Homeland Insecurity

The following article from yesterday’s Boston Globe, titled “Security Officials Downplay Threat of Lasers Aimed to Crash Airliners got us thinking…

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security officials yesterday sought to calm fears that terrorists might try to crash commercial airliners by shooting blinding lasers into their cockpits during landings, saying that there is no credible evidence that any groups are planning to use such weapons and no incidents involving lasers have been reported in Boston or the Northeast.

On Thursday, the Associated Press reported that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security sent a bulletin to local law enforcement agencies around the country in July warning that saboteurs could seek to down airplanes by aiming lasers at pilots during landing approaches.

But in September, a Delta Air Lines pilot was injured by a laser directed into his Boeing 737 about 5 miles from Salt Lake City International Airport. The flight, which came from Dallas, landed without incident after noticing the laser, but the first officer later felt stinging in one eye and was diagnosed with a burned retina, according to the Washington Times.

Have we been missing the news, or did this one slip under the radar, so to speak? Can this be true? It’s like finding out that:

At least twice since the Sept. 11 attacks, US intelligence officials believed, terrorists had smuggled a nuclear device into the United States, once in New York City and later along the Potomac River near Washington, D.C. A senior Bush administration official who asked not to be identified said that before the information was determined to be unfounded, he considered calling his wife and telling her to take the children and head for the Virginia mountains.(Globe Nov.2)

People are shining lasers into the eyes of commercial airline pilots? No wonder officials are downplaying the story, the airline stocks are already in enough trouble…

from the Boston Globe