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.
link to the usatoday story, please?
Am I the only one here who thinks that's letting them off kind of easy? I mean, if I were to shoot a SAM at an airliner and get caught, I think I'd probably be looking at more than 25 years even if it missed. In both cases, the intention and the potential outcome are the same...
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I know we don't read the articles but to stop linking to them is not making it easier.
Doesn't sound like fun anymore, does it?
For once, everyone will have an excuse for not RTFA.
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
Why was he doing this in the first place? If he had malicious intent then he deserves to go to jail but if he was just screwing around I think a small fine and some community service is in order
The post mentions a USA Today story, but where's the link?
"Powers. I have them."
here
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Now my lazer tag equipment is criminal and my AOL CDRom chainmail can get me in trouble too!
.. sharks.. with frickin laser beams on their head!
When lasers are outlawed.. only outlaws will have
Shit book, but a plausible idea nonetheless.
USA Today Story
I initially misread the title as "Laser Printing Could Lead to 25-Year Prison Term."
Needless to say, I was more than a little bewildered.
"Hmmm . . . new article on Slashdot, think I'll check the comments . . . Argggh! My eyes! I can't see anything!!"
The slashdot story is missing the link. No comment about the editor who posted it.
For those who need a link to the article since the story doesn't seem to have it, here it is:
USA Today Story
" I would really like to know what he was thinking."
I'm pretty sure he wasn't.
BSD is designed. Linux is grown. C++ libs
On the bright side, so many more things to do with a laser than pointing at air planes and stuff. Strange how you wont be put into 25 years of prison if you point it straight at someone's eye. Now back to pointing at people and burning them from a distant.
Hopefully this is the same for jerks doing it at movie theaters. God that's annoying.
Seriously though, I'm kind of glad. IF someone is aiming anything stronger than a laser pointer at plains and trying to interfere with the landing, they deserve more than a slap on the wrist.
If it's one thing the idiot should know is that we're not going to screw around with our airplanes anymore. Mess with them, and find yourself in pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
I like how he lit up the police helicopter which led to his arrest. I mean, with all the flap about this, he HAD to know that police were looking for the guy doing it.
I wonder if just finished a grand theft auto marathon before going to "look at the stars"
and I'm thinking wtf, the pro-collusion bent of American law is really getting out of hand here; now they're forcing people to buy overpriced ink cartridges?
...oops.
-b
myselfmusic
Especially since laser painting is usually a reference to "painting" a target with an infra-red beam, so that it may be accurately bombed.
25 years is a bit harsh, but OTOH I don't want people distracting aircraft pilots as the article I read said this guy did.
Fine the hell out of him and give him a year in jail
"The Feds arrested him after he flashed a police helicopter searching for the source of the beam."
The guy should get life for stupidity. After all the news about the Feds trying to track down the people pointing laser pointers at planes, he goes and points one at a police helicopter. How stupid can you get?
Seems to me you have to try pretty hard to laser an airplane cockpit from the ground. I find it hard to believe he wasn't trying to do exactly that. 25 years might be harsh, but stupidity is expensive. You should avoid it.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Before all the contrarians come out. It's just a huge coincidence that he flashed airplanes and then a helicopter? It's very assy of him, but I'm not sure if it's 25 years in prison assy.
I hate sigs.
No necessarily....many times when you shine a laser at a target it is refered to as "painting the target"
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
I would have copy/pasted from the USA Today article but at the time I read it the link was unavailable on the main page so from this article at the Detroit Free Press:
On Friday, a helicopter carrying Port Authority detectives was hit by a laser beam as its crew surveyed the area to try to pinpoint the origin of the first beam.
I just love the wording they chose to describe the stupidity... "hit by a laser beam". They make it seem like the dude was firing a laser gun at them and harming the helicopter. Ugh. Yeah, pointing a laser pointer at a flying aircraft is dumb and it's unnecessary but to attempt to make it sound like some physical damage could have been done by the laser is just sensationalism.
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
"Painting" should be "pointing."
Nope. "Painting" is the term used for 'painting a target', such as used with smart bombs and sniper rifles. It's used for targeting, and considering the anti-terrorism topic this use of the word is still fairly relevant.
I think the government has gone too far with this terrorism thing. I think that in order to be charged under the Patriot Act, the intent of committing terrorism should be proven. This does not mean that I don't think he should be punished for what he did, but this law is so broad that a bank robber could be charged under the Patriot Act for terrorizing the customers and employees. Terrorism is performed on mass scale, not on handfull of people.
Isn't that about what you'd get if you used a laser to burn pirated CDs? I'm sure that bringing down a jet is very nearly as bad.
Maybe, if you were printing $100 bills.
Don't pick up the pho*(@)$*@&@!@ NO CARRIER
Phew. That clears it up for me. A few years ago, I saw some video from the process car manufacturers use to paint their cars. They use lasers to guide large spray painting machines over the body of the unfinished car. I guess it helps in defining how much of each color to spray the car.
That incorrect headline gave me the visual of someone using 10 or 12 lasers around the outside of their house in order to guide some massive spray painting machine.
Was this guy using a laptop while pointing a laser at the plane, or what?
Aside from that - I could care less what this guy gets. Even if I agree with the posters claiming that the pilot could obviously not see the laser - anyone who is flashing a laser pointer off at a POLICE HELICOPTER these days is obviously a complete idiot/jackass. To me this is natural selection in action.
We're basically now arresting and locking up stupid people. Maybe this is a good trend, but honestly, before "terrorism" this guy would just get a slap on the wrist.
Now, because we're at war a simple act of (admitedly dangerous) stupidity will get you facing the patriot act.
Hmm.. maybe this isn't such a bad thing. I wonder if they can arrest the guy who weaves down the freeway lane-hopping and tail gaiting under the patriot act too, he treathens my life every day.
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
"She said her client was playing with his young daughter, using the laser's narrow green beam to point at stars..."
Am i missing something? How does this work? It's pretty obvious to me that the daughter wouldn't be able to see the dot on a star.
Maybe I missed the point. How does someone aim a laser into a cockpit unless they have a laser sight on their rifle with a high powered scope and are using the scope to aim the thing? OK so you may not need the rifle but you do need the scope and laser combo, which I don't really get as a smart thing to do with an airplane or other place where people don't have eye protection.
The case hasn't even appeared in court. It's just that this action seems to fall under the Patriot Act, according to the prosecutors. The beauty of our judicial system (though not infallible) is that he gets his day in court. If the judge is a reasonable person, this man will either be acquited or get probation to be made an example of.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
At least 25 years...
25 years sounds harsh because the guy was just screwing around. But the truth is the Feds have to make an example of this guy because going easy on him will not effectively deter other morons from doing this. The FBI has enough to do without tracking down legions of dipshits.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
25 years sounds fair enough, he even shined it at the helicopter that was searching the area for him. But what really gets me is what sort of person would shine a laser at any type of aircraft in the sky? Common sense seems to be only for the gifted nowadays.
There is precedent, albeit tenuous, that the only purpose of certain kinds of equipment, or even logic (DeCSS anyone), is to do unlawful and criminal things with it.
Now, I'll grant that there are many reasons for owning laser pointers. Specifically, if you have a cat, it is a patented means of delivering exercise to the feline.
However... With datamining, if you buy diesel fuel, fertilizer, and now a laser pointer, you can end up on a watch list which you could avoid if you did not buy a cat toy.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Do you want it punished as a stupid but annoying practical joke or as the attempted murder of hundreds of people?
I think the guy should be fried just to deter other clowns from putting it on their "Stupid People Tricks" audition tape.
It's been on the Radio in the NYC area all week.
1010 WINS was talking about it nonstop (then again, they go through all of their news in 22 minutes and repeat), but they were reporting the first one, then they reported the second one -- note that in this one, the laser hit the cockpit of the helicopter of the people that were looking for the source to begin with, they were asking to get hit.
Video Production Support
Obviously this fellow slashdotter was midled by the power of the green laser
That said, the poster makes it sound like its another case of the Patriot Act out of control, but if pilots are distracted enough by this guy to call the cops, and the beam is powerful enough for the cops to find him, then he deserves to be arrested.
Something doesn't add up, and I don't know what.
All the incidents can't be like this, some guy playing with his kid. Are they copycat? Did one incident get reported first? Or was there really a rash of people shining lasers at planes more or less simultaneously? Quite a coincidence, that.
I don't quite understand what's going on here.
I do know this, though: This is serious, and the penalty sounds about right to me. 25 years for shining a laser at someone may sound stiff, but how about 25 years for reasonably endangering the lives of about a hundred people? The government is right here, it is no joke when there are people in that plane.
Can you imagine shining your laser at a landing plane and watching it crash? I have a few mottos in life, and one of them is "Never engage in an endeavor where the worst case scenario is complete success"; you just know that's when life will choose to deal you the Royal Flush. I'd say this qualifies. (The canonical example, of course, is Russian Roulette. Do you really want to "win"?) I couldn't live with myself after that.
They say the plane was about 10,000 feet up and the laser came from 15 miles away. It doesn't take a genius to see that:
1) Laser pointers over 15 miles away - or even nearly 2 miles away - lose a lot of their energy and are no brighter than dim LED bulbs at those distances.
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?
A blog like any other.
Well there goes my livelihood! As a professional painter, I make my living painting things. I'll miss painting lasers; Dr. Evil was my best paying customer.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
I tihnk I'm starting to like this Patriot Act thing. So far it appears to be a viable excuse to get the asshats out of society. Though the whole thing about them knowing what I'm doing all the time still kinda bothers me. *puts on tin hat*
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems Slashdot has misunderstood why pointing a laser at aircraft is seen as a threat. This is not because the terrorist is trying to blind the pilot but because "painting" an aircraft, building, etc. with a laser is used as a cheap missile guidance system. Hence, it is not something the feds take to kindly to.
Nothing is impossible. We just haven't quite worked out how to do it yet.
I have one of those cool ThinkGeek green laser pointers and it was kind of fun (and amusing for the kids) to take it out on a cloudy or foggy day and look at the neat laser beam. Even the ThinkGeek description advertises its use for skypointing while stargazing, which works even in the clear in very dark conditions. Now I'm scared to do either. God I love these times we live in.
While it is definitely possible to do it to a helicopter, but has anybody realized that it would be nigh near IMPOSSIBLE to shine a laser pointer into the cockpit of an airliner, particularly into the eyes of the pilot? Look at how far back in the cockpit the pilot sits as well as the angle from his head over the instrument dash and into space. An airliner's cockpit windows are designed for visibility of the sky around the plane, not the ground. While this dumbass deservers a prison term, it is 100% asinine to use terrorism laws here to impose 25 years.
Maybe he showed them his bare ass when they came looking who was pointing a laser at the jet?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
who read "Laser Printing" and thought "Shit".
I am trolling
While he's most likely not a terrorist, this guy ought to be charged under Federal Anti-Idiocy laws for not only initially flashing the plane, but also flashing the helicopter that was later searcing for the source of his laser. He actually tells the agent that arrested him not to shine the laser into his eyes becuase it might blind him!
"Dyurrrrrhh...."
Salon published a letter to the editor today regarding their prior story about the potential for lasers being used to blind pilots. In the letter the physicist argues that to use a laser properly for this task would require expensive and large equipment, at least two men, and good site selection. Basically, much cheaper and deadlier weapons are available to the motivated terrorist than lasers. The article and letter in reply are worth a read... --M
Why don't other terrible crimes get such a high sentance?
I'm sure that many people can't believe the lenient sentences associated with some attrocious crimes, and here we see a 25-year sentence for shining a light.
I'm sure that if you have a list of crimes, ranging from bad to worst, that it would look like the sentences were picked at random.
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
...is how this dude and his little green laser temporarily blinded the pilots? What does that mean? They saw it and took their eyes off their instruments, or that it caused actual temporary eye damage? How can you sustain a laser on a moving target with the windows located on TOP of the vehicle when you're beneath? Lots of questions here, and 25 years is simply outrageous.
C'mon people, we've taken the terrorism thing far enough. A guy in his backyard playing with a laser pointer is not a terrorist. New York street kids in gangs are not terrorists either, no matter how much you want them to be.
In fact, "terrorist" is a term that has no meaning anymore since it's become so overused, sorta like "pirate" which is used in every context from high seas robbery to filesharing to South Park's "ass pirate".
Let it go!!!
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
Worse still, he now has to live with the permanent epithet, "Laser Guy."
Evildoer 1: I'm the Disgruntled Postman!
Evildoer 2: Welcome aboard! Meet MurderOne, Manslaughter, Aggravated Assault, and oh- that guy over in the corner is Laser Guy.
Evildoer 1: THE Laser Guy?
Laser Guy: Just give me a laser pointer and i'll - (remembers what he's in for and hangs his head in shame) be almost completely ineffective, but not ineffective enough to stay out of PRISON... *curls up in fetal position and sobs*
Evildoer 2: Yep, that's LaserGuy, all right.
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
Aiming a device that's notorious for being used to aim projectiles with at an airplane isn't the smartest thing in the world to do.
This story should be up there with the 'dumbest criminals' like something from Fark. I mean, come on. That would be like popping up from behind something with a realistic plastic gun and aiming it at a police officer.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Why should the judge be leniant? What if this person had blinded someone and caused the plane or helicopter to crash, possibly killing many people? This is no different than if this person had been aiming a gun, rocket launcher, whatever, at the aircraft. He probably thought he was being funny or 'just joking', but this is serious. Stupidity has no limits and should be stopped.
Just wanted to point out that pilots of commercial aircraft are granted a public trust. That trust is granted after they have proved themselves capable of piloting the aircraft well, proved themselves to be of good character. Our government then licenses them to command the plane -- and with it the lives of sometimes hundreds of passengers. Further, the passengers each put their lives in the hands of the pilots.
Pointing a laser and blinding a pilot on final approach is the same as having broken into the cockpit and putting your hands over his or her eyes. You should and would be right to be charged with as many counts of attempted murder as there are people on the plane.
25 years seems like a light sentence for that charge, to me. So he's getting quite a deal.
But, to use the ignorant line "I didn't know" betrays the mind that each of us has in our heads. We have the ability to think through our actions, and we have the responsibility to each other -- as a society -- to do so.
Intent has nothing to do with responsibility for actions. Perhaps intent can change the severity of the sentence, but should never invalidate the crime and the perpetrator's responsibility.
If we want to live in a society, peacefully, and get along with each other, it is incumbent on all of us to take responsibility for our own actions, and to demand that our fellow citizens do no less.
-tooley-
If only there was a Dumbass Act that this guy could be tried under.
Up to 25 years means nothing. Federal laws are incredibly broad so vastly different conduct is covered under the same law, with the same theoretical maximum. I was charged with a crime for which I could receive "up to 25 years" and got 1 year probation.
Nothing to see here, move along...
Nope. "Painting" is the term used for 'painting a target',
I'm sure the prosecutor will agree with you, but it's still an irrelevant term here. Yeah... it's called "painting the target" when explosive ordnance is intended as a follow-up. But, in this case, the word "pointing" applies. This is a clear case of a thoughtless knucklehead wreaking havoc. A five figure fine? I'd be all for that. But 25 years of FPMITAP? I think not.
Does it matter? People need to think before doing things.
I can't always hit the toilet from a foot away, how the hell did this guy get a laser in the face of a pilot in a plane hundreds (thousands?) of feet in the air?
A laser beam is a laser beam. 99.9% of laser beams are not destructive to anything other than MAYBE a retina, or a piece of paper with properly applied toner.
I think most people understand that if anyone has a laser small enough to track a helicopter with that it's not going to do any damage to the helicopter. Unless there's a rash of laser rifles running around that I'm not aware of....
paintball
Yes, 25 years does seem a bit harsh.
The Feds arrested him after he flashed a police helicopter searching for the source of the beam.
Besides, one would imagine going through life being *that* stupid should be punishment enough.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
What is the focus of the legal system anyway?
Deterence: Not tough-enough (if I was a terrorist trying to blind pilots I would laugh, wow so 25 years that you John Q. Public pays for my room & board, go for it.
Reform: Too tough. Same as any 13-year-old charged with murder. Sure they know it's "wrong" but how the hell will a person ever learn from his/her mistakes if they are screwed for life for 1 goof.*
* by goof I mean one incredibly brain-dead stunt, that deserves a serious repremaind.
Yes I know it's an age-old problem, but holy fuck it's screwed up.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
I interpreted the danger of this being more of painting an aircraft with a laser as needed to target a laser guided missle. correct me if i'm wrong.
Yeah, this guy set off our paranoia. So?
He was using a laser pointer THAT WAS MADE TO BE POINTED AT THE SKY! Surprise! There are planes in the sky!
The results of this action have been sensationalized as well. The pilots were temporarily blinded...gee...like that never happens driving your car on a sunny day.
I'm really curious as to how this action could be done in a destructive manner. You'd need a clear day, the right angle, and have a laser with a certain power and be within range. What does it take to align those variables?
While it might not have been the brightest thing to do, I'm not convinced that it is particularly dangerous either.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
how could you blind a pilot facing forwards, looking out very small windows thousands of feet in the air, from a point on the ground looking straight up? you'd just hit the bottom of the aircraft
even if you were good enough to hit the plane (and you'd have to be damn good, a milimeter twitch of your hand translates to several meters that far away), you'd never be able to get the laser into the window, and even if you could accomplish that, it would still only be hitting the roof of the cockpit! unless this was a magic laser that could turn corners or something, you're not going to be blinding any pilots
May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage. RAmen.
at least not after being blinded by a laser.
Seriously, is it even possible to do damage with a conventional hand-held laser from over a mile away? The laser certainly would be far from a "dot" at that distance, and you would have to hold it pretty darn perfect to "paint a target" for any amount of time.
Buy your Laser pointers now before there is a law against owning one. They'll probably go around shutting down sites that sell them, like ThinkGeek. Forcing them to provide a customer list so that they can track down potential terrorists.
You might want to keep a close eye on your Binary clock...
It's the beam, dude. While a standard cheapo red beam laser pointer does not usually have a beam visible unless there's enough fog to prevent seeing stars, the higher-end pricey green lasers have a beam that can be seen with just the normal trace of dust in the air, since it's about 50 times brighter than the usual red ones. Perfectly good for a pointer for astronomy lessons.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Seriously. I have a laser pointer right here beside me. I've often shined it at the moon, to see if it would make the moon turn red, but the sun is much more powerful than my laser pointer. So I tried to hit the International Space Station, to see if I could turn it red, but it didn't seem to do much if anything. So I shined it at a cloud, and maybe I hit the cloud, but the laser was still pretty close to being a dot and I couldn't see the dot. I shined it at a mountain, and same thing, couldn't tell if I hit the mountain or not. I shined it at the house all the way at the end of the street, and I saw that. I'm gonna try using binoculars to see if I can see it when I shine it at the mountain. But does anyone know how far the typical laser pen will shine?
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
An observation, after reading the article... They said green laser, and $100. That means it was a garden variety laser pointer, or something similar. 5 mw probably. That kind of laser from 3000 ft away will not blind anywone. Unless he got a heck of a deal on a really big laser, I think this story is bunk -- the pilots made a big deal over nothing, and the feds are running with it. Great use of the Patriot Act, folks... Dave
Before everyone here completely overreacts (oops, too late, this IS slashdot, after all), the odds of bringing down an airliner by shining a laser pointer into the cockpit are about likely as if you shot a BB gun at that same plane. Consider the fact that airliner cockpit windows are very narrow, rounded, and designed to reflect glaring light, OH, and they are on the UPPEr side of the fuselage, not the side facing the ground. Also, the planes are probably a couple of thousand feet in the air, moving at a couple of hundred miles per hour (even during approach), the odds of blinding BOTH pilots and causing an crash are astronomically small. Slashdot needs a new category "FUD and paranoia". Read what an actual pilot has to say about the whole silly matter(http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2005/01 /04/askthepilot118/index_np.html) before you convict this idiot
of anything more than being a moron. 25 years is
an insane sentence for a moronic act. The guy admitted to trying to take down the helicopter, but its insane to charge the guy under the patriot act. No way he gets anywhere close to that kind of final sentence, if he's even proven guilty at all.
Its really funny to see how much the Fibbies are "over-reacting". Life in States now is to constantly look over ones shoulder..... what a curse
Here's what my dad claims:
The government has a satellite with a laser on it. They thinkg 9/11 would have been avoided had they 'blinded' the hijackers with lasers once they got control of the plane. They're testing the satellite out, and using this poor guy as a scapegoat.
My first thought about damage was not about blinding the pilot, it was about the reaction of the pilot who notices the laser dot trained on him. You do not want those guys having what-the-fuck-is-that moments while handling a large vehicle quite possibly filled with lots of people. How exactly does he know that it's not about to be followed by a weapon of some sort? "There's no such weapon that works that way" could end up being famous last words.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Let's hear it for the "evil government" "sticking it" to the little guy and another round of "oh our liberties are being curtailed", but what this dude did was fucking stupid and I'm glad they caught him.
Shining a laser in someone's eyes is assault, plain and simple. I don't know if I'd call it terrorism, but I don't find criminal charges to be out of order.
We've messed up again.
Laser Targeting systems are Infra Red, not Visible. So marking a plane for a missile wouldn't be identified until you were going, "Oh Shit! That looks like a missile!.. BOOM!".
Has anyone considered how easy it would be to carry a knife onto an airplane? How about a ceramic kitchen knife. No X-Ray footprint. But that's moot because no plane in the US is going to allow a bunch of whack-o's another opportunity. It would suicide to even try.
Obviously our Nations sense of humor was damaged as much as the Trade Center was.
Another item the TSA will take / detain you on your next trip. While this guy certainly wasn't using his brain, he doesn't deserve 25 years and a 500k fine. Just another gross abuse of the so called "patriot act".
In the eyes of animals, ALL humans are sadistic cannibals.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
To hit the cockpit of a plane traveling 100s of MPH so far above him....
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
Who knows, next time it may be someone 'painting' a target w/ the laser for something heavier, or a laser sight/ranger... Personally if I see red dots centering on something, must assume that laser rifle/pistol sight...
User not found: Please check the world and try again.
and that's where he's headed.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
She said her client was playing with his young daughter, using the laser's narrow green beam to point at stars Ironically, now he'll be in jail 8.7 years from now when the beam finishes its return trip, (assuming Alpha Centauri) so he won't be able to show his daughter what the hell he was pointing at.
you can sit 25 years in jail for pointing a laser pointer at a helicopter
And for murder can get out in under 5 years.
Yea our laws at work. Does someone ever review some of the laws and just make a flat out decision that some of the penalties are just assinine (in both directions).
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
I agree, kill 100 with a leatherman might be difficult.
Now, if you had a plastic spoon AND a leatherman...
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
They may be charging this guy under the Patriot Act, but it has been a federal offense to interfere with the safe operation of an aricraft for many years. I was a Marine Corps helicopter pilot for 11 years, and back in the mid 90s we had someone flashing our aircraft at night with one of those ultra-bright (million candle power or so) flashlights. After several near-crashes, we finally pinpointed his house, and that night he got a visit from his friendly neighborhood FBI agent.
So please, stop acting as if every enforcement of a provision of the Patriot Act is some new depradation by the current administration. There may be some provisions of that act that should be revisited, but that doesn't make the entire thing some vast conspiracy to revoke our civil liberties.
Recently I read something about pilots not really needing the windows in the cockpit because because basically everything can be done with instruments. This makes me wonder if the laser really blinded the pilots or if it somehow blinded their instruments. Any thoughts on how a laser beam would affect whatever instruments are used in planes these days? It seems if the instruments were operational then this in the worst case would be like flying through low-level clouds because as the plane got closer to the ground the laser beam could no longer track the plane because it would be blocked by objects on the ground...unless this guy had a direct line of site to the runway.
He also was charged with lying to federal officers. Why do you lie in this situation? Just to jump to conclusions, it seems to be a common trend to not take responsibility for your actions. All he had to say was "Yes, I shined the LASER on your helicopter and I apologize. It was not my intent to distract and possibly blind the pilots." It also mentions the fact that he had a GREEEN laser pointer. It must have said somewhere on the box that it was upwards of 35 times brighter than your common red laser pointer. Yeah, laser pointers are neat, but they're a tool more than anything. I've had then shined on me not knowing where they came from, and not once did I think I was being painted by a sniper - I was simply upset at the fact that it would possibly be shined in my eyes. Smack with an a Encyclopedia set, letter by letter , send him home with each and tell him to a get a clue. Fine a couple hundred thousand to be used on more 2-ply cotton toilet paper for the headquarters, and send him to jail for a few years. Or, just have him get his Helicopter license, send him up and have him try to fly with lasers in his eyes.
Why? Why would someone do that other than for obvious reasons. It would seem that he isn't the dangerous terrorist the charges imply beacause a real terrorist woulden't be dumb enough to shine the laser at the police. I suppose that I could see somebody doing stupid things with fancy lazers and whatnot. Thats why I am never going to get a gun beacause I would problably go around looking for things to shoot at.
411 Y0UR 8453 4R3 8310NG 70 U5!! -NSA
Apparently recently green laser items have been sold to the general public. Unlike red lasers , green lasers apparently have a far greater range( a green laser pointer can have rannge of a couple miles) and are far brighter than the red lasers.
Why would the general public need a laser with a two mile range?
They couldn't come up with something more believable in their quest for domestic 'Terrorist' activities, (read: Excuses to put regular people in prison for no good reason), than laser pointers?
Think about it. .
The whole sparkly, brand-new Fear is that airplane pilots might be blinded in their cockpits by laser pointers, right?
Okay. Explain this: How exactly does a laser-pointer 'terrorist' go about blinding a pilot from ground level? Those cockpit windows, aside from being quite small, were last time I flew, situated on top of the plane's nose.
Are these domestic laser-pointer 'terrorists' standing on mountain tops? Seriously! The claim isn't even logistically possible!
It seems clear to me that this is simply more horse-hooey. --But, hey, whatever works. People obviously eat this crap up. I even saw one post below where a guy was complaining that 25 years was not enough prison time for an evil laser pointer 'terrorist'! Maybe we need newer, stronger laws! --And think about it. . . The guy arrested by the flying Storm Troopers, if he had done this a year ago, wouldn't have faced any charges at all because it would have been before the stupid fear-hype. --Which just goes to show that television propaganda really does work.
Bit by bit, the anti-terrorist laws will be turned in upon the American citizens. That's how facsism works. Aim out, then control within.
But, laser-pointers? Come on!
-FL
Are you implying that they may be a missing link? Or just noting that it was from the "too-bright-therefore-not-so-bright" department editor?
Eh. Errare humanum est.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
So, shining a laser directly at something is called painting?
Huh. I always thought it was called pointing.
Guess you learn something new every day.
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
This asshole pointed a commercial laser at an airliner. He temporarily blinded the captain and copilot while they were trying to land. When the police sent a helicopter to find the source of the laser, this idiot pointed his laser at the police helicopter. He lied to the FBI and tried to pass the blame on to his child.
This isn't some teenager doing something stupid. This is a 38 year old man who should know better.
25 years and a half million dollar fine does sound pretty harsh to me, but if he had caused that plane to crash it wouldn't seem nearly harsh enough.
Fuck this guy.
Move along, nothing to care about here.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Are they trying to make sure we can't communicate with each other without government approval?
Of course that argument falls on its face when you are later found guilty of lying about such events to the FBI.
YMMV of course.
BSD is designed. Linux is grown. C++ libs
From the article: "Thousands of inexpensive lasers used for home repair jobs were sold before Christmas, some for as little as $15."
What kind of home repair can you perform with a laser pointer?
I think you'd have to try pretty hard to do it on purpose, but if you wave a laser around from the right spot on the ground (maybe a mile or two off the approach to a big airport?), I think you'd have to try pretty hard to not do it by accident.
I don't think that anyone has suggested that these laser-pointer-illuminations have the potential to do physical harm, and we've let little kids buy them and play with them for years now. If these laser pointers were likely to do any harm, we would already be seeing many thousands of blind kids.
My take on this is that a Federal prosecutor in New Jersey needs to get a life.
See what I've been reading.
Then you're extrordinarily dense. The difference is intent. One scenario indicates a malicious person who will seek out ways to harm. The other may simply be a moment of stupidity. See mens rea
Gosh, that's just rude. I was just perplexed as to why my reference to the same material yesterday - which would, I think, have generated the same vigorous commentary that this listing has - wasn't picked up. Further, I thought it would be helpful to point out the earlier discussion to people that might have missed it. Your unpleasantness is not helpful, and doesn't really add to any general sense of your own credibility or of /. in general.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Immagine you just bought a $700 laser pointer. You're amazed that you can see a reflection from stuff really far away. Hey look, I can even shine it on that plane overhead!
/.) News reporters were like "this is sophisticated laser tracking" and my parents were like "I wonder if it's terrorists?" I said "no, it's probably some guy with one of these laser pointers I just saw on the web, but if they catch him, he'll be prosecuted as a terrorist." Sucks being right all the time about this kind of stuff...
Really, I bet that's the extent of it. This whole "THEY ARE CRASHING PLANES WITH THEIR LASER GUN" is just more post-911 hysteria. 25 years is a long time. This is an equivalent penalty to MURDER, and this is far from it. I think a stiff fine would be enough to stop folks from doing this.
More importantly, this is just one more case where the PATRIOT act, which gives some constitutionally-questionable powers to law enforcement, for the specific purpose of apprehending terrorists, has been used on someone who isn't a terrorist.
Funny thing is, I saw this on the news like 2 days after I saw a link to one of those uber-laser-pointers that burns holes in plastic cups (I believe I was linked from
I've read a few things about the laser he was reading, which seem to contradict themselves.
First I read that he said it was a piece of test equipment for fiber optic cables (and he used it for his job). Sounds like it could be powerful?
Then I read it was a green laser and he ordered it for $100 from a website. (Thinkgeek?) That doesn't sound that powerful then.
Does this mean that Jean-Michel Jarre won't be doing any more laser lightshows for fear of being bombed by the US military?
He's French, so they'll probably find an excuse to bomb him anyway.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
This is getting really silly, and really scary, both at the same time.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
Now think about that little dancing dot and imagin trying to even hit an airplain sized object from 4000 feet away?
Now imagine hitting the cockpit, and then imagin hitting a piolets eyeball?!?!
Does anyone else think this is rediculous?
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.
The problem is that most of the other terms the article could have used (illuminated, painted, shined on, etc.) don't indicate the gravity of the danger this bozo was causing. Here is a brief article explaining some of the risks of even very low power lasers such as laser pointers (Class 3a laser generally with a power level of less than 5 milliwatts).
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
If said plane is flying directly at you.
Don't know the details nor did I RTA... just an observation that seems to be missing herein..
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
There's a reason why fighter aircraft are armed with high rate machine cannons. There's a reason why antiaircraft weapons are cannons. A handheld popgun isn't going to bring down an aircraft, even if it manages to poke a small hole in one of the multiple separate fuel tanks. No way. Nevertheless, anyone attempting to do such should be hammered good and hard by the justice system.
Kudos, this is the first time I've lauged out loud at a post, and not even read more than the headline. Thanks.
Bah
but, will a $15 green laser reach that altitude? How in an enclosed cockpit do pilots see they are bieng painted? COuld this rash of laser tagging be the work of those making crop circles?
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
this may sound like a stupid question, but how is it physicly possible to blind a pilot from the ground?
i mean you are obviously under the plane and the windows are in the top side of the airplane.. so how is it possible for the laser beam to even enter the cockpit.
or are there any laser-sensitive stuff on the bottom of the plane that can cause something (other than showing a little red dot)?
Of course, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't actually know what I'm talking about. I've just been through the "well, we could charge you with X, but if you cooperate we'll let you off with X/30" routine enough myself, that I tend to be skeptical of the threats made by police/government.
What's sickening is that in a way, you are right. Dramatically overpunishing a few to cow the rest is much more efficient than dispensing justice fairly to all. Ask any dictator, junta, or Catholic schoolteacher.
Sometimes seventeen/Syllables aren't enough to/Express a complete
There are just certain things you should have the common sense not to do.
And directing a laser pointer into the eyes, or in this case cockpit of a plane trying to land is one of them.
Landing my Piper at night is tense enough, your flying off instruments, that are lit up about like your cars gauges. The runway's landing lights give you an idea of distance but little else.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
Not harsh enough. If he likes lasers so much, a ten year sentence of back-to-back viewings of the Laser Pink Floyd show at the local planetarium will straighen him out.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Calm down, everyone. A 5mw laser is a _little_ dangerous at close range, because of the power density (intensity) of the beam. If you've got a 5mw beam with a 300 micron diameter, its intensity is about 250 mw / mm^2. Also, since your pupil is larger than the beam diameter, by pointing it at your eye you can pump the entire 5 mw into your eye.
That's _kind of_ dangerous, but you have to work pretty hard to do any permanent damage (like stare into the beam for a while).
On the other hand, lasers like this have a beam divergence of at least half a milliradian (due to diffraction, if nothing else -- it's IMPOSSIBLE to collimate a 300 micron diameter beam of visible light better than that).
So if you're, say, a kilometer away, the spot size of the laser is a half meter. This gives a power density at the pupil of your eye, of about 80 nanowatts per square millimeter, or 80 milliwatts per square meter.
Truly, truly harmless.
That's about 1/12000th the intensity of direct sunlight.
Anyone who wishes may point their green laser pointer directly at my eyes from a range of 100 meters or more, for as long as they wish.
Yndrd1984
Ok I'm getting really tired of the So called memo's that state just about everything and anything is a possible terror plot. Get over it only tell me when you have solid proof. (And not solid from a crack head that is getting paid to talk / divulge information to the government on this issue.)
But these idiots with the laser beams.. At 38 years old you should know better.. would you drive down the highway and point a laser at the person driving next to you, no probably not.
Well as for sentencing I think 25 years is a little light compared to the death toll that could potentially have been created. If said person took down an air craft their should be a mandatory sentence of one year per body with 50 bodies equaling the death penalty. why am I so harsh? what if a family member was on that plane you'd feel the same.
Agreed. It's time to start trotting out one of the America's greatest political quotes of all time again; "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" -- Franklin Roosevelt. It's absolutely timeless wisdom.
The man who was arrested was caught because he shined the same green laser into the cockpit of a helicopter that was surveying the area to discover the origin of the laser that temporarily blinded the pilots of the airliner. They were able to find his location because of this, and incidentally he blamed the helicopter lasing on his daughter. So here we have not just poor judgement or a one-time prank, but a guy who was shining a very bright laser (according to article it was used to test fiber optic cables) at pretty much anything that flew overhead. If he had just done it once he likely would have never been caught and it could be written off as poor judgement.
Because of this I think his sentence should be more than just a slap on the wrist, definitely some heavy fines, maybe a few years jail time depending on what motives they discover for his actions. However, if it turns out he was just a jerk, or an idiot, or whatever and wasn't trying to bring down aircraft, then the maximum 25 year sentence is definitely too long. What I fear is that to make an example of him and to stop others who seem to think lasing planes is a fun idea (reports from multiple other airports of similar events) is that the government will hit him with the max or near max penalty.
I have to wonder, making examples of criminals or not, how some judges can justify these extreme jail sentences? The criminal learns his lesson for sure, but is effectively never given the chance to apply that lesson. In 25 years the man will be so old as to almost be ready for social security, and with a criminal record he'll be lucky if greeter at Walmart is even available to him. What the system has done now is taken an otherwise productive (granted rather stupid for his actions) member of society, burned a ton of taxpayer $$ on him for 25 years, then released him to be a further drain on the system.
At what point will someone - the american people, congress, other judges - say enough is enough and start setting limits on jail sentences to times that make sense? If this guy is guilty of nothing more than the airline equivalent of chucking rocks over the freeway as a dumb prank then I'm pretty sure 5 to 10 years in the fed pen will be quite enough to ensure he doesn't shine a laser anywhere again. Even 5 years is a sizable chunk of someone's life, and prison is no fun place to spend it, plus getting one's life back on track after such a sentence will be hard enough. It's time to stop this "War on X" mentality that the justice system has taken and give non-violent offenders a chance to learn from their actions and apply those lessons in their lifetime instead of overcrowding prisons and sucking up taxpayer dollars.
Anyway, this rant is mostly concerned with if this guy turns out to be just a beavis/butthead type who got his hands on a laser and gets the 25 yrs. If he gets a more appropriate sentence length, or if his actions were in fact malicious then I guess this rant is moot. But there seems to be a trend in our courts to just throw people away forever, which in the end really doesn't teach a very long lesson since those people never get out to tell others to not follow their example.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
You have to realize that even though lasers don't diverge (expand) much as they travel, they do.
So what starts out as a small circle of light at 3 feet ends up -3000 feet later- being maybe a 30 foot circle of light. At that range it's hard to *miss* aircraft.
Hmm you see no difference between aiming a rocket launcher at an aircraft vs. aiming a laser ? Besides, is this how fragile airplanes are now, that a laser pointer can bring them down ?? And to think all this time terrorists have been wasting their money on aquiring explosives.
I have to admit, before the concerns started coming up a couples months ago, painting an aircraft with a laser is the kind of thing I might consider trying on an impulse, but being careful not to do it while it was heading toward me so light couldn't enter the cockpit. It wouldn't take me 25 years to realize that was a little irresponsible, though. It would take about 1 night in jail. Actually, it only took me one news article. Still, some people don't learn as quickly as I do. A small fine and some community service seems like a much better punishment in this case, assuming he had no malicious intent. Remember he reported that his daughter was with him when he did this, which makes me more inclined to believe the story that he was just playing around and did something stupid.
How do pilots manage to see the runway during approach if the windows are on the top, and the runway is under them?
The plane was only at about 3,000 feet on approach for landing. I'm guessing that the pilot just MIGHT have been looking towards the ground.
But maybe that's just me.
Instead of pointing your laser at an airplane, you should mount it on a shark and have it point the laser at a submarine.
At least it wont blind the crew and wont get you into trouble with the FBI.
Wow...wouldn't the dropped overpass itself be more of a problem than some rocks from same?
A year in jail?! He could have blinded those pilots, and he could have caused the deaths of hundreds of people! That kind of reckless mischief is serious businss. It warrants at least five or six years, especially since he did it repeatedly.
Correct. As both are weapons and both can bring the aircraft down, although in different ways. In the case of the laser, it's not the plane in jeopardy, but the eyes of the pilot/copilot (and once they are blinded, the plane is blinded).
Read the US constitution.
We've certainly come a long way in this country. It used to be only poor minorities could aspire to be scapegoats. Now everyone has the same chance.
Sometimes seventeen/Syllables aren't enough to/Express a complete
The question isn't intelligence, the question is intent. Chronically stupid means he didn't INTEND to bring down an airliner. We've always gone lighter on people when they didn't have intent, and sometimes if you didn't have intent, an act isn't criminal at all. Whether or not an act is criminal, and how criminal an act is, isn't just determined by the act itself, but also by the INTENT behind the act, and the SUCCESS of the act.
That's why there's 1st Degree Murder, 2nd Degree Murder, Manslaughter, Reckless Homicide, and Not Guilty by Reason of Mental Defect. If you committed the ACT of boobytrapping your door to have a swolrd come down on someone's head if opened, any of the above could be the correct end result, depending on whether you knew your wife was coming home within 30 minutes of setting the trap, or you saw a door salesman coming to the door so you impulsively chose to set the trap then, or you just always leave the trap set because you're super-anal about property defense, or you set the trap because you believe little green men are trying to get in your front door.
And even if you intended to kill someone, if your boobytrap fails and only injures them, your charge/sentence will not be as harsh as it would if you were a smarter criminal and built a more effective trap.
So, yeah, we generally are easier on the stupid.
paintball
Were they attached to a frickin shark's head?
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
Which brings up a very interesting point. With the advancement of lasers & optics at some point laser weapons will be available. How will these be handled. I can't imagine them being available to consumers legally at any point. However many have argued in the US that the right to bear arms is more about allowing civilians access to equalizers should the government get out of hand... so what then?
hearing? glare != BLINDING. be serious.
gimmie.
Never attribute to complicated malice what can be explained by simple stupidity. -- TMK
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.
A plane flying over his house? How did he point the laser through the aircraft window exactly? Unless he was on a mountain top, or a long damned way away from the plane and using a MUCH more powerful laser which would not diminish after 2 miles, the stated claim is not even possible.
And these days, any statements taken from captives mean exactly nothing since the U.S. has demonstrated a willingness to torture prisoners.
This is total propaganda bullshit. The fact that it's suddenly happening all over the country is further evidence of its being a deliberate orchestration of social engineering.
And you fell for it. Smooth.
-FL
So using the same logic, pointing my finger should be illegal too, being as how I COULD have been pointing a real gun.
he flashed a police helicopter searching for the source of the beam.
This is about the dumbest thing I have ever seen. There is ABSOLUTELY no way this guy was going to get caught, and if he was caught, there was no way he was going to be convicted. Then he goes and reveals his position, his identity and his guilt. All I can say is: WTF?
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
if they find out that the whole system is fundamentally flawed, millions could lose their jobs!
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
You don't need anything sophisticated to stabalize the laser, or track the plane. The terrorist isn't interested in bringing down one specific plane at a specific time. They're just looking for A plane (or just to cause enough Terror due to the threat).
They'll just keep aiming the lasers at planes until they get lucky and hit the cockpit windows, dazzling pilots during final approach. If they miss the cockpit of one plane, big deal. There'll be another one along in a few minutes, until they decide to bug out and try somewhere else.
Instead of talking about justice or equity, the reasoning centers around social control and the realative worthlessness of individual citizens (not to mention non-citizens).
I recall a few EMP experiments at a certain Army base that disabled every piece of unshielded electronics for miles around. Luckily there were no aircraft nearby. Punishments? Apologies? None.
Sometimes seventeen/Syllables aren't enough to/Express a complete
-to-lifers... "What are you in for?" "Rape/Murder." "Arson Spree." "Assault / Armed Robbery." "SHINING MY LASER POINTER"
Haha, he's doomed.
Not that I don't think a fairly harsh punishment isn't appropriate... people that are going to ignorantly engage in activities that very easily can endanger other peoples' lives ought to be punished to the very limits that the law will allow, but I think actually charging him with terrorism is a bit silly (especially when you consider what terrorism actually means... it's patently obvious he isn't a terrorist).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
25 years might be harsh, but stupidity is expensive. You should avoid it.
Forget the guy for a second, and look at society. There are very good reasons to provide a sensible, graduated punishment system.
Imagine you're an amoral guy who's been pointing lasers at airplanes for fun. You hear sirens. You know that if they catch you, you'll go away for 25 years. There is very little incentive for you not to flee the cops and put lots of people in danger along the way, because your punishment is already about as high as it will go. In order to be reasonably sure that minor crimes won't turn into major high-speed chases or hostage standoffs, you need to make sure that minor criminals have an incentive not to cause them.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
They're making an example out of him by giving him a really harsh sentence to deter anyone else from even THINKING about it. C'mon. This is America. ;]
(In reality, they did this to make the headlines but he'll probably get a couple months in jail AT MOST.)
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
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.
That's exactly why the pilot of a commercial aircraft rarely if ever flies the approach by hand.
I'm sorry but this is wrong. Have you ever been on the receiving end of a laser that's 15 miles away? In highschool we took the science department's low power helium neon laser and shot it accross the valley (about 20+ miles) then photographed it's relative brightness against the city lights (Salt Lake City). It was extremely bright and dwarfed the light output of the entire city by several orders of magnitude. One of the newer green pointers is probably at least 100 times brighter in appearance than that crappy HeNe laser!
I have no doubt that you could temporarily blind someone easily with a green laser pointer from 15 miles or more away, especially at night.
This guy was an idiot. Case closed. Ever read the Darwin Awards? This guy is lucky to still be alive based on how dumb he is. Odds are, 25 years in prison will protect him from doing something else this dumb that will cost him his life.
The REAL issue here is that very powerful green lasers have gotten extremely cheap ($59.00 to $99.00) so they need to throw the book at this guy to prevent the rest of us citizens from playing possibly dangerous games.
A more realistic thing to do is come up with a technological solution to prevent an airplane from being downed by a $100.00 device. A self-darkening wind screen, some sort of polarized surface, a one way mirror coating?
The use of the Patriot Act is a travesty. The guy is pointing out stars to his daughter and obviously Mr. Clueful was not exactly trying to hide the fact from the police helicoptor.
Well maybe they should think about that and at least fix the potential laser problem on the airplane end so this cannot happen.
Putting this guy away will not forever secure all airplanes, and it seems kind of a joke that almost anyone form anywhere can bring down a $50,000,000 plane with a $100 astronomy tool.
And just how wide was this laser that it blinded ALL of the pilots ? Was it like the bat-sign over Gotham city ?
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2005/01/05/80877 4.html
This article gives a bit more detail about the situation that may make things a bit clearer.
"The jet, a chartered Cessna Citation, was landing Dec. 29 with six people aboard when a green light beam struck the windshield three times at about 3,000 feet, according to court documents. The pilot and co-pilot were temporarily blinded but were able to land the plane safely. "
Now, he may not have been trying to blind the pilots, but this guy had to realize that that is a possibility. Especially given his profession: he tests fiber-optic cables - with lasers, I assume, since it says the laser was purchased for his job AND he is quoted by police in the USA Today article as saying "Don't point it at your eyes. It could blind you" when the laser pointer was brought out during questioning.
The article says he hit the cockpit of the plane not once, but three times (!) with the laser. Stargazing my ass. He was seeing if he could really do what was in the news reports. And then, after hearing on the news that the Feds were taking this VERY seriously, he goes and points the beam at a helicopter. Not exactly the brightest bulb in the lamp, eh? A distant airplane, ok, maybe... maybe if you're a dumbass... I might believe you when you say you initially thought it was a star. A helicopter, close enough for the police to shine a spotlight on your house?
One more thing to note: Everybody is going nuts over the potential penalties in this case. 25 years and $500,000 is the maximum penalty. Keep in mind that this all has to go before a judge and possibly a jury, depending on whether his attorney thinks he'll be a sympathetic defendant for a jury. It is very rare in criminal law for a defendant to get the maximum penalty. More than likely, this guy will get less than a year in jail out of it all.
My opinion on this? This guy is one of the biggest dumbasses on the planet and probably deserves some jail time. 25 years is too much here, but some time behind bars is probably a good idea, both as a lesson for this guy and as a lesson for the "consequences ignorant" folks out there.
Call for a new FAA rule requiring all pilots and copilots be required to wear broadband laser eye protection during landings.
This will put this matter to rest completely and protect them from a more dangerous near infrared laser attack on them.
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"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Riling Texas is pretty stupid as they supply a lot of the nations needs - we need them, they don't need us, and they have a lot of armed citizens who could easily make sure that all the "stupid crimials" stayed on the OTHER side of the fence, thank you very much.
No, instead it is far better to simply bring to life the concept of "Escape from New York" and turn the whole city into a giant prison. A lot of the people that should be in such a place are there already (including stock analysts) and furthermore, it would be even harder for terrorists obcessed with harrasing New York to do anything if the population at large was very stupid and/or evil. You can't blow up a building with a bomb in a truck (see previous WTC plot) when your truck is jacked about a block into the city, or you get mugged and loose your briefcase dirty bomb.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
wow this country is becoming more and more like the late 20's germany.our personal freedom are being taken away "for our own protection". we also have "the enemy" in germany it was the "big bad jews" in the u.s. its the "terroris muslims who want to destroy american way of life". we had our own "burning of the reightstagg (sp) " whats next ? death sentences for drug users (after all they support the "terrorists") ? howabout camps for "them brown people "? this blows ive never been more ashamed to be an american. its time to start flying the flags the way we did after 9/11 but lets do it the right way and fly them upsidedown.
I can see how the media might have suggested the idea of shining lasers at aircraft and after reading that people went outside to give it a try.
The charges together carry a possible maximum of 25 years. He has not been convicted, nor sentenced to the max.
We shall have to wait and see what comes out. The judge and/or jury probably has wide latitude in the sentencing.
>>
Ordinary laser lights will not do much to the eyes, as far as I know. Obviously if this light is going 3k feet in the air, it's not an ordinary laser. It's obviously quite high-powered and capable of causing injury.
>>
You're kidding, right? Even the laser at the supermarket for scanning prices can damage your eye. It's less than 0.5mW, so casual exposure won't hurt you.
A 5mW red laser pointer is another matter. A few seconds can cause temporary blindness. In under a minute, you can cause permenant damage. And as to range, with my 5mW 632nm diode (common in 'bright' pointers), I've been able to reflect it off a stop sign just over a mile away. I used my telescope mount to align it and keep it steady (you'd need steadier hands than mine!), but the reflection was visible to the naked eye. Nothing fancy involved.
The human eye is most sensitive to green (in the middle of the visible spectrum) so a 5mW green laser looks much brighter. And can do much more damage. And so far, we've just talked about Class IV and III lasers.
Someone with a more powerful laser could do some serious harm in a short amount of time. Most CO2 lasers aren't in the band visible to the human eye and are very powerful. For a couple thousand dollars and some surplus parts, you can build a laser that will cut metal. If you're really gung-ho and have some skills, you can do it much cheaper.
This incident? I think they're making the guy a patsy. Even if he was being stupid and shining a laser at a vehicle in the air, he probably didn't think it would hurt anyone. Intent is a very important concept. It doesn't indemnify him, but it ought to suggest more appropriate penalties.
What should his punishment be? Since no one was hurt, I'd say probation and community service.
While I certainly don't believe that the US had any direct involvement in the events of September 11th, I also certainly see the parallel between the WTC and the burning of the German Reichstag in 1933. Be very wary of anything done in the name of 'anti-terrorism.'
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
Has this daft law ever been used to deal with an actual, real, evil, acid-spitting terrorist? Ever?
There was no mention in the article about altitude. I also did a Google search but found no such details.
Unless the fellow's house was actually built on the runway, I find it rather unlikely that he managed to hit the cockpit at 3000 feet from his backyard.
-FL
But a vital piece is missing from the information we have: exactly what part of the "Patriot" Act was involved, and exactly how did it make it easier to find him? From the report, he was caught after the chopper investigating the incident was shined on as well.
This man is a double-scapegoat; his case is also being used to boost the efficacy of the "Patriot" Act, even though no specifics are given. The USA Today article even has a bootless frission about how these dangerous terrorist weapons are available over the Internet for $15.
Sometimes seventeen/Syllables aren't enough to/Express a complete
Actually a bullet fired from a good rifle is supersonic, compare to
Mach 1.
What was the last time you flew on a supersonic aircraft?
According to your page, a bullet goes about 900m/s. A typical airliner might land at 60m/s. The bullet is therefore going 15 times faster than the airliner. That qualifies as a "small multiple" in my eyes. Having to hit the plane with a bullet that's only going 15 times faster is going to be difficult.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
The headlights of a motor vehicle do not focus intense, coherent light at a small point. A laser pointer does. It's much easier for a laser to burn a blind spot in a human eye than for a conventional light source to do the same.
See, by the time he would get to retire, there will be no such thing as Social Security. Most retirement homes look pretty much like jails anyway, and jails have a little bit of excitement once in a while (prison riot v.s. bingo night). So I bet he is thinking of this like an early retirement.
Im.
3,000 feet up on final approach.
You don't have to shine the laser directly into a pilots retina to dazzle him in that crucial time during landing. Especially considering this is occuring at night, suddenly illuminating the windshield infront of him with an extremely bright green light, which is dancing around due to aircraft movement and vibration from the guy pointing the laser, is going to dazzle the pilots and seriously fuck with their night vision.
A terrorist doesn't have to be precice, because he's not trying to bring down one particular plane, at one particular time. He just has to keep pointing it at planes during approach until he gets lucky.
The terrorism pretext is a big excuse to clamp down on Americans. In other news, little Johnny rudely pointed his finger at his teacher, Mrs. Smith. He will get 50 years for that. Little did Johnny know that his finger pointing interrupted Mrs. Smith's speech and caused her to lose her bid for school principal.
Note that he's not getting 25 years automatically - he's getting UP TO 25 years.
So, I think people should decide how riled up to get after the sentance is handed out.
Note that not only did he hit the helicopter, he admitted shining lights on a jet - this is not an average laser pointer in operation. Regardless of how you feel about the Patriot act something should happen to this guy, his actions are indefensible.
I also think 25 years is overkill. But you also can't just let people who might blind pilots go with a $100 fine and a night in the pokey to "sleep off the stupids". They are right to make an example him so future people shining lasers on planes are really the ones you want to go after - punishing him imporves the S/N ratio for other crimes of the sort.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Hey, it's in the name of public safety! You could... um... you could burn yourself on that drum in a laser printer! They should be outlawed!
(well it does get pretty warm)
You are standing in an open server west of a blue house, with a boarded front door. There is an Exchange mailbox here.
I disagree. At any given moment, within 5 miles of a busy airport, assuming 5 large airplanes are aloft in that range (very unlikely) with a cross sectional area of 400 square feet each, the chances of randomly hitting one of the airplanes instead of empty space is a little less than 1 in one million. The chance of hitting the cockpit window is several hundred times less. The chance of hitting the cockpit window twice (randomly) is 1 in nearly 12 quadrillion. Of course if you do it for a period of time, the chances go up.
But if you do it in purpose the chances are more like 1 in 1.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
In order to be reasonably sure that minor crimes won't turn into major high-speed chases or hostage standoffs, you need to make sure that minor criminals have an incentive not to cause them. ]
Agreed, but I get the feeling that some of our law enforcement actually enjoys turning relatively minor crimes into major once, so that in addition to charging the suspect with the original minor crime they can also charge with speeding, wreckless driving, resisting arrest, 27 counts of property damage, etc... BTW it is also quite ridiculous how they frequently charge with 8 different things for a single crime, and they can all potentially stick and the penalties add up. They should only be able to charge with the most serious one the crime qualifies for.
we have the patriot act to protect us from those rogue laser pointer terrorists trying to blind pilots.
Now when do we get a law to protect from rogue governments trying to point fear colored laser pointers at the public?
So you are saying that if someone yells "fire" in a crowded auditorium and it happens that this time nobody got hurt that nobody should go to jail? But if it just so happened that someone tripped because their shoelace was untied, and someone triped over them and got hurt, someone might be subject to jail?
Perhaps in your democracy, there isn't such a concept as negligence or deterence, but I don't think that's a commonly held position. Which at least in this case means that under a democracy, wouldn't your position be moot?
Just something to ponder before you use the royal "we" again...
RTFA, a laser was aimed at an airplane and then at a helicopter trying to find the source of the laser. He did it twice, and the second time wasn't even an object that far away.
once --> ones
Totally not true. From the CNN article:
"Banach also initially denied any involvement in the earlier incident, in which a laser beam struck a small aircraft with 13 people aboard as it was landing at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, 12 miles west of midtown New York City."
He's still an idiot, but he didn't endager 250 people. The jet was a small, chartered commercial jet, not a 777. And when they say "earlier incident," they mean the jet. The second incident was when the cops were in a helicopter trying to figure out where the first laser incident took place (the dumbass tagged the cop 'copter with the laser, too, effectively punching holes in his "I didn't know what I was doing" defense).
Now, you could argue that if the plane with 13 people crashed in MidTown it would lead to more deaths, but there's no basis to just randomly grab 250 as a death toll.
Transistors and Beer!!
article on the subject.
The jet, a chartered Cessna Citation, was landing Dec. 29 with six people aboard when a green light beam struck the windshield three times at about 3,000 feet, according to court documents. The pilot and co-pilot were temporarily blinded but were able to land the plane safely.
Man Charged Under Patriot Act for Laser
The chance of hitting the cockpit window twice (randomly) is 1 in nearly 12 quadrillion
Which is precisely why I find the whole story suspect. I've already heard the air traffic control record for that night, have you?
Pilot: "Traffic control. We're approaching landing and see a green laser light shining around the sky. Know anything about it?"
ATC: "Not a thing. Is it pointing at you?"
Pilot: "Not really. We were just checking on it."
ATC: "Probably my neighbor looking at stars with his little girl again. You know that little girl punched my son at school 'cuz he tried to kiss her? Tell you what. Just say that the beam hit you twice and nearly blinded you. Don't forget the nearly blinded part. We'll get the police over there to do the same thing."
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
I couldn't find exactly what law he was charged with violating, but suspect it's 49 USC 49504 (search at http://uscode.house.gov/search/criteria.php), which was amended by the Patriot Act.
That section deals with "Interference with flight crew members and attendants," and reads:
So, is shining a light, especially one which meets US safety regulations (as all laser pointers must) at someone "assault?" How about a flashlight? Seems to me that is going to be quite hard to prove. Doesn't "assault" also require intent to do harm?
Certainly, a laser light show not deliberately made to point at an aircraft can't be considered "assault."
The FBI seems confused about the law (no surprise). In this (http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=385589) AP article, it states that "According to the FBI, the Patriot Act does not describe helicopters as "mass transportation vehicles." While the statement is technically true, it's also the case that the Patriot Act doesn't describe anything as "mass transportation vehicles," in fact the phrase never appears at all.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Fact,
This idiot bought a commercial grade laser, not a laser pinpointer.. nUmber, two when confronted blamed inon his daughter when questioned by FBI..
I woudl say that is enough illegal intent there to get him the full 25 years..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
So the pilot is going to sit there staring into the light whilst travelling at hundreds of miles an hour?
I can quite happily see this laser flashing the pilot, but nothing more than a few seconds at most, and even then, the pilot just needs to do something he has done all his life.
Blink.
We arent talking about military or medical lasers, this is a handheld pocket pointer.
liqbase
I just love the wording they chose to describe the stupidity... "hit by a laser beam". They make it seem like the dude was firing a laser gun at them and harming the helicopter.
doesnt sound that way to me at all, any more than "hit by a spotlight".
your attempt to assign malicious intent to the journalist failed utterly.
I wasn't commenting on the specific case.
So trying to blind pilots in order to cause their aircraft to crash will only net you 25 years?
Who said he was trying to blind pilots in order to crash the plane? How do you know he wasn't just playing with his new laser pointer, trying to see if he can see the reflection off the plane? Sure, it's not the smartest thing to do, but it isn't like trying to bring down an airliner, either. They will have a tough time proving that his intent was to blind the pilots.
When I got a laser pointer years ago, I'd shine it at the wall on the building across the street from me. I wanted to see how good it would project a beam. I was not trying to blow up the building with the laser or kill everyone inside of it.
I mean, if I were to shoot a SAM at an airliner and get caught, I think I'd probably be looking at more than 25 years even if it missed.
If you shot a SAM at an airliner, that would show malicious intent. For what other reason would you possess a surface to air missile? I'm not a lawyer but I'm pretty sure the law sees a laser pointer and a SAM in a different light, given their purposes and capabilities.
I think what we are seeing is what many predicted would happen- the government is using powers that it grabbed under the guise of "catching terrorists" against its own people. What used to be a simple criminal offense is now a major offense under new anti-terrorism laws. They are testing the waters trying to see how many things they can apply their new powers to. It seems that everything from smoking pot to teenagers playing with firecrackers to possessing a fake ID in order to get into bars will now have an anti-terrorism charge applied to it. The fact that these people aren't terrorists is irrelevant to a prosecutor trying to make a name for himself. The government has strong new powers and it will use them recklessly and mercilessly against its own people.
At first glance, hitting a plane with a laser pointer from that far away seems unlikely -- trying looking at an airplane cockpit through a handheld telescope and you'll see what I mean. Still, I guess enough people are trying it that some are getting (un)lucky. For example, in September the first officer on a Delta 737 on approach into Salt Lake City suffered retina damage from a laser:
1 35 6-3924r.htm
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20040928-11
I am an instrument rated private pilot myself, and I can attest that night vision is a very fragile thing -- even on a coupled instrument approach (ILS), pilots nearly always have to do the last 200 feet and touchdown manually. Just flashing a camera in the cockpit within a few minutes of touchdown would be very dangerous. Most of the laser problems so far are probably accidental, from laser light shows, etc. Rightly or wrongly, those may be banned within the next couple of years.
You evidently don't know dick about laser refraction, aiming, positioning, and angling. There is zero percent chance that even if the damn plane was still in the air that anyone could accurately point and shoot a laser through the air that would refract through the glass properly enough to cause any eyesight issues even if they were only 100' away from the plane.
Stupidity may have been a part of this, definitely. But criminal intent of downing a plane is laughable.
Go and actually try to maintain a steady laser pointing at a small target from any distance and you'll see how impossible blinding a pilot's eye through a moving plane window would be.
Not to mention the equipment to blind, only temporarily, a pilot in the perhaps millisecond that the angles would've been proper is so large and almost unattainable, that having such equipment would be almost impossible.
Think of it this way. The US government can't properly create a ground-based laser system to down missles or aircraft, with all of the resources and scientists at their disposal, but this guy is a threat to aircraft? Bullshit.
Even the feds reject that there was terroristic intent or threat but still, he's a terrorist prosecuted under the PATRIOT act? Once again, bullshit.
Power is inversely proportional to the square of the distance?
/. what in the HELL was I thinking...
Oh, yeah, this is
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
Sideshow Bob: Hah! Attempted murder? Now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel prize for attempted chemistry? Do they?
Anyways, I think the general idea was to shine the laser at a plane, so the worst case scenario would have been a pretty green dot on the hull. Pilots complaining about being blinded is just an accident.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
they will burn through stuff - they will burn through your clothes, plastic, cardboard (I don't know about metal) but certainly it's not one of those opening your car door things or a little red dot that your dog or cat chases around on the carpet - these types of things will probably burn a hole in your carpet. Pointing it at your skin would be incredibly painful, perhaps lead to some serious burns. It'll burn through your clothing.
It's more like shooting a BB gun up into the air just for fun. These types of lasers need to be thought of as a loaded gun (i.e. don't point them at people or anything else you wouldn't point a gun at). A cloud, a tree, a brick wall, freshly fallen snow, no harm done. These aren't any kind of expensive government things, they are apparently legal, but powerful. The idea is that you ought to treat it like a gun, not a toy. This probably has a lot to do with the "new-fangledness" of lasers, and perhaps a resistance to think that the science fiction stories would ever come true.
People just don't realize how powerful lasers can be, and that even legal ones you can buy for a couple hundred bucks can be very dangerous and need to be treated appropriately. We need to raise the awareness that they are dangerous.
Well, guess this is another victory for the terrorists then.
Everytime citicens lose a bit of their freedom, those who oppose this freedom win. 9/11 till now was a string of victories for the terrorists, even if the Government wants you to believe otherwise.
How much liberty and peronal freedom have you lost due to "laws against terror"?
A sad day for the USA.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
Mod parent up, stupidity/and-or/psychosis does not make him a terrorist.
No sig for the moment.
I am not a stupd adolescent white male.
That stands to be reasoned. The man in question, however, is not a stupid, adolescent, white male. He is a stupid, middle aged, white male.
2. How is this "online"?
Does someone print slashdot out for you, or do you read it over the intar-web with your compu-tar?
But since there have been many incidents, this IS happening to him. His situation is much worse than it would be because of the sins of others. He is a scapegoat. Scapegoats don't have to be the squeaky-clean innocents TV tells us they are.
Sometimes seventeen/Syllables aren't enough to/Express a complete
For those of you who seem to be missing the "rights" point of this article I'll point it out for you.
A man who was being criminally negligent and recklessly endagering other people's lives has been charged using your new anti-terror laws.
Do we need to recap what it means to be considered a terrorist in the USA these days?
Briefly: indefinite detention without charges, roaming wiretaps without cause beyond suspicion...secret searches...etc
Your "anti-terror" laws are now openly being used to prosecute regular criminals as well as "terrorists".
This wasn't a laser pointer. It was a commerical grade green laser used for testing fiber optics. Plus the guy came out multiple nights and pointed it planes/helicopters. He wasn't just goofing around with it one night and boom he's arrested.
The issue of lasers as a hazard to airborne navigation popped up as a pretty big issue in the laser display industry about a decade ago.
The issue from a pilot's point of view.
The SAE G-10T working group took the lead hammering it out; more here.
The resulting FAA regulation is Chapter 29 of FAA Order 7400.2E.
Also enjoy a brief video clip providing a pilot's eye view of a high-powered display laser illuminating a cockpit.
pants
A couple of these recent incidents the pilots complained of being temprarily blinded. Doesnt sound so innocent to me.
there are numerous incidents where airline pilots have had their eyesight temporarily or in some cases permanently damaged from lasers illuminating the cockpit.
the TSA has a long history of lots of documented cases of cockpits being hit by UV, IR, visible light lasers and the crew being blinded. long before all these fuckin' idiots started buying laser pointers off ebay and pointing them at aircraft.
it used to be relatively rare, but now you have every fucking moron in the country thinking its a good idea to blind pilots.
How did we get from the original article's
" temporarily distracting the pilots"
to your
"blinding the pilots and causing the plane to crash" ??
Distracting is a very generic term. Anything and everything can be "distracting". This article is distracting from other stuff I would be doing. Even if they just say a little green light out there and paid attention to it for a second they can say they were temporarily distracted by it.
I am absolutely tired of hearing all of this FUD about the USA PATRIOT Act. Have any of the people that are against this thing even read it? Or, is it that they do not comprehend it? Or, perhaps it is that they just want to lie and mislead of others about it? Surprisingly, the document is written in clear and consice English... and very comprehendable. Also, the document does not make new laws or precendents... is merely makes small modifications to existing laws.
The best thing about the USA PATRIOT Act, in contrast to other items, is that individual portions can be made invalid if found to be violating rights, and that the document stipulates that the Constitution of the USA should be used to determine anything questionable. Sounds like the same foresight that has let the Constitution itself transcend time.
The point is, this is all FUD. I do not care if I get modded down; it will just prove what ignorance exists (the people who mod me down will be objected to the USA PATRIOT Act and be offended by what I have stated, but they most likely have not read the document).
Politics, Life, and More on my Aspiring for the Future
You'll be surprised how much light is reflected by the little retrorefector beads in the license plate or steet sign. I've illuminated license plates 1/2 mile away with my cheapo red pointer. You might find it's actually quite hard to consistently "paint" a small, faraway target with a handheld pointer. After all, The Man has spent billions on "smart" weapons systems that do this, and they don't always work.
BTW DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK - Make sure there are no people around. Police officers (and anyone that might have a gun around) assume that if they see a red dot, someone is aiming a laser sight at them. You might get shot, and I won't send flowers to your funeral.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
> it isn't NEAR enough power to harm anyone's eyes.
The pilots are testifying that it impaired their ability to fly the plane. If you think they are committing perjury, please write an amicus curare brief expressing your opinion. Perhaps you can testify as an expert witness (a physisicist? and Opthamologist? a pilot?) and you can affect the outcome of the trial.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I mean, the guy could have caused the death of many people, caused any amount of destruction (if it crashed in a built up area), did it to a search helicopter who was looking for him, and did it all with a commercial grade laser. Either he's a sadist, terrorist, or complete moron. I think it's best that he be locked up, for stupidity if nothing else.
Okay. You say that like it's inherently bad. Oh, and BTW are you saying that you would openly support Kerry or Hilary knowing a) they voted for it, b) they didn't even read it? Quite the educated voter, eh?
Critical reading, Cynical reading, same difference ;)
require "something.clever";
The inverse square law only applies to point sources (i.e. those which radiate omnidirectionally).
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
All these news articles about a laser could blind a pilot and knock down a plane just incited some bored and stupid people to try to do this. Its like all those kids imitiating MTV Jackass.
altitude most certainly was mentioned in several articles about the incident.
you either didnt read them or you didnt google very well.
This is yet another example of a person introduced to a new technology who uses it unwisely. This will only become more common as more fools get newer, more powerful toys. Can you think of other examples? I'll bet you can.
I am picturing, not a laser into the pilot's eyes, but rather light diffusing laterally into the windscreen glass, impairing visibility. To me that sounds much more likely. If consumer power laser light can do that much damage at kilometers distant, I am now terribly afraid of the glimpse I get at the supermarket, past the mirror on the checkout stand!
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
this isn't even the best/most expensive one, but this is enough proof.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/lights/5a47/
And yes, I would tell anyone not to look into even a $1 cheapy red laser.
But theres a world of difference between shining a laser at effectively point blank range, and getting a glancing flash from somebody thousands of feet away moving at hundreds of miles an hour.
I've said this already, but if ANYONE had intent to damage or injure or cause any sort of problem, they would be shining lasers whilst stood at the end of the runway, or pointing at trucks on the motorway.
Not from your own backyard, and certainly not from thousands of feet.
liqbase
Actually, the 'terrorists' are also afraid of our own government. Their tactics suck as much as the governments, but frankly, they present much less of a threat to me personally.
Since terrorism is by definition the causing of terror or fear...
If the cheapo pointers that you can buy at Target for a few dollars are a risk then this really is a story. If you have spend several hundred dollars and buy from some sort of industrial supplier then it is not near as much of a story. I really wish such articles would give us the whole story. What is not really being made clear is if all the airplane incidents were done with cheap inexpensive laser pointers, or more expensive, more powerful lasers.
If the cheapo pointers that you can buy at Target for a few dollars are a risk then this really is a story. If you have to spend several hundred dollars and buy from some sort of industrial supplier then it is not near as much of a story.
What the heck was this guy doing pointing a laser at an airplane? Doesn't he know these things are DANGEROUS?
The whole 'lasers as weapons against planes' hysteria has to be one of the stupidest in memory. It just doesn't work. Salon.com's Patrick Smith, author of Ask the Pilot has written about this. Today an (almost) PhD. Physicist wrote in to support Mr. Smith. Text below for those of you who don't want to view the ad.
--- Jan. 5, 2005 |
I'm a few months away from receiving my Ph.D. in physics from a highly respected physics department. A good portion of my work has involved using various types of lasers.
To understand the improbability of a laser attack, consider the technical requirements involved. A weak laser beam can indeed blind a person. However, hitting a small target like an eye is very difficult over long distances. In order to have a high probability of success the terrorists would need to spread out the laser beam to fill the cockpit window. That isn't so difficult, but when you spread out a beam of light it becomes weaker, so you need a more powerful laser to compensate. Terrorists would need a large laser with a portable power supply and cooling system. Such systems are available, but they are bulky and expensive.
Next, temporary blindness is certainly dangerous. However, as Patrick Smith pointed out, blinding a pilot for a few seconds is not necessarily enough to bring down a plane. To bring down a plane the terrorists would have to inflict an injury that pilots can't recover from quickly. That requires either more power or a sustained exposure.
Sustained exposure requires the ability to track a plane. Tracking a moving target is certainly possible, but it would require skilled engineers to develop a system as well as money for parts. To reduce the necessary skill and expense, they would want to illuminate the plane from a point along the flight path. They would also want to do it from a high point that has a line of sight to the cockpit during takeoff or landing. However, takeoff and landing paths are generally chosen for a lack of tall buildings and large hills.
The location requirement is by no means an impossible resource constraint, but it does add to the difficulty of the task. It is interesting that the alleged attacks are happening around the country. Each site would need to be carefully selected, to ensure a good line of sight as well as easy access for bulky equipment and little scrutiny from law enforcement or other nosy observers.
Realistically, the complete weapon system would cost a hundred thousand dollars, require at least two people to operate, and would require considerable time to setup. Not to mention considerable time to dismantle before fleeing. (Unless they want to leave behind expensive equipment that authorities can trace.) And all of this would have to be done from one of the few hills or tall buildings in the flight path.
These are not impossible hurdles for a terrorist group, but most terrorist attacks against America in the past 10 years have involved fertilizer bombs, other improvised explosives, and boxcutter knives. If terrorist groups have money, technological savvy, and a network of operatives to scope out prime sites near airports around the United States, why not do something simple like make conventional explosives and plant them in public places?
Finally, the fact that the alleged incidents have involved visible light makes me even more convinced that these are not terrorist attacks. Lasers that emit visible light would be a poor choice for a weapon system. First of all, pilots would notice that the cockpit was being illuminated and they could cover or avert their eyes while waiting for the illumination to pass. Second, a powerful laser beam passing through the sky will scatter from dust and water droplets in the air, letting l
That money hungry government ran into MY laser beam I swear!
"this may sound like a stupid question, but how is it physicly possible to blind a pilot from the ground?"
I'm leaning to the theory that the diffuse beam hits the laminated cockpit glass on-axis, and diffuses through it, making enough of a glare problem to reduce visibility.
I didn't specialize in optics in physics, so I don't feel qualified to comment, but I just can't buy the theory that a consumer laser caused actual retina damage from kilometers away.
On the other hand, if the pilot is testifying that his vision was damaged by the laser, and if an opthamolgist corrorborates with expert testimony, and if there is some evidence that the New Jersey guy did this intentionally, well, he'd better get used to eating corned beef and working in a machine shop.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
That simplistic dualistic thinking drives really gets on my nerves.
'You don't like A therefore you must like B because the mainstream mindset defines A and B as opposites.'
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
the Demotivators 2004 calendar - "It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others". This poor guy is a loser and will probably be crucified. Let his experience be a warning to others.
You evidently don't know dick about laser refraction, aiming, positioning, and angling. There is zero percent chance that even if the damn plane was still in the air that anyone could accurately point and shoot a laser through the air that would refract through the glass properly enough to cause any eyesight issues even if they were only 100' away from the plane.
There have been incidents of people having their eyesight damaged momentarily due to lasing. Crews get briefed on lasing events everytime they're going into the AOR because it's happened to us before.
This guy should be prosecuted under the sensibly applicable laws ie for being an idiot with a low power laser. But as a terrorist ? hmmm. Some of the posts say that a jury will sort it out, except that as a terrorist he won't get one or his own choice of council or anything you expect. And even if he does theirs plenty of t word paranoia in the US to convict with. A recent news article here in Europe had a quote that we are in danger of "sleepwalking into a police state" What use are laws or protections from the state if it can void them all with the t word?
This is a complete abuse of power. Nobody believes these were terrorist acts nor do they believe this man is a terrorist so why bring him up on charges of terrorism? More to the point who is this law suppose to stop the terrorists? Does anyone believe that the terrorists would think twice about pointing one of these things at a plane because they might go to prison for 25 years? Hell make it 100 years we are talking about people who are ok with strapping a bomb to themselves and running into a crowd then setting off the bomb. This law is strictly for the purpose of violating the rights of american citizens. I wonder if I can get good pizza in Canada?
"At this distance laser beam will widen to the point where the cross-section of the beam will be around 1 meter"
Diffused into the laminated glass of the airplane cockpit, that would be just about right to obscure the visibility, wouldn't it?
I think people are jumping to the conclusion of "retina damage", even though that's not really the claim being made. Obscuring the pilot's visibility is.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
It's all in the punctuation.
what are you saying? that the feds shouldn't prosecute this guy for interfering with a flight crew and/or reckless endangerment? please clarify.
sulli
RTFJ.
"BTW it is also quite ridiculous how they frequently charge with 8 different things for a single crime, and they can all potentially stick and the penalties add up.They should only be able to charge with the most serious one the crime qualifies for."
You do not truly under the nature of the criminal system, the D.A., and kick-back funding plus political aspirations. They all combine to make a pretty effective machine that does not care about you as a person in the least bit.
It's a machine that works well for the purpose it is being used for; not for the reasons it was intended to address.
BSD is designed. Linux is grown. C++ libs
The US Army(apache pilots) in Kosovo as well as the Canadaian Coast Gaurd off the coast of Seattle have both reported cases of laser Hazing of their pilots in the past by the serbs using russian gear and in seattle the beams always seem to come from somewhere near a russian fishing boat...odd..google to your hearts content this threat has been real for several years.
"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.
. . .so if you're basing this off of what you've done with a red one, you might want to think again.
Oh, and I commonly use red, green and infrared lasers. I'm using red as my example because it the sort of hand held laser most other people can relate to, and the color/power of a laser are completely irrelvant to the issue of targeting.
Targeting, is, in fact, my primary preoccupation with lasers, and if you are hand holding you cannot reliably target a motionless and inanimate object the size of a retina only feet away from you. At twenty feet you'll need a mount to hit it for more than a quarter second at a time, and from 100 you'll need a shockproof mount of some sort, or someone walking across the floor might cause enough vibration to throw the beam off target.
An airplane is relatively easy to hit using the "firehose" method. And completely pointless for any reason other than goofing around.
KFG
Sure, you claim your only motivation was to show the audience something new. But people don't really need a group lesson and nifty pointers to learn where comet Machholz or the Andromeda Galaxy are- they should search them out on their own. And ditto with Slashdot. Did you think about what happens when millions of (in)coherent eyeballs go slamming against a website all at once? That site can go down for minutes or hours- customers could be bounced; money could be lost (and as time is money and everyone has only so much time, really, lives could be lost...).
In fact, anytime you bring too much attention to any one site or any one person you could be distracting them and keeping them from doing their necessary work. That's almost as bad as FOIA requests. If only the PATRIOT Act existed before Woodward and Bernstein: they'd have been lucky to only face 25 years. (sarcasm mode off)
All this laser pointer talk reminds me...
A work associate of mine was telling be about this art installation he once worked on. They took about 600 laser pointers and hung them from a ceiling (pointed down) on small springs in a smallish room. When people walked on the floor of the room above, it made the pointers jiggle all over the place in a not-so-quite random way and "draw" little designs on the floor.
Very interesting effect.
Sorry, I can't find any images of it, but it's cool to think about.
No, I didnt ask if thay had to put big signs everywhere telling the unwashed masses "DO NOT STARE INTO THE POINTERS, YOU STUPID FUCKTARDS."
you may now mod this out of existence
s'wut i sed.
There have been incidents of people having their eyesight damaged momentarily due to lasing. Crews get briefed on lasing events everytime they're going into the AOR because it's happened to us before.
:)
Oh, I completely understand that the capability for instantaneous blindness does exist, but it simply doesn't with the methods and equipment used.
Industrial lasers, putting out 1kW to Military Laser/ABL/SBL/THEL putting out between 100kW and 10MW could easily blind with a millisecond of exposure. That is if they don't burn right through your eyesockets...
Better suggest police helos don't fly over astronomy sites using adaptive optics - they shine lasers into the sky to allow their optics to compensate for atmospheric fluctuations.
Who else might that be a reference to? I met that old geezer back in the early 1970's when I went to some lectures at Tannen's in NYC. Also learned some stuff from Slydini, and met a real young, real obnoxious and very dorky David Copperfield (he's from NJ).
My Human Gets Me Blues.
The real question is, how do the bozos in charge think this kind of prosecution is going to make anybody safer? Won't it actually make most of us less safe because it takes resources away from bona fide terrorists? This all harkens back to the McCarthy witch hunt. While Crazy Joe located exactly zero (0) actual Russian agents, the real Russian agents were laughing themselves sick at how easy the guy was making it for them. In both cases, it was about political and monetary gain, not about the phony hunt for spies/terrorists.
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
Well, first off, it's a green laser which is orders of magnitude more powerful than the $5 red keychain laser I (and maybe you, too) have in my pocket.
The stories I've read didn't say, but if it were an instantaneous flash vs. something steady or repeated that would make a big difference as well.
I still think it would take some determination to actually flash a cockpit, even if the airport was nearby.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Most people would agree with you, there, but what's not obvious is that the defendant is guilty. It's possible that what he says is true, the he and his daughter were out pointing a laser at trees and the sky when the FBI swooped in.
There are two rights issues at stake here, libel and the banning of harmless devices. How would you like for your picture to be published by the USA Today online with a highly incriminating description? Fun, fun, fun online. Second, the whole thing may be a stupid stunt to get you to believe that laser pointers are dangerous and should be controlled like firearms. If distractions really were dangerous, there would be no billboards on public highways.
It's garbage like this that shows how sorry mainstream media is. It's slanted and poorly researched but it has power due to self advertisement and a perception of proper editing. Understanding these issues is a critical part of your ability to defend your rights online.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
And how much light energy could you possibly be receiving at that point? ( 1/4 inch / 30 feet ) ^ 2? That comes to 1/14400.
Even if you could see it I sincerely believe that would not be enough to blind you or even affect your vision, even it was a green laser, which is much more powerful than a red one (and more likely to harm the eye since it's more sensitive to that color).
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Those are off the menu as of now...
What is the minimum? I know it doesnt make for good news, but could probably help the discussion here. Is the minimum a fine?
Everybody seems all pissed that this guy is getting 25 years. No, actually he is not. He is has been arressted. The charge carries a maximum sentance of 25 years. There is still a trial, and then if found guilty will be sentanced. Besides the paranoid readers, who really thinks any judge will sentence him to the maximum? I would say there is a VERY good chance he would be sentenced to the maximum.
First, lasers do spread (although a lot less than incoherent light), so the dot several miles away is larger than the dot several feet away.
Second, aiming is not as difficult or impossible as you make out - -the plane is moving, but in a steady and not erratic way. He reportedly succeeded in temporarily "blinding" or at least dazzling the pilots fo the first plane. That was just with a hand held laser -- add a good mount and scope, it'll become trivial for any good rifleman. Remember, a good long distance rifleman can put a bullet in a 10" target at ranges of thousands of yards, and the bullet doesn't expand and is affected by wind. The laser is not significanlty affected by wind, and does expand.
Third, some kinds of lasers can blind you in microseconds, especially infrared lasers. They are well refracted by the human eye, and just being in the visible range unprotected will blind people literally before they know it. This is so bad that there are specific prohibitions in war crimes for using any type of laser to blind the enemy, and the spectrum on some weapons programs have been changed to prevent blinding from reflections (which would generate war crimes charges).
Fourth, you don't have to actually cause permanent blindness, just bounce enough light around the cockpit that the pilots cannot see well or focus consistently, and you have a good chance of crashing the plane.
Just because you aren't smart enough to figure out how to make something work doesn't mean that other people can't figure it out.
I don't have any great love for the government, and I'm against the Patriot act and especially misuse of it. But give credit where credit is due; they are right in this case. Even if this guy is merely an idiot -- he is a very dangerious idiot.
It looks like what he's saying is that this was an arrest for show that has little to do with fighting terrorism and much to do with making the FBI look good. We have the FBI themselves admitting that they do not think any of the suspects are terrorists, but simply think they are pranksters. I'd like to see them even prove the pranksters are guilty, and I doubt they care. What they did was fly around long enough to see a green flash, then they broke down doors.
It's possible, and we should presume, them man is innocent. He could have been doing just what he said he was doing, demonstrating a laser pointer to his daughter by pointing it at trees and sky. I doubt very much that he intended to blind air crew.
To prove guilt to me you would have to have recordings of green light from the same location for a long duration and from multiple locations. Anything else to me is an accident.
It would be reprehensible for the FBI to make a splash like this, and they will prosecute all the harder to avoid the embarrassment of losing.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Ironically, the higher power green monsters are promoted as sky pointers (visible beam and so on) for astronomy education.
You are so incredibly incorrect.
Senator Joe McCarthy absolutely DID identify active Soviet agents.
Among them was Alger Hiss.
The American Left and other pro-Communist groups claimed it was a bs witchhunt with no substance. They knew that wasn't true but was an effective political claim given the public's lack of familiarity with intelligence matters.
Read up on the Venona decrypts. I worked at the NSA when parts of these were declassified. I've seen some of the still classified documents. They're real, no question about it.
There is no factual basis, whatsoever, for your claim.
Several years ago while on a walk at night, I was hit with a laser in my eye. The laser was being used by kids a block away, and my eye hurt the rest of the night.
Having said that, I think 25 years is a bit long, but this idiot was obviously doing more than pointing out stars. I think arresting him to make a point to everybody else out there is a good idea.
Oops, butterfingers! Now you're a terrorist!
Who really knows what the guy was doing? Maybe he was pointing out stars to his kid and the airplane crossed the path of the beam. Can you track the cockpit window of a plane a few miles away moving over a hundred miles an hour? Sure, he was an idiot for pointing at the helicopter, too, but there's apparently no law against that.
And how likely is it that the type of handheld, battery powered laser pointer used at star parties can blind someone from a mile or more away? The beam would have diverged at least an inch, too much to cause retinal damage unless it was a pretty expensive, much less portable model. At best, the pilots were momentarily startled by the beam momentarily hitting the glazing of the window. They're lying or embellishing the story, the moron is pressured by the government to cop a plea (or we'll make life really difficult and expensive for you and your family) and everybody thinks the gummint is looking out for the real terrorists.
Someone should find out the specifics of the distance between the plane and the moron and do some tests before the "PATRIOT" act claims another victim.
Here come da fudge!
Someone intentionally tried to blind the pilot of an aircraft in an attempt to cause a crash. Why shouldn't the scumbag get a stiff prison sentence?
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Setting this specific case aside, is it possible that the reason we've heard of so many incidents lately is that green laser pointers have become more widely available? I suspect that many of these cases (again, this one aside) result from people pointing their green lasers in the sky randomly just to see the beam. I imagine that it can easily look like someone is shining a laser at you if the beam is visible. Add in the difficulty of determining distance when looking horizontally out of a cockpit window and you have the ingredients to fuel serious paranoia.
The worst your average consumer-level laser pointer can do is cause "flash blindness". That is, if you point the thing *directly* into your eye, at a closer distance, you could be blinded in that eye for ~10 minutes.
They aren't high powered enough to permanatly blind you. However, obviously, they are still dangerous to people driving vehicles and aircraft!
I was not saying that using lasers should be illegal. However to use your gun analogy, this situation relates to someone walking around in an airport pretending to have a gun in their pocket. Allthough essentially harmless, the security services have to check that your not actually a threat. This wastes time that they could have spent finding real terrorists, which I'm sure you would want them to be doing. In the end, I was just pointing out that the feds probably don't see the blinding of the pilot as a serious possibility, they just don't want people to be wasting their time, as they have to check every laser pointed at a building to see whether it is some terrorist with a missile.
Nothing is impossible. We just haven't quite worked out how to do it yet.
Maybe you should review the efffects of the RICO Act. It is a law passed 30 years ago to help prosecutors fight the Mafia and "Organized Crime".
Police raid homes at 3 AM and confiscating 'guilty' property without due process more than 10,000 times per year, making the RICO Act the primary source of 'extra' funds and equipment for local law enforcement today. Even if the address the snitch gave was mixed up by the police and they hit the wrong house they often still keep the booty. The RICO Act is a license to steal and it is making theives of a good many police. Even if the victims prove their innocence the police do not have to give the property back, and many do not.
It is as aggregious as the Patriot Act and no doubt the PA will be abused even more, especially by politicians who do not want opposing views to be heard, or police chiefs who don't like to hear their work being critcized.
Never!
This is slashdot.
I guess today is a passable day to die.
So now it's illegal to play Asteroids on the clouds?
I had a bear that was well behaved until he learned to use a lazer. Would've shot him but he fried my retinas every time I pulled out the Weatherby.
Did it ever occur to you that she might be jealous of your leatherman?
Actually many murderers get much less than 25 years.
The aircraft he is charged with disturbing are a helicopter and a cessna citiation. Neither have automatic landing capabilities. Most planes do not.
Because of a little thing called the Constitution. If you can muster enough support to (legally) overturn the 2nd Amendment, go right ahead. Until then, stop trying to do end runs around it. (http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/secondamendment2.htm)
Also, you'd better be straight in front of or behind that aircraft if you intend on shooting at it. Your lead from any kind of angle at a plane going more than 150mph would be - significant. Sure as hell wouldn't have much in common with where the laser beam was pointed.
KeS
It was mostly Hoover and the FBI who identified the "Communist sympathizers". McCarthy asked them for information. When McCarthy started attacking the president (Eisenhower) and the US Army, in 1954, Hoover felt he would be threatened and stopped providing information.
Joe just thought it was a good story and a way to get some attention. It WAS a circus, and a HUGE waste of resources.
Also, McCarthy was the fourth member in the history of the US Senate to be censured, in December of 1954.
Not in hollywood anymore - we sent his ass to Sacramento.
The US government taxes everybody who lives in the US, whether or not they are citizens (even illegal aliens pay sales tax).
First of all, sales tax is not a federally levied tax. It is decided upon and collected at the state level and lower (County or Municipality level for Local Option Sales Taxes and Hospitality Taxes).
Second of all, illegal aliens would have a tough time paying Federal taxes, given that they don't have a Social Security Number, which is how your income (and the various taxes you pay on it) are linked to your person. This is the main reason companies hiring illegal immigrants pay them under the table -- without a SSN, the company can't very well pay taxes on them. They also get the added "bonus" of cheap labor, as it's not like the laborer's can call the Employment Security Commission to complain about making $2/hr, now is it?
Despite conventional wisdom, I've discovered you can blame a guy for trying. It's called "attempted murder".
"There was a time when I was really looking forward to work in the US sometime in the future. Now I wouldn't live there even if I would get paid for doing so."
I'm sure that if you consider only the sensational press of any place, you would reach the same conclusion. Despite the bleak picture painted by the media, or the homogenized conception of the US you may have, the US is a very diverse place with a lot decent stuff going for it.
Despite what you may have read, not everybody is unemployed, obese, drives an SUV, or suicidal.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The US Constitution applies to US Citizens ONLY. Foreign nationals are granted NO constitutional protections, unless they become US Citizens.
Not true. Anyone in the US gets the same rights. The Constitution doesn't say anything about citizenship.
Well, folks can try breeding in prison, but since they usually segregate the sexes, attempts at breeding rarely work. Doesnt stop some folks from trying, though.
I don't know about Texas, though. Kindof like shutting the barn door after the horse is loose.
I think a fence around D.C. would be much more appropriate. That seems to be the soure of a lot of our problems and they already have the high crime rate.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
After all, they should have had a warning saying pointing the label at airplanes was illegal under the PATRIOT act.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Green beam is much better visible than red beam - even for the same energy. A harmless looking dim red can be more dangerous than blinding-bright green. I don't even mention infrared - is it less concentrated when it is invisible?
I'm sick and tired of this 'gotta send a message' shit that lawyers use to dole out disproportionate punishment.
As soon as anyone with a law degree uses the phrase 'gotta send a message' you know that any standards of justice, proportionality or even-handedness are about to be flushed down the toilet.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
...would use an infrared laser and remain undetected. The invisible beam would blind the pilot much easier as they wouldn't "see" a bright light and look away, only feel a burning after the damage had been done. Also a beam that couldn't be seen would be harder to track to the source. This guy was obviously an amateur.
-LRA
SAILING MISHAP
1 The grape is moving, a pilot does not sit motionless.
2. The perpetrator is firing from UNDER the plane.
3. The wider the spread, the more energy the laser will need to blind someone.
4. To be effective, it would need to blind both pilots at once, they will change course.
Not saying it can't be done, or that they shouldn't put away anyone how does this, but it is more difficult then you imply.
If this guy was just doing it to do it, it was not a terrorist act. Horrible, wrong, but not a terrorist act.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I just wish those little bastards that shine their laser pointers on the movie screens in the theater would get 25 years.
Ok, maybe just a good caning.
you don't put a victims family on the jury.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I would imagine it's the wattage of the laser that counts. For the ditty little handhelds 3mW of power is still 3mW of power (yes i know this one is a bit more powerfull than that).
;-)
Regardless of the colour of the light the energy is still *there* but just in a slightly different wavelength.
Then again i know 3/5th's of fuck all about this optical stuff but figured i'd give my useless opinion like the rest of the mob.
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know when your gonna get food poisoning.
"What if, at the very moment he was shining his laser at the constellation of Leo, a burst of wind turbulence took the pilots by surprise and caused the plane to careen out of the sky.
:)
I think both are equally likely."
Actually, as turbulence HAS caused crashes and is often considered an Act of God, I say we should arrest God for terrorism
because you are too stupid to own one.
Do you really think it was the same power as the one used on the plane?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
YOu are quite right, since he's probably not part of a terrorist gorup, it wasn't terrorism. Just attempted mass murder.
Further, I dunno if you've read the article, but both the pilot and copilot of the commercial airplane *were* blinded, momentarily.
Which is why a police helicopter was in the neighborhood a few days later, looking for the source of the beam... And geez, if the moron did not try to blind them too, which is how they found him.
Claude Angers
I mean, nobody has ever brought down a plane with a laser pointer.
I mean, COME ON
When will the paranoia stop? I can't bear it anymore.
From reading the article it apears that he actually was painting the police helicopter that was looking for the source. This does not sound like a case of "oops I waved my laser in the air."
Or people that just want other people's stuff.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
and this is not an abstract mildly interesting issue of civil rights to me.
First of all, let me say that all of the above posters who wonder "what the big deal is of a laser hitting the bottom of a plane when the cockpit window is on top" are uninformed. As a pilot on final approach, the only direction I cannot see is directly behind or directly under me, but I continuously scan every other segment of the sky. Especially at night I have to let my eyes pause for a moment on each section in order to discern relative motion, as a quick scan would not allow me to detect the characteristic red/green/white nav lights + strobe of a moving aircraft above the many lights (both stationary of all color, flashing, and more slowly moving ground vehicle) below the aircraft. So a fair amount of our time on final approach is spent gazing downward, since while descending that part of the sky represents the largest risk of collision hazard. This attentive watchfulness is of course an important part of what we do, and if while looking for aircraft below us both pilots are "temporarily blinded" or worse (depending on the type of laser used) we are obviously in a very scary situation.
Secondly, this idea that pilots fly the approach on autopilot is misinformed. Yes, cruise flight and the initial segment of the approach are usually (but by no means always) performed with the assistance of an autopilot. However, the autopilot is routinely and often given manual commands in a terminal environment to comply with air traffic control instructions all the way up to the very last final intercept of the glideslope. So pilot incapacitation during any descending maneuver before that final segment poses a very real threat to people on the ground below the aircraft's path (a much larger area than the airport proper). Also, with the exception of some large airliners and very few corporate aircraft, most jets do not have autopilots approved for autolandings, so at some point during the last 200 to 1000 feet the pilot will hand fly the plane, adjusting the pitch attitude and simultaneously reducing thrust to make a smooth landing flare. This is not something I want to feel my way through without sight.
There are many reasons to not use autopilot, some flights are also operational line checks where the pilot in command is being evaluated by a check airman who expects them to hand fly the plane to demonstrate proficiency. I often fly by hand both to keep my skills sharp as well as because it is enjoyable to have the responsiveness of a very powerful jet airplane at my fingers. There is satisfaction in rolling the plane onto a perfectly aligned final approach without the autopilot's assistance.
As a group, professional pilot's take the safety of our passengers very seriously. We attend recurrent training continuously throughout our careers, and simulate almost every conceivable emergency that it is possible to contend with. However, some emergencies elude constructing nice pat standard operating procedures to deal with. Obviously if an aircraft comes apart in flight then all you can do is follow the arc of the individual parts toward the ground below. Likewise, becoming blind is a situation that we just can't train for.
Finally, I've also noticed some posts recommending using some sort of film on the windshield that would protect the pilots. This is unlikely to happen soon for several reasons. I would love to hear that such a material exists that is effective over the many frequency ranges that could conceivably be used in a laser. But even if it did exist, each aircraft has a slightly different type of construction and would require a huge amount of research and development. The price would be astronomical. As an example, the windshield of a Learjet is nearly an inch thick, is comprised of multiple layers of various materials (including different types of plastic and acrylic and a layer of gold used to heat the windshield) which have been thoroughly tested for strength, compatibil
How do we know it's true?
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
I'll appeal to your obvious hot-button by noting that the loss of Texas makes the country even more reliant on foreign oil. I'm sure you'll agree we'd have to invade another country to make up for the loss.
Then of course there's the matter of Mission Control. but I guess you'd be OK with scapping the space program and all.
Or all the farmland that grows food, but then I suppose you thrive on good feelings from others.
Or the massive amount of international travel and goods that go through Texas, but I guess you'd rather just spend a few billion to move all that traffic to someplace like New Orleans where it can get washed away by the next major hurricane.
Or the vast electronics industry there. But I guess you'd rather go live in a cave and commune with endangerd bunnies.
I'm from Colorado, and if anyone has the right to dislike Texans it's me. You don't even rate man so give up your irrational hatred. Just repeat these words: "The map was purple". Remember that you are putting the hate down on people that AGREE with you (or used to before you decided they were worthless scum), which is really about as stupid as you can get.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's still being debated.
I've seen some of the still classified documents. They're real, no question about it.
Ok sure, don't be offended when I don't take your word for it.
There is no factual basis, whatsoever, for your claim.
There are is no factual basis for your claims either. Nothing that can be proved.
Time makes more converts than reason
Yes we all know what 25 years means. Heck a lot of posters here may not have been alive that long...
Gettting a big powerful laser, setting it up as a toy, and shinging it on planes - then lying to the FBI. All those point to a tremendous lack of judgement that you have to wonder about extending to other areas of life.
ALSO consider the amount of fear things like this have put into people. People get freaked out about stuff like this, a lot of the general populace would probably not get on a plane if you mentioned that you knew someone was going to shine a laser into it for a few seconds on landing.
So yes, 25 years does not sound too unreasonable given the total lack of judgement, and lack of concern for other peoples feelings. I'd feel the same way about a similar sentance for spammers.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Exactly...I was simply pointing out that if they're silly enough to ban these lasers because of something that has only a potential to be harmful. I wasn't trying to say "ban guns". Not in the least.
Was only saying...so, they ban lasers. Yet anyone with a gun could do much more damage if they really wanted to. I mean, if someone REALLY wanted to bring down a plane with a rifle, they could. Then what will we do? Nothing of course. And you're right, you'd have to muster enough support to overturn the 2nd Amendment. Would someone bringing down an airliner with a gun bought at Walmart do that? Who knows. Personally, I don't have a issue with owning guns...OR lasers for that matter. I just have issues with people wanting to ban things..yet keep other things. Hypocrites and such.
Stop trying to ban everything under the sun because it "might" be used as a weapon. What's next? Banning pens on airplanes? I mean, let's think about it...you could kill someone with a pen if you REALLY wanted that person dead. BAN THE PENS! HOw about those forks used in the meals on airliners...I'm sure you could jam that into someones neck and hit a major artery. BAN THE PLASTIC FORKS!
SO you see, I was trying (and I guess failing) to point out how silly banning these lasers would be.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
This is relatively new. Until the 1990s, it was safe to talk to the FBI. But it no longer is.
So just keep insisting that you want your lawyer present. And you have to be very clear about it. Courts have held that "I think I should talk to a lawyer" is not sufficient to invoke the 6th amendment right to counsel. You have to make an unambiguous statement.
That's supposed to stop interrogation, but it doesn't always. Eventually, if you keep insisting, they usually give up and let you talk to a lawyer.
Critical reading would require there to be information to back up the inferences, for example of neighbors or the man himself saying so or inconsistencies in the accounts. In addition, to make the inferences you made one would need to have first hand (or similar level) knowledge of the behavior of pilots in such situations.
Critical reading would require there to be information to back up the inferences
That's under editorial license and selective reporting. It never would've made the headlines if it weren't reported to paint the guy in a bad light now would it?
Watching the mod points stack up, none of you could ever work at Google. You're incapable of thinking outside the box.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
This is not about making people safer. It's about testing how far our powers go after their dramatic expansion under the Patriot Act.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-FL
You know you can buy these lasers on ThinkGeek, don't you?
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/lights/5a47/
DAILY ROTATION
And while Banach was subjected to the intense scrutiny of an FBI lie-detector tests, the pilots weren't. Why should we believe the pilots?
Why wouldn't you? What would they have to gain from lying - and remember there are multiple pilots reporting the same kind of thing. Furthermore remember that the pilots statement came BEFORE they found this guys, so it's not like the pressure came from that angle to make this up. Banach was the one that said he shined the light at a jet, that accusation DID NOT come from the pilots report - it just backs up what they said!
Also, why arbitrarily trust lie detector tests? I don't. I don't see why that would "force" you to confess to something you did not do.
I've been wondering about the police helicopter. Apparently the cops and the pilot went out to try to find the source of the light. Wouldn't that be done in the daytime? Isn't it also kinda tough to see a dot of light on the outside of a helicopter if you're inside the copter?
Flip your statement around. think how powerful the light had to be to see it during the daytime! (If that was when they were out, I believe it was at night though) As others have said this was not a laser pointer from WalMart.
Also if you look at a copter (especially a police copter) a lot of the copter is windows so it would be quite easy to see a dot aimed at you unless you were directly above it.
You also conveniently ignored the fact of a laser being seen in a jetliner requires it to move with the jetliner, which backs up the whole "specifically pointed at a plane" thing that he confessed to. Did I mention he confessed? I think that's just a little important.
There's too much here that doesn't add up. I think this is a case of "we saw the beam of light in the sky and assumed it was aimed at us".
There is NOTHING that does not point to this being the truth. Why do you think they would set up some random guy? And remember (again) that he confessed! It's not like they are pinning the jet thing on him from some sketchy evidence. The pilots report just lets them know which jet he actually used the light on. If he were innocent do you not think his lawyer might have mentioned that? Nope, instead she just says his punishment is unfair given what he did. When everyone, including the accused, agrees with the charges and you don't than I fail to see how you can arrive at the conclusion the charges are wrong.
You have not exercised a single moment of critical or individual thought. You have reacted in a fashion that one would expect from doing nothing more than reading the articles.
And all you've done is thicken the cloud of paranoia that surrounds you. You failed to address a single one of my points, instead continuing single-mindedly down the track that you will not deviate from. That sir is not any kind of reason or critical thought at work.
I said nothing which was anti-government. The government is free to go arrest people and subject them to lie-detector questioning if it's plausible that the accusers aren't exaggerating the story or flat out making it up. In all fairness, if you want to strap me to a lie detector, then your accusation better have been made under lie detector questioning first.
In what way is accusing them of fabricating witnesses and setting them up not anti-government? I guess you could just say anti-law enforcement, my apologies for incorrectly noting the nature of your personal boogeyman.
You're not paranoid when they're really out to get you. But sometimes (perhaps even often) they REALLY ARE NOT OUT TO GET YOU. I don't see why you can't accept the reality of a police investigation actally coming up with some results, especially when the suspect sends them a beacon and then confesses. Do you believe they tortured the confession from him? Think carefully before you answer, for the answer you give to that question wil linger and bee seen by others.
There are plenty of other things in this world that are genuine coverups, you cheapen them all by crying foul in a case so clear-cut.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Charges and trial are now completely optional; you can be imprisoned FOR LIFE without them. Oh, and torture comes free with the package: the terrible weight of the Geneva Convention, resolutions against Torture, etc, have been lifted from your friendly hotelier.
you had me at #!
But a gun is indeed a tool. Just because you don't like what that tool is intended to do doesn't mean that it isn't a tool.
I don't like guns -- in fact, my instinct is to agree with you about abolishing guns. Guns disgust me. I don't even like being near police officers, knowing that they are carrying a lethal and destructive tool. But you know what? It's no more my place to tell gun nuts that they're wrong than it's their place to tell me that I can't encrypt my mash notes to my girlfriend.
Guns do have recreational uses, and there's nothing that makes hunting any worse than any other form of animal killing. Meat from wild animals is actually the ultimate cruelty-free food. Countless animals are killed whenever a field is plowed or threshed, whereas a single moose or deer can feel a number of people.
You are an idiot.
If you've ever worked around lasers, you don't have to point the beam directly into an eye to get damage. There's this thing called scattering, and there is this other thing called reflection. Both are possible in an airplane cockpit.
You don't have to hold the beam on the cockpit window and aim for the pilots' eyes. You just need to strafe it across the window a few times. The window will reflect some of the light, trap some of the light and scatter it in the glass, and transmit some of the light. All you need is some transmitted light to bounce around in the cockpit and you've at least temporarily blinded the pilots.
And finally, since your statements in your post betray the fact that you DO NOT work around lasers, and have no idea of how dangerous they are to human eyes, your arguments are bullshit. As for a laser system that can down targets (aircraft and missiles) look at MTHEL, the Army's high energy DF laser in New Mexico. That one HAS downed incoming missiles and can down aircraft.
I know of one person where I work that was blinded by a targeting laser that is used to align another laser. This laser was akin to a HE-Ne laser that you can buy from radio shack for 10 bucks. The guy suffered permanent retinal damage, and this is from a scattered beam that got out of it's containment tube and bounced off a wrench. And the guy wasn't wearing his eye protection, so he's also a dumbass, but his exposure was on the order of a millisecond of scattered laser light.
Now, if only we can get murderers, rapists, and child molesters this kind of sentence?
My first thought on seeing the current article was that the guy reads /. and was testing some of the theories thrown around here in the very recent past. We've been talking about whether or not you can intentionally get a laser dot into the cockpit of a passing/landing plane. And now this all of a sudden, mentioned along with a rash of lasers being pointed at planes around the country. What, have we Slashdotted the sky now?
On any of the FDA-classed devices below Class 3B, the brain and eyelid react fast enough to prevent eye damage from point-blank range.
By definition 3B or above means the brain/eyelid reaction time is too slow and the eye can't protect itself. 4 means eye/skin/fire danger.
Even a class 4 laser would be unlikely to do anything except be annoying at a couple miles, as everyone has pointed out.
Oh, also- do you know how hard it would be to keep a laser trained on a plane at that distance by hand? Nearly impossible. I strongly suspect that either he or his daughter really WERE just waving it around...and if the class of the device is low enough, he's perfectly within legal FAA limits; only lasers over a certain class being operated outdoors require notifying the FAA.
Please help metamoderate.
If you're an anti-terrorism agent of some kind, and you're sent to investigate green lasers pointing at airplanes, which mode of thinking will make you feel better?
- "Terrorism is dangerous and an act of terrorism could kill many people. My very important job is to prevent that, and I want to spend as much time as possible working on the important stuff. We've spent days tracking down a father who was showing his kid how nifty lasers can be. He's been embarrassed in the news for being an idiot and in for some community service, but, boy, I'm not going to get those hours back, what a waste of time." or
- "...We've spent days tracking down a father who was showing his kid how nifty lasers can be. This has to be very important, else I wouldn't have spent all those hours working on this. I caught you and you are going down, mr. terrorist hiding as a techie guy. Oh, you're not a terrorist? Well, I caught you and you are going down, mr. example-to-terrorists hiding as a techie guy."
Just in general people don't like admitting that they've put a lot of time and energy into something that didn't help their main mission. Very hard to get people to believe that old statement of economists: "Sunk costs are irrelevant." Much easier on the ego to think that "What I'm doing *must* be important and relevant, else why would I be doing it?"And so specifically if legislative bodies threw in DOS attacks, taking pictures of bridges, paying train tix with cash, or failing to know all the lyrics to 'God Bless the USA' into the PATRIOT Act, it *must* be because those are all related to terrorism, not because the FBI hornswoggled them into shoehorning 20 years worth of Xmas wish-lists into the Act during a month of extreme grief and emotion. Nope.
And so if the TSA puts every every Carlos Garcia, John Lewis and David Nelson on the Watch-List it *must* be worth doing, those repeated time-consuming checks on all 10 thousand of them each time they fly rather than doing the actual random checks that keep us safer.
If you're doing important anti-terrorism work then it just isn't possible that you'll get side-tracked. (which is why, had the PATRIOT Act existed in the 20th century, Tesla, the "October Sky" rocketeer, and pretty much every member of pyrotechnics guilds and model rocket clubs would have ended up with SSSS's on their plane tix and plenty of long, recorded talks with the local constabulary. Especially Tesla- scaring the neighbors like that, potentially taking down the grid, born in a foreign country. How'd he even get in? Thank goodness now we're keeping out all those foreign engineering grad students: maybe our science and economy will suffer, but we'll feel safer.)
Any bets on if there will be a special exemption for lasers used as gun aiming devices?
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
Well, it looks like the 'Justice' system is no longer about 'innocent until proven guilty.' In fact, it's looking more like guilty of your crime, and several others, until who-knows-when. You're going to have to prove there was malicious intent to lock this guy up. And even then, not the PATRIOT act, oh please not the PATRIOT act. Like was said, criminal mischief would be more accurate. His intent seems noncriminal, just stupid, shining a laser on aircraft. Well, if stupidity were a crime, much of the country could be locked up. There was a definite danger, as is often the effect of stupidity, but already on this board I've seen this guy labeled as an attempted murderer. That's a possibility. But it seems a little harsh to judge his intent without having any idea what it actually was, or even an examination. That sort of judgement sounds vaguely like the press rap and charges filed against him. This seems to fall more into the 'don't fire guns into the air' that gets spread around at New Year's and such. You shouldn't have to tell anybody. But people are stupid, so you do. Frankly, the danger posed by guns in the air seems to supercede the danger of lasers in the air, what with decompression, fuel tanks, etc. Ahh, witch-hunting. We are now a much more paranoid nation. I may have said too much, and I meant no offense, but maybe it will be the Thought Police at my door next. Terrorist-sympathetic message board postings will not be tolerated by the regime!
"Ok, all you're allowed to do is go to work, watch TV and shop. Nothing else." "Can I go to the bathroom?"
Your green laser will not work on the blue police.
You are promptly shot for twenty-five damage with the additional penalty of a "pound-me-in-the-ass state prison" takced on.
You are demoted to Red and lose one clone from your six-pack.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
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.
There is no evidence that he was using a "high-powered laser". Even if he had, for commonly available high-powered lasers, it is highly implausible that it would have injured or even dazzled the pilot.
Yes, and if the government starts criminalizing stupid but harmless behavior, that is cause for concern.
It is particularly ironic that the guy was also subjected to a lie detector test. It seems like scientific illiteracy is rampant in the legal system.
It's a frickin' laser beam. It can blind people.
No, it can't.
It is actually a really dangerous choice in toys.
No, it isn't.
Could someone explain to me what use a laser would be in pointing out stars to his daughter? That was one of the things he said he was doing with it, but I fail to see what the laser would reflect off of that would make it useful.
The airplane, of course. Duh!
Be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker. JG Ballard
I'm sorry. (Sorry that you are a whining faggot hippie.)
But here's the thing: I'm a gun-loving, SUV-driving, animal killing/eating, flag-waving, hot-babe-appreciating capitalist. You seem to be having trouble mustering a clear picture of things, or working up better vocabulary with which to express it.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Nah, along with the convicts, well take all the people who own SUV's but never drive them out of the city and put them in Texas. We'll slash our dependence on foriegn oil AND get rid of thousands of yuppie urban cowboys!
Then of course there's the matter of Mission Control. but I guess you'd be OK with scapping the space program and all.
We'd still have Florida.
Or all the farmland that grows food, but then I suppose you thrive on good feelings from others.
Huh? CA has the most agriculture. We could probably feed the entire country by the food grown in California, Alaska and the Dakotas.
Or the massive amount of international travel and goods that go through Texas, but I guess you'd rather just spend a few billion to move all that traffic to someplace like New Orleans where it can get washed away by the next major hurricane.
Nah, we'll just build the superhighway in some state that isn't to chickenshit to actually use income taxes to pay for stuff.
Or the vast electronics industry there.
We'd still have CA.
I'm from Colorado, and if anyone has the right to dislike Texans it's me.
Why's that? My reason for hating Texas is because it seems to produce more than the average number of assholes, and because one of my best friends is from Texas, so I knock it every chance I get when he's in earshot. Like, the time he was wondering why lost his Internet access in his apartment:
Me to Dan (the Texan): "Ahh, the reach-around, a Texan specialty"
I'm with ya on that this is overkill, but the laser IS a threat to the air crew.
Have you ever been hit squarely in the eyes w/a laser pointer? I have, at a small concert (some jerk on the other side of the stage was shining it across and kept hitting me). It is temporarily blinding. I didn't expect it the first time and all I knew was that my world went bright red and I was disoriented, almost fell.
It is NOT a pleasant experience, and I'd hate to have it happen while driving, much less flying.
Taken to an extreme: There is a new prisoner control tech that is basically a super-laser flashlight (green in this case) that overwhelms the senses and makes the prisoner fall down. Not nice, but better than a baton.
Was the guy lighting up the plane to guide a missle? No.
Did the pilot know if someone was attempting to blind him? No.
Did the pilot know if a laser sighted pistol was being aimed at him? No.
The last 2 are reasonable assumptions, and reason enough to consider the plane in danger.
The guy was stupid and doesn't deserve to lose 1/2 his life for this stunt, but he did a dangerous and threatening thing and should be punished.
Doing it again to the police chopper? That was just dumb.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
But think again: is it really a story about laser beams, or even about the right to be a complete jackass? Or rather about a blatant abuse of PATRIOT act?
IMHO the key point in this story is the misuse of PATRIOT act, and I'm affraid that such misuse won't take long before happening online.
So maybe we should stop with the "WTF does this story do in YRO?"...
...while in the practice area with a student. We were doing VOR intercepts when the entire cockpit became illuminated in white light.
It wasn't immediately obvious where the light came from; up, down, behind, etc. My first reaction, of course, was that being several thousand feet in the air, it must be another airplane. The thing is, without knowing where the source was, I couldn't tell what the proper evasive action was. I had no choice but to hold straight and level while I frantically looked around, half-expecting to get hit by another airplane. It only took perhaps a second or two to realize what was happening, and to locate the source on the ground; but it seemed like a lifetime waiting for our lives to end in a mid-air collision.
I didn't have the luxury of the FBI being interested. For that matter, the police helicopter that was operating over town wasn't even interested.
I don't know about 25 years; but this guy needs to be taught a lesson, as do others like him.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
The passive form of threat... "I am threatened" is not the same as the active form of threat "He is threatening me."
I consider being painted late at night walking through the park an active threat, same as if I was being mugged by a guy carrying what he implies to be a handgun but is really a hairbrush in the pocket.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
Oh, and you wear the Anonymous Coward label well. Very sporty!
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Laser safety goggles have been around for years. Have a couple in each cockpit. With their financial problems right now, the airlines will probably ask the government to supply them.
I didn't follow the whole Petersen case here in CA, but without regard to where you stand on abortion issues; how the hell can you have laws that simultaneously permit third-trimester abortions AND allow murder charges to be placed against an unborn fetus?! I gotta get out of this place.
KeS
> There is no dispute over the fact that it was an ordinary laser pointer
> involved. I'm not sure what sort of "powerful" laser pointer you have in
> mind. Go down to Best Buy and try to buy one of these "powerful" pointers.
>
> Let us presume, however, that you have somehow managed to get a "powerful"
> pointer and a monocular. You will still be unable to do anything more that
> pass the beam over the retina of a motionless man 20 feet away by "blind"
> luck, and only for a fraction of a second at a time. The feat has nothing to
> do with the power of the laser or any possible optical magnification.
I can buy a 47mW green laser pointer on ebay.
I can find a 50mW one or even a 190mW one.
Note that these class IIIb lasers that *will* damage the eye faster than the blink reflex kicks in (read: fraction of a second) on a "sweep" -- no monocular required; and can even cause damage if viewed indirectly (reflected).
If I was the pilot, I would want a few minute alone in the room with the guy to help him mend his foolish ways, thats for sure. ...
I think some level of laser light filtration should be considered cockpit windows maybe, or for pilot eye-wear. Obviously not all spectrums can be blocked at once, but maybe, the frequencies most likely to be used should be selected. With temporary filters that slide in place for near ground operations like take off and landing.
Society is an animal that survives on trust. Trust of itself not to kill itself. If it cannot trust itself, it will guard itself too vigorously, strangling itself, or it will kill itself because it cannot be trusted to not attack itself.
most laser-guided weapons use IR lasers, anyway. They're cheaper to make for the amount of power needed to work over the 5-10 mile span they must traverse, and IR gets absorbed the least by the atmosphere (blue gets scattered much more, so invisible UV lasers are out of the question if you need accuracy)
You'd be dumb to use a visible laser for missile guidance, anyway. any human in the vicinity would be able to follow the beam back to its source with their plain eyesight.
I don't believe the pilots ever really felt they were in danger. While it is annoying, distracting, and wreckless it was just a moron screwing around with a laser pointer, not an act of terrorism, and the government knows this. They obviously were not really threatened by it. If they were, they wouldn't have sent another aircraft to hover around in the same place looking for him. If a guy was shooting off stinger missles you wouldn't send a helicopter to float around in the area. You'd send in someone by ground. They were just pissed off and they wanted to set an example to the hundreds of people who do this a year. There was never an actual feeling of a threat. I think he should have some punishment, but they need to keep it in context. 10 years and 250 million seems excessive for a prank.
Whoa, slow down there, cowboy!
I believe the GP's point was that guns are machines designed for the sole purpose of killing people. Now, mastering a weapon (be it a gun or a samurai sword) is a typical form of rewarding recreation in many societies, and will remain so, and I support that (in fact, I'm against gun control). But the fact remains that weapons are designed for killing people (or at least, living things).
Laser pointers, on the other hand, are not designed for killing people (and neither is your car). They both have the capacity to kill people -- but then as was demonstrated in the John Waters classic, "Serial Mom", you could kill someone with a leg of mutton, too.
There's so much anti-gun rhetoric these days that for those of us that support the second amendment it's tempting to read hysterical gun-phobia into everything that doesn't explicitly support our right to bear arms. But let's not go too far.
Fact: guns are designed to kill people. This does not make them, as tools, responsible for the act of killing -- the old adage about guns not killing people is completely true. But guns do little other than shoot at things for the purpose of killing something. If you use them for target practice or skeet shooting, that's great. But these are essentially just training exercises so that you can use them more effectively at what they're designed to do. Those exercises just happen to be fun, more fun in fact than actually shooting living things, in most cases.
Laser pointers are different because, like cars, killing things isn't even their intended use. The GP was pointing out the irony here -- we won't outlaw things expressly designed to kill, but will discuss outlawing things that aren't, but might just be used that way, in an extremely inprobable situation, by some nut.
I don't read his post as suggesting we ought to outlaw guns, or that gun laws are stupid. Rather, I see him as pointing out that outlawing laser pointers is stupid. And I agree with him.
Just curoius becuase no one else has asked this question, how can a laser from the ground blind a pilot through the windsheild? The physics seem off to me, I can beleive a helicopter would spot a laser, but a plane? The guy would be beaming at the bottom of the aircraft right?
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever."
You have no problem with that?
Anyway, since then it HAS indeed been examined, and you'll pardon me if I don't share your rosy assessment.
As for being easy to read. . . The USA PATRIOT Act may indeed be written in "clear and concise English", but it is nonetheless damned hard to work through as it constantly references other laws and statutes to which it makes dozens of wording changes and amendments. --And you'll pardon me again if I don't share your feeling that "small modifications" to existing laws are no big deal. In law, it's all about the wording; the difference between words can kill a man or set him free.
--Indeed, in order to make sense of the PATRIOT Act, one has to have numerous other legal documents available, and more importantly, understand in context those other laws which are being altered. Reading the Act is by no means an easy task, and that you describe it as such is just plain baffling.
--And beyond all of that, one of my favorite parts is how the Sunset clause (section 224) includes a whole string of exceptions which leave a variety of those amendments snuggly in place after the December 2005 cancel date.
The fact of the matter is that a large amount of American law has been significantly altered without any review. This kind of law-making should never be done without scrutiny or debate. --At least not in a country claiming to be democratic. But instead it was deliberately pulled off during a time of high emotion; deliberately made unavailable for proper readings.
I have a problem with that, and if you don't, then you are the last one who should be calling anybody ignorant.
-FL
Okay. Thank-you for posting, "uberskyjock". I'll try not to waste your time.
Your notes, while fascinating and informative, have little bearing on the fact that somebody has been arrested and threatened with 25 years imprisonment for posing a non-threat.
Everybody is needlessly scared, the media is doing an irresponsible over-hype job and the authorities are over-reacting. --Yes, playing with lasers and airplanes is rationally arguable as being similar to joking about bombs in an airport, but that has little to do with what this is really all about. . . That is, the maintaining and increasing of the fear levels across the U.S. populace.
It should be remembered that movements toward stricter laws are always rationally arguable, but the laws once made are nearly always irreversible.
A little care is needed here.
-FL
25 years though. come on. i bet he gets less. a stiff fine would do, maybe a year or two with it.
I see no reason to attempt further reason. If he had a fixed laser the jet would (or small plane) never have seen it as I said repeatetly. the idea that somehow two pilots had a grudge against some guy in a suburb...
in your haste to reach for any solution which fits your mental model, you ignore Occams Razor. Keep hunting, I'm sure you'll find what you're looking for. You always do.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Actually I have been to New York. Really I have nothing against it, I just simply wish to point out the fallacies of people who seem to hate Texas so much just because it's a bit redder shade of purple. And New York is an easy alternative, primarily because of the movie. And of course the people that are raging against Texas would be the ones it would tweak most to suggest using New York instead... so fram that standpoint it's a choice of levity (for me).
New York does have some kind of scary areas though, you have to admit. I lived in Houston for a while and although it has some pretty bad areas too, I'd have to say there are areas of New York from my wanderings there that I'd less rather be in than the bits of Houston that were not very safe.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Pull all sorts of conjecture about possible mistakes I could make from wherever.
We are talking in both cases about repeated acts, not just one time mistakes. And of course the repercussions of an action you take. I actually think pointing a laser at a helicopter is a lot more serious deal as it requires more pilot intervention to keep under control and land safely.
Also, I disagree that either are really cases of "fucking up". Both are acts done knowingly which makes them worse. People do not accidentally send spam that they profit by; you do not accidentally put a very powerful laser outside and start shining it on things passing by in the sky.
The guy has a kid so of course there is some cause for compassion. But again this is a really stupid act and requires some level of punishment. Instead of critizing me, offer some constructive suggestion as to what YOU think is an appropriate level of punishment and why.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Lightning strikes happen all the time but let's not confuse the issue.
It might have taken a deliberate effort to cause the first event. That's not what was chased, however.
The chances of being hit by a random beam when you are flying a helicopter looking for beams over a heavily populated area might be better than you think. If the helicopter follows the first flash, the odds only get better. They might be as good as your chances of chasing actual gunfire. Where my mom used to live, you could hear the shots all night long.
We shall see what happened later. There's a chance this man did what's reported. There's also a chance he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and all of us are going to be slapped and denied the ability to own a usefull and mostly harmless tool. We don't have any dwell times or expert opinions of it. Right now, all we know is the defendants name, face and that the FBI had an axe to grind.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You are an idiot. If you've ever worked around lasers, you don't have to point the beam directly into an eye to get damage. There's this thing called scattering, and there is this other thing called reflection. Both are possible in an airplane cockpit.
Fine. Surely you can account for the in-air attenuation of a 2mW 532 laser at 8000 feet and can say without doubt that the laser power at such a distance would be strong enough to cause out-of-medium scatter.
What is much more likely is that any small amount of laser that did happen to get past there would've been attenuated and would predominantly refract into the glass pane. Not to mention that the angular reflection of the laser to transmit through the a singluar glass pane would have to be between 1 and 30 degrees, because beyond that point the attenuation caused by the glass would negate most anything that could get beyond that.
And finally, since your statements in your post betray the fact that you DO NOT work around lasers, and have no idea of how dangerous they are to human eyes, your arguments are bullshit. As for a laser system that can down targets (aircraft and missiles) look at MTHEL, the Army's high energy DF laser in New Mexico. That one HAS downed incoming missiles and can down aircraft.
Your use of examples shows that you have zero knowledge of the scaling of lasers and the power used. Now, also bear in mind that the MTHEL is currently a one-shot system, as it requires 1 Megawatt of input energy for a 10KW blast. A lot of heat and power to contend with. Not exactly backyard, three-shot equipment.
Yes, the MTHEL has taken care of aircraft and missles. If I said no lasers had done this, I simply meant to say that the threat of lasers that he possessed is so small it's negatable.
The MTHEL is a 10KW Neodymium doped laser system. This guy had, at most a 2mW laser pointer, but I'll grant you a 10mW laser.
Do the math. The power of 100 of his would "equal" 1W, and 10,000 of those would equal the MTHEL capabilities, which would be easily and legitimately a weapon. So, I guess if he fired 1 million of his laser pointers at once, then he'd have a legitimate weapon.
If I throw a pebble at someone, it's miles of difference from throwing a SUV-sized boulder at someone.
I know of one person where I work that was blinded by a targeting laser that is used to align another laser. This laser was akin to a HE-Ne laser that you can buy from radio shack for 10 bucks. The guy suffered permanent retinal damage, and this is from a scattered beam that got out of it's containment tube and bounced off a wrench. And the guy wasn't wearing his eye protection, so he's also a dumbass, but his exposure was on the order of a millisecond of scattered laser light.
And I'm going to go ahead and say that while it was "akin" to a RadioShack He-Ne 1mW system, it was akin only in type, but was orders more powerful, which can definitely have eyesafety problems.
FWIW, since you asked, I *do* work with lasers on a daily basis as part of a Free-Space Optics communications system, operating at 785, 808 and 850 nm, through a pulsed wave 100mW (on our 3R product; ~67mW on our 1M product) infrared laser system.
You are so incredibly incorrect. Senator Joe McCarthy absolutely DID identify active Soviet agents. Among them was Alger Hiss.
Senator Joe McCarthy had nothing to do with Alger Hiss. HUAC was the committee that investigated Alger Hiss. McCarthy, in the Senate, didn't start begin his BS witchhunt until two years later.
Would you be willing to have a laser shined in your eyes, from a mile distance, while driving your car at speed?
You paint a beam on the target (anything with the beam WILL be the target) and the incoming missile/projective will aim for it.
THAT'S why I don't want some joker with a laser tagging my flight, so some other joker with a shoulder mounted missile, in another location can triangulate in and blow my ass out of the air.
Throw the book at him and get the laser pointers off the street. Its not a question of boring a hole through the planes. Its a question of lighting 'em up for a targeting system.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Punishing the foolish will not remedy the situation. Relatively inexpensive lenses (compared to tracking down pen-laser owners) are available which filter out specific laser wavelengths; so as to prevent eye damage or distraction form effecting the flight crew (http://www.elvex.com/laser-spectacles.htm). A man who unintentionally jeopardizes a flight through ignorance is being prosecuted as a man who was attempting to target for a missile. 25 years!? This sounds familar. I'm still waiting to see those WMD's in Iraq.
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Most military aircraft are not armored in anything like the conventional sense of the word- usually they have one or two hardened spots-usually related to hydraulics and crew compartments. The hydraulic lines themselves are considered armored, but most of the aircraft is a very, very soft target. A high powered rifle could easily shoot through an apache helicopter. The trick is, it wouldn't do anything. Aircraft are big- and except for a few components, very little of the aircraft isn't protected by redundant systems.
As for fuel, it's not as bad as people think. The fuel cells of combat aircraft are self sealing, I wouldn't be suprised if civillian craft were similar in this regard. Contrary to popular belief, aviation fuel is very difficult to ignite, and doesn't burn well outside of high pressure enviroments. This is one reason why aviation fuel fires are as messy as they are, the fuel takes its time burning. Aircraft will frequently take damage to fuel cells, usually the biggest problem is the loss of the fuel itself (ie. How're we gonna make it home now, Chief?)
These are the reasons aircraft take so much to bring down, not some armored covering.
Hitler identified active foreign agents as well, so what exactly is your point?
And if he was just stupid and gets locked up for 25 years, I doubt his daughter will be thanking the Government for taking her father away from her. Strike 1 more off the list of patriots.
(i can't believe I just wrote a "what about the children" post)
Really? Name one.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Exactly.
And since no one asked, I *do* work with weaponized laser systems.
The MTHEL is a 10KW Neodymium doped laser system
As for MTHEL, it's a Dueterium-Flouride laser. It has multiple shot capabilities as long as it's supplied with enough chemical fuel. Read up on it:
MTHEL Article
As for attenuation, that's totally dependent on the laser wavelength and the medium it travels through. This has a good diagram of attenuation curves:
Free Space Optics presentation
And yes, I *do* understand the attenuation problem. But a guy with a pointer is just as dangerous to a pilot's eyes as a guy with a MW class anti-missile laser. The pilot will still get his eyes irradiated, and he'll still be blinded. A pilot trying to land blindfolded is a rediculous idea, yet that's what would happen should the flight crew lose their eyesight if only for a few moments. Landing an aircraft is tricky, even if you are flying by instrument and have your glideslope outlined for you by your landing autopilot.
You also forget that it's not only the power output in the utility of a laser as a weapon, but the beam area. 1mW incident on a square mm is the same irradiance as a 1kW laser with an irradiance area of 1 meter squared. In both cases, you are putting 1kW of energy into an area the size of a square meter. (Assume that the angle of incidence is zero so there are no losses due to reflection... cos(0) = 1. In other words, a perfect hit.)
I guarantee that that 1 mW laser on that 1 mm squared of retina is still deadly to those cones and rods in your eye.
Wow, this story and discussion must have the most mis-information of any story I've read on /. in a while...
.175W/m^2. Assuming a 1cm^2 retinal area of the pilot's eye, there would be a total of about .0175mW of energy on the pilot's retinas. Compare this to a 100W high-beam of a car at 100m, which is around .00024mW of energy on the retina (about 1/100th of the energy). Also keep in mind the fact that when looking into a wide laser beam, you do not perceive it as just a spot in your vision- rather, your entire retina is stimulated, in effect completely filling your vision with the laser light. Though the flash may have been brief, it is hard not to notice when everything goes green for an instant and suddenly your eye is struggling to convert all-trans-retinal into 11-cis retinal - in effect, you are blinded for a short time.
I completely agree with what you have to say. Lasers do not follow the inverse square law when in a "beam," even if that "beam" spreads out. Instead, the radiant intensity decreases proportionately with the spread. For instance, if you shine a 1W laser at a target a distance away which produces a 1cm^2 spot, its intensity would be nearly 12.5kW/m^2. At a much further distance, its beam will be 1m^2, and now its intensity is 1W/m^2. Note that the total energy of the beam stays constant - 1W throughout.
This, of course, assumes everything is perfect. As noted in numerous other posts, the beam is not perfectly coherent, etc. etc. etc., but the laser the guy was using was a high quality communications-spec laser, NOT a laser pointer. The main loss of energy in this case would be atmospheric absorbtion, which is quite low but not insignificant.
Let's assume this guy's laser was 500mW with a beam dispersion of 0.001 (e.g., the beam will diverge 1mm every meter). Let's also assume the aircraft were about 2km from the laser source. Over this distance, lets say the beam loses 30% of its intensity to atmospheric absorbtion. That gives us an intensity of
But then again, I could be wrong.
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
There's no "debate" about Alger Hiss among people in the intelligence community. You've obviously never had access to those sorts of materials.
Unfortunately for you, documents released from the KGB archives and those of their client regimes, such as the Stasi, absolutely did show a numebr of the people Joseph McCarthy fingered as Communist agents were such agents.
It matters not a whit if you don't believe it. You're more than welcome to show up at my door and look at my orders, awards and photos from my time at Fort Meade but I'll most certainly not post such items for public consumption. There's the little factor of a 70-year gag order which affects anyone who's worked there.
The claim that McCarthy's actions were all a BS political witchhunt are untrue. As with many other things involving intelligence, the entire evidence is not laid out for public consumption. You'll still find people who think the Rosenberg's weren't Soviet agents, regardless of the fact that Soviet documents show they were as do living serios Soviet agents.
Ah, darn, I got them mixed up and I'm usually someone who points out the McCarthy was a Senator and, thus, didn't have anything to do with the HOUSE Un-American Activities Commission.
Again, VENONA documents, even the small portion which have been released, can eb cross-referenced with other publicly available documents to show that Mccarthy DID finger Soviet agents. You don't have to believe it for it to be true.
Someone yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater is trying to get people hurt, this guy wasn't.
And frankly I doubt the story of the temporary blinded pilot, it's hard enough to keep a laser pointer to a small target a few feet away keeping focused on a moving plane a few thousands yard away is just not doable handheld...
Look I'm just saying that 25 years is a lot for throwing a pencil from across the room.
Especially if there was no intent to kill.
While putting up a fence, I used a rotating laser to mark the strait line to guide me.
The laser was happily rotating 360 at several 100 RPM s a plane flies over my house as they do about 10 times a day.
Should I be worried about a 25 year prison term for that?
A 12 bang bang (combat engineer) with a spork is generally considered to be a WMD. Thats why MRE's only come with a spoon.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
They'll get my duct tape when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
Cooler heads and existing laws should be able deal with this one without all the added drama.
-FL
better buy my dad some oakleys to replace the standard top gun affair style shades
A blog I run for the wealth
There's no "debate" about Alger Hiss among people in the intelligence community.
Well we all know the intelligence community never is wrong. I mean, just look at all the WMD coming out of Iraq! Good thing we got to Saddam before he could use them!
You're more than welcome to show up at my door and look at my orders, awards and photos from my time at Fort Meade but I'll most certainly not post such items for public consumption.
Seem pretty convient. Not that I care, since you claim only to have seen 'documents.' Well, if some gov't agency wrote it on a piece of paper, it must be true! Get over yourself and your former job. Its likely you've hurt far more innocent people then you helped.
As with many other things involving intelligence, the entire evidence is not laid out for public consumption.
Oh ok, well then I'll trust you just b/c you (and the gov't) said so. I'm not really sure why we need this evidence crap at trials anyway..you wouldn't have gotten arrested if you didn't do it!
Now, I'm going to go back to reading my bible, its old and someone says i should believe it!
I'm not sure if this is true. If the sky is clear, I don't think you would be able to see the beam. You cannot actually see a beam of light. This is why they need fog machines in laser light shows: to make the beams visible.
Immagine[sic] you just bought a $700 laser pointer. You're amazed that you can see a reflection from stuff really far away. Hey look, I can even shine it on that plane overhead!
...
Really, I bet that's the extent of it.
And this doesn't cause you concern? How about
"Imagine you just bought a $700 driver. You're amazed that you can hit golf balls really far away. Hey look, I can even bounce them off that commuter train over there!"
Now, physical bashing and smashing aside, the possible ensuing wrecks are both worthy of some law forbidding similarly stupid acts.
What about your right to free speech/expression? Nah, your right to expression via golf balls into trains or lasers onto planes fits nicely along side your right to express yourself by shouting "FIRE!" in a theatre.
Face it, lasers can temporarily affect the vision of people, and all it takes is a temporary lapse in vision for those in control of a landing aircraft for nasty things to happen. This guy is a moron, but shouldn't be locked up for that. This guy endangered people's lives - and THAT'S why he should be locked up.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
--I do believe you're right. 25 years is WAY too harsh for something like this; 6 months to 1 year should be more than enough to warn people off (unless Something Bad happens because of laser-painting.)
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
The reference is to the man, the master, the professor himself. Myself, I am an amatuer. But a huge fan of the pasteboards.
You have made one of the best posts in this discussion. It is such a shame that I have no mod points.
Does it go on forever?
You're right, I have never had access to those sorts of materials but I don't believe you have either.
Unfortunately for you, documents released from the KGB archives and those of their client regimes, such as the Stasi, absolutely did show a numebr of the people Joseph McCarthy fingered as Communist agents were such agents.
Again I say, don't be offended that I don't believe you, after all why should I?
It matters not a whit if you don't believe it. You're more than welcome to show up at my door and look at my orders, awards and photos from my time at Fort Meade but I'll most certainly not post such items for public consumption. There's the little factor of a 70-year gag order which affects anyone who's worked there.
Well I suppose I could claim I was God on the internet and someone would believe me, but I'm not one to be that foolish.
Time makes more converts than reason
Draco was the first lawgiver of ancient Athens, Greece. His laws, written in 621 BC when he was archon eponymous, were particularly harsh, as the death penalty was the punishment for even minor offenses. Hence expressions such as "draconian punishment" or "draconian laws", and more generally, "draconian measures" (far-reaching). (from Wikipedia)
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
People sneering at Texans may not realize this - but Texans consider themselves supurior to YOU. And perhaps rightfully so, given that they are the ones free to take the ball and go home if they don't like what is going on.
Houston alone is worth keeping, if only for the restaurants.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This sounds fishy to me. He was pointing out stars, so chances are he'd be shining the laser at a rather high angle. I don't know how much exposure you people have to planes, but I'll point something out: The cockpit windshield is on the top half of the jet. below the windshield, a nose bulges out. It provides better aerodynamics and shit, I guess. It's irrelevant. Now, tell me, how could he paint a jet and somehow manage to shine a lser at a constellation or whatever else and manage to hit a plane at cruising altitude and overcome the nose and the angle of the windshield to hit the pilot in the eye. Even taking off, the plane would be pointed at an angle high enough that the laser should be unable to reach the windshield and hit a pilot in the eye. Landing is more likely, but even then you have the task of dealing with range. I assume he wasn't inside the gates of an airport, which would put him at a minimum of several thousand feet away from the plane. This sounds like a huge load of bullshit to me.
... a.k.a. - In the state of being without a clue.
This goes out to everyone that thinks that hitting this guy under the PATRIOT act is somehow too harsh, wrong, or you just don't like the PATRIOT act. (I don't either, but that's a discussion for another post):
If you have ever even THOUGHT about flying a plane, ever used a flight simulator that comes anywhere near resembling reality, you would know that even the slightest distraction or problem in the cockpit can mean the entire plane goes down. Further, anyone who has been painted from a distance can tell you that it is very disconcerting, especially with the thought that the laser in question could be attached to a potentially lethal weapon. This gives you a shot of adrenaline, which in turn causes you to go into "fight-or-flight," and in this mindset it is very easy to make a critical mistake.
Finally, terrorists aren't just guys in turbans in the middle-east that learn how to fly a plane but not land it. They can be litterally anyone with any agenda. I don't know if they've hit your necks of the woods, but eco-terrorists are on the rise here in California, and they are proving even more dificult to find than "regular" terrorists because they often have no criminal record outside of "disturbance" arrests, and they look just like everybody else . An eco-terrorist gets it into his head that planes are the next big Ozone-Hole-Ripper, one laserpointer is all they need to take down an airplane and all passengers aboard.
I think 25 years is perfectly fine. He endangered everyone in the air and on the ground, and lives are more important than the jollies of a man who thinks that buzzing planes is fun.
I have no tag line
It seems obvious the guy was an idiot but unlikely a terrorist. If he were that I would suspect he would have been hanging around the airport in direct view of pilots landing. Secondly, I can't wait for the lawyers to become involved for the passengers. Let's say I'm looking out the window and I'm flashed, can I sue the airliner now for not providing reasonable protection against a potential threat to me? I was at costco last week and they had a 10 million candlelight powered flashlight. I'm pretty sure this thing could lightup the entire plane at 8000 feet so is a flashlight an issue now? What if I painted a plane at 30,000+ ft totally by accident if at all possible, is that also a terrorist act? What's next, somehow I painted your gps satellite? I think the guy should be treated as if he was on the plane himself and interfering with the cockpit crew. It's interesting to see how the govt. likes to make examples of terrorist acts with our own U.S. citizens such a public display yet the real dangers are rarely discussed until the crisis has occurred.
If he has seen them, he is in a world of shit for talking about it openly. Public dissemination of classified documents is a no-no.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
If you want to live in the comfy Rush Limbaugh version of the world, then that's your choice, but it seems a touch cowardly to me when one can't look reality in the face.
Austrailan Victim
Navy Seal says Iraqi who died at Abu Ghraib was roughed up in CIA's `romper room' "[. .
Amnesty International investigates. "Whenever interrogators brought in a new prisoner, they would always bring in a block of ice. She did not know why they brought the ice or how they used it during interrogation. But the interrogation sessions always included the ice block and were followed, a few hours later, by a visit to the prisoner, who by then would be unconscious, by two doctors, an American and an Iraqi. The prisoners were invariably taken out of the interrogation room unconscious."
The Red Cross Report on US torture of Iraqi prisoners tells us that, "[. .
--Now consider that the people who are taken prisoner are generally treated to conditions you call, 'hazing'. --These are the people who the U.S. supposedly went to Iraq to 'rescue'.
This is not about 'getting information' which they teach as being a necessary evil on dumb-ass propaganda shows like 'Alias'. This is about needless, wide-spread brutality.
-FL
That's a common misconception. With a laser, it really depends on the beam convergenge. Lasers have a linear power falloff rather than the geometric one we're used to. While ordinary lights get much dimmer as you get further away, a laser with perfect convergence would be just as bright 10000 meters away as 1 meter away (except for relatively small atmospheric losses). Moderately good lasers have an angular divergence of only a fraction of a milliradian.
Also, the HeNe laser we used in highschool was an el-cheapo late 1970s Meteorologic and I doubt it was anywhere close to 10mW. We couldn't even get it to laze half the time. If you decide to try the same experimant out for yourself with a higer power green laser, you'll have to take responsibility for any permanent retinal damage that may occur. ;)
I totally agree. Can you say "example?"
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
McCarthy didn't know about VENONA, however. He was and remains a jackass.
English is easier said than done.
Since many of the Soviet documents have been made public, they should be available on the web somewhere. If they are it might help quash all the arguments. As for the other documentation you are referring to a lot of those should be available under the FOA and probably aren't because no one has asked about them. Right now it's interesting history without much intelligence value so there really isn't a great (documented) need to keep them classified.
Senator McCarthy was involved in a witch hunt, nothing more nothing less. If he had accurate information it's because the people he got it from were reliable and knew it to be correct, but in the long run he wasn't really that interested in accurate information...just in what he could use to advance his own objectives and career.
Yes, but the atmosphere is full of crap, welll technically particles that will scatter and diffuse the beam. I have looked back at a sub 5mw laser pointer from 200m and it is just a bright dot. It doesn't even screw your night vision.