Ok, Who Got the New Techie Toy for Christmas?

[billroper]

This article discusses a couple of recent (as in post-Christmas) incidents of someone shining a laser into the cockpit of a plane. (I heard about it on the radio this morning.) The government is worried that this might be terrorists.

Maybe. I, on the other hand, would start checking the catalogs that sell high-end toys for techies to see which of them are selling lasers that would fit the description of the offending beams. I think several somebodies got a new toy for Christmas and didn't realize that they could actually hit the airplane with it.

Never underestimate what a techie will do with Somebody Else's Airplane.

Comments

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

this link from polyfrog's journal shows (a) a site that was selling lasers that might be a real problem for planes (I don't know enough about the subject to determine how much the beam would spread or be attenuated by the distance from ground to airplane, but it would certainly blind people at close range), (b) said site has closed in the last couple of days because of these stories, (c) it includes a link to another story reporting 6 incidents in the last few days.

I think it's almost certain that the people pointing the lasers at planes are idiots rather than terrorists, but that won't keep either the government from ramming draconian regulations through or would-be manufacturers to pull their products off the market to cover their own asses. So once again, a few idiots who make the news cause all of us to lose a little more of our freedom, and once again, the only people who will care are the few who would actually want to use that freedom responsibly -- such a small minority that their rights can be stolen safely.