Green-hued laser pointers are a thing, and they’re not illegal to own. I have one for stargazing, but I also keep an eye on FlightAware to know if there are any inbound flights and avoid using the laser when there are.
This strikes me as much ado about nothing.
If you watch the video, its a very fast mover, not likely sourced from the ground. Lasers from spacecraft in LEO are used for environmental and atmospheric sensing. I have never seen a visible one like this before, but i imagine someone in the atmospheric sensing world could explain its utility. My experience is that by looking at the laser return scatter from space in different frequencies and their Doppler shifts, you can do things like determine winds at different altitudes (useful for fling balloons) as well as constituent gases in the atmosphere.
It wasnt from the ground up but from the sky down
Did you watch the video? The pattern from the laser did not show ground-based people shining something up. It was several "shots" and it traversed across the sky with a single point of origin from above and several points of "impact" below.
I take my dog out the driveway at night and let him chase my red laser pointer. He loves it. BUT - FedEx comes in pretty low right over my house every 3 or 4 minutes on approach to the Memphis hub, so I’m very careful not to point it up!