Posted on 01/04/2005 4:27:48 PM PST by Las Vegas Dave
NEWARK, N.J. - Federal authorities Tuesday used the Patriot Act to charge a man with pointing a laser beam at an airplane overhead and temporarily blinding the pilot and co-pilot.
The FBI (news - web sites) acknowledged the incident had no connection to terrorism but called David Banach's actions "foolhardy and negligent."
Banach, 38, of Parsippany admitted to federal agents that he pointed the light beam at a jet and a helicopter over his home near Teterboro Airport last week, authorities said. Initially, he claimed his daughter aimed the device at the helicopter, they said.
He is the first person arrested after a recent rash of reports around the nation of laser beams hitting airplanes.
Banach was charged only in connection with the jet. He was accused of interfering with the operator of a mass transportation vehicle and making false statements to the FBI, and was released on $100,000 bail. He could get up to 25 years in prison and fines of up to $500,000.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
The distance thing puzzles me. You can live in Parsippany, or your home can be near Teterboro Airport, BUT NOT BOTH! I used to live in Parsippany and you might get in the Essex County Airport lanes, but Teterboro is too far away. Yahoo has 24 miles from the "center" of Parsippany to the Airport. Even if it was from the closest point in the township to the airport, that is still over 20 miles. Something doesn't add up on what has been released. Maybe we will get to know the exact location distance from where he was to the airport.
Yep. According to the Patriot Act, "domestic terrorism" can mean anything that involves "acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State." Under this definition, any crime anywhere committed by anyone can be considered an act of domestic terrorism."If it wasn't a bad law, no one would have felt the need to name it "PATRIOT".And to think that some brave "patriots" here are just fine with that.
They'll change their minds just as soon as someone they don't like is in office and not one moment sooner.The first thing anyone should do, before supporting a law, is consider if they want their political adversaries enforcing it.
-Eric
Excellent comment.
Perhaps the media is distorting things to boost readership and hysteria.
I didn't think to look on a map, thanks for posting this! I guess "near an airport" is vague enough for them to stretch the truth.
We're going to have to find out where this guy's house is and where the planes were to make sense of this.
I suspect that all the media hype about people with brand new laser pointers has stirred the government up to DO SOMETHING to make them look competent.
Or, from the Bernaysian perspective, the government has decided to act on something and is using the media to justify its actions.
Also, many people know relatively little about lasers, consequently they cannot detect media BS. Some talking head profoundly stated that the laser incidents were made using a "military laser wavelength" or "a type of laser only used by the military" and many people on FR have repeated that without question (or Googling).
LOL!
As Freeee pointed out sheltonmac left out 2/3 of the definition.
The act has to "`(B) appear to be intended--
`(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; `(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
`(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; "
to be treated as domestic terrorism.
I think there is a supporter of the Patriot Act somewhere who secretly puts out crank and false information about it to discredit it's critics. That's the only way I can explain the bizarre things that get said about it.
I think that the laws were passed by the Weimar Republic, the predecessor to Hitler, to protect themselves against the wanna bees like Hitler. He just used their laws to his own ends.
Because it lacked intent to intimindate or coerce a civilian population or to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.
That's the definition right out of the Patriot Act.
His actions were criminal, not terroristic. Remember, crimes are a *bad thing* too.
You sound knowledgeable, allow me to ask:
Does the laser that you describe have the power to project a beam that would be visible 11 miles out and at 3000 feet? If visible, can it still do damage at that range? Thanks.
Note that it doesn't call for a clear intention of anything.
Carolyn
Take this guy- he doesn't meet the Patriot Act definition of a domestic terrorist.
If you interfere with the operator of an airplane with callous disregard of endangering the passengers that's a crime under the Patriot Act- but it's not domestic terrorism.
But it's domestic terrorism if you have sent a note to the airline saying that you'll endanger the operation of the plane if the government doesn't close down the IRS- or done something else to show intent to firghten the people into doing what you want.
This guy doesn't have to be any kind of terrorist to be charged under the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act does not ONLY apply to terrorists, but expands existing laws and creates some new ones that can be applied to terrorist investigations--but also to other criminal investigations.
I just now got off the phone with a friend who is a US Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin, who has immersed himself in understanding the Patriot Act for clarification on this. He told me that in this particular case, Interferring with Mass Transportation was NOT a federal crime until the Patriot Act. So the act did create a new crime, as an amendment to Ch. 97 of the Fed. Criminal Code by expanding the the definition of mass transportation. Prior to the act, however, the only mass transportation that was covered were trains.
As I understand, this man MUST BE be charged under the Patriot Act if the crime is "Interferring with Mass Transportation". Also interesting, a federal judge determined after the Patriot Act that airplanes did not constitute mass transportation, because the act defined mass transportation as "vehicles", and airplanes, according to this judge were not vehicles. Congress then amended the act to define vehicles as including airplanes. Bizarre.
Interestingly, our federal authorities here investigated a man who was randomly taking over (pirating) radio frequencies used for emergency purposes for fun...the feds used the Patriot Act to obtain a roving wiretap to finally catch the guy. We also had a case in this state where the feds busted a drug ring that was using the internet and the FED EX service to sell and deliver the drugs. Technically, the Patriot Act was also used to obtain information on who the person was who ran the website. In another case here as well, a portion of a kiddie porn ring was busted up using some provisions wrapped into the Patriot Act.
I have never tried it, so I'll extrapolate.
If the criterion is "to be visible" to the target, then heck yes. A little keychain LED light for lighting up a door keyhole can be "seen" over a mile away on a dark night. I've done Morse sessions with the Scouts like that with a blue Photon II microlight. I have been camping in the mountains and I have seen a single porch light over a distance of several miles- probably a 60 watt incandescent that sprays out in a big circle, not concentrated and directional.
I've been in a commercial jet at altitude, 32-38,000 feet, and seen searchlight beams from below, those four-lights-on-a-truck kind.
I live near an airport and I can see the landing lights of the incoming birds a long, long way out. They turn them on out by Diamond Bar, CA, and you can see them snap on from Marina Del Rey. Those are only a hundred watt incandescents, I think, in a parabolic reflector, and the drive time is about an hour so maybe 40 miles?
So I think it would be safe to say that if you were up on a mountain, let's say near Big Bear Lake in California where you can get a good view to the East, and someone down on the Pearblossom Highway or in Landers beamed you with a 5 mW green laser pointer, you'd see it. You can see car headlights at that distance, about 10-12 miles, so something as bright and distinctive would stand out as a bright green spark. The beam diameter would be pretty big and the beam from a 5mW laser would not come close to damaging your eye. Earlier I calculated beam power at .46 microwatts/cm2 at a range of 10,000 feet, not very intense. You wouldn't see a heylookitthat bright beam sizzling through the air up on Big Brear but if you looked down at the beamer's location you'd see the laser.
The beamer would see the beam seem to reach from the laser all the way to your location, which is why astronomers are using them for pointers. That's a distance and perspective illusion, the scattered light from the beam gets dimmer with distance. I think but am not sure, that people close by would see the beam out to maybe a mile away, but further away they wouldn't since the scattered light would diffuse out quickly.
When Vegas used to allow laser sky shows, you'd see the beam when you were fifteen miles or so out if you were driving in, but those were up in the watt class not milliwatt. Now the big white light on Luxor can be seen for a good distance, it shines straight up, but they curtailed laser skyshows. Catching a one watt laser light show beam in the face while flying is orders of magnitude beyond the laser pointer (see my post about the FAA open-air laser regulations, it has a link to a report that has laser power/distance relationships).
Light does not stop until it hits something. When someone says that a flashlight, laser, or spotlight has a range of one mile, or 10,000 feet, or whatever, the light keeps going after that. The range is mostly a marketing ploy but usually means that's the distance at which you can tell when you hit something. So if you buy a red laser pointer, I got mine at Wal-Mart on sale for $12, and they say it has a 3000 foot range, they mean that you can see the laser spot after the coherent beam goes 3000 feet and the diffuse return reflection goes back to you another 3000 feet, getting weaker and more spread out all the way. If that's the case, then if the viewer is 6000 or more feet away, he'll see your laser as a bright light, but the light bouncing off his white van (say) is too diffuse and dim for you to see. You won't know it, but you tagged him!
Intent. The man is an idiot who broke safety laws via some sort of twisted thrill seeking. I doubt he set out to harm anyone. When I was a kid, my brothers and I shined a great big light at a bunch of passing Hueys near Ft. Campbell, Kentucky. We were being cute. The Hueys turned around, landed in a field, and disgorged a platoon of troops ... who were also thrill-seeking. I learned an awful lot about escape and evasion that night, but nobody got hurt or was charged with any crime.
What people do MUST be judged by intent. This is the same malfunction that gets little kids charged with crimes when they carry a one-inch plastic GI-Joe "weapon" to school.
They weren't "snuck" into the Patriot Act. They had been kicked around Washington for years as others have pointed out. The Patriot Act was almost exactly the same as a bill introduced at the beginning of the congress by Sensenbrenner. And anybody who even nonchalantly followed the bill knew the money laundering laws in it were added from a separate bill.
I wish they had kept the bill just to anti-terrorism, but it was known at the time they didn't. Of course the media didn't provide good coverage, just simplistic and sensationalist 'reporting'.
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