Laser Painting Could Lead to 25-Year Prison Term 1615
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.
Only 25 years? (Score:1, Interesting)
Am I the only one here who thinks that's letting them off kind of easy? I mean, if I were to shoot a SAM at an airliner and get caught, I think I'd probably be looking at more than 25 years even if it missed. In both cases, the intention and the potential outcome are the same...
The sentence sounds about right. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:25 years? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why this is creepy to me (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Only 25 years? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Scared to use my ThinkGeek laser (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Only 25 years? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:25 years? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:25 years? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Only 25 years? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Your Rights Online? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Can't say I blame them. (Score:3, Interesting)
She said her client was playing with his young daughter, using the laser's narrow green beam to point at stars and illuminating trees and neighbor's houses.
And shamelessly lifted from another post in this discussion, this http://www.skypointer.net/ [skypointer.net] link states that
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.
which supports the former statement.
In short, the guy was pointing out stars to his daughter, he NEVER intended to point it at an airliner (I'd like to see someone with a handheld laser pinpointing an airliner several thousands of meter up). So calling it "assault" is just ridiculous. Picking out this guy also is: supposing the linked site sold any number of units, this means that many people in the US are doing exactly the same, they just didn't hit the one in chance of flashing an airliner miles away AND having the beam deflected into a pilot's eyes. Conclusion: there has been much media attention about lasers hitting an airplane recently so a scapegoat had to be found. He's just one unlucky bastard. Not a criminal. And definately not a terrorist. Why do I hint at scapegoating?
"We need to send a clear message to the public that there is no harmless mischief when it comes to airplanes,"
Justice Department officials said they do not suspect terrorism in any of the cases, but said Banach's arrest shows how seriously they take the matter.
Also, I really disliked this little piece of information:
After the agent switched it on, Banach warned him "not to shine the laser in his eyes because it could blind him," the court documents say.
Let me just say "well DUH!" A 5mW laser (a bit more than the presentation-purpose lasers) are ubiquitous and one shouldn't look straight into those from a few cm away either. This just makes it blatantly obvious this is pure sensationalist "journalism" about a gross injustice, namely picking out one individual, ruining his life, to make a public impression.
ps. If this laser situation should prove potentially dangerous, something SHOULD be done, agreed, but this is just a perversion of justice.
Patriot? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Only 25 years? (Score:3, Interesting)
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).
Re:Only 25 years? (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Re:I'm confused by the distance (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:A Laser Exercise - Experts Only! (Score:5, Interesting)
If its coming more or less directly towards you, the apparent velocity goes waay down. And aircraft on approach are not going 600. More like 250.
You don't have to completley 'blind' them, as in burn out their retinas, to be very, very hazardous.
You can try this yourself. Remove the brakes from your car. Drive at high speed, at night, on a crowded road.(Crowded, to simulate the workload of a pilot on approach). Have a friend shine a high power laser into your eyes for a few seconds. (Said friend will probably want to be on an overpass, rather than in the car with you.)
If you live, repeat the exercise a few more times.
And other victory for the terrorists... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Physicist: Lasers are a poor choice of weapon (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't think
I read no political bias in either the original article or the letter to the editor. You know, sometimes people offer statements without explicit political or partisan bias. Seriously!
IOW: "It tastes not quite unlike tea!" - Arthur Dent
Cheers,
--Maynard
If only we got the whole story (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Harsh sentences vs learning (Score:3, Interesting)
Or maybe you'd feel differently if you were a professional pilot, blinded by the laser, landed successfully, but were never able to work again for the rest of your life?
This was not a simple, harmless prank.
Perhaps this calls for tighter regulation and licensing of more powerful lasers. (FCC? egad!). But let's at least start with protecting the public from this fucktard.
Re:How dangerous could it possibly be? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Yes, your rights online. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Wrong (Score:2, Interesting)
So why not just use a rifle? And we are not arresting people who point rifles at planes....
"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."
Well, it's good thing pilots don't have sunglasses
Second, pilots land all the time in bad weather. If that doesn't qualify as an inability to see well or focus consistently, why aren't planes crashing left and right? Perhaps because it isn't that easy? And perhaps the fact that pilots don't HAVE to see where they are going to land (visual landings are nice but not required).
Look the guy is an idiot. But he isn't a dangerous idiot. Not even close.
Look, if a terrorist wants to bring a plane down, they will use a weapon. Not a toy that could be used as a weapon. Rifles and bombs are much more effective. Not to mention bringing a plane down by a laser pointer wouldn't inspire much terror (the point behind terrorism) because it would be virtually impossible to prove.
Of course, exactly why he was charged under "anti-terrorism laws" when he wasn't suspected of terrorism (according to the article) boggles my mind. I imagine a good lawyer could/will have a field day with that....
Re:May I Be the First to Say... (Score:2, Interesting)
Terrorism = whatever antiterrorist agents fight... (Score:3, Interesting)
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 [lasvegassun.com], John Lewis [washingtonpost.com] and David Nelson [californiaaviation.org] 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 [sfgate.com].
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.)
Re:May I Be the First to Say... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:May I Be the First to Say... (Score:5, Interesting)
This guy was doing a stupid, possibly dangerous thing. It wasn't terrorism, however, and a multi-decade prison sentence isn't going to discourage actual terrorists (though it will hopefully discourage other idiots who don't have terroristic intent to pull similar crap - though I somehow doubt that too).
Re:Is this a good trend? (Score:3, Interesting)
Enough already! (Score:3, Interesting)
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