Slashdot Mirror
Laser Strikes On Aircraft Becoming Epidemic
First time accepted submitter AlphaWolf_HK writes "Ars Technica has a story about a 52 year old man who was arrested and sentenced to three years in jail for shining a high powered green laser at a helicopter along with an interesting video showing how he was tracked down. The FBI says that laser strikes are becoming epidemic, saying that they expect to see reports of 3,700 of them this year."
Make the bastard spend his years in line for the TSA.
"sentenced to three years in jail for shining a high powered green laser at a helicopter "
Good. And since it's a federal crime, he gets to serve 85 percent of that.
I almost had someone arrested for shining a laser at my friggin' eyes across a bar. But since I knew the person and knew he wasn't "all there" I just confronted him.
But if it was anyone else, I would have pressed charges. Yes, it's assault.
There needs to be *at a minimum* public education on this issue, and if nobody is willing to do that, then handheld lasers need to be outright banned for unlicensed individuals. This opinion is unpopular for slashdot, but shit really has gotten out of hand.
--
BMO
Actually I think a few of these cases getting out and being better known -would- prevent many cases. Face it, this didn't start proliferating as a problem on it's own. People saw the news where a few of these cases happened and though "oh that's funny, I could do that too, no one can catch me". Cases skyrocketed over the last couple of years since the news got posted.
That same approach can be made to curtail the problem. It just requires an equal amount of energy being put into it.
The only problem I see with this particular article was that it was very clear just how much of a dumbshit the guy with the laser was. If he had been inside a building or car going from place to place to change where he used the laser from he probably wouldn't have been caught. Likewise had he discarded the laser the second he saw a police car coming, while out of site of the helicopter, chances are fair they wouldn't have found the evidence either.
What "technical solution" do you see to visible light being shown through a window? And how could you make it commercially viable to every aircraft in the sky? Brainstorm it. If you find something, great, but that's a pretty damned huge problem.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
My solution would be to mount even more powerful lasers on some of the aircraft. Fight fire with fire. Plus, it would just be cool.
For a country in constant fear of terrorists hijacking their planes you take it pretty lightly when someone actually tries to make airplanes fall. Three is a very light sentence, they should make an example of those that get caught.
My young Stepson got one of these (powerful green laser) and I was pretty much blown away at the power of it... I did see when he was unpacking it lots of warnings so I spent some time with him when he first tested it out. So we get outside at night and what is the first thing he tries to do, yep point it a plane flying overhead... so cue the huge boring lecture from me about the danger of these things and how if he gets caught pointing his laser at planes, or cars or people's eyes he will be sent to a boys home... well I think he got the point. The main thing is that kids need to understand the danger of these things and there is a responsibility for parents to keep up with the times and actually understand that "new toy"...
There are approximately 76000 aircraft departures in the US every day. 76000*365= 27,740,000. 3,700/27,740,000= .00013. So 0.013% of flights have reported a laser strike and no aircraft have been downed. It would seem that the FAA need to look at the definition of epidemic.
You could certainly make it a combination of technical and legal. For example you make it illegal to manufacture or import a laser of any but a handful of wavelengths. Then install filters for those wavelengths over the cockpit windows. Yes it won't stop everything. But the vast majority of lasers are commercially purchased. If you can't purchase one that will get into a cockpit, problem solved.
For the ass-hats who insist on building their own and proceed to point it at airplanes and cars, well we can start with two to four charges of assault and go on to three hundred cases of attempted first degree murder. Followed up by a couple hundred civil lawsuits. Not only can they spend the rest of their lives in jail, but they will be bankrupted as well. If they happened to be married -- until their spouse gets a divorce -- joint property for the win. Go ahead and make the wife and kids homeless.
There is no rational reason why a civil society should have to put up with this kind of shit.
I remember the time when I bought a HeNe Gas laser back in the 80's to make a spectacular laser show with, for the neighbors. I had no intentions on shining lights on airplanes or innocent people at all.
And I use lasers all the time in my electronics lab for experimentation.
Unfortunately, lasers have become so cheap, and super powerful laser-pointers (which has no real world use whatsoever) has become available to the street-kids, so we'll undoubtedly see these lasers become illegal for anyone to possess and own. Including innocent experimenters at home, thanks to the idiots in the streets who just find it fun to point 200mw lasers at anyone.
5mw is enough for anyone who wants to "play" with a laser pointer, it'll reach several hundred meters, enough to bedazzle the laymen out in the streets, and makes no difference from any 200mw+ laser whatsoever visibly, and furthermore...it won't blind anyone, not destroy pilots sights or policemen etc.
In fact...not even a 200mw laser will blind ANY pilot, as it is a physical impossibility to hold a 200mw laser beam of any significant distance steady by a human hand, it will shake - it will sway, it will swing...and the atmosphere will pollute and defocus the beam itself so it won't harm anyone.
Sad...just sad.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
This wasn't by accident. It didn't "briely pass over an aircraft."
If you actually watched the video, the laser was pointed directly at the helicopter over a series of minutes. Accidental pointing would have been unlikely for such a period of time, since you need to track the helicopter for that long.
>Have we slid so far down the slippery slope that something like this will become punishable?
Your argument is unreasonable and legitimizes the pointing of lasers at people who have lives in their hands.
>There's some really stupid shit that can get them in big trouble.
And you can't deliberately point a weapon at whim at a person and not get in big trouble.
Mens rea was demonstrated in the video. He got done and fairly so.
--
BMO
It's a BEHAVIOR problem. There is no such thing as a technical solution to a behavior problem.
Not all are green lasers. You only have to go wicked lasers to find lasers of all sorts of frequencies. One of your sibling posters suggested, combing these filters with legislation to only sell lasers at specific frequencies. That would eliminate most of these complains (unless the pesky chinese start selling these lasers directly from china, aliexpress anyone?). But I am not a fan govt interference and I would rather they spend time educating people/children and making the punishments well known, than legislating laser frequencies.
And you are assuming, it is easy to build such filters. It is not that easily to build analog filters that block a very narrow range of frequencies. It would very very difficult to build and would still result in loss of light in other frequencies. If you are talking about blocking multiple frequencies, you might as well forget about this idea.
"One of the most natural things in the world a kid with a lazer pointer will do is shine it straight up into the sky."
Good lord.
First of all, the odds that a kid would shine a laser into the sky and accidentally hit an aircraft are... well, stupendously low. The laser point is incredibly tiny, and the sky is incredibly large. And the slightest movement of the hand holding the laser has huge implications at the distance where an aircraft would intersect it. If it's not trained and held on the target, it would never be noticed.
So, "no" to whatever point you're making.
Actually, I thought of one. Get rid of the window. Replace it with an array of video cameras and a big viewing screen. Put different color filters on each of the cameras and have a computer system that will turn off one of the cameras if it gets excessive amounts of light.
I didn't say it was an affordable solution.
Federal investigators have released this video of a French citizen wanted in connection with an array of high-power green lasers aimed skyward.
Rumours that the "attack" was actually part of a concert were dismissed by US Federal Music Expert, Sam Confederate IV, who said "I know both types of music, and that there noise in the video ain't country *or* western."
However, attempts at having the suspect- known only as "Jimmy Shelljar"- deported from France to the United States have run into problems. A legal document, addressed to "Our bestest friend, Nicolas "L'Americaine" Sarkozy, The French White House, Paris, France" was returned marked "no longer at this address". In addition, scribbled underneath was a cartoon of a "cheese-eating surrender monkey" making an obscene gesture and the message, "Fuck you, arrogant Yankee scum! Signed President François "La Socialiste" Hollande".
Investigators believe that the suspect is motivated by frustration at not having released a worthwhile album in over ten years. More news as we get it.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
But the orientation of the polarization is unknown. It could be adjusted by the pilot but wouldn't prevent an initial surprise effect. It is practically useless.
Duh? You mean the navy aircraft fly directly over civilian dwellings during final approach. I think that is the problem here.
When that base was built 50 years ago, it was only farmland around it. Money corrupts, land gets sold, and the Navy has been bitching about it for years.
Lasers are not the problem. The appropriate solution is to label the crime what it is -- attempted murder against the number of people onboard. Have fun with your back to back life sentences for trying to kill 300 people, jackass.
What could possibly go wrong? The cost/weight of high def video cameras and display screens isn't so bad, but the potential for failure is going to spook most pilots. They know that wires don't short out and make their windows go black...
On the other hand, a lot of aircraft could benefit from a low angle looking camera/screen so the pilot can see the runway clearly on approach.
How about a technology similar to transitions lenses where a powerful light will cause immediate tinting of the window around the beam (not the entire window, just the area where the beam is shining through). It may still cause a temporary problem, but it would prevent extended problems.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
You can already get green-laser safety goggles for medial purposes which have a notch filter right around 532nm but a colour-balanced view outside that frequency. At http://brinellgreenlaser.blogspot.ca/ they specifically mention using them for pilot protection.
Seems to me the pilots could just wear these on takeoff/landing and they'd be fine.
"Go ahead and make the wife and kids homeless."
That fact that democracy lets people like you have power over me is fucking terrifying.
Reflective coating on the outside of an aircraft. Essentially this is the solution to directed energy weapons: durable mirrors.
That's about a million times easier to say than do, and do well, of course but that's basically the only technical solution.
When light hits a surface some combination of 3 things happens: Reflection, refraction, absorption. Refraction (where it goes through the material) isn't any good since that's the thing we're trying to avoid, and 'redirecting' light from the outside and inside just means you can't see anything looking out. So it's a matter of cranking up the other two. If you had a material that was optically dense in one direction but not another (that would absorb the energy, preferably without catching fire) that would be ideal, but off the top of my head, and admittedly, it's been a while since I was in an optics lab, I can't think of an easy way to accomplish that, or you reflect the energy away.
Materials can have different optical properties at 90 degrees to each other - it looks one way front on and another side on, but that doesn't really help any if you want to see out. And there are are things like 'one way mirrors' but they rely on a difference in luminosity between the two sides, not, afaik, some particularly unidirectional property.
The other option is enclose the cockpit and do everything with cameras.
So ya, a technical solution is not all that feasible. The problem with the law 'making an example' of some people is just that: it's unfairly treating some people for 'public benefit'. It's like a 600 000 dollar fine for sharing a CD on a P2P network, or at least it might come across like that. Now if you can prove that an aircraft can suffer catastrophic failure due to a laser then you charge anyone doing it with attempted murder and see what happens from there, but I think the argument that it's an awareness problem first and foremost is probably true.
Nice strawman. Murder or attempted murder requires mens rea. Most people who do this are not trying to kill anyone. They're just being idiots.
Reckless endangerment, sure. Attempted murder? Good luck getting that to stick. You'd be laughed out of court.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Flip-up panels. If something goes wrong, you reach over, flip it up out of the way, and you have your windows back.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I have a welding helmet with a LCD shutter, as soon as the the photo-voltaic cell detects a bright light, the lcd goes black; cost less that $50.00 at Harbor Freight; lots of people like pilots spend more than that on sunglasses. Sure you couldn't go completely off the shelf with it, the helmet is about shade 3 even when off, which is pretty dark at night, and I'm not sure what would happen trying to look at an LCD display in a cockpit while wearing LCD's on your eyes, but it's very plausible.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
If someone is an idiot and thinks it would be funny to shoot a gun into a crowd it's still attempted murder.
Is this the next phase of the stupid laser-pointer-in-the-movie-theater gag that was "becoming epidemic" in the late 90's? Why do some people become idiots when they get a laser in their hands?
I was always impressed how that died off without any serious crackdown. People just squawked about it until it was common social knowledge that nobody though you were cool and everyone thought you were a dick.
Hopefully this dies off too.
Excellent: We'll equip the pilots with Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses!
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
There's a big difference between being punished for your own crime, and being punished for someone else's crime, whether or not that someone else is a blood relative.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
You gotta really be a douchebag to point a laser at an aircraft. It's like dropping bricks off a highway overpass.
What the fuck is wrong with people? It's not like these are delinquent kids doing this laser thing. We're talking full-grown people.
It's a good thing my experience with the people in my life is nothing like the picture of humanity I see reflected by the media every day. Honey BooBoo Chile and The Apprentice and all that. If I really believed people were as messed up as the commercial media portrays, I might get depressed.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Like dropping bricks off a freeway overpass.
I bet there are at least 20 years worth of "reckless endangerment" and "interfering with air traffic" and other crimes. Is there such a thing as "attempted manslaughter"?
"Just being an idiot" is not an excuse for putting peoples' lives at risk. Dude needs to look at losing one or two decades. It has to be enough time to deter.
You are welcome on my lawn.
By that standard, no one who commits a crime should ever be punished because it would also hurt the criminal's family.
Sorry, but the collateral effect on the family is a way to encourage women not to marry and have children with douchebags.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I happen to live in an area where pilots regularly violate laws on altitude. IIRC, the law is 1000 feet above ground level in populated areas. My area is definitely *residential* as I am surround with at least 1000 other houses, though they are not close together as in a typical suburb, but clearly it falls under the regulations.
I've been through this before: 1000 people are going to respond and say that I am wrong: it cannot be that these pilots choose to violate the law, but you have never been in a position to try and complain about these things, and I can assure you that unless you can afford a lawyer and a private investigator, there is nothing you can do about the pilots how regularly intrude on your space. I have called the FAA and every law enforcement body that I fall under and all I ever get, at best, is sent to someone's voicemail.
Nobody cares at all about the slim minority of people who are regularly intruded upon by these assholes. The helicopters fly sometimes within 100 feet my house, barely skimming the treetops, and from inside the house everything is shaking. These are the biggest, richest assholes of them all - they are flying to their second home or third or 50th home and could give a shit about being inconvenience to spend the time to ascend and then descend. The next ones are the pilots is small planes. These guys don't vibrate the house, but they are VERY loud and the pitch of the engine and extremely annoying.
In some areas it is even worse with the problem of helicopters, and what I wonder is if these residents who are lasering these pilots do it out of anger for not being able to do anything else about the violations. I do empathize with their position, but violence is not the solution for me. I'd be willing to bet that as more people learn about this cheap method of encouraging pilots to fly elsewhere, the more of the asshole pilots will get lasered. I'm saying it's right, but frankly, they should be flying at higher altitudes.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Wow. Dramatic video of catching a perpetrator. And interesting representation of what a laser hit looks like in a helicopter. It's so easy to become captivated by a video even if it has no relevance.
How many tragedies have resulted from these thousands of incidents?
If I can just learn if there were 5 or 50 or 500 fatalities resulting from laser strikes, then I will be better able to weigh the significance of the problem. I'm pretty sure that is what elected officials will be asking.
Each year a certain number of people die from drowning in their bathtub. A few die from shark attacks. Some, including celebrities, die from erotic asphyxiation (hah! I speled that rite on the frist tri!). Legislators have to decide where is the most effective place to put their limited funds and protect people from a dangerous world.
...omphaloskepsis often...
They fight forest fires with fire, dumbshit. Burned grass doesn't burn.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
Easy, we just use two polarizing filters offset by an angle of 90 degrees from each other!
I welcome our new 99% overlords.
But there are really two kind of people. Those who aim a laser at an aircraft, and those who don't.
Those who do think that EVERYONE does it, that is their defence and they think EVERYONE else is also stupid enough not to realize their possible consequences of their actions. But this group, while small is not just near insane, they are also VERY VERY LOUD.
So in every discussion, they shout out about their actions and make the rest think that apparently it is normal after all to be an asshole. It isn't. Their favorite battle cry is "have you never been a teenager and did something stupid".
Honest answer for the majority: "No I haven't".
Proof? If all of us REALLY did it, the world would be a hell hole. Take something as simple as speeding, if it was really something all of us did all the time, then there would be a LOT more traffic tickets. It is a small percentage that speeds all the time that accounts for the number of traffic tickets. You can drive on the highway yourself and see that the majority are following the speed limit.
Same with tying cans to cats. NOBODY does this, except a few sociopaths who then shout out about it making the world think this is normal behavior. It isn't.
It even has more serious consequences, part of women's lib wanted women to have the same sexual freedom men had. But did men, the majority of men really have that much sexual freedom? If men could sleep around, they needed women to do that with, so logically, the rates are the same on both sides. Yet there is a generation where you had some women jealous of men's freedom to have multiple partners while for most men, this simply ain't the case at all.
Check for yourself, have you ever increased the number of female sexual partners in conversation?
Right, because we believe the "media" story of the few to be the norm. If a hollywood star has a thousand girls, then so must everyone else. Nope, sorry.
We got to stop treating the freaks of our society as normal. Shining a laser at an aircraft is not normal. It ain't fun, it ain't harmless, it ain't something any normal person has any reason or desire to do.
Que the loud sociopaths protesting that they are normal after all: GO!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Am I the only one who noticed that video is timestamped April 2010 while the arrest this story is talking about happened in 2007? Sheesh.