New System to Counter Photo and Video Devices

Incongruity writes "News.com is reporting that a team from Georgia Tech has developed and demoed a system that actively searches for and effectively blinds cameras and camcorders within a 10 meter radius." From the article: "In this system, a device bathes the region in front of it with infrared light. When an intense retroreflection indicates the presence of a digital camera lens, the device then fires a localized beam of light directly at that point. Thus, the picture gets washed out."

I can just see it now...

[TheOtherAgentM (700696)]

Paparazzi Shields for famous celebrities. It's like a force field!

Re:I can just see it now...

[LurkerXXX (667952)]

Better yet, protection from police speed cameras.

Re:I can just see it now...

[uncqual (836337)]

Off topic, but I'm waiting for the first lawsuit where the flash of a speed camera distracted a law abiding driver momentarily which results in a fatal accident. Somehow, I think the general public's dislike for the cameras might not make the city attorney's defense job any easier when the jury retires to deliberate.

Re:I can just see it now... [OT]

[vrai (521708)]

In the UK the rear car is always liable in rear-ending incidents. The reason being that you should never be so close to the car in front that you can't stop/take evasive action if it suddenly brakes. Whilst the liability may be different in the US the principle remains the same; if you can't stop in time you shouldn't have been so bloody close!

In my (not so) humble opinion the law should treat tail-gaters as harshly as drunk drivers. There's no excuse for either and both are incredibly dangerous to other road users.

</rant></offtopic>

Re:I can just see it now...

[tambo (310170)]

Paparazzi Shields for famous celebrities. It's like a force field!

And also, fertile grounds for the class-action lawsuit craze of 2008. At least the court reporters will have some fun transcribing "My eyes! The goggles do nothing!"

- David Stein

What about glasses ?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Can't wait to see how many people will go blind with this contraption!

Re:I thought the same thing...

[forkazoo (138186)]

A remote control will blind a camera in night shot mode, but it won't blind anybody. It can actually make a pretty cool looking lens flare, depending on the remote and the camera... I wouldn't be too worried.

A Tale.

[ackthpt (218170)]

It was the coldest winter on record and the poor little match girl found she could find no buyers for her wares and she began to shivver.

She lit a match and felt the warm glow of its meager heat before it burned down to her fingers and she dropped it in the snow. Then she lit another and another until all her matches were gone and she began to feel icy fingers of winter clutching at her tiny frail frame.

She moved along the street looking for an open door, shelter, any shelter. Then she thought, what's this? She felt a deep warmth the likes of which she had not felt since her mother's embrace. It was glorious. She sat down to rest and soon fell asleep.

And thus it came to pass, she was found roast to a golden brown, like a Thanksgiving turkey, before the offices of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Re:A Tale.

[QuickFox (311231)]

perhaps the moderators need to actually READ the post before moderating?

You must be new here.

-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time.
Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it. Do your part.

Counter camera devices

[by Anonymous Coward]

Big deal. International Rescue had them already, 30 years ago, to protect strangers from photographing the Thunderbirds.

The advance of technology

[RobNich (85522)]

The next step is a video/still camera that detects an infrared source and closes an iris to keep the light from bouncing back. Or better yet, a coating that keeps the infrared from bouncing out of the lens.

Ha! Take that G-Men!

[l0ungeb0y (442022)]

I'm gonna get like 10 for every room 'cause I know you're watching and trying to keep me from talking about the Alie^H^H ...mmmmpppph

[Remote Peer Quit Unexpectedly]

this is great

[drfrog (145882)]

now the police can give the beat downs without any fear of being caught

Re:this is great

[bugnuts (94678)]

That's okay, you can do it back. Just install this on your car to drive through red lights and avoid the photograph.

Now, we merely need to mount these on the heads of sharks and.... Muhahahhaha!

Muahahahahha!

Re:this is great

[antic (29198)]

Most slashdotters rely on their general appearance being enough to safely blind any nearby cameras.

Shame about the smell though...

Filters

[ChaosMt (84630)]

Thanks goodness, no one has invented the infrared filter!

Am I wrong, or does this seem too easy to defeat?

Am I Wrong?

[Snorpus (566772)]

... or wouldn't a portable one of these be a great way to take out all the cameras in, say, a bank?

There's still other details to work out, like the armed guards, the exploding ink in the money packets, etc., but I'm glad those Georgia engineers solved one of my problems.

Re:Am I Wrong?

[Kjella (173770)]

Did you forget all the Mark I Eyeballs in the bank? Unless you want to try breaking in when the bank is closed, with all the cash locked in vaults and alarms all around. Also, I really shouldn't be helping you out but I doubt you'll make it very far anyway - there's a very low tech solution, used for centuries which they call masks. Sometimes people want to find an absurdly complex and technological solutions to simple problems.

Kjella

I know I sugested that about a year ago on /.

[John Sokol (109591)]

I know I sugested that about a year ago here on slashdot. //yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=137379&threshol d=0&commentsort=0&tid=158&tid=126&tid=153&tid=173& tid=155&tid=137&mode=thread&cid=11485581 [slashdot.org]

Part of "No Pictures, Thanks" from 1/26/05

  It's actualy easier, you just need a high powered IR source, such as a bunch of LED's,
  the Cameras AGC automaticly adjusts so you turn totaly dark.

Re:A big fuck-you to big-government

[hungrygrue (872970)]

Or a potential fuck you *from* anyone who doesn't want the public to be able to document them. Immagine if these were used to keep any non-approved journalists from taking pictures/recording events? Or used to cover an entire area where a protesters are demonstrating to make covering the event harder?

Re:What about

[PitaBred (632671)]

Read the goddamn article:

How it works
The Georgia Tech system essentially exploits the "retroreflective" property of digital camera lenses. When light strikes a retroreflective surface, a portion of the light bounces back to the original source. While eyeglasses, bottles, watches and other glass surfaces are retroreflective, a coating on virtually all digital camera lenses puts cameras in a class of their own.

Re:What about

[visgoth (613861)]

I had a job working with a vicon motion capture system that used IR strobes. For those who aren't familiar with the technology, here's a quick explanation of how it works:

A group of cameras are arranged in a ring formation, with their lenses facing inward. Typically, this ring is raised up about 10' or so above the ground, and the cameras aimed down toward a common area. Each camera's lens has a donut shaped ring mounted to it. The donut's surface is covered either red or ir emitting led. The light from these leds floods the capture area (the volume) and bounces off of reflective markers which are attached to the actors inside the volume. The cameras, which are IR sensitive pick up the markers, and a computer then uses the feeds from multiple cameras to triangulate the positions of the markers.

Anyhow, the Vicon guy did say that its not a good idea to stare into the strobes, as it was probably not healthy for the eyes. The red ones are probably less unhealthy, as your pupils contract due to the visible light. The ir ones don't emit any visible light, and the only way to tell if a strobe as working was by a green led stuck among the ir ones.

Just to wrap up this mishmash of info, and to make a point, I don't think flooding areas with ir light is a good idea, as I did find myself getting headaches and eyestrain if we left the strobes running too long in the studio.

People too.

[Ungrounded Lightning (62228)]

And, of course, the eyes of some animals (cats, alligators) are strong and precise retroreflectors.

People, too.

That's why you get "red eye" in the picture if the flash is too close to the lens.

For people it's probably a vestigial remmanant.

For animals it's a night-vision adaptation. The retro-reflector is behind the light-sensitive part of the retina. Any light that makes it through the sensors is sent back (nearly) the way it came in, giving the retina a second chance to catch it and thus a tad under a 3db increase in sensitivity - at a slight cost to focus. The shine you see is what made two passes without being caught.

Re:overengineered

[RapmasterT (787426)]

This would probably cost more however. The typical installation I'm imagining would have a 1/2 disco ball mounted above or below the screen, throwing a bath of IR all over the place.

that's not a bad idea actually. It could be very effective for concerns about videotaping new movie releases for piracy. set up a disco ball and a high powered IR spotlight. The crowd couldn't see anything, but cameras would get that moving starfield pattern across everthing making the recording unusable. It wouldn't prevent taping, but the result would be horrible to try to watch.

you better patent that quick...

Re:theater

[gl4ss (559668)]

mpaa wouldn't love it straight..

but companies selling snake oil to mpaa definetely will love this. it doesn't matter if it works or not for them either, it's not like random movie goers made versions that end up the net anyways but they could still sell 10k worth of equipment that does absolutely nothing as mandatory to every cinema there is, equipment that would not save mpaa one penny but would cost them tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. that's how mpaa and cinemas are REALLY losing money, by paying to people who sell them snakeoil to fix their "problem". like riaa is losing money by buying "copy protection" tech that doesn't really work at all nor could it ever increase their revenues even if it did.