won.
The irony here is that it's not the terrorists I'm afraid of, it's our own government. Seems the terrorists have won either way.
"Don't worry guy, we'll never use PATRIOT to prosecute citizens. We'll only use it to fight terrorism." (Imagine it coming from Saddam in South Park.)
Now we're using PATRIOT for day-to-day law enforcement. I'm not saying this guy should not be punished for his stupidity; I'm saying we should all be concerned for the day a National Security Letter and a unmarked van take you away.