Posted on 01/03/2005 7:58:40 AM PST by .cnI redruM
It’s not very hard to twist the knickers of people working for the TSA. They operate in a zero-defect environment where they can’t really look like heroes, but they sure look like idiots if they ever drop the ball. It could be said that the TSA plays a zero max game. The best anyone there can do is not miss something. Thus, it’s no surprise that when pranksters started flashing lasers onto a couple of planes, they didn’t get the joke.
The people who administer the TSA and the entire rest of the Department of Homeland Security operation have got to be careful not only of how well they patrol our domain, but how professional they look while they do it. It requires diligence and patience to catch that one individual in ten million who actually plans to strike a match to his own Reeboks and scupper a passenger jet.
It also requires a certain level of judgment not to look like a caricature to the other 9,999,999 people who just want to get on the plane and finish their trips. If the TSA, or any other uniformed authority, takes itself so seriously that people think they have a G-d complex, they lose the respect of the people they seek to protect and are rendered totally ineffective.
The more rebellious people out there start treating them the way Beavis and Butthead treated Principle Vickers. Soon their authorite’ gets about as much respect as Cartman’s does on the South Park Cartoons.
Recently, the Department of Homeland Security got a memo terrorists were trying to use lasers as a possible weapon. This is not totally without precedent. Internet conspiracy theorists still believe to this day that the Russian Navy blinded a US Navy Pilot who flew too close to a Russian Frigate by shining a laser into the cockpit of his jet. In the imaginations of fear-mongers, laser weapon systems make the black helicopters take flight.
So the DHS goes on alert for lasers. Then a guy from Parsippany, NJ gets a laser thingy and decides to play around with his daughter in the back yard of his house. He shoots a few planes with it, and his daughter probably thinks he’s a goofball. Not surprisingly, the DHS radar screen pings and the alert is sounded
Having the cops show up ten minutes later and question him doesn’t look good. It’s understandable, given the alert memo and given that a plane flying only a few miles from where The Twin Towers were struck just got lased. However, it just looks like something Mike Judge or Trey Parker would put into a cartoon short to ridicule overzealous authoritarianism.
Thankfully, the FBI and Jersey Police have given this guy his due process and hopefully an apology for the misunderstanding. The Jersey Laser Man will probably play with his daughter more carefully next time. If everyone is lucky, the incident will be a one-off and can everyone involved can forget about it.
The incident has spawned a copycat in Nashville, Tennessee. These imitators don’t do this to be malicious or even seriously insubordinate. However, they do issue the authorities a good, timely reminder. Uniformed authority is necessarily put on a short leash in America.
We respect the people who wield it, but we expect them to use judgment and intelligence. That respect can turn to resentment, anger or maybe even hatred if the majority of the people see the authority being misused. The DHS has a thankless job. They don’t need to complicate it further by eroding the confidence that is placed in them by those who they protect.
Bears repeating.
This blog would have more credibility if they included the worship habits of the so called "prankster".
I don't know all the background here, but it seems like it would be awful tough to shine a laser from the ground into the cockpit of an airplane traveling at, what, 400 mph? Wouldn't you need some kind of tracking device, or something more advanced than a hand and a laser pointer? Who was this guy anyway? What's to say he didn't have the word "Muhamed" in his name?
Owl_Eagle
"You know, I'm going to start thanking
the woman who cleans the restroom in
the building I work in. I'm going to start
thinking of her as a human being"
There's so much squabbling between the different agencies that make up DHS, The right hand, most of the time doesn't know what the left hand is doing.
They should NOT play this down. While this incident may have been innocent, it needs to be pointed out (sorry about the pun) that it is a federal offense to direct a laser at an aircraft. From the stories I have read, the lasers that are being used in the majority of cases are not the $19.95 electronic toy version, they are much more sophisticated and expensive, although readily available for legitimate construction use such as foundation leveling and pipe laying. If these sort of incidents continue, regulation/registration/licensing of these types of lasers will be eventually become a requirement which will result in increased housing costs. That is why kids and adults who haven't quite grown up yet need to cut this crap out...it is NOT funny.
I'm sure most of it is luck. With a good view it wouldn't be that hard...Like the vantage in wanes world where they sit on the car and watch the planes come in would be a good place to do it...the odds of someone hitting a cockpit with a laser pointer from the ground when the plane is up in the air is are near impossible.
The person who wrote this article are of the same type of people who complain that no action was taking before 7-21 (a date I made up) when a plane full of 300 people crashed into the (enter building here) because some (kid or terrorist) flashed a laser pointer in a pilots eyes
Yesterday while i was on my back deck for a smoke i was watching tv through the windows and i noticed a laser pointer flash over around in my home, windows, tv and presumable me (i haven't acomplished what my mother did and grown eyes in the back of my head so its hard to say)
My first thought was stupid kids..then i briefly imagined a rifle round going through my head or blasting through some other part of my body. Needless to say it wasn't a pleasent though. I'll be over to the about 6 or 7 houses that are situated behind me talking to some parents after work.
It's probably useless and the kids won't fess up, and I don't have the tracking equipment to trianglate a laser pointer. But i'm pretty sure it came from directly behind me. I'd rather say something now before my dog ends up dead or i'm driving home from work at night and get flashed in the eyes, or something else equally unlikely.
I still can't figure out how someone on the ground, underneath a plane, can shine anything into the cockpit...
I agree it's dangerous, I just couldn't see how a light from below, gets into the cockpit, which is situated on the top, in the front. It seems, that someone would have to see the plane from a very far distance, coming at them, to have the angle such that it gets in. It seems like that would be a very small object to both see, and hit. Would mirrored glasses help?
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