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Couple Busted For Shining Laser At Helicopter
coondoggie sends us to another Network World piece, this one about a couple charged with shining a green laser into the cockpit of a police helicopter. The FBI and the US attorney's office charged the California couple under a federal statute. They could end up paying a $250,000 fine and doing 20 years of jail time. "The complaint states that on November 8, 2007, at about 10:55 p.m., a green laser beam illuminated the cockpit of a Kern County Sheriff's Department helicopter, which was flying at 500 feet during routine patrol in Bakersfield, California. When the light hit the cockpit, it disoriented the Kern County Sheriff's pilot, causing pain and discomfort in his eyes for a couple of hours, the FBI said in a statement."
These are generalisations but :
Presentation pointers are red, very low powered, you can't see the beam without some kind of mist, you can get them for under five pounds in the UK all over the place, normally smaller than a pen, but thicker.
Green lasers are more powerful, you can see the beam in clear conditions, they cost an awful lot more ( somewhere between 100 - 200), are much larger, closer to say, a couple of coke cans stood on end, and can cut through a polystyrene cup....
Or at least that was the case the last time I looked maybe a year ago, I just took the first google hit that caught my eye and unsurprisingly they've got smaller and cheaper now : http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/lights/5a47/
heh, the thinkgeek page even specifically points out "Warning: Green lasers are very powerful. Pointing at aircraft may land you in jail. Without a Monopoly card to get you back out. Use it wisely."
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Yeah I faced 90 days in jail and a 500$ fine for not having a rabies tag for my dog. I showed the judge proof that i vaccinated him after the ticket and the judge dismissed it.
Welcome to American law.
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Those lasers are powerful enough to show up (ie: a green line) when pointing out stars and constellations to your significant other or children.
I'm not really sure how a laser would bring down a plane though. Do you really think the pilots are up there doing dives and loops and such?
I agree and I call shenanigans on the cops. Try and point a laser pointer at a stationary object that far away. You can't hold it still enough. Even if a helicopter was hovering in place, I'll bet that the victim pilot couldn't hold a beam on something as small as a helmet visor inside a cockpit from a quarter-mile away for anything longer than a fraction of a second. Wahhhhhhhh.....
It was a GREEN laser, which puts out a lot more power than your standard red keychain ornament.
No, no, and... No!
A IIIa (now called 3R for the type of devices under consideration here) puts out less than 5mW. 5mW of green laser light doesn't magically contain more energy than 5mw of red laser light.
Humans perceive green light as much, much brighter because we have a higher sensitivity to it. But in terms of total power, 5mW equals 5mW equals 5mW.
That said, IIIB/3R can cause temporary eye damage, though it takes some effort to target it just in the right spot and for long enough (a quick random sweep across the eyes won't do it). But "disorientation" and "hours of discomfort", over 500ft away and through a window? No. Evil piggies just want to cry victim.
I've owned one of these lasers for a little over two years now. It is nothing short of amazing to hold in your hand and press the button on what is nothing more than a pen sized laser pointer that will illuminate an object over 40 miles away. When you first take hold of one of these at night, the desire to point out any and every object you can see with your naked eye is overwhelming. It takes a better man than I am to resist that temptation. Then if you have the opportunity to illuminate a moving object? It is a very natural desire, I've felt it. Its like seeing a car accident and avoiding the temptation to even look. It is easy to criticize.
When my wife took hold of the laser, we were driving in the car in SoCal and she illuminated a mansion up on a hill and exclaimed "This thing is AWESOME!" which was one of the only times in memory she has shown avid approval of any of my "toys". Then she said "I can see why people want to shine this at flying objects."
If you illuminate any of the reflective street signs with the laser, it is amazingly impressive. The entire sign, regardless of size, illuminates so blindingly bright that you cannot look at it. Do this at a street sign over a freeway and you could easily cause an accident.
To avoid the temptation not to play with one of these is too great. I sympathize with this couple completely.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
"The helicopter was at 500 feet, so the distance from laser to cockpit was at least 500 ft, and probably more than 1000 considering the angle needed to enter the cockpit rather than bounce off the bottom of the helicopter."
Not necessarily. When the article says they were flying at 500 ft, it is most likely quoting the official report which came from the pilot. To a pilot, "flying at 500 ft" means flying at 500 ft above sea level (altimeters measure altitude using barometric pressure, which indicates altitude above sea level, and therefore can't possibly know where the actual ground is). So, if, for example, ground level was actually at 200 ft above sea level, the helicopter would only be 300 ft above the ground. This is probably not an unrealistic altitude for a patrolling police helicopter.
It's also not necessary to shine it at much of an angle if the helicopter was banking in a turn and the pilot was looking into the turn, as a pilot might logically do when turning, and also looking down, which a police pilot on patrol might logically do.
The article also doesn't state that it's a 5mW laser, just that it's a hand-held green laser. There are much more powerful hand-held green lasers than 5mW available.
The article does not give enough information to write this off as "more green-laser hysteria".
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
actually just the opposite. You can see the beam because it is absorbed more than the red one ... and then retransmitted, which has the effect of scattering the beam.
The sun shines white, that's true. It appears yellow because the blue is scattered. By contrast the entire remainder of the sky appears blue (because the blue rays, while coming from the sun, have been scattered by absorption and re-transmission).
What an electron absorbs in energy, it will retransmit some time later.
I am a laser engineer at work (trained to work with dangerous high power class IV lasers) and can tell you that there are limitations to this approach.
The filter material at most laser wavelengths would not be clear. My laser safety goggles for 532nm green lasers are dark amber, 660nm red laser goggles are blue. Not practical for navigating aircraft around obstacles.
There is no single filter that is effective for all wavelengths of lasers (green, red, co2, etc).
Also the optical density for a single filter - the blocking capability of the filter - is not the same level across different wavelengths. And optical laser filters do not block the laser beam, they reduce the energy level. Prolonged exposure even with laser safety goggles will still cause eye injury; the object of the goggles is to reduce the energy long enough to account for the reflex time of turning your eyes away from a laser beam and thus avoiding eye injury. This does little good in a cockpit when someone maliciously aims a laser beam at an aircraft.
There is also the hazard of refracted and reflected beam energy. The beam will be refracted as it strikes the cockpit glass and its energy may or may not be attenuated, and there is also the hazard of beam reflections off of objects in the cockpit. The danger of stray beams in this condition is very real and it may be near impossible - while affixed to the pilot seat via seat belt - to avoid exposure to any laser beam. There is also the remote possibility of the refraction of the glass having a focusing effect on the laser beam and exposing the pilot to higher w/cm^2 laser energy at the wrong place.
I have never experienced a laser eye injury, but have been told in laser safety training that they are extremely painful.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
*sigh* Try RTFAing for a change... the helicopter pilot and observer traced the visible-light beam (by the backscatter) back to the house of the defendants. A subsequent search (with warrant) found the green laser pointer. The couple then admitted that they were using it on the night in question.
About the only question left for the court is did the couple shine it at the helicopter directly (in which case it was an intentional attack), or were they shining it in the sky and were just careless.
Yeah, if you used it in an open area, the cops might have more problems. OTH, it was a police helicopter, which are used to chase down suspects all the time.
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The Supremes issued a 5-4 ruling back in 2005 that sentencing guidelines are not mandatory, they are advisory only. IANAL either, but here's a link from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers:
http://www.nacdl.org/public.nsf/mediasources/20050113b
And just this month a 7-2 ruling in the Minbrough and Gall cases, related to crack cocaine sentencing guidelines, again they are advisory only, not mandatory. Here's a link from the LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-sentencing16dec16,0,1084405.story?coll=la-opinion-center
What you are neglecting is the retina absorption of laser radiation, which varies with wavelength. The human eye absorbs the most light energy in the 500-700nm wavelength range, which happens to be where green (532nm) and red (660nm) fall within. In the same amount of time, 5mW of 532nm laser energy will do more eye damage than 5mW of ultraviolet 400nm laser energy.
Incorrect. Any laser higher than class 1M can cause permanent eye damage. Laser eye injuries are extremely painful even at class II 1mW or lower levels. Class IIIR (formerly IIIa) lasers can produce no more than 5mW, but class IIIB lasers can produce as much as 500mW and can cause skin damage.
Lasers are not a controlled substance. One could purchase a class IIIB green laser that puts out 500mW of laser energy and really do damage to a pilot from the ground. If you think these people are exaggerating about their suffering, you are dead wrong.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Absolutely positively not true. Laser sources that emit a non-visible beam fall in class IIIR, class IIIB or class IV which are the worst eye hazards regardless of power. ANSI Z136.1 specifies that non-visible class IIIR or higher laser beams must be enclosed to prevent laser radiation exposure to non-trained personnel.
I work around exposed class IV CO2 10600nm laser beams capable of putting out 100 watts (that's watts, not mW) of power. The beam is invisible to the human eye yet it is capable of cutting metal. "Not dangerous at all" is a serious understatement.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Pain I'm skeptical of too, and I bow to your superior experience in this regard, but even temporarily dazzling a pilot over a city is serious.
Having had afterimages for several minutes after being exposed to a specular reflection of a 5mW green laser in office-lit conditions (reflected from a whiteboard), I can sympathize.
It doesn't say the power of the beam - you can quite easily pick up green laser pointers on eBay that are advertised as 100mW or more (here in the UK, at least). Also, the copter is likely to be quite low, and you'd only want to try this at night so you could see the dot. The pilot's pupils would be dilated due to the darkness, so I can imagine quite a severe dazzling effect.
Sean Ellis
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