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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?
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.
here
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Well, trying to kill someone generally nets you less than that. I assume if you actually succeeded you'd get a bit more than 25 years.
ScienceSeeker.org
"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.
I think there is a big difference between hitting a plane with an industrial type laser, and screwing around with your laserpointer. Check it out I'm Luke Skywalker .. bbbzzzzzeeeewwww, oh crap was that a POLICE helicopter?
Considering how windshields on airplanes are on the top of the plane, shining lasers at them probably won't blind them, and they won't crash.
But it's the same as pointing a laser pointer at a itchy trigger finger cop.
The guy shouldn't get 25 years, he obviously isn't a terrorist. But i'm now unpatriotic for thinking so.
Runnin' On Empty
" 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
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
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
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.
There are two possibilities. One is that there was intent to blind pilots and cause aircraft to crash, in which case 25 years sounds pretty light to me. Life imprisonment would be appropriate for attempted, premeditated mass murder.
The other possibility is that it was a stupid, stupid person who wasn't really thinking about the consequences of what they were doing at the time and there was no premeditated intent to cause a plane to crash. If that is the case, I think 25 years is a bit extreme.
In any case, hopefully a jury will figure out what the case was - as long as it doesn't go before a secret court with hearings closed to the public, then I'm happy.
I 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
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.
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
Did you see what his excuse for pointing the laser in the cockpit was? He said he was looking at stars with his daughter, and it "accidentally" pointed into an airplane's cockpit.
Am I missing something here? Can someone please explain to me how to use a laser pointer to look at stars?
Well, it's certainly hard enough to throw a little girl hard enough to bring down an airplane no matter how strong you are.
-mkb
Well, this was a $100 laser... not exactly your average keychain laserpointer. Also, the plane was on approach.
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.
OK, I can see giving him more time. He was trying to do something that could have had a very dangerous outcome if he succeeded.
But they're talking now about outlawing lasers to the general public?!?! Huh? Because they can be used for this?
OK, outlaw them. They have the slight chance of maybe blinding one of the pilots on approach. (again, another Tom Clancy scenario in a book about using an ultra bright light to bring down an approaching airliner...just like in the same book a 747 pilot crashed his plane into the Capital building in Washington...but I digress......)
But if they could do this, why not outlaw all guns and rifles in the US! I mean, couldn't THESE be used on approaching and departing airliners? A 460 Weatherby Magnum rifle could do some serious damage...maybe bust open a fuel tank if aimed with any degree of accuracy. I mean, if you're going to outlaw a 10 dollar laser pointer, shouldn't a high-powered rifle be in the same boat?
But no no...can't do that can we! We have the NRA...there is no National Laser Association lobby group in Washington looking out for our right to keep and bear lasers!
(is it bear or bare...I can never remember)
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
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
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.
Considering how windshields on airplanes are on the top of the plane, shining lasers at them probably won't blind them, and they won't crash
Think about this. If the pilot can see the ground from the cockpit (and they can), then someone on the ground can shine a laser in their eye. Your assumption is that the plane was directly overhead. The plane was on approach to a nearby airport and was at very low altitude. One can easily see inside the cockpit from various angles around the plane.
This will likely be settled and the guy will receive minimal if any jail time. But the gov't has to show that it is addressing this issue.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
another site says:
Red laser pointers have grown cheap and ubiquitous, but unfortunately, they are not very effective as sky pointers. In contrast, green laser pointers are very effective because of the eye's greater sensitivity to the 532 nanometer green light. Under dark sky conditions, the beam from a 5 milliwatt green laser pointer creates a dramatic impression, and the beam apparently extends for more than a kilometer. Any bright light source, ranging from light pollution induced sky glow to a crescent moon, will reduce the apparent brightness of the SkyPointer(TM) although the beam will usually remain visible. The light pollution acts in such a way that people closer to you will still see the beam, whereas those further away may have difficulty.
Please read this very informative article entitled "Lasers Aimed At Airliners: Overreaction?"
My only complaint with this article is that the author does not realize that $500 or so will buy you a VERY powerful laser that is easily capable of damaging the eyes in a heartbeat. But otherwise, a good read.
I am getting very discouraged at the sheer amount of paranoia in our society. Everybody is overreacting to everything and is afraid of their own shadow. My wife is afraid for me to even pull out my Leatherman in public, because she is afraid that other people might thing that I might be a terrorist or some other type of bad guy. Riiiight. Like I could really kill 100 people in a mall with only a 2-1/2 inch blade and a pair of pliers. Except for special circumstances (like on an airplane), you cannot kill 100 people with a pocket knife unless your name is Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris, in which case you don't even need the knife.
Remember: if you walk around in fear, then the terrorists have already won. Think long and hard about where the term "terrorist" came from. I refuse to give them the satisfaction of being afraid.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Very easy...using a green laser pointer, where you can actually see the beam, it's very easy to point out stars and planets etc etc. It's used as a pointing device out of doors.
They work quite well too so there's no "it's that star...no no, that one next to the bright on there...no, down further....see it?" With the pointer you just follow the beam upwards. A green lasers beam is quite visible.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
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.
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
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.
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-
I know the /. article did not provide a link to the actual article, but you're making some rather strong incorrect statements. I did RTFA and (A) the laser light entered the cockpit and temporarily blinded both the pilot and the co-pilot. Apparently either the angle of laser relative to the cockpit was such that it went in, or else there was some unlucky refraction/reflection. (B) There was no concern that this represented someone pointing a gun at the plane, there was concern that terrorists were trying to blind pilots to cause them to crash. Although the investigators did state that they do not believe the actions of the suspect in this case to be terrorist.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
As I see it, the time isn't the issue here. The fact is that this man is not a terrorist and should not be punished under terror laws - argue for him getting more or less time to your heart's content, but do not twist the course of fair and just use of the legal system. If these laws exist for terrorism cases, use them in terrorism cases. If the rest of the existing laws are inadequate, change them, don't use that fact as an excuse to get unpopular proposals into general use through the back door with false assurances that they will only be used in very specific circumstances.
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?
But they're talking now about outlawing lasers to the general public?!?! Huh? Because they can be used for this?
Some days I think it would be a lot easier for the govenment to just tell us what we can do. "Ok, all you're allowed to do is go to work, watch TV and shop. Nothing else."
_______
2B1ASK1
US Citizens can't be declared either enemy, or illegal combatants. Thanks, court system!
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
This is not saying that this sort of behavior shouldn't be punished, what it is saying is that it should be done under existing laws. There's no reason to charge someone with "terrorism" when their conduct is more accurately described as "reckless endangerment", "malicious mischeif", or "interfering with an aircrew".
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
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.
Now it's on the local news that someone has been trying to do it. The FBI is investigating.
The next night he's out and tries to do the same thing to a helicopter. He's either deliberately trying to do harm to them, or so stupid he should never been allowed to reproduce. Either way, locking him up should be safer for the general public.
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.
The jet, a chartered Cessna Citation, was coming in for a landing last Wednesday with six people aboard when a green light beam struck the windshield three times at about 3,000 feet, according to court documents. The flash temporarily blinded both the pilot and co-pilot, but they were later able to land the plane safely, authorities said.
...
Then, 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 original beam.
Oopsie daisy!
kfg: Imagine trying to "bring down" a car with a laser pointer. I'll be you couldn't do it in a Godzillion years.
I imagine it would be much easier than you imagine. A sustained laser at a drivers eyes would make them swerve if not stop dead on the road. A pilot of a passenger plane does not have that luxury.
The guy that did this is a 38 year old asshole, not an innocently playing child, and I'm glad he's going away. If he didn't know this was going to lead to trouble he's also one of the dumbest men in the U.S.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
The US Constitution applies to US Citizens ONLY. Foreign nationals are granted NO constitutional protections, unless they become US Citizens.
Illegal combatants are designated as such because they do not wear military uniforms, instead they try to blend in with the population, setting off car bombs and trying to kill as many people as possible. If the terrorists want to be treated as POW's under Geneva, then fine - just as soon as they start identifying themselves with some form of uniform or mark (which would have the added benefit of making them easier to find and kill.)
Also, it's spelled "indefinitely".
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.
The reason why he is so totally screwed is that the feds have to make an example of SOMEBODY. When lasers are selling for $100 on eBay, they are going to be ubiquitous, and until someone is made an example of, a lot of the people who buy them are going to aim them at airplanes for snorts and giggles, thinking that it's not a big deal. The government has to show them that YES, IT IS A BIG DEAL.
After all, how could something so simple as shining a beam on an airplane be a criminal act? But if this guy gets 25 years, it will send one hell of a shockwave through society and most people will get the message.
I imagine that even the prosecutors feel sorry for this guy, just some knucklehead who was goofing around with his kid, completely ignorant of how this would be interpreted. But they can't just let it go.
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?
Heh, a bizarro Macguyver would need either a bar of chocolate or a rubber band.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
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.
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
Where in the constitution does it say that the constitution applies to us citizens only?
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
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.
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.
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.
It's a good thing we donned uniforms for the American Revolution so that we can take this stand on illegal combatants now without a hint of hypocrisy.
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. --
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.
> But they're talking now about outlawing lasers to the general public?
A scientific colleague of mine told me a story from when he was in grad school that went something like this. For some reason, some general legislative stupidity, the state of Wisconsin considered passing a law banning all devices that emitted electromagnetic radiation. Before the law passed, my colleague's advisor, a physics professor of some repute, was asked to testify at a hearing about the law.
He said to the legislators on the panel, "I'm about to remove from my pocket a device that emits a great deal of electromagnetic radiation, switch it on, and point it at you." The panel was, of course, terrified. He then took out a flashlight. Needless to say, the law didn't pass.
I suspect this laser business will be somewhat similar. Could a laser conceivably be a public danger? Yes. So could hammers, matches, fertilizer, etc. I seriously doubt there's going to be a laser ban.
It does make sense.
15 miles away and 8000 feet means that the plane needs to drop about 1000 feet per minute for each minute that the plane is in the air. Touch down speed for a big plane like that is probably in the 120-200 mph range. That means the 15 mile approach would take 7 1/2 minutes. That's not al ot of time!
Each second of that last 7 1/2 minutes before touch down the plane has to drop at least 15 feet! Each second!
This is a very dangerous time of the flight. For one or both pilots to be blinded at this juncture - or even imparied slighly - could lead to catrosphe. Imagine the pilot is off just slightly in his approach. The plane drop 16 feet per second, instead of his normal plane of 15 feet per second. That would mean the plane would be 450 feet below sea level when it "gets" to the runway (aka, it crashes well before the runway).
Those 8000 feet and 15 miles numbers make perfect sense for a jumbo on approach.
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.
Actually, the charge was Reckless Disregard for Human Life. Its just that Terrorism and Patriot Act make for wicked headlines.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
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.
Likewise, they might as well arrest people for skipping rocks when there's an ocean liner passing by. "You can _kill_ somebody with a rock!" Sheesh.
I score this as a typical application of what I call The Stupid Person's Syllogism:
Identification of X and Y is left as an exercise for the reader. I think you'll find the SPS explains a lot about modern society.
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.
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
Would driving with your highbeams on classify as Reckless Disregard for Human Life? What you if you blinded a bus driver carrying a load of passengers?
We have a really whacky idea of appropriate jail terms these days. It's like another form of inflation.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I sympathise with you, but you're wrong. First, there have always been "victimless crimes," and people in prison for commiting them. Second, what he did could have caused a large number of deaths, and should be punished, just for that. Third, your conclusion is a non sequiter, in that the state of democracy in the USA has nothing to do with this.
The thing most of us are overlooking is that he could receive a 25 year sentance, not that he will. That's the maximum, and there's no reason to assume he'll be sentanced to that. I'll not be surprised to hear that he receives either probation or a suspended sentance.
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I've done a fair amount of research on the topic, but I can't find a comprehensive list of treaties the US is bound to. There may be some that I've missed, but generally:
The US is being somewhat more than accomodating in the fact that during a time of war or even armed conflict spys, saboters, un-uniformed soliders and mercanaries who are captured are subject to summary execution without hearing, redress, trial, evidence or even a chance to speak. The famous Vietnam era video footage of a man being executed at point blank range with a shot to the head demonstrates something: the prisoner was an illegal spy. His execution was perfectly legal under all applicable international law.
Unless you have something or some document I can't find, the US can view any captured in a war zone as either (1) a mercenary if they are from a foreign land, (2) a spy, or (3) an un-uniformed solider and execute them on the spot in compliance with international law.
I am not arguing for the sake of argument and if you have some *first* hand reference material, please let me know so I can update my notes. There is a lot of garbage floating around about international law this and international law that. But not so much in terms of clear concise information.
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.
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.
Are you asking for a legal opinion or a moral opinion? Are you driving with your highbeams on to intentionally blind the bus driver?
Another context where you may hear painting is in sniping. You paint a target with a laser beam for better accuracy.
After all, how could something so simple as shining a beam on an airplane be a criminal act?
How could something so simple as removing a stop sign from an intersection be anything more than petty vandalism?
Every laser I have ever seen includes a prominent and impossible-to-ignore warning: dangerous to your eyeballs you nitwit! The accused shined this laser into the eyeballs of an airline pilot. If the jury (yes, he will get a jury) finds him willfully culpable of this act, then he deserves jail time.
This is not different than if someone shot a BB gun at an airplane cockpit. The odds of a BB gun penetrating the windscreen of any airplane cockpit is between zero to zilch, but anyone doing so would be up on identical charges. And rightly so. I don't give a shit if he was just "goofing around". All the "goofing around" defense does is throw the crime into the category of "criminal negligence."
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Now I want to see Mythbusters build a little girl cannon!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
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 Constitution is a binding agreement between the states who ratified it, their citizens and decendants, and those who volunteer to become a citizen of the US and are therefore bound to it by oath.
All people born into the terrority of the US are natural born US citizens, and are protected by all of our laws and the Constitution. You may renounce your citizenship at anytime by going to the US embassy, State department, or foreign consulate and swearing in writing an oath of renunication (followed by exiting US soil). Unless you do this, you are not a citizen of the United States and you therefore do not have the responsibilities or rights of US citizen.
People born in Zaire or France or China are not descended from the ratifiers, nor have they ratified it, nor are they bound by it. If the United States Congress voted by majority to permit it and a majority of citizens of any foreign province, terrority or land voted by majority to ratify it, the US Constitution would apply fully to all of its citizens.
There's your answer.
I don't know about you, but I for one already have a "little" girl cannon. Or so the e-mails tell me.
*ducks*
"An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program."
Has this daft law ever been used to deal with an actual, real, evil, acid-spitting terrorist? Ever?
It's not so much for looking at the stars, but for sharing the experience of looking at the stars. Have you ever tried to point out a specific star (other than the brightest, most obvious ones) to someone else? It usually goes something like this:
Up there, see that one that's kind of reddish? Now go a little left and up? Got it? Now the one directly above that about twice as far away as the second was from the first? OK? Go just to the right of that about as far as the width of the full moon. That's the one...
Needless to say, it's frequently very hard to get two people, especially if one of them is inexperienced with observing the night sky, looking at the same point on the celestial sphere.
Now, the scenario with a green laser:
That one, right there. [points laser directly at the object of interest]
---
When this story started coming up, I was concerned because members of my astronomy club routinely use lasers for this purpose, and I for one had never considered we might inadvertantly blind a pilot!
I have no idea if this guy is on the level or not. Just trying to answer your question...
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
Agreed. I find it extremely annoying when half the idiots in their gi-normous SUV's and pickups drive around with their foglights on when there isn't any fog.
:-)
Hey!! Spunkmops!!...
if(fog > 3)
foglights = on;
else
foglights = off;
endif
</rant>
(Or maybe I'm just too light-sensitive and should just plan on staying in my parent's basement...
Illegal combatants are designated as such because...
The problem is how to distinguish between "illegal combatants" performing acts of war, and foreign nationals performing criminal acts.
The bush administration is providing very shaky criteria with which to do this distinguishing -- a perpetual state of "war" on terrorism that may never terminate, legislation that redefines hoards of previously criminal acts as acts of "terrorism," etc. It's actually rather scary -- the scope of what constitutes an "enemy combatant" grows larger and larger without boundaries. Your "fuck 'em, they're enemy combatants" attitude demonstrates a grave lack of thoughtfulness into this (which seems to be shared with the president).
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
They voted for that act because, at the time (just after 9/11), anyone who voted against it would automatically be labeled a "terrorist supporter" and have his/her political career finished.
Remember, people weren't exactly rational at that time.
The Tlog - a technology blog
I've been momentarily blinded by oncoming headlights.
I have that experience daily. I've yet to see a car with headlasers though. The laser part makes a world of difference. There is no dispersion pattern for a laser. That's what makes it a laser. You have to look directly into the cohesive beam of a laser to see it at all. That's why it makes a red dot instead of a red splash, like car tail lights do. A person on the other side of the street from you can only see the laser at all if that tiny red dot happens to pass directly over his retina.
Now, take that car and toss it at a couple hundred miles an hour and several hundred feet over your head.
Try to make that little red dot pass directly over the retina of the driver. For that matter, try to make it hit the driver at all.
Try somthing easier, try to put out your own cat's eye with your laser pointer. You'll certainly be able to distract her, for hours on end. You'll get bored before she does.
Her eyes will be perfectly safe. You will not be able to even momentarily blind her.
KFG
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.
What is the danger of crashing a plane from a laser underneath it?
If you're directly underneath, there isn't much danger. He was not directly underneath the plane. He was able to paint the cockpit window with his laser. The diffusion of light on that window temporarily blinded the captain and copilot.
Wouldn't it require hitting the pilot and the co-pilot in the eye while simulteaneously something goes wrong on the plane that the on board computer can't fix?
No.
Pilots don't do particularly much now adays from what I understand.
They still land the plane, which is what they were doing when this idiot blinded them. They were at approx. 3000 feet as the descended for landing. The autopilot doesn't land the planes. People do.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
How is this insightful?
For starters, I fail to see how charging someone under a specific provision of a federal law is evidence that ANYTHING can be labeled as terrorism. Note: this case is not being labeled as terrorism. Also, please point out the due process being skipped, and the Constitutional protections being violated.
Further, you state that the PATRIOT act shouldn't be used, instead deferring to existing laws. Well, the PATRIOT act is an existing law, so that doesn't make sense. You state that he should instead be charged with "interfering with an aircrew." Did you RTFA? "He was charged with interfering with a flight crew under the USA Patriot Act."
As further evidence that the PATRIOT act does not mean that "ANYTHING the powers-that-be don't like" is illegal, I would like to point out the fact that the man in question was not charged in the targetting of the helicopter specifically because there is no provision in the act to allow for this.
Unless you have something or some document I can't find, the US can view any captured in a war zone as either (1) a mercenary if they are from a foreign land, (2) a spy, or (3) an un-uniformed solider and execute them on the spot in compliance with international law.
Oh, really? Well, you're missing a word from that sentence, so this may be a little unfair, but was that "any one" or "any soldier"? One of the issues is that right now anyone living in a "war zone" (which can be very loosely defined and includes a ton of people) can be picked up as an "enemy combatant." Anyone at all. That's the scary part.
Now, screening people right then and there is quite difficult. This wouldn't be too bad if there was due process to separate true combatants from people who just happen to, say, be living there at the time. Most people aren't complaining about the fact that these folk can be detained, but in the fact that there's no way to decide if they should have been. Guilty until proven innocent, indeed.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
First off, they found the man who was in fact shining a green laser at air vehicles, so it's doubtful that the pilots made it up, and what would they stand to gain by fabricating such a story?
Secondly, no one said it was a solid state laser, at least not in the article that I read. His lawyer claims he bought the laser online for $100 and its intended use was for testing fiber optic cable. Granted, $100 for a green laser pointer sounds about right for a solid state job from thinkgeek, but it's possible either he or his lawyer is lying. Maybe he does have a green pen laser and that's what he turned over to police, but the one he used on the plane could have been a 500mW gas laser he bought after he decided the penlight didn't do it for him?
Additionally, the wired article says the incident occured on approach at 3,000 feet, which - if we assume a ground angle of 30 degrees - means the beam could have travelled as little as roughly 6,000 ft, just over one mile. A 100mW laser at that distance would still be enough to flashblind someone for a few moments if it got them in the eyes.
While I agree that all of this should be taken with a grain of salt, and that we're all arguing with too little information, this story is not impossible or even implausible.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
But the high beams instantly kill the drivers vision while they shine (from front or into mirrors) while he is participating in what is already a very dangerous activity. The pilot could afford a few seconds without vision (hell he could get up and do a dance)
Bottles.
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.
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We most certainly did. Nathan Halewas executed for being caught out of uniform, for example.
The problem is that when the sun is out, the pupil is contracted to block much of the energy. At nighttime, the pupil is dialated to allow more light in, which compounds the laser problem.
I agree that some handheld laser briefly flashing across a cockpit is not a danger. But a laser pointer can cause damage to the eye, especially at night. There was post with a link on the previous slashdot thread which showed that a laser pointer generates a light intensity about 100 the times that of the sun on a typical eye.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
The pilot could afford a few seconds without vision (hell he could get up and do a dance)
But a laser can burn the retinas causing temporary blindness which may last a little longer than the fuel on the plane can
I don't like the patriot act, etc, at all any more than you do. But I'll work to change the law. I won't go do something moronic and then claim no one should be upset because there is also a bad law on the books.
Fair enough... I especially like this quote "Can be used for skypointing, projection on low clouds, signalling, detecting explosives" -- maybe he was just trying to detect some explosives on the plane. Also, the range is only about 2 miles. This all assumes he didn't go with a more powerful laser from a discount supplier.
The problem is that passing a law in which a particular intent is illegal means that the terrorists can get off if they can plausibly state that their intent was pointing out stars to someone, while passing a law that doesn't take into account intent means that astronomers can accidentally get charged with terrorism and have no recourse.
Long story short, the right answer is to properly design aircraft so that this isn't an issue. An ideal design would include a handful of cameras and VR panorama glasses. Only slide the window shades out of the way if the electronic navigation fails. Even better, it could give you a 360-degree view of the area around the plane, which would have some nice advantages.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
um.. do you have __ANY__ idea what 25 years in jail is? that's one's whole career. that is your life. when you come out, you are old and cannot find work and cannor get a job and a good number of the people you knew a re dead and the rest either don't remember you or don't want to talk to you.
30 days in county jail for being a jackass sure, but 25 years?
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.
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 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.
Considering the pilots in the Cessna got flashed three times, and a helicopter got flashed by the same guy, I'm pretty sure it was intentional.
Still, pre- and post-9/11 stories are interesting to read. Post 9/11 stories abound with "terrorists using lasers to possibly down planes" whereas pre-9/11 stories are about mischief, poor planning, and training pilots not to stare at the beam. Funny how things change.
Pre 9/11 laser-plane stories:
Problems with Laser Light Shows
Outdoor Laser Safety Is in the Hands of the FAA
As another note, we had some asshat firing a pellet gun at car windows back in the 90's. Someone was caught shining a laser pointer at a vehicle and arrested as a suspect. Funny (and scary) thing was listening to the idiot talking heads on TV speculating if a common laser pointer could shatter a car windshield. Yes, they were serious about it.
Post 9/11, they are going all out to hang some asshat out to dry for screwing with planes. The idiots who do this deserve to be punished, but what it really looks like is lasers are getting set up to be regulated and/or removed from public availability.
What's really interesting is that there is an FAA report (April 2001) documenting at least 150 instances of cockpit illuminations between 1996 and 1999. That's about once a week. It wasn't big news then.
I'd love to get one of those 100mW green lasers to mess around with, but now I can't. I would expect some kind of bill being introduced in Congress soon to address this issue now that they are back in session.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
"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.
In your hatred, you have forgotten one crucial principle behind the US legal system: innocent until proven guilty. Yes, the people locked away in Cuba might be "savages" who deserve it, but that determination is made through due process. When it is not, then what you have may not be but is indistinguishable from locking away people arbitrarily.
The prison system at Gitmo holds people whose guilt are determined with no formal proceedings by the US military. They are held indefinitely and (before much protests) without any possibility of appeal. The administration of the prison is basically not examined by any third party or even another US government branch. For a country that rightly prides itself in a system of checks and balances, Gitmo is an embarrassment and a danger to US reputation. The US governmental system is designed to not trust any single person or agency, and that has worked very well.
The US Constitution applies to US Citizens ONLY. Foreign nationals are granted NO constitutional protections, unless they become US Citizens.
You are plainly wrong. Foreign nationals generally enjoy the same legal protections as US citizens when on US soil. That's why the so-called illegal combatants had to be sent to Cuba to skirt this. If you were right, then you can sue any foreigner in the US and win by default, and the cops could lock up foreigners for any reason for any length of time.
If the terrorists want to be treated as POW's under Geneva, then fine - just as soon as they start identifying themselves with some form of uniform or mark
Terrorism as a strategy evolves from the inability to fight a superior power head-on, so people who resort to terrorism are unlikely to revert to "civilized" nation-to-nation warfare that is common to recorded history.
During WWII American pilots dropped incendiary bombs on various cities, and caused deaths of enemy civilians in the hundreds of thousands at a time. They did so in uniform. I'm not calling them war criminals at all, but I want to point out that we do want to be very careful what we designate as "civilized" war and otherwise. Judged by today's standards (which includes much better technology to possibly win a war without killing so many), those actions might be considered war crimes. It is therefore folly to think that the definition of civilized behavior is immobile, and in part that definition has usually considered the actual ability of a party at war.
The main problem is, terrorism isn't going away, and as even Bush had admitted, the war on "terror" as a concept may never be won. It is better to find a real way to deal with captured terrorists, rather than hide in the legal limbo between US law and the Geneva Convention.
"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.
Granted, a searchlight aimed at the plane or even a sufficiently large display of BOOBIES might have the same effect ...
Probably not even that. He was probably just amused that he could see his laser pointer spot on the plane. But he's probably regretting it nowSorry, I was just annoyed at all the media attention.
Common sense tells me that while he may not have intended to blind pilots or cause harm, he was interfering with the flight crew in such a way as to cause a safety hazard. This brings up the question of why the Patriot Act was (mis)used.
This laser pointer incident is caused by the same type of idiocy that compels people to fire guns into the air on New Year's day.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
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.
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.
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.
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!
as many pieces of the Act have already been found
That's unsubstantiated. Show it. Which sections?
have not looked deeply into the Patriot Act as what I have read scares the living hell out of me
I've read the entire bill.
I have felt for a long time that our (US) government is only here for it's benefit and the US people are being allowed to reside here to support it.
That may be true, but the patriot act has nothing to do with that.
All the Patriot Act has done that I can see it allowed the US Government to go after it's own citizens for not thinking/acting the way they are expected to.
You should read the bill before you go MAKING THINGS UP.
For one thing, its main purpose was to allow various agencies the legal right to share information. If the CIA knew for a fact that an attack on the US was going to happen before the PATRIOT ACT it would have been *ILLEGAL* for them to tell the FBI, the White House, etc. That's insanity!
As for the laser incident, the guy is guilty of nothing more than doing something stupid.
Stupid isn't a crime. Interfering with a flight crew is - by means of stupidty or not.
I have seen people do things that could have done more harm than this and carry on their merry way.
So? Does that justify this bad behaviour?
But then again, the US government could probably find something illegal with that and the next thing you know you with have the FBI, CIA, ATF and any other department with a gun pounding down your door.
Ahh... a conspiracy nut. Should have known. The CIA? Get real.
Silly is a laser pointer in a movie theater.
Reckless is a laser pointer lighting up an airplane. Yes it sounds like loads of fun to try, in fact my "inner redneck" is just itching to see if it really can be done. The laser pointer is pretty much harmless, but why try to annoy and/or distract people who are responsible for the safety of up to hundreds of people in the air and on the ground? Especially when at these times they are usually busy taking off or landing the plane.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
The aircraft he is charged with disturbing are a helicopter and a cessna citiation. Neither have automatic landing capabilities. Most planes do not.
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.
To quote: "If you look directly into the beam from a laser pointer for more than a minute and a half in a very steady manner, or shine the beam into your eyes with binoculars, you could end up with permanent eye damage."
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.
...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.
you don't put a victims family on the jury.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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
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.
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."
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.)
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!
Way to be an asshole, asshole. Yes, in fact it IS the same power as the ThinkGeek pointer. According the the CNN article, Banach claims he bought the laser pointer in question at BigHa.com, which sells a green laser pointer of the same 5mW power as that sold by ThinkGeek. But thanks for the ad hominem anyway. Very classy.
We should make the Sun illegal because if you look into that for a minute or two you might go blind.
My other car is first.
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
It's not that the ThinkGeek laser pointer could do anything to an airplane, it's the fact that people (including the police) believe it can.
By the way, you are a moron.