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Transportation Shark

Finland Announces an Anti-Laser Campaign For Air Traffic 114

Posted by samzenpus from the stop-pointing dept.
jones_supa writes Trafi, the Finnish Pilots' Association, and STUK, the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, have launched a joint campaign against air traffic interference with the title "Lasers Are Not Toys." Ilkka Kaakinen from Trafi says that laser pointers interfering with air traffic is a real problem in Finland. "We receive reports of several cases of laser interference every month and every one of them is potentially dangerous," Kaakinen says. Last year, 60 cases of laser pointer interference were reported in Finland, and the figure for this year was at 58 in November. Despite the continuing interference, only one person has been caught misusing a laser pointer in this way in Finland. That single person was not convicted of a crime, as the court was not able to establish intent. Kaakinen says other countries hand down severe punishments for interfering with air traffic, even years-long stretches in prison. He also reminds that it is important for users of laser pointers to understand that the devices are not toys, and that children should be warned of the potential danger in using them irresponsibly – or ideally, not given one at all.
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Finland Announces an Anti-Laser Campaign For Air Traffic More

Finland Announces an Anti-Laser Campaign For Air Traffic

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  • Do not give lasers as gifts to children (Score:5, Funny)

    by mbeckman ( 645148 ) on Sunday December 21, 2014 @03:09PM (#48648027)
    And when you do let children use a laser you own, make sure you supervise them closely.

    I have a great t-shirt from Meredith Instruments that reads "DANGER! LASER RADIATION! Do not expose beam to remaining eye."

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      And when you do let children use a laser you own, make sure you supervise them closely.

      I have a great t-shirt from Meredith Instruments that reads "DANGER! LASER RADIATION! Do not expose beam to remaining eye."

      Sadly, most of the arrests have been people in the age of majority - perhaps they had the maturity of children, but they aren't children. Plus, given how expensive they are (several hundred bucks), it generally isn't a children's toy.

      As for those claiming that it's not a problem because no one's lost

    • DANGER! LASER RADIATION! Do not expose beam to remaining eye

      The beam might get damaged.

  • In retaliation, sharks have implemented an anti-aircraft campaign.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Am I the only one who notices a strong correlation between lasers suddenly becoming Public Enemy Number 1 and the increased use of drone technology?

    • Sharknado! [wordpress.com]

  • Require lasers sold to the public to have a built-in, slightly-divergent lens. That would improve PowerPoint usage too.

    • They already have it.
      • They don't.
        • Of course they do. Without a lens, a laser diode's beam would so divergent as to be unusable for most applications.

          • Right. They have a lens to focus the beam into as close to a parallel beam as feasible. jclaer is saying they should be required to have a considerably more divergent beam. How many people have a legitimate use for a laser that can maintain a pencil-sized beam at a couple of miles? There are applications for such a thing, but I doubt most people use the capability as anything other than a dangerous novelty, if at all.

            • How many people have a legitimate use for a laser that can maintain a pencil-sized beam at a couple of miles?

              Fortunately, thanks to the laws of physics, such a laser would have to have an aperture of at least 10 to 20 cm, but probably much more, and thus would be very conspicuous.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AK Marc ( 707885 )
              Have you ever watched the laser demonstrations? They all use additional optics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] They add in a focusing lens. Nobody quotes how much it spreads out, but they all do based on inherent flaws in the optics already. They are already 6' wide or more at approaching aircraft height, so how wide would you want them? Have you ever tried shining a hand-held laser at the moon? Even if you did, it wouldn't be visible. It spreads out too much.

              My solution would be putting cameras
            • Immerman and kyosuke: Yes, the beam is already diverged owing to imperfections of the laser collimating optics. That's not the same thing as adding deliberately diverging optics. As I noted elsewhere, divergence makes the problem worse for pilots, because the beam is still very bright but at distance becomes 6' or more in diameter, making it very easy to target aircraft.
              • It's significantly diverging primarily because of the laws of physics. Even "perfect" optics wouldn't help because you can't simultaneously have a small aperture and a low-divergence beam. And I'm acutely aware that increasing its divergence only exacerbates the problem, that's why I concluded some time ago that it's a dumb thing to do.

            • astronomers, astrophotographers, hunters, target shooters, etc.

          • You think a "lay-ser" beam is divergent? Have you ever considered

            • This thread
            • Your mom's thighs
            • The hemispheres of my skull as the zombie slashdotters attack me after this post

    • Re:convex lens (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mbeckman ( 645148 ) on Sunday December 21, 2014 @04:10PM (#48648343)
      That won't work because "the public" includes the many tradespeople and professionals that use lasers for surveying, construction, directional antenna alignment, and cat therapy.

    • The gods themselves strive in vain to improve PowerPoint usage.

  • pew pew pew

  • Just use filters (Score:5, Insightful)

    by d18c7db ( 1031260 ) on Sunday December 21, 2014 @03:52PM (#48648245)
    All popular lasers operate at very specific wavelengths. Can they not build a filter in the aircraft window to attenuate the 635nm, 532nm and 445nm wavelengths? Or is that is too expensive, how about the cheap and obvious way, require pilots to wear special laser filter goggles during takeoff/landing. Problem solved?
    • Why put the costs onto tax paying companies where you can bother tax paying citizens?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by d18c7db ( 1031260 )
      I just did a quick search and this is already being looked into. http://www.laserpointersafety.... [laserpointersafety.com]

    • Re:Just use filters (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mbeckman ( 645148 ) on Sunday December 21, 2014 @04:07PM (#48648315)
      Googles won't work, and neither will a filtering windshield. They'll just obscure vision. The wavelengths are all over the spectrum. The only thing that would filter them all is a piece of steel. Tough to land that way.

      Even if you could protect pilots, what about the rest of the public? As with any dangerous product, the answer is not to make the general public armor themselves, but to simply demand responsibility from the product owners. Your idea is like requiring police to wear bullet-proof helmets so that children can have unfettered use of guns.

      As with firearms and drones, people too stupid to use lasers responsibly should not be allowed to use them at all. But also as with guns and drones, the answer is not prohibition. It's education. You should be required to demonstrate safe lasing knowledge before buying, just as you must to buy a handgun most places.
      • Actually, Googles will work, and are excellent for education. Goggles won't work. ;)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sconeu ( 64226 )

          My EYES!!!!! The goggles do NOTHING!!!!!

          • Too bad lasers blasted your eyes and you can't read. You would have read that we're talking about all-spectrum goggles. You should have paid attention to the t-shirt ;)

      • Googles won't work, and neither will a filtering windshield. They'll just obscure vision. The wavelengths are all over the spectrum. The only thing that would filter them all is a piece of steel. Tough to land that way.

        What if you just used steel windshields, along with Googles Earth to find out where you're at? I don't see any problem with

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        >people too stupid to use lasers responsibly should not be allowed to use them at all.

        I don't know anyone capable of using a 1000 miliwatt pocket laser safely, myself included. All it takes is one glance, or one reflection and blam your vision is damaged.

      • 1. Practical lasers are in just a few frequencies. Not all over the spectrum. They are NOT light bulbs. Filtering works.
        2. The rest of the public is not the problem. The problem is not damaging of eyes. It's seeing nothing because the whole freaking windshield lights up.

        Having said that, education should indeed be part of the solution.

        • 1. While fixed-frequency laser pens are popular now, tunable dye lasers can operate at any wavelength. They're widely available on the surplus market from medical devices, and you can readily buy larger laser modules of hundreds of miliwatts. And even pen lasers now operate in shades of yellow, purple, blue and orange, in addition to green and red. Filters must be tuned to a small wavelength range, and each color range would require several filter layers. Blocking all would result in opacity.

          Filtering i

  • No government decree will convince people that a cheap laser pen is not a toy.

    Are lasers not also dangerous to airline passengers? Of the 60 cases of 'laser interference' how many were blinded or otherwise injured? And why are Finnish pilots looking out the window?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You do realize that airplane accidents are extremely rare and when happened, they usually are caused by an unique chain of events, where one event alone wouldn't caused the crash. The laser pointers alone may not be enough to cause a plane crash normally, but in a critical moment they may be.

      Even a minor distraction or problem can be fatal:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJnPH5ud2W0

    • Swell: try this experiment. Get on a busy freeway during nighttime rush hour. Now point two high-intensity flashlights directly to into your retinas for thirty seconds. Then try driving.

      It's not eye damage we're worried about. It's collision damage from the aircraft careening into a parking structure during final approach, killing everyone on board.

      • You mean, like, when you're driving in a rainy night with the oncoming traffic's lights reflecting off the wet ground?

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by bws111 ( 1216812 )

          I hope you are not claiming that that situation does not lead to crashes.

          • No, but very obviously the situation is FAR more commonplace and so far crashes are small enough in numbers that even insurance companies didn't cause an outcry about it, so it can't be that bad.

            And yes, I take insurance companies' revenue as an indicator of whether a situation is dangerous, not people dying. Simply because there is way more pressure on politics if the former starts to cause a problem...

  • A pilot checking in here (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EmperorOfCanada ( 1332175 ) on Sunday December 21, 2014 @04:44PM (#48648537)
    I am not condoning this behaviour, and as a pilot would be royally pissed (if I wasn't dead) if someone did this while I was flying. But I recently got a bright green laser and love to see just how far I can shoot the beam to hit things. Basically if it is a clear moonless night I can pretty much hit a target out to the horizon. But if I were a bit of a dimwit I could clearly see the temptation to try and hit airplanes in that it would be cool to hit something moving and at that height.

    So while punishing people who do this I certainly hope they take into consideration that most people doing this would not be criminal terrorists so much as criminally stupid. Thus the proper punishment most of the time should be to scare the crap out of them and then ban them from owning a laser pointer for a decade or two. Keep in mind that the goal will be to prevent the dimwits from doing it again; it is generally quite hard to prevent them from being dimwitted and thus identifying the occasional dimwit and training him will be far more effective than trying to somehow reach the dimwits and convince them from doing it trough draconian laws which will largely serve to make the dimwit's lives far worse than they already probably are.

    For instance when flying the reports are that the lasers often are coming from trailer parks vs the nice end of town.

    • But I recently got a Barrett M82A1 [barrett.net] and love to see just how far I can shoot the .50 cal rounds to hit things.

      Does this version sound any better?

      • I would have thought that your analogy would have required an extra special level of dimwit except:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

        and then there is this nincompoopery:

        http://m.wpxi.com/videos/news/... [wpxi.com]

        But my thing is that I like to shoot a laser across say a body of water at the storage building miles away which presuming some common sense results in zero harm. But few would debate the harm in shooting up at an airplane. The key being that a few would debate the harm; a few dimwits. But assuming

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Livius ( 318358 )

      most people doing this would not be criminal terrorists so much as criminally stupid.

      The crime is attempted second-degree murder. There's more to it than stupidity.

      • You must be an puritanical American who has been brainwashed that all sinners need to be punished old testament style. How about thinking with your brain for once and asking, which is better for society: To take some dimwit and throw him into the justice system which will chew him up and destroy whatever small(especially in America) chance he had for even a crummy life, or to educate him into being a better citizen and send him on his way?

        And before you even spend one keystroke defending America, 70% of A

      • You clearly have no idea how stupid people can be. For research purposes I advise going to a beach party in summer.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

      If it's a moonless night and presumably the target you are aiming for is unlit (so you can see the beam reflecting off it) then you are firing blind. There could be someone stood there, or in the 5km (3 miles) or more to the target.

      • I will save my concern for people stumbling around in the dark on an uninhabited island for the 22nd of never. You must be one of those health and safety types.

  • I'm sick of this (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Charliemopps ( 1157495 ) on Sunday December 21, 2014 @05:20PM (#48648725)

    I'm sick of this bullshit myth.

    Lasers do not cause Aircraft to crash.

    It's never happened, it never will happen. I can't even focus my pen laser on my cat that's 10 feet away from me for more than a split second. Hitting the windshield of an aircraft that's at least 1000 yards away and traveling at at least 200mph?!?! At worst, you have a 1 in a billion chance of nailing the pilot directly in the retina, so yes, you shouldn't do it because that might annoy him. But it's not going crash the plane even if that happened.

    Now, for all of you that are going to tell me I'm dumb and don't know what I'm talking about... Please provide evidence. Has any plane ever had an accident as a result of a laser? Any? I've heard from some irritated pilots, and I can understand that... I'd be irritated to. But to claim there was any chance of an accident and we need to limit consumer freedom to harmless technology, just so we don't annoy pilots? That's a joke.

    And, I'm willing to offer evidence myself:
    2013 Egyptian protests. Snipers on buildings and in helicopters we targeting opposition leaders. As a result, protesters started buying cheap green laser pointers in the market and using them to highlight Sniper and helicopter positions. Eventually, so many lasers would be focused on passing helicopters they looked like this:
    http://cdn.theatlantic.com/sta... [theatlantic.com]
    and here's a video:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
    This went on every night for months. Dozens of aircraft, thousands of lasers focused on them continually... but not one single crash. None.

    There's absolutely no way these laser pointers could cause a crash... and if they could, the NTSB should immediately require all aircraft to be retrofitted with polarized sheets on the inside of the pilots window. It'd cost a couple of dollars per aircraft and wouldn't infringe on the personal freedoms of the general population.

    • Re:I'm sick of this (Score:4, Informative)

      by mbeckman ( 645148 ) on Sunday December 21, 2014 @05:50PM (#48648895)
      Dear sick: you are dumb and don't know what you're talking about. The risk is not pilot eye damage. It's pilot distraction or temporary blinding during a critical phase of flight. As a helicopter pilot, I can tell you that every phase of flight in a helo is critical, as we typically fly at 500' AGL by law and are constantly looking for obstacles to avoid. A laser that makes me not see and avoid the power lines ahead will kill me just as effectively as if it had been a photon torpedo fired from the USS Enterprise.

      When an airliner is landing, this is also a critical phase of flight. Blinding the pilot then will make it impossible to read instruments, possibly if not probably resulting in the aircraft departing from the glide slope and runway centerline and into a collision with airport surroundings.

      You're right that no aircraft in the US has been shot down yet by a laser, although some pilots have suffered permanent eye damage. This is where the part about you being dumb comes in. See, intelligent people try to be pro-active about foreseeable disasters and take action before anyone, even a dumb person, dies. So we're just looking out for you. Pity you're too dumb to realize that.

      • Not just no aircraft in the US, no aircraft in the world has had anything more than a pissed off pilot at landing.

        You seem to be arguing like I'm saying people should target aircraft at landing with lasers, its no big deal. Re-read what I said... I mentioned at least twice that you shouldn't do this. Stupid kids do this sort of thing. But this is heading in a very predictable direction. They are trying to ban consumer lasers with this lame excuse. Is there a possibility that the right laser, hits the right

    • Lasers do not cause Aircraft to crash.

      People cause Aircraft to crash.

    • Re:I'm sick of this (Score:5, Informative)

      by mbeckman ( 645148 ) on Sunday December 21, 2014 @05:58PM (#48648931)
      Dear Sick: if you had bothered to put on your Google goggles you could have easily found instances of pilot eye damage:

      http://abcnews.go.com/News/jet... [go.com]

      • An FAA preliminary incident report described the pilot's injury as minor but did not provide details.

        Yea, sounds like it burned his eye right out.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by zlenko ( 1543805 )
        What?! 5000 feet?! This story is utter BS. Let's take, for example, specifications for Wicked Lasers Krypton ("The Krypton is the world's most powerful green handheld laser", priced $999). "Beam Distance 0.25 Lux - 47475 meters". Let's assume that the beam was from the ground at about 45 degrees. This gives the distance of about 7000 feet. (47475 / (0.3048 * 7000)) * (47475 / (0.3048 * 7000)) * 0.25 - this gives about 120 lux. To put this into perspective, direct sunlight is more than 32000 lux. Yes, laser

      • All you've done is provide evidence of some pilot's eye getting damaged.

        You have failed to provide any evidence about how you need eyes to fly a plane OR any evidence about crashes due to pilots being unable to see.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bws111 ( 1216812 )

      Do you understand the difference between 'has not happened' and 'can not happen'? There are many instances of accidents caused by things that you would think could not cause an accident.

      Is a laser by itself likely to bring down a plane? No. Can a laser be the last straw that causes a crash when the pilots are already dealing with some other problem? Yes.

      Look into the history of air crashes and educate yourself. Except for mechanical failures a whole bunch of crashes are caused by multiple small things

    • Couldn't agree more. Just consider the jitter from your hand. If I shine a laser pointer at a wall 20ft away the dot jitters about plus or minus half an inch. At 1000 yards that's plus or minus 6 feet. Pretty much impossible to hold it steady enough so that the pilot would even notice.

      • Who cares if the chance of hitting the planes if incredibly small... using this argument it should be legal to stand in your garden with a blindfold, and shoot at your house with a BB gun. The chance of hitting a window would be small, the chance of hitting you even smaller, so if one did hit you it would be an "accident".

        About the "jitter from your hand" argument... what if one has the laser pointer mounted on something that is easy to aim... like a riffle. Rifles are designed to be held steady, even a toy

  • Real problem? Haven seen even single reported case in news....
    • There are many reports of SERIOUS, career-ending eye damage to pilots due to lasers. Here's just one, why not google your heart out until you're convinced the threat is real. http://www.washingtontimes.com... [washingtontimes.com]
    • Naval Lt. Cmdr. Jack Daly and Canadian helicopter pilot Capt. Pat Barnes suffered eye injuries hours after an aerial surveillance mission to photograph a Russian merchant ship that had been shadowing the ballistic-missile submarine USS Ohio in Washington state’s Strait of Juan de Fuca. The Navy recently turned down an appeal from the Defense Department inspector general to award Cmdr. Daly a Purple Heart for the incident. Cmdr. Daly, who retired from the service last year, continues to suffer eye pai

    • Why does there need to be a "problem", there is no "good reason" to point lasers at planes.

      If you have a car, please post your licence plate number so that we can make an objective study of whether you will crash if people point lasers at your car.

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