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$10k Reward For Info On Anyone Who Points a Laser At Planes Goes Nationwide
coondoggie writes: "The FBI today said it was making national a pilot program it tried out in 12 locations earlier this year that offers up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of anyone who intentionally aims a laser at an aircraft. According to the FBI, the pilot locations have seen a 19% decrease in the number of reported laser-to-aircraft incidents. Those locations included: Albuquerque, Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, and Philadelphia."
1) Aim laser pointer at my own plane, parked in a hangar. 2) Turn myself in for "intentionally aiming a laser at an aircraft" 3) Profit!
Real programmers use "copy con program.exe"
What's the reward then?
not a bad deal, especially when you receive the money up front
I see Michael Cooney at Network World (coondoggie) is submitting his own blog posts again.
Planes get lost, re-routed etc ALL the time. Think a nightclub with laser advertising, plane flies overhead, or helicopter. Can they be punished?
"The FBI today said it was making national a pilot program it tried out in 12 locations earlier this year that offers up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of anyone who intentionally aims a laser at an aircraft.
You'd think they'd have just put polarized glass in the cockpit by now if it were that big of a deal. Oh wait... that's right, it's not that big of a deal.
Why do we continue to allow things like this to get blown so far out of proportion that we end up sending 16yr olds to prison for something that never really had a chance to do harm to anyone in the first place? A landing aircraft is moving faster than freeway traffic at it's slowest. Without computer control and actuators there is no way a person could, by hand, hold a laser on a cockpit window for more than a tenth of a second. If a pilot is unable to land a plane after a flash of light that brief, we'd better start making lightening illegal because it's a hell of a lot brighter, and more common than a laser strike.
2) Offer to pay him $8K for pointing a laser pointer at a plane and going to jail.
3) Profit!
You could probably find a more erratic person willing to take less than $8K of the 10K, but I would imagine you'd want to deal with a fairly rational person who doesn't feel resentment towards you (i.e. for getting ripped off). The goal of this plan is to rip off the government and the tax payer, not the fall guy.
What the government should do, is offer $20K for turning in the orchestrator of a laser pointer arrest reward scheme.
I can't imagine it would have any real affect or we'd read about planes falling out of the sky left and right all over the world.
right? Right?
US army got plenty of those.
Right - I've just read the headline. I'm going out with my laser pointer, and since I live under a flight path 10k$ here we come!
I used to believe in police rewards...until I tried to claim one.
Pigs lie.
Are you familiar with wicked lasers?
its not just about fixed wing aircraft. this is a huge deal for helicopters.. including the ones used by the police force. It doesnt cause them to fall out of the sky but it can ruin a pilots career.
Why do the decision makers in this country have an insatiable urge to ruin everything for everyone by making needles, useless, delusion, meaningless legislation that makes our culture, our lives, our freedoms the governments issue, make normal every day illegal? It is so ludicrous, like one person stated, why do we have such a strange system in which 16 year olds, young, respectable people with futures going to jail for YEARS for stupid frivolous crap, this overly litigated country we live in now is becoming a nightmare, I read recently over FORTY-THOUSAND laws were passed last year alone, do you know what any of them are? I don't.
Just call the cops on anyone you know who owns one. It's not like "their word" will be much protection. You can even shine the laser yourself, just time it when they're home.
My point about an allegation-based law system made, anyone that actually shines lasers at cockpits is a fucking idiot and more juvenile than any "manchild" who still reads fairy tales.
-AC.Falos
What the world is coming to now a days, lasers and aircraft.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I live in the Chicago area and have never heard about this pilot program for rewards. How could an un-announced program have any effect at all?
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Stop flying and polluting the atmosphere with jet exhaust. There's also the noise around airports, planes always flying overhead, mostly needless fuel consumption. I won't get into the big brother issues.
I know, how about just driving and actually seeing the country you live in and just maybe, MAYBE, slowing life down a little?
There's always the train, ship, or bus as well that doesn't pollute everyone else's view of the sky.
celle
P.S. Of course, now that I've stated the non-starter, how about just banning open-ended laser applications or open-ended lasers or even requiring termination for laser beam applications like many other em.spectra technologies.
Laws that benefit the use of surveillance drones should be expected before they become commonly used. A cover story for the public should keep them calm while military and police drones are placed in the sky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Any "amateur astronomer" who tries to do their laser-assisted star tour somewhere as light-polluted as the surroundings of a typical airport needs clue.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
I was developing Ronja OSHW FSO and contemplating using a laser pointer.
I called an authority asking if hitting a pilot's eye would be a problem.
They said absolutely no problem. The pointer has a small aperture causing divergence by diffraction. So after a few kms, the light spot would be diluted.
They said the biggest reason is the pilots have to be used to random intense lights on the horizon. City's windows cause pretty intense sunlight reflections.
Of course different thing is if you use high powered laser pointers as some sold on the internet or other kind of laser with precision optic of large apeture.
Other factors (they didn't mention): atmospheric jitter, speed of airplane. Pilots eye at 200 km/h spends 1.8 msec in a 10 cm beam.
I think this is scare mongering unless they go after higer powered lasers which I think should be illegal in public for eye safety reason anyway.
My latest OSHW project
Yep. Precisely how many planes has any laser brought down so far? Have lasers become a standard military weapon yet? If so I'd expect to see Al Caida and the Taliban routinely using laser pointers to crash US aircraft. But oddly enough, we don't...
Let's get real. Is a laser pointer a mile away going to disable both of a pilots eyes? AND both of a copilot's eyes? And how long were you blinded when a supermarket checkout scanner laser last caught your eye? Did you crash your shopping cart? Did you call in the FBI?
This mountain is such a molehill. It makes me wonder why the FBI is overselling this schtick so hard. It's easier than working for a living, I guess.
They always find weak minded individuals who could be influenced easily. The promised payout is not necessarily monetary. The real beneficiary is a three letter agency that not only can justify it's existence, but also get internal promotions, more money and more resources. Most importantly you could call somebody as a domestic terrorist.
Current laser reward scheme is just unnecessary publicity.
I'm an airline pilot who has been lased three times, and I'm probably one of the only pilots in the country to have also earned a degree as a laser technician. With these credentials I was chosen to represent my airline at the ALPA Laser Illumination Conference in 2011. http://laserconference.alpa.or... The threat is real. It's easy to dismiss it as a "what are the odds" type of event, but the truth is that it happens far too frequently. People can buy these 1+ watt diode lasers very easily online and do with them what they will, and they frequently choose to point them at airplanes. What does it look like in the cockpit? Pretty much like an intense green strobe effect. And the worst thing is that once the light is seen the first time it's human instinct to look out the window to try and find the cause of the flash. Then the second blast hits as the pilot is looking directly at it. Depending on altitude and beam divergence, there's a real possibility of permanent eye damage. The lower to the ground, the more likely the damage. At night a pilot's vision is kept adapted to the ambient light in the cockpit, so their pupils are dilated to allow more light in. This also increases likelihood of damage. Flash blindness can last for many minutes, and it's a very bad thing to have your pilots flash blinded. It is a real issue, and having personally experienced it, I can say it's a problem.
You didn't hear it ,therefore it didn't happen?
I guess no trees make noise when you aren't around.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Fear mongering does not need to be rational, this is citizen training so that they hear and see how rewarding it can be to turn in people for cash.
+1
NT
Yep. Precisely how many planes has any laser brought down so far? Have lasers become a standard military weapon yet? If so I'd expect to see Al Caida and the Taliban routinely using laser pointers to crash US aircraft. But oddly enough, we don't...
Let's get real. Is a laser pointer a mile away going to disable both of a pilots eyes? AND both of a copilot's eyes? And how long were you blinded when a supermarket checkout scanner laser last caught your eye? Did you crash your shopping cart? Did you call in the FBI?
Yes, really, let's get real. Do you really think every person able to fly the plane has to get blinded on both eyes before it gets dangerous, and is it really ok as long as pilots only loose their sight on one eye? It's all about safety margin, and the lasers eats up a lot of it.
The reward needs to be this high because catching these terrorists is very difficult. The current level of penalty and the reward is the only way to do it as long as the risk of getting caught is as low as it is, and people are as ignorant about the dangers as you.
Quick internet search and wiki page on the subject and I can't find a single aircraft incident caused by lasers, even a few coordinated attacks that did nothing.
Damn, everyone and his brother should accuse their worse enemy. $10,000 is $10,000. Oh wait, no one is actually going to prosecuted and this is all just a mind fuck? Say it isn't so.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
"One Hundred BILLION dollars!"
It just occurred to me that when the movie came out a hundred billion was a lot of dollars.
How quaint.
Yep, and lasers shoot themselves at airplanes.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Just remove the windows from all planes, and install body scanners everywhere within a hundred miles of any route.
My airspace, MINE!
Get a family dollar pointer, point a plane, toss pointer by enemy neighbor porch/car door.
Call report strange laser
Profit...
Government is going after "snitches" Supreme Court just stood behind forcing Time's reporter to turn over his anonymous source over a CIA operation he wrote about. They want to arrest Assange/Snowden, they got Manning, making government employees scared to snitch on illegal government activity. Yet the government wants citizens to snitch on each other!?
Fuck off, I ain't reporting shit, you can't have different rules, you want people to leak on neighbors then stop killing/attacking/threatening government whistleblowers.
Finally common sense. If lasers are so effective, then we would use them. They would be more powerful and computer guided to stay on the enemy cockpit. From these comments it would be cheap and effective. The enemy would also be using them on us. But why don't we have hundreds of soldiers reporting their experiences with them?
One can report someone for shining a laser pointer, they are arrested but not convicted -as they didn't shine it at a plane, in fact at the time no planes were in the air.
Profit (just a bit of your time)
Otherwise, it's the chair.
My airspace, MINE!
I read a book of that nature. I can't remember it's name, but the jets were flying over his house due to a new airport, so he floated Barrage balloon above his place.
It was a fairly decent book but he'd most likely be shoot in this age. - They downed the balloon with the after burners of a jet.
-A barrage balloon, sometimes called a "blimp," is a large balloon tethered with metal cables, used to defend against aircraft attack by damaging the aircraft on collision with the cables, or at least making the attacker's approach more difficult.
doesn't care about uninformed opinions. both about the known damage caused by handheld lasers and what little effect polarized filters would do to prevent it.
My airspace, MINE!
-A barrage balloon, sometimes called a "blimp," is a large balloon tethered with metal cables, used to defend against aircraft attack by damaging the aircraft on collision with the cables, or at least making the attacker's approach more difficult.
Found this gem reading further: " They proved to be mildly effective against the V-1 flying bomb, which usually flew at 2,000 feet (600 m) or lower but had wire-cutters on its wings to counter balloons. 231 V-1s are officially claimed to have been destroyed by balloons." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
Something I didn't realize is how many freaking V-1's were set off.
then you do it instead of trying to come up with lame excuses why self-important idiots shouldn't be expected to follow the same rules as everyone else.
put people like you in your place before a plane goes down due to your delusions of adequacy and belief that you should be able to do whatever you want.
is to not waste time arguing with idiots like you, as you seem to think that being a dense moron somehow legitimizes your willful ignorance.
Amazing how a cheap device an compromise a multi-million dollar piece of equipment. Don't give the terrorists any ideas!
Finally common sense. If lasers are so effective, then we would use them. They would be more powerful and computer guided to stay on the enemy cockpit. From these comments it would be cheap and effective. The enemy would also be using them on us. But why don't we have hundreds of soldiers reporting their experiences with them?
Just like chopping a person in the head with an axe can't possibly be dangerous. If it was then the army would only axes.
It's just a source of structural weakness in the airframe anyway. Just get rid of the windows and replace with cameras.
From the other side of the argument.
Where does shining a laser into anyone's face fall under the bill of rights?
Where does interfering with a pilot or driver while performing their duties fall under things you can't live without?
The safety of the aviation industry isn't built around guessing how likely it is for someone doing reprehensibly stupid things to cause accidents. The safety is built around minimizing stupid behavior in general.
Is there a legitimate (non war zone) reason for firing a laser that has a non zero chance of interfering with a pilot at an airplane?
No there is not.
There's no need to debate the likely hood of some specific set of circumstances that could potentially cause a crash, since there's no need to excuse criminally stupid behavior of this sort in the 1st place.
It's a $10,000.00 bounty on people who are risking the lives of others for fun. It's not denying you your rights, it's not an issue subject to debate on the pros and cons of how and when you should fire up a laser at planes. It's just another tool to prevent heinously stupid things from happening.
~G
(Every simple ass problem here seems to turn into a debate on the odds of it happening, how about we decide not to play the game to begin with? )
then they're fucked.
seriously, what a terrible idea.
I do love fucking up imaging star parties from 80km away :)
*wide beam*
They are a military weapon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzler_%28weapon%29
Too bad the Chemtrail jets are likely remote operated.
I'm sure they can find someone else to mes sup everyone's orders.
Al cicada?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada
Shine laser at aircraft.
Wipe laser of all fingerprints.
Place laser on hated neighbors backyard patio table.
Call police.
Watch neighbor get arrested and get $10k payout.
Guess we can call it " lasing " vs " swatting ".
Screw lasers. Rent one of those bazillion candlepower spotlights you see at kickoff events and shine THAT at the aircraft.
Since it's not a laser, tell the LE's that show up to piss off.
Planes don't fall out of the sky when hit by lasers any more than cards spontaneously burst into flakes when a driver looks at their phone. The question is of risk. Do you want a pilot to be unable to see a runway during the most critical maneuver of the entire flight? It's not at all dissimilar to not wanting some idiot behind me on the road to be smsing his bro while I'm performing an emergency break in front of him. It's a risk to other's life. Don't do it. Note I say others, not your life. Your life is yours to end whenever you want.
Will try it out tonight. (I don't live in US)
Chinese already plan to build a tunnel under the Bering strait.
And since the trains will be Chinese I think they will be probably faster than American airplanes.
So I guess we all change from planes to trains and the problem will be solved forever. No more pointing of lasers at airplanes.
You have no clue about how flying works. There are many levels of redundancy to everything. This is to keep planes from falling out of the sky.
You get blinded, hopefully your right seat can still see, if both right and left seat are blind. Do a go around and turn on the auto pilot or grab the pilot who is dead headding on the flight; or for long flights the extra flight crew(s) who is/are sleeping. Hey look the plane didn't fall out of the sky.
It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt
Oh so now it's plexiglass instead of glass. Keep moving those goal posts. You people who get your panties in a bunch about people with lasers are just fucking stupid. Bitching to be bitching I call it. How about you go bitch about the kids playing with the real guns and not the laser pointers.
"Some" air ambulances. You know that is ONE air ambulance right?
Some of the commenters are claiming that a laser pointer is much the same as a flash of lightning. As a practical matter, they are not.
When you are flying in or near a thunderstorm (I have), you know the flashes are coming, and you keep your head down. You might even wear a instrument training hood and you're focused entirely on the instruments. You also turn up the cabin lights as bright as possible, which isn't a problem, because you're not looking outside.
With a laser pointer on a visual approach or low level flight (thankfully, never encountered this), you're looking outside, you've got the cabin lights down low so your night vision is fully adapted. Your pupils are fully dilated and you definitely would be temporarily blinded, and possibly at just the wrong time.
Absolutely they can and it's not unusual. I'd you operate a laser more powerful than a handheld pointer, you ccarb easily get busted for pointing skyward whether aircraft fly by or not. Any decent DJ or light jockey knows not to point lighting upward outdoors.
You may have noticed in the last few years club lasers have almost universally switched to scatter effects, where there are two hundred weak beams rather than one strong beam. That's largely because a strong beam can get you in trouble in several ways. Heck, just having an overpower laser at a show without a permit is a big fine - even if it is pointed at the ceiling.
Ps - the local FAA field office can approve unterminated (or terminated) laser effects outdoors, so it IS possible to do it safely and legally. The FAA might just tell the operator to point the laser this direction, not that direction (such as not toward the approach corridor for a local airport).
Lol. Try filtering red, blue, and green while making a post. You'll notice that you can't, because you couldn't see anythind. Red is at one end of the spectrum, so you can filter it and everything just looks a little blue, because you've filtered out the low end of the spectrum. You can filter out blue by filtering the high end of the spectrum. You can filter green by filtering the middle of the spectrum.
If you block the low end (red), the middle (green) and the high end (blue), you've just blocked ALL light.
(1) Establish how many personalities can be distinguished within the defendant's mind.
(2) Try to identify the personality who was in charge at the time, and do him/her for pointing the laser.
(3) Prosecute all the other personalities for being accessory and/or accomplice to the act of pointing the laser.
(4) Depending on how tightly the personalities are linked, you may optionally prosecute each of them for conspiracy to commit a crime, or even taking part in a criminal organisation.
(5) Add all sentences together. This is how long the body pointing the laser should go behind bars.
I suspect that the defense of "multiple personalities" will lose its popularity very quickly.
Thank you! I didn't know this. :-) Much appreciated.
why would be someone as stupid to intentionally aim at aircraft in the night with laser lights. it's attempted murder...
Give the pilots an Oculus Rift headset with images fed from cameras mounted on the headset. Make sure you don't get a high-end headset "now capable of accurate reproduction of laser beams". While you can still blind the cameras with a laser you cannot burn out the pilot's retinas.
(I do hate myself a little for plugging a Facebook product.)
sigs are hazardous to your health
Phone fail. "cars spontaneously burst into flames"
Who says that the military does not have any?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzler_%28weapon%29
Well ones that blind you for life are outlawed by this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_on_Blinding_Laser_Weapons