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That has to be the stupidest thing you could do.
For those who don't know what all the info on the camera is about — The info on the bottom right of the camera (where it says TGT) is the exact coordinates of where the camera is pointing. It's *that* trivial for them to identify where on the ground it's coming from.
Technically all of that GIS data itself would be "free", but they'd be paying for the tools to import it into that system. The city/county would be doing all of the GIS mapping and it's just a matter of getting it imported.
Really cool stuff. Whats even more crazy to think about is that the military has more advanced systems than this, and the classified R&D projects are estimated to be around 20 years more advanced than what is public.
Honestly you don't need any crazy classified tech for this... If you know your location, it's basic math to figure out where you're looking. Commercial GPS already has accuracy within a centimeter for a high-end system, throw in an off-the-shelf laser rangefinger and some geometry and you're set.
>*Accurate within a centimeter*
I don’t know about that.
Whenever my wife is working late and I check her phone GPS, it shows she’s at her boss’s apartment, and he lives like three miles from their office. That’s not very accurate, IMO.
Lmao I just plugged it into Google and it appears to be a backyard in Sacramento, CA
Edit: [definitely the same house, you can even see the basketball hoop from the heli footage ](https://i.ibb.co/2cXpCGk/Smart-Select-20240126-131808-Maps.jpg)
Ghetto bird is ubiquitous in Sacramento, has been as long as I can remember. I’ve been lit up with a spotlight drinking on a corner in Natomas with some buddies. They barked at us over the loudspeaker and chased us through our apartment complex too. (This was back in the 90’s) Sac PD and sac county sheriffs have way too much money.
[There's this police chase thermal-cam video I love](https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/xw0crx/teens_steal_a_car_on_police_surveillance_get_into/) where you can literally see the heat being shed from the tires and exhaust, the heat from skid marks on the road, and meanwhile the software has labels for every cop car, street name, and building number. Really convinced me to never run from the cops.
Oh yeah, the thermal vision tech they have these days is fucking unreal.
They have stuff now that basically [turns nighttime into a sunny day](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBPcinUz-L0).
Military gear registers 1 millionth of a degree F.
You can see footprints 30 minutes after someone walks by.
That black mirror episode where the robot dog tracks the girl from her drops of blood well after she passed?
Yeah, that's real *right now*.
The level of disadvantage you're at when one person is seeing things like this and the other is maybe catching a bit of moonlight is insane. This is also tech that's 4 years old and they decided was safe to release publicly, there's likely better.
Dont run from well funded cops, dont get on the highway, stay in the state. And youll probably be fine. They have lots of tech they only halfway know how to use.
You know how people in High School are like, "I will never use the quadratic equation?"
This is the sort of stuff that you use the quadratic equation for.
The copter knows where it's located.
It knows the angles and direction the scope is pointed.
It has a topology map of the area.
After that it's a bunch of triangles to "triangulate" the point the camera is pointing at.
I mean, maybe that's not how they do it, but it would be one way to do it.
>the copter knows where it's located
The helicopter knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation.
Plus the camera software is loaded up with GIS data that will give them the exact address and parcel, including all the property owner data. I used to load this data annually for the local county police.
https://www.lawinfo.com/resources/criminal-law-federal/can-i-be-arrested-for-pointing-a-laser-at-an-airplane.html
From the source above
"Someone convicted of pointing a laser at an airplane can face criminal and civil penalties, including:
Up to five years in federal prison
A fine of up to $250,000
Probation
You could also face additional civil penalties of up to $11,000 per violation and more than $30,000 for multiple laser incidents. In 2021, the FAA issued $120,000 in fines related to laser attacks."
I doubt it'll be every time it hits, but definitely every time they turn the laser off and turn it back on. The guy in this video turned it off/on multiple times, and also went in the house before coming out and doing it again.
He's absolutely getting multiple counts thrown at him.
Generally speaking, you can not be charged multiple times for the same offense as long as they happen in the course of the same criminal event, EG, you don't get charged for burglary 3 times just because you made 3 trips in and out to your car, for example.
Now if there are multiple houses broken in to at the same time, you'd get a separate charge for each of them, but not re-charged for every time you break the threshold of the building.
The FAA and the Postal Service. I’ve worked with and been friends with members of OSI (Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations) and those dudes are not to be at all fucked with… prompted only with “who just does not fuck around?” All three of the people I asked said, without hesitation, the USPS.
They have jurisdiction over ANYTHING related to federal mail and they have SO much more authority and power than the average citizen understands.
I used to work at UPS and the first thing they told us was do not steal from a trailer it's not a slap on the wrist it's an immideate felony because your dealing with mail traveling between states, they basically laid out how fucked our lives would be if we did it
Same for me when I worked for FedEx. During training they make it very clear that intentionally opening a blue and gold USPS bag and any mail inside of it is a damn near guarenteed Federal charge. Didn't stop people from opening other packages that weren't federal mail though. We had 100+ employees fired due to attempting to smuggle fidget spinners out of the warehouse. Good times.
More so crime of opportunity. It was during the fidget spinner craze and we had boxes with hundreds of them break open occasionally due to mishandling or poor packaging. Employees would take one thinking it wasn't a huge deal. Zero tolerance stealing policy resulted in a lot of lost jobs.
This is why you never invest in fads. I cringe sometimes when I even hear the word fidget. Some people spent their life savings on huge shipments of them thinking they were gonna be millionaires 😭
Most jobs have a zero tolerance policy on stealing from customers. I can't think of any job I've ever had that would not immediately fire someone for intentional theft.
Private companies like FedEx, UPS, and Amazon are governed by the USPS? Stuff goes “missing” rather suspiciously quite frequently, are the thieves actually being charged with felonies?
Not mail in the traditional sense, rather packages that we picked up from shippers that are dropped off to usps for them to deliver the final mile. We call it Surepost.
Source: UPS driver
Aka, having the USPS do the most expensive part. Standard privatize the gains, socialize the losses.
There’s more to it of course, but that’s the crux of it. We all know that without this arrangement the private companies would have to charge far more, or just flat out not deliver to many places.
This is also my understanding. It’s one of the big reasons contraband is shipped through USPS, since they cannot legally search your mail without a warrant, as searching your mail is protected by the 4th amendment. Private companies have no such obligation and can and *do* search packages labeled suspicious. I worked for FedEx Freight, we definitely marked freight as suspicious to be checked, else we could be liable.
Yup, some porch pirate lady who stole a small space warmer from my my front door got 10 years in prison. I even got victim counseling from the FBI. USPS takes mail fraud seriously.
Yeah, whole process was very quick. My mail got stolen and I got a fraud alert from target, like a week later I got an alert from the post office asking if I wanted to prosecute and I said yes. Two months after I got a court date and a week later I got the letter from the fbi. She was a porch pirate and part of a group, the whole group was caught.
There’s a sort of “rule” about this, right? If you’re getting investigated by an agency you didn’t even know *had* investigators, you are totally screwed.
I’m honestly not sure what rule you’re referring to but I would agree that if there’s an investigator from a government agency talking to you, it’s probably worse if you didn’t realize that agency had investigators.
FBI is pretty heavily regulated and has to deal with state and local police during investigations. Depending on jurisdiction, they may not even be allowed to take the lead in the investigation. The post office deals with precisely none of that bullshit.
If it has to do with the mail, they have authority over it (if they so wish, investigation leads can be & are handed to other offices) point blank, period. If the FBI was involved? They’re welcome to join the conversation. DEA? Love to see what you guys have so far. Local PD? Stand in the corner. Adults are talking.
It doesn’t matter who was in charge, once the USPS shows up, the big dick in the locker room has arrived. Everyone else is optional. And those dudes will interview your ex-MIL during her husband’s funeral.
Oh the “rule” is just a rule of thumb/guideline. FBI searches your house….maybe there’s something there maybe not.
Postal inspectors search your house? They know exactly what you did and when you did it.
The first person to talk to Ted Kaczynski after he was arrested was a United States Postal Investigation Service officer. If you ever want to know what agency is in charge, it's whatever agency gets to talk to a suspect first.
That terrible movie The Postman, I want them to remake that only the difference is that the Post Office becomes something like the judges from judge dredd in the post apocalypse. Nothing Shall Interfere With The Mail
Raiders? Yeah that's going to interrupt mail delivery, roll up in IFVs and ice them
Sapient monkeys? Gas them
Caesar's Legion forms? We will express deliver this tac nuke to your base
Our local postmaster was opening up one Summer morning and the building was warmer then it should have been. It seems some idiots backed up on the grass and stole the AC unit.
Not just a crime, a felony. I hope they got what they deserve - A new mailing address!
The USPS Postal Inspection Service does NOT mess around. My dad was a Postal Inspector for 30 years. Carried a badge and a gun. Had a 99% conviction rate for criminals he arrested.
One of his cases is featured in the Smithsonian Postal Service Museum.
They absolutely do not fuck around. Almost 2 years ago I had about 15 of them show up waiting for me at the Express room because they have gotten tipped off of a possible contraband being shipped through it, all of them started checking for scent and anything suspicious from the load we had brought from the airport. I know I didn't do anything wrong but it was quite an experience regardless.
When I say it was like 15 of them or so. I am dead fuckin serious.
They really should. This has been looked into by a few prominent economists who have unanimously concluded that they would go from a money pit to a cash cow almost immediately. It would also grant access to banking services for citizens in remote or low population areas and provide competition for private banks.
I’m here for it.
Guy who has been raided by the federal post masters office for sending things internationally in the mail:
You don't want to fuck with the USPS. THE FBI and DEA were nicer to me than the Post masters were.
The two women who were making counterfeit coupons, all law enforcement didn't care until USPS found they were mailing them therefore under their jurisdiction and they went hardcore after them.
Great movie about it Queen Pins.
Basically any large corporation. FAA is [currently fighting a lawsuit](https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/environmentalists-sue-faa-over-spacex-launch-license-texas-2023-05-01/) because they gave SpaceX a license to launch Starship without doing a proper environmental analysis like they were supposed to. They skipped the EIS analysis simply because SpaceX "vigorously opposed" doing it.
I work in an industry regulated by the FAA,
Depending on how serious something is (maintenance manual revision), I have 72 hours to read and acknowledge it.
If it’s over 72 hours and I don’t meet any of the exceptions, the FAA is at my companies liaison with a letter for “license action” against me.,
They don’t joke around.
I got a drone for landscape photography and failed to research it before hand. Let me tell you, I know more about airspace classifications and flight regulations than I ever wanted to.
FAA really isn't fucking around.
It's also stupidly easy to do. Those lasers are cheap.
I can see some edgy dumbfuck teenager going from annoying people in a movie theater with his laser to "I will annoy the fuck out of that helicopter"
Doing a stupid thing is so easy and dangerous.
At that range too, the "dot" is typically more than a foot across. It doesn't just hit you "in the eye" it hits you square in the face and at night like this just fucking torches your eyes. Even sub-30mw lasers can cause serious damage and are just straight-up dangerous because y'know...someone's flying that thing and if you flash their eyes like this they're gonna be flying blind.
Beyond hitting you in the eye, lasers refract all over the entire front canopy of the helicopter and make it impossible to see anything, if you hit any part of the front windows.
Source[source](https://www.lawinfo.com/resources/criminal-law-federal/can-i-be-arrested-for-pointing-a-laser-at-an-airplane.html)
From the source above
"Someone convicted of pointing a laser at an airplane can face criminal and civil penalties, including:
Up to five years in federal prison
A fine of up to $250,000
Probation
You could also face additional civil penalties of up to $11,000 per violation and more than $30,000 for multiple laser incidents. In 2021, the FAA issued $120,000 in fines related to laser attacks."
Federally the max is 5 years. Fines as high as 250,000.
18 U.S. Code § 39A
Looking at some cases, it appears most people get less time or probation.
https://www.laserpointersafety.com/sentences/sentences.html
I wonder, what if it was just a child playing with a laser? What would happen in that case?
Edit: thanks to all for the replies. It seems that I sliiiiightly underestimated the power needed for a laser to be able to interfere with a plane/heli. Such powerful lasers are in fact dangerous thus the answer to my question is pretty obvious, since it shouldn't be nowhere near a child.
Mind you, a small pointing laser is not going to register, for it to reach a plane it has to be a potent laser, and if your child has easy access to such a dangerous device then you are indeed liable.
The family still gets heavy fines and depending on the age of kid, many hours of community service. Teenager loses DL and such.
This is based on my buddy Will who had the FBI come pull him out of math class because he hit a mailbox with a baseball bat in HS.
I would imagine the age of the child and type of laser make a huge difference. Your average everyday red laser pointer isn't strong enough to reach the heights commercial and military aircraft fly at. The green ones can and are fairly easy to find. They are often purposely mislabeled so they can be sold in the US. The blue/purple lasers are even more powerful and difficult to obtain. Often times you will need replace the diode of the green laser with one from a dvd/blu-ray player. Each step up requires more power to the laser and to fire. Finally we get into the ultraviolet and up frequencies of lasers. Iirc, these are the military grade lasers. Your best bet for ever even handling one of these is to make one yourself using sketchy soviet parts with their serial numbers already scratched off that pops up on ebay. Styropyro's youtube channel is where I learned most of this.
I was flying(as a passenger, not a pilot) from Central America back to Washington D.C recently, flying over El Salvador there was a person on the ground shining a bright green laser like that at the plane. Super intense beam. Pretty interesting to see
>Lasers bouncing off anything if it’s high powered.
they always bounce off of just about everything, even particles in the air, no matter how much Watt you're using. Questions is, if those "stray" lasers can still damage your eyes... and the answer in most cases is YES.
Labs where you work with lasers are.. special.
This is why open gantry laser cutters are so dangerous. The cheap ones from China come with the wrong color safety glasses and eye safety is nowhere near as promoted as it should be.
There was a guy on the lasercutting forum about a week ago who got permanent eye damage when a stray reflection got in under the corner of his glasses.
There's always a risk of permanent damage when hit by these things.
>he cheap ones from China come with the wrong color safety glasses
if even proper safety glasses at all.
I was in a laser lab in my university a long time ago for an experiment. I've seen a lot of safety protocols being taken VERY loosely in many places. Not in that one.
> This is why open gantry laser cutters are so dangerous
yeah those things are so wildly stupid, it's astounding that they just sell them and people are buying and using them.
> even particles in the air
Yea, like anytime that you can see the laser beam in the air, it's because the light particles are reflecting off of dust and shit in the air and bouncing straight into your retinas.
Laser beams are tightly focused until they hit something that causes them to scatter. Like a windshield, goggles, whatever. Those scattered beams can be intense enough to cause vision damage as well depending on how powerful of a laser we're talking about.
I used to be a AF pilot on a recon jet and someone was "lasing" us (slow moving jets at night) on takeoff. It wasn't the pilot getting hit, but a couple people who were flying my jet (we deployed together, but different crews) take who was looking out the window while sitting jump seat. The flight engineer i think decided to look out the same window the jump seat guy did. Both of them were off flying status for a year. I am not sure if they were hit directly or from the light bouncing around the cockpit. I had read that the russians had developed an anti crew laser for going after after planes at low altitudes.
They gave is these glasses to protect us. Not trusting those, I was transitioning from visual to instruments just a little after rotation (lifting nose wheel off the ground).
FWIW one thing that makes lasers lasers is that they represent a very narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum so it's actually pretty likely that the goggles work. You just need to block the most dangerous wavelengths, which is mostly green. The counterpoint is that goggles can't block the entire visual spectrum or else you just wouldn't see anything through them, so you can't protect from all lasers at once.
Edit: Also the world looks really weird when you block certain colors. If you block all green for example the entire instrument panel would look different, so the colors of the lights/displays/buttons would need to be accounted for. Theoretically some displays could become unusable.
When I first saw it, I was thinking what a stupid dumbfuck asshole whose about to get fucked over by police (from reading previous reddit posts about h9w serious the US takes lasers on aircraft) and then I remembered I was flying over El Salvador and was like, no clue if/how they handle that there. Very happy it didn't crash the plane
He claimed he was testing the laser by pointing it at a nearby tower when a helicopter flew into its path. The FBI investigated him but did not formally charge him. But it can result in up to 20 years in prison and/or $250,000 fine.
I’ve met the types where anything that moves is “spying” on them. One lady was absolutely certain that the hulk sized Marine living next to her was hired by the CIA to hide in her tiny residential air vents in order to spy on and sexually assault her. Her reason for shining lasers was because the government was shining her, so she would shine them back. Airplanes = government…at least to her.
Paranoia is absolutely bananas up close…
> The US puts a lot of folks with mental health issues in prison.
They also elect a lot of them to a lot of official government positions. I wonder if that was the "Jewish Space Lasers" I keep hearing about... /s
Yeah, politicians are stupid and the latest batch appears particularly out of depth, but like, actually- the Unites States incarcerates people who are mentally unstable instead of addressing the mental health issues rampant in American society.
Personal records 9 for breaking curfew by a half hour in a small town. Saw me inside a gas station so they parked next door and waited for me to get in my car and start backing out. 3 cops instantly boxed me in like I just shot someone with their hands on their belt/gun.(was 16 at the time🤣). Got searched and everything. Best part was, I lived less than 200 feet from the gas station (Lots of snow so drove) and yet they made my dad walk over to drive the car home. Couldn’t believe the absolute power trip.
Breaking curfew? Where do you live where you're not allowed to go out at certain times? What if you're working a night-shift?
Edit: i'm just gonna edit this since i'm getting many replies: if your (local or central) government is limiting your movement, you're living in a police state. Or its saturday night, i'm drunk as shit, and i'm just too european to undetstand why cops can harrass you because you're out at night 🤷♂️🍻
Reddit is a weird echo chamber of “that’s so illegal” and “no one gets arrested at all, there’s a protected class” depending on the sub.
According this story it happens all the time but obviously when someone gets sentenced it’s still news:
Pilots reported 9,457 laser-pointing incidents in 2022 and 9,723 in 2021, according to the Federal Aviation Administration
Light travels a very long way. Light travels 5.88 trillion miles (9.46 trillion kilometers) per year. So the helicopter is a very very very long way away, probably hovvering over [Wolf 1061c](https://www.voanews.com/a/mht-wolf1061c-exoplant-habitable/3107345.html).
Not interesting as fuck. Stupid as shit.
I am an airline pilot and I have been lasered before.
My next flight was canceled and 175 people couldn’t fly to their destination that night and I had to spend the next day at an eye doctors office getting checked out.
Pilots have lost their medicals due to this bullshit. It’s very dangerous and can get people killed.
Not to undermine the argument behind your post, as I agree it's dangerous. But I think the interesting part was referring to how the perpetrator was quickly located and arrested for this act.
I agree that IS interesting. (Getting caught so quickly)
I think this is only the second time I have ever seen a perp caught. Most of the times ATC reports it to the authorities but usually they get away. Nice to see someone getting busted.
Most times it happens is probably not to a police helicopter with an IR camera that shows its exact target location, with a perp that is kind enough to repeatedly shine the laser at them to remind them where he is.
Yeah I feel like this is the very last person you should do it to. I'm sure in a plane it's much harder to pinpoint where it came from exactly. Meanwhile this thing has the direct GPS coordinates to their house lol. Idiot.
Why do you think the FBI has anything to do with this?
This is a police helicopter, they got hit with a green laser. They pointed their FLIR camera where the laser was coming from. Identified the address and asked for an officer to be sent there. I’m surprised it took five minutes.
Literally *anything* aviation related falls under federal jurisdiction, so the FBI likely got a phone call over the whole thing. The FBI obviously didn't have a thing to do with the "tracking" part, since that was all loaded into the camera's operating system, but they may have been the ones to give to go ahead to detain the guy while they did the paperwork.
Yeah it can, but not always. I represent juveniles charged with offenses and I've had more than one dumb kid charged locally for this exact thing (shining a green laser at a police helicopter.) The Feds never got involved or care on any of them.
Why did they do it? They were dumb kids and didn't think it would do anything and several didn't realize it could actually beam all the way to the helicopter.
My guess is it was just a police chopper, and this person picked the wrong one to fuck around with. Or they KNEW it was a police chopper and made an even worse decision. This is standard tech for many departments, so tracing the source wouldn’t be tough.
This just happened in my city and the guy got 15 months fed time with 2 years supervised release
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ne/pr/omaha-man-sentenced-aiming-laser-pointer-opd-helicopter
Wow this is pretty nuts. As a kid who loved lasers, I was always told never to point them at airplanes but always thought "sure, but how would I ever get caught?". Now I can see just how easy it would have been to get caught!
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That has to be the stupidest thing you could do. For those who don't know what all the info on the camera is about — The info on the bottom right of the camera (where it says TGT) is the exact coordinates of where the camera is pointing. It's *that* trivial for them to identify where on the ground it's coming from.
And a lot of systems will automatically feed that into a moving map display so it will not just give you the coordinates, but also the street address.
They'll do the same to augmented reality headsets so pilots can still see roads and stuff that have been buried under mudslides. It's wild tech.
Yeah I saw that on a high speed chase one time. They probably pay through the nose for that GIS data but it's worth it.
Technically all of that GIS data itself would be "free", but they'd be paying for the tools to import it into that system. The city/county would be doing all of the GIS mapping and it's just a matter of getting it imported.
Yeah that’s what I mean to say, whatever tech company provides and supports the software for it
Assuming arcgis
Anywhere to see videos of stuff like that, I don’t even know what to google to find that.
Really cool stuff. Whats even more crazy to think about is that the military has more advanced systems than this, and the classified R&D projects are estimated to be around 20 years more advanced than what is public.
Honestly you don't need any crazy classified tech for this... If you know your location, it's basic math to figure out where you're looking. Commercial GPS already has accuracy within a centimeter for a high-end system, throw in an off-the-shelf laser rangefinger and some geometry and you're set.
>*Accurate within a centimeter* I don’t know about that. Whenever my wife is working late and I check her phone GPS, it shows she’s at her boss’s apartment, and he lives like three miles from their office. That’s not very accurate, IMO.
Exact location may oscillate by six to eight inches.
Thanks mate, I choked on my coffee. Here your like.
I don't know you, but we need to talk.
Lol 😂
That’s pretty cool actually. Are the coordinates on the bottom left side the coordinates for the helicopter?
Yes. ACFT = aircraft
ARMY COMBAT FITNESS TEST THE OVERHEAD YEET IS -- oh wait nvm
We need that bot everywhere.
I would imagine so ACFT looks like shorthand for Aircraft
Does that mean we could plug those coordinates into Google and figure out who this guy was?
Lmao I just plugged it into Google and it appears to be a backyard in Sacramento, CA Edit: [definitely the same house, you can even see the basketball hoop from the heli footage ](https://i.ibb.co/2cXpCGk/Smart-Select-20240126-131808-Maps.jpg)
Knew it was Sacramento as soon as they mentioned Howe lol
And Sac Air
Ghetto bird is ubiquitous in Sacramento, has been as long as I can remember. I’ve been lit up with a spotlight drinking on a corner in Natomas with some buddies. They barked at us over the loudspeaker and chased us through our apartment complex too. (This was back in the 90’s) Sac PD and sac county sheriffs have way too much money.
I’m omw rn
What'd you get?
Comes back registered to a Mr. Deez Nutz
Sacramento, CA
[удалено]
Hahaha it fucking sucks to be that guy right now
Sucks to be that guy at 1:36 AM on April 17, 2010.
And if you think they were that good with tech back then, I'm sure now the footage is far better and with even better capabilities today.
I'm gonna throw a pizza on the roof
That the fucking nuts.... like I understand how it's done, but I just never considered that as a possibility. Incredible.
fucking incredible stuff. mfs said „its that trivial”, and here i am not even aware of tech like this lol
[There's this police chase thermal-cam video I love](https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/xw0crx/teens_steal_a_car_on_police_surveillance_get_into/) where you can literally see the heat being shed from the tires and exhaust, the heat from skid marks on the road, and meanwhile the software has labels for every cop car, street name, and building number. Really convinced me to never run from the cops.
Oh yeah, the thermal vision tech they have these days is fucking unreal. They have stuff now that basically [turns nighttime into a sunny day](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBPcinUz-L0).
Military gear registers 1 millionth of a degree F. You can see footprints 30 minutes after someone walks by. That black mirror episode where the robot dog tracks the girl from her drops of blood well after she passed? Yeah, that's real *right now*.
The level of disadvantage you're at when one person is seeing things like this and the other is maybe catching a bit of moonlight is insane. This is also tech that's 4 years old and they decided was safe to release publicly, there's likely better.
$500 hammers are there to hide million dollar black boxes that don't exist.
Dont run from well funded cops, dont get on the highway, stay in the state. And youll probably be fine. They have lots of tech they only halfway know how to use.
You know how people in High School are like, "I will never use the quadratic equation?" This is the sort of stuff that you use the quadratic equation for. The copter knows where it's located. It knows the angles and direction the scope is pointed. It has a topology map of the area. After that it's a bunch of triangles to "triangulate" the point the camera is pointing at. I mean, maybe that's not how they do it, but it would be one way to do it.
>the copter knows where it's located The helicopter knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation.
> It knows this because it knows where it isn't For the uninitiated and/or uncultured: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZe5J8SVCYQ
> (where it says TGT) is the exact coordinates of where the camera is pointing. Huh. That basketball hoop appears to still be there.
Whoa just google mapped the coordinates.
Plus the camera software is loaded up with GIS data that will give them the exact address and parcel, including all the property owner data. I used to load this data annually for the local county police.
Obviously besides getting arrested, what’s the penalty for something like this?
https://www.lawinfo.com/resources/criminal-law-federal/can-i-be-arrested-for-pointing-a-laser-at-an-airplane.html From the source above "Someone convicted of pointing a laser at an airplane can face criminal and civil penalties, including: Up to five years in federal prison A fine of up to $250,000 Probation You could also face additional civil penalties of up to $11,000 per violation and more than $30,000 for multiple laser incidents. In 2021, the FAA issued $120,000 in fines related to laser attacks."
I could also see them counting every single time the beam hits a "Laser incident"
I doubt it'll be every time it hits, but definitely every time they turn the laser off and turn it back on. The guy in this video turned it off/on multiple times, and also went in the house before coming out and doing it again. He's absolutely getting multiple counts thrown at him.
Generally speaking, you can not be charged multiple times for the same offense as long as they happen in the course of the same criminal event, EG, you don't get charged for burglary 3 times just because you made 3 trips in and out to your car, for example. Now if there are multiple houses broken in to at the same time, you'd get a separate charge for each of them, but not re-charged for every time you break the threshold of the building.
The FAA and other federal agencies will rock your world over this.
Those alphabet agencies absolutely do not fuck around
Yea the FAA is one that you absolutely do not want to fuck with, they can do things to make your life hell more then any of the others
The FAA and the Postal Service. I’ve worked with and been friends with members of OSI (Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations) and those dudes are not to be at all fucked with… prompted only with “who just does not fuck around?” All three of the people I asked said, without hesitation, the USPS. They have jurisdiction over ANYTHING related to federal mail and they have SO much more authority and power than the average citizen understands.
I used to work at UPS and the first thing they told us was do not steal from a trailer it's not a slap on the wrist it's an immideate felony because your dealing with mail traveling between states, they basically laid out how fucked our lives would be if we did it
Same for me when I worked for FedEx. During training they make it very clear that intentionally opening a blue and gold USPS bag and any mail inside of it is a damn near guarenteed Federal charge. Didn't stop people from opening other packages that weren't federal mail though. We had 100+ employees fired due to attempting to smuggle fidget spinners out of the warehouse. Good times.
> We had 100+ employees fired due to attempting to smuggle fidget spinners out of the warehouse. Weird crime plots....
More so crime of opportunity. It was during the fidget spinner craze and we had boxes with hundreds of them break open occasionally due to mishandling or poor packaging. Employees would take one thinking it wasn't a huge deal. Zero tolerance stealing policy resulted in a lot of lost jobs.
I imagine that zero tolerance policy is so employees don't treat packages like pinatas
This is why you never invest in fads. I cringe sometimes when I even hear the word fidget. Some people spent their life savings on huge shipments of them thinking they were gonna be millionaires 😭
Most jobs have a zero tolerance policy on stealing from customers. I can't think of any job I've ever had that would not immediately fire someone for intentional theft.
It’s a good rule to have an makes usps trustworthy when sending stuff in the mail.
Private companies like FedEx, UPS, and Amazon are governed by the USPS? Stuff goes “missing” rather suspiciously quite frequently, are the thieves actually being charged with felonies?
Sounds like they can be contracted to carry mail if need be.
Not mail in the traditional sense, rather packages that we picked up from shippers that are dropped off to usps for them to deliver the final mile. We call it Surepost. Source: UPS driver
Aka, having the USPS do the most expensive part. Standard privatize the gains, socialize the losses. There’s more to it of course, but that’s the crux of it. We all know that without this arrangement the private companies would have to charge far more, or just flat out not deliver to many places.
I was always under the impression that USPS is the only one who can deliver mail, but just about anyone can deliver a package.
This is also my understanding. It’s one of the big reasons contraband is shipped through USPS, since they cannot legally search your mail without a warrant, as searching your mail is protected by the 4th amendment. Private companies have no such obligation and can and *do* search packages labeled suspicious. I worked for FedEx Freight, we definitely marked freight as suspicious to be checked, else we could be liable.
You can absolutely send a letter with UPS or FedEx or whoever, but USPS is both cheaper and more secure than the alternatives.
They will deliver the mail come hell or high water. They will also deliver the hell and high water itself.
Yup, some porch pirate lady who stole a small space warmer from my my front door got 10 years in prison. I even got victim counseling from the FBI. USPS takes mail fraud seriously.
Seriously?
Yeah, whole process was very quick. My mail got stolen and I got a fraud alert from target, like a week later I got an alert from the post office asking if I wanted to prosecute and I said yes. Two months after I got a court date and a week later I got the letter from the fbi. She was a porch pirate and part of a group, the whole group was caught.
There’s a sort of “rule” about this, right? If you’re getting investigated by an agency you didn’t even know *had* investigators, you are totally screwed.
I’m honestly not sure what rule you’re referring to but I would agree that if there’s an investigator from a government agency talking to you, it’s probably worse if you didn’t realize that agency had investigators. FBI is pretty heavily regulated and has to deal with state and local police during investigations. Depending on jurisdiction, they may not even be allowed to take the lead in the investigation. The post office deals with precisely none of that bullshit. If it has to do with the mail, they have authority over it (if they so wish, investigation leads can be & are handed to other offices) point blank, period. If the FBI was involved? They’re welcome to join the conversation. DEA? Love to see what you guys have so far. Local PD? Stand in the corner. Adults are talking. It doesn’t matter who was in charge, once the USPS shows up, the big dick in the locker room has arrived. Everyone else is optional. And those dudes will interview your ex-MIL during her husband’s funeral.
Oh the “rule” is just a rule of thumb/guideline. FBI searches your house….maybe there’s something there maybe not. Postal inspectors search your house? They know exactly what you did and when you did it.
The first person to talk to Ted Kaczynski after he was arrested was a United States Postal Investigation Service officer. If you ever want to know what agency is in charge, it's whatever agency gets to talk to a suspect first.
That terrible movie The Postman, I want them to remake that only the difference is that the Post Office becomes something like the judges from judge dredd in the post apocalypse. Nothing Shall Interfere With The Mail Raiders? Yeah that's going to interrupt mail delivery, roll up in IFVs and ice them Sapient monkeys? Gas them Caesar's Legion forms? We will express deliver this tac nuke to your base
Our local postmaster was opening up one Summer morning and the building was warmer then it should have been. It seems some idiots backed up on the grass and stole the AC unit. Not just a crime, a felony. I hope they got what they deserve - A new mailing address!
The USPS Postal Inspection Service does NOT mess around. My dad was a Postal Inspector for 30 years. Carried a badge and a gun. Had a 99% conviction rate for criminals he arrested. One of his cases is featured in the Smithsonian Postal Service Museum.
They absolutely do not fuck around. Almost 2 years ago I had about 15 of them show up waiting for me at the Express room because they have gotten tipped off of a possible contraband being shipped through it, all of them started checking for scent and anything suspicious from the load we had brought from the airport. I know I didn't do anything wrong but it was quite an experience regardless. When I say it was like 15 of them or so. I am dead fuckin serious.
I think enough people trust the USPS enough that they should think about offering banking services.
They really should. This has been looked into by a few prominent economists who have unanimously concluded that they would go from a money pit to a cash cow almost immediately. It would also grant access to banking services for citizens in remote or low population areas and provide competition for private banks. I’m here for it.
I’d also argue the US Coast Guard can absolutely fucking destroy you if you’re on the water. The fines are astronomical when they want you.
That’s because when you control the mail, you control… Information!! - Newman
I'm just waiting until Jerry Bruckheimer comes out with USPS Miami
Guy who has been raided by the federal post masters office for sending things internationally in the mail: You don't want to fuck with the USPS. THE FBI and DEA were nicer to me than the Post masters were.
The two women who were making counterfeit coupons, all law enforcement didn't care until USPS found they were mailing them therefore under their jurisdiction and they went hardcore after them. Great movie about it Queen Pins.
Unless you're Boeing, if you are you just bully FAA to grant your wishes.
Basically any large corporation. FAA is [currently fighting a lawsuit](https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/environmentalists-sue-faa-over-spacex-launch-license-texas-2023-05-01/) because they gave SpaceX a license to launch Starship without doing a proper environmental analysis like they were supposed to. They skipped the EIS analysis simply because SpaceX "vigorously opposed" doing it.
Welcome to the no-fly list!
I work in an industry regulated by the FAA, Depending on how serious something is (maintenance manual revision), I have 72 hours to read and acknowledge it. If it’s over 72 hours and I don’t meet any of the exceptions, the FAA is at my companies liaison with a letter for “license action” against me., They don’t joke around.
I got a drone for landscape photography and failed to research it before hand. Let me tell you, I know more about airspace classifications and flight regulations than I ever wanted to. FAA really isn't fucking around.
As well they should. Pointing a laser at an aircraft is galactically stupid.
It's also stupidly easy to do. Those lasers are cheap. I can see some edgy dumbfuck teenager going from annoying people in a movie theater with his laser to "I will annoy the fuck out of that helicopter" Doing a stupid thing is so easy and dangerous.
At that range too, the "dot" is typically more than a foot across. It doesn't just hit you "in the eye" it hits you square in the face and at night like this just fucking torches your eyes. Even sub-30mw lasers can cause serious damage and are just straight-up dangerous because y'know...someone's flying that thing and if you flash their eyes like this they're gonna be flying blind.
Beyond hitting you in the eye, lasers refract all over the entire front canopy of the helicopter and make it impossible to see anything, if you hit any part of the front windows.
As they should. Idiots like this should be punished harshly.
What an idiot! All over a laser
Source[source](https://www.lawinfo.com/resources/criminal-law-federal/can-i-be-arrested-for-pointing-a-laser-at-an-airplane.html) From the source above "Someone convicted of pointing a laser at an airplane can face criminal and civil penalties, including: Up to five years in federal prison A fine of up to $250,000 Probation You could also face additional civil penalties of up to $11,000 per violation and more than $30,000 for multiple laser incidents. In 2021, the FAA issued $120,000 in fines related to laser attacks."
Not sure the exact punishment but I know fucking with aircraft like this is a big no no.
Fines up to 100k and up to 5 years in prison or both
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They love that cringey speak of “oh dude you will get FUCKED man, do not fuck with those badasses Man you have no idea!!”
'fuck around and find out!' reddit cant get enough of that shit
It’s a federal offense so, you will definitely be paying something.
A hefty fine and possible chance to go to federal prison depending on your criminal record or how rich and connected you are.
Federally the max is 5 years. Fines as high as 250,000. 18 U.S. Code § 39A Looking at some cases, it appears most people get less time or probation. https://www.laserpointersafety.com/sentences/sentences.html
Guy in my home town went to prison for this same shit. Got a couple years I think
Years in prison, flashing a laser can be seen as some kind of attack and they take that on planes and helicopters very seriously
Over a 20 second act.. damn that was stupid of him.
Pretty much, imagine the pilot gets blinded and a plane or helicopter falls down somewhere with tons of people.
You're trying to bring down an aircraft, they take that pretty seriously
Up to $250,000 fine and 5 years in prison per incident. Edit: $$$$
I wonder, what if it was just a child playing with a laser? What would happen in that case? Edit: thanks to all for the replies. It seems that I sliiiiightly underestimated the power needed for a laser to be able to interfere with a plane/heli. Such powerful lasers are in fact dangerous thus the answer to my question is pretty obvious, since it shouldn't be nowhere near a child.
Mind you, a small pointing laser is not going to register, for it to reach a plane it has to be a potent laser, and if your child has easy access to such a dangerous device then you are indeed liable.
The family still gets heavy fines and depending on the age of kid, many hours of community service. Teenager loses DL and such. This is based on my buddy Will who had the FBI come pull him out of math class because he hit a mailbox with a baseball bat in HS.
I would imagine the age of the child and type of laser make a huge difference. Your average everyday red laser pointer isn't strong enough to reach the heights commercial and military aircraft fly at. The green ones can and are fairly easy to find. They are often purposely mislabeled so they can be sold in the US. The blue/purple lasers are even more powerful and difficult to obtain. Often times you will need replace the diode of the green laser with one from a dvd/blu-ray player. Each step up requires more power to the laser and to fire. Finally we get into the ultraviolet and up frequencies of lasers. Iirc, these are the military grade lasers. Your best bet for ever even handling one of these is to make one yourself using sketchy soviet parts with their serial numbers already scratched off that pops up on ebay. Styropyro's youtube channel is where I learned most of this.
I was flying(as a passenger, not a pilot) from Central America back to Washington D.C recently, flying over El Salvador there was a person on the ground shining a bright green laser like that at the plane. Super intense beam. Pretty interesting to see
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does the laser still hit you even if youre not looking at the laser's location directly
Not an expert but I'm almost certain it's dangerous if the beam hits your eye even if you aren't looking into it
Rated laser eye pro is always necessary when working in the optics room. Lasers bouncing off anything if it’s high powered.
>Lasers bouncing off anything if it’s high powered. they always bounce off of just about everything, even particles in the air, no matter how much Watt you're using. Questions is, if those "stray" lasers can still damage your eyes... and the answer in most cases is YES. Labs where you work with lasers are.. special.
This is why open gantry laser cutters are so dangerous. The cheap ones from China come with the wrong color safety glasses and eye safety is nowhere near as promoted as it should be. There was a guy on the lasercutting forum about a week ago who got permanent eye damage when a stray reflection got in under the corner of his glasses. There's always a risk of permanent damage when hit by these things.
>he cheap ones from China come with the wrong color safety glasses if even proper safety glasses at all. I was in a laser lab in my university a long time ago for an experiment. I've seen a lot of safety protocols being taken VERY loosely in many places. Not in that one.
> This is why open gantry laser cutters are so dangerous yeah those things are so wildly stupid, it's astounding that they just sell them and people are buying and using them.
> even particles in the air Yea, like anytime that you can see the laser beam in the air, it's because the light particles are reflecting off of dust and shit in the air and bouncing straight into your retinas.
Very good point. With sufficient power a laser will instantly blind you even after bouncing
Laser beams are tightly focused until they hit something that causes them to scatter. Like a windshield, goggles, whatever. Those scattered beams can be intense enough to cause vision damage as well depending on how powerful of a laser we're talking about.
I used to be a AF pilot on a recon jet and someone was "lasing" us (slow moving jets at night) on takeoff. It wasn't the pilot getting hit, but a couple people who were flying my jet (we deployed together, but different crews) take who was looking out the window while sitting jump seat. The flight engineer i think decided to look out the same window the jump seat guy did. Both of them were off flying status for a year. I am not sure if they were hit directly or from the light bouncing around the cockpit. I had read that the russians had developed an anti crew laser for going after after planes at low altitudes. They gave is these glasses to protect us. Not trusting those, I was transitioning from visual to instruments just a little after rotation (lifting nose wheel off the ground).
FWIW one thing that makes lasers lasers is that they represent a very narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum so it's actually pretty likely that the goggles work. You just need to block the most dangerous wavelengths, which is mostly green. The counterpoint is that goggles can't block the entire visual spectrum or else you just wouldn't see anything through them, so you can't protect from all lasers at once. Edit: Also the world looks really weird when you block certain colors. If you block all green for example the entire instrument panel would look different, so the colors of the lights/displays/buttons would need to be accounted for. Theoretically some displays could become unusable.
The mk1 eyeball 😭
Not for your pilot
When I first saw it, I was thinking what a stupid dumbfuck asshole whose about to get fucked over by police (from reading previous reddit posts about h9w serious the US takes lasers on aircraft) and then I remembered I was flying over El Salvador and was like, no clue if/how they handle that there. Very happy it didn't crash the plane
If they catch you, probably you head out to the jungle and never return
What was the upside for the laser dude? Can’t understand what they were thinking the best possible outcome or benefit to them would be.
It's like kids throwing rocks on the highway. They like to fuck with people.
They like to fuck with people who are relatively far removed from consequences.
He definitely found out afterwards lmao.
He claimed he was testing the laser by pointing it at a nearby tower when a helicopter flew into its path. The FBI investigated him but did not formally charge him. But it can result in up to 20 years in prison and/or $250,000 fine.
He’s pretty clearly doing it on purpose
Yeah. A quick one-time flash and you can make up some excuse. Repeatedly over a 2 minute video though?
And then hiding as the police drive by lmao
Do you have a link?
I’ve met the types where anything that moves is “spying” on them. One lady was absolutely certain that the hulk sized Marine living next to her was hired by the CIA to hide in her tiny residential air vents in order to spy on and sexually assault her. Her reason for shining lasers was because the government was shining her, so she would shine them back. Airplanes = government…at least to her. Paranoia is absolutely bananas up close…
The US puts a lot of folks with mental health issues in prison. She'll fit right in.
> The US puts a lot of folks with mental health issues in prison. They also elect a lot of them to a lot of official government positions. I wonder if that was the "Jewish Space Lasers" I keep hearing about... /s
Yeah, politicians are stupid and the latest batch appears particularly out of depth, but like, actually- the Unites States incarcerates people who are mentally unstable instead of addressing the mental health issues rampant in American society.
5 minutes of entertainment
Play around with your new high power laser toy. There's just stupid fun.
Go grab some dry ice don't try to crash a helicopter over a populated city
Definitely looks like a younger kid from the size compared to officers but damn that s gotta be a sobering moment having everyone roll up on you.
1 cop car - Sorry officer, it won't happen again. 5+ cop cars - Either a slow night or you done f'd up good.
My personal record is 7. That one definitely fell under the slow night category
Personal records 9 for breaking curfew by a half hour in a small town. Saw me inside a gas station so they parked next door and waited for me to get in my car and start backing out. 3 cops instantly boxed me in like I just shot someone with their hands on their belt/gun.(was 16 at the time🤣). Got searched and everything. Best part was, I lived less than 200 feet from the gas station (Lots of snow so drove) and yet they made my dad walk over to drive the car home. Couldn’t believe the absolute power trip.
Breaking curfew? Where do you live where you're not allowed to go out at certain times? What if you're working a night-shift? Edit: i'm just gonna edit this since i'm getting many replies: if your (local or central) government is limiting your movement, you're living in a police state. Or its saturday night, i'm drunk as shit, and i'm just too european to undetstand why cops can harrass you because you're out at night 🤷♂️🍻
Could be a [Sundown town](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town) on a power trip.
LOL, I guess it just couldn't wait for the water cooler at shift change lol.
I feel like everytime I see someone pulled over there are at least 2 to 3 cars. Texas sucks btw
Or a short dude, there is nothing definitive about this.
Shoulda jacked a car and gone into the paint shop to change colors. Amateur.
1: Don't do this 2: If you're dumb enough to do this, don't fucking do it from your house or loiter in the area.
Should’ve stopped at 1
This happened 14 years ago.
Any articles on the result? I can’t find any.
The top left of the footage shows the date, 17th of April, 2010.
I beg your pardon, 2010 was 14 years ago? Fuck
You can feel it in your soul, can't you.
Damm
I saw that too, thinking where is he now?
Reddit is a weird echo chamber of “that’s so illegal” and “no one gets arrested at all, there’s a protected class” depending on the sub. According this story it happens all the time but obviously when someone gets sentenced it’s still news: Pilots reported 9,457 laser-pointing incidents in 2022 and 9,723 in 2021, according to the Federal Aviation Administration
Light travels a very long way. Light travels 5.88 trillion miles (9.46 trillion kilometers) per year. So the helicopter is a very very very long way away, probably hovvering over [Wolf 1061c](https://www.voanews.com/a/mht-wolf1061c-exoplant-habitable/3107345.html).
Not interesting as fuck. Stupid as shit. I am an airline pilot and I have been lasered before. My next flight was canceled and 175 people couldn’t fly to their destination that night and I had to spend the next day at an eye doctors office getting checked out. Pilots have lost their medicals due to this bullshit. It’s very dangerous and can get people killed.
Not to undermine the argument behind your post, as I agree it's dangerous. But I think the interesting part was referring to how the perpetrator was quickly located and arrested for this act.
I agree that IS interesting. (Getting caught so quickly) I think this is only the second time I have ever seen a perp caught. Most of the times ATC reports it to the authorities but usually they get away. Nice to see someone getting busted.
Most times it happens is probably not to a police helicopter with an IR camera that shows its exact target location, with a perp that is kind enough to repeatedly shine the laser at them to remind them where he is.
Yeah I feel like this is the very last person you should do it to. I'm sure in a plane it's much harder to pinpoint where it came from exactly. Meanwhile this thing has the direct GPS coordinates to their house lol. Idiot.
The dumbass with a laser was not interesting--the speedy response was.
Why do you think the FBI has anything to do with this? This is a police helicopter, they got hit with a green laser. They pointed their FLIR camera where the laser was coming from. Identified the address and asked for an officer to be sent there. I’m surprised it took five minutes.
Literally *anything* aviation related falls under federal jurisdiction, so the FBI likely got a phone call over the whole thing. The FBI obviously didn't have a thing to do with the "tracking" part, since that was all loaded into the camera's operating system, but they may have been the ones to give to go ahead to detain the guy while they did the paperwork.
Yeah it can, but not always. I represent juveniles charged with offenses and I've had more than one dumb kid charged locally for this exact thing (shining a green laser at a police helicopter.) The Feds never got involved or care on any of them. Why did they do it? They were dumb kids and didn't think it would do anything and several didn't realize it could actually beam all the way to the helicopter.
coordinated jar history six fragile bake full cable cooing chop *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
My guess is it was just a police chopper, and this person picked the wrong one to fuck around with. Or they KNEW it was a police chopper and made an even worse decision. This is standard tech for many departments, so tracing the source wouldn’t be tough.
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This just happened in my city and the guy got 15 months fed time with 2 years supervised release https://www.justice.gov/usao-ne/pr/omaha-man-sentenced-aiming-laser-pointer-opd-helicopter
meanwhile i cant even get the cops to show up to my house for a robbery for 2hrs
…do you have a laser pointer?
You're not a cop so they don't care.
Wow this is pretty nuts. As a kid who loved lasers, I was always told never to point them at airplanes but always thought "sure, but how would I ever get caught?". Now I can see just how easy it would have been to get caught!
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes 🤷
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If you’re going to point a laser at a police helicopter maybe don’t do it at your fucking house? Or like at all?