New System to Counter Photo and Video Devices 401
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... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I can just see it now... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I can just see it now... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I can just see it now... [OT] (Score:5, Informative)
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... [OT] (Score:3, Interesting)
The short answer is simple: Drive at a speed that allows you to stop within the distance you can see. If people tail-end you, it's their friggin' problem.
If you drive 10m behind the car in front of you, at 80 km/h, then you're
Re:I can just see it now... [OT] (Score:3, Insightful)
Correct, and in the UK, that's actually the offence. I once ran into a car from behind (well, 4 people collided, all in a row because someone 4 cars ahead decided to slow down suddenly to turn off without indicating).
As it happened, a police car passed by a minute later, and stopped. The policeman told me that I'd committed an offence, which was "D
Re:I can just see it now... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I can just see it now... (Score:3, Interesting)
That may help in some situations... Until someone smart enough drives by the camera with *another* piece of polarized film and matches the angle at 180 degrees, making it *black*
A 50% film (such as polarized) is ususally acceptable en
Re:I can just see it now... (Score:5, Funny)
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
Re:I can just see it now... (Score:3, Funny)
What about glasses ? (Score:5, Funny)
I thought the same thing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe I'm just slightly paranoid and it will have no effect at all. But since the article doesn't state anything about impact to human eyes and most eyewear protection is m
Re:I thought the same thing... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I thought the same thing... (Score:2, Informative)
It isn't the IR that blinds the camera - the IR is simply to look for reflections, like those given off by lenses (and, of course, eyeglasses). When the IR gets a "hit", a directed beam of light (flashlight on a servo?) is aimed at the lens. Pretty low tech really. Given that we've had "lens detection" devices for years (decades? The military is a big fan), the real story s
Re:I thought the same thing... (Score:2)
Again, we're all somewhat ignorant about the technical specifics of this unit, so my concerns might be totally baseless. This
Re:I thought the same thing... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's how I read it, and there's the problem. Even if there's no risk to the eyes themselves, it opens up a huge potential for liability from people being suddenly (temporarily) blinded and/or startled while engaged in something risky - using power tools, pouring a cup of scalding hot coffee, handling then dropping fragile/expensive equipment...
Re:I thought the same thing... (Score:4, Interesting)
The military already has lasers designed to temporarily blind you. Could you hook those up to some kind of eye-recognition software that would allow the laser to automatically target people's eyes? Could be useful in a firefight or ambush, although you would need some way to keep it from targeting your own troops.
Re:I thought the same thing... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, they shouldn't. It is against the Geneva convention to use devices such as lasers to cause blindness. Death's okay. But blindness is verboten.
Re:I thought the same thing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, strong IR light is bad for your eyes.
link 1 [weizmann.ac.il]
link 2 [enamelguild.org]
link 3 [potterymaking.org]
2. Your glasses don't reflect IR, your camera lens does (actually, they all have an IR filter to prevent it reaching the CCD/CMOS).
Many types of glass do reflect IR light.
Think about it a little more, are glass or plastic eyeglass lenses really going to be made out of THAT different a material than glass or plastic camera lenses?
3. My optician is using some pretty bright light at my check-up. Enough to make a recording useless (read: saturate the CCD/CMOS), not enough to harm anyone.
It might appear bright, but you don't necessarily know what the spectra of the light actually looked like and therefore how much power was contained total.
Re:What about glasses ? (Score:2)
If they use IR for the flash, nobody will go blind.
Old style contact lenses (Score:2)
Yeah that was my first thought too. First unlucky guy that walks by one of these wearing old style contact lenses is screwed.
What about (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't want to get blinded every time I walk up to a trade show display.
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Re:What about (Score:2)
Re:What about (Score:2)
Re:What about (Score:2)
Or generally, make your lens have the same frequency response as a human eye?
Re:What about (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What about (Score:2)
Re:What about (Score:2)
That's why this idea is useless for preventing photography with a plain old film camera - it's a lot easier to spot someone using one of those, however.
Glasses reflectivity (Score:2)
Re:What about (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:2)
The other interesting thing is strong IR light wipes out my night vision for about the same amount of time as a visible light of the same intensity would.
Re:What about (Score:5, Informative)
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.
FP? (Score:2, Insightful)
A Tale. (Score:4, Funny)
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. (Score:2)
Re:A Tale. (Score:2)
Re:A Tale. (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Not exactly new (Score:2)
Re:Not exactly new (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Not exactly new (Score:2)
theater (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:theater (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:theater (Score:2)
Re:theater (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Old news already (Score:2)
There was this dream amusment park, and a little kid runs away to the park, and then aliens come.
Oh, right.
Free Lunch, by Spider Robinson. The creater of the dream park got his money making this sorta thing to counter paparrattzi. Guess Spider didn't think of the other uses cameras are being put...
--LWM
NASA was way ahead on this one. (Score:3, Funny)
Lawsuits here we come! (Score:3, Interesting)
On a related thought... I wonder what it would take to trick the system into shooting the beam at ones eyes... heck, with a system like this you could just claim that you were blinded by the system for a few moments and now you suffer from crippling migraines and what not... ka-ching!
Counter camera devices (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Counter camera devices (Score:2)
Infrared filters! (Score:2, Insightful)
Are there any infrared filters that can be made easily? If so, I see a counter to this!
Re:Infrared filters! (Score:2)
Re:Infrared filters! (Score:2)
Those cheap camera modules you can buy from the likes of Marlin P. Jones don't have infrared filters, which is why they will "see in
Re:Infrared filters! (Score:3, Informative)
TFA mentions that IR filters "present some challenges ... though it turns out that the camera detector can spot lenses cloaked with infrared filters." However, I think if someone intentionally tried to secure a camera against this device, they would have a lot more luck. The filters they tested against probably had similar glare properties to a camera lens. So take a camera with an IR filter, give the filter itself a good non-glare coating, put something like the Leopold Anti-Reflective Device [outdoorsuperstore.com] on it, and
Re:Infrared filters! (Score:2, Interesting)
So in this case I guess we wouldn't need infrared filters, but something that obsorbs infrared light so it doesn't get reflected easily. Or even maybe something that bounces incoming light in another direction.
The advance of technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The advance of technology (Score:2)
Screw that (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would you need to demo something like this? (Score:2)
Great fun! (Score:2)
overengineered (Score:3, Insightful)
They're using an IR emitter to generate a reflection that is sensed with the camera to trigger an ambient light source to overwhelm the offending camera. Not to mention the modulated light attack that would launch on the eyeballs of anyone happening to be looking in that direction.
seems like since CCD's are IR responsive in the first place (which is how they are detecting them), why not just continuously bathe the area in an overdose of IR and skip the detection and visible light altogether?
Re:overengineered (Score:2)
Re:overengineered (Score:3, Funny)
Re:overengineered (Score:2)
The screen would reflect on all angles pretty much evenly, but the normal moviegoers wouldn't have an issue seeing the normal projected image.
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.
Re:overengineered (Score:5, Interesting)
you better patent that quick...
Ha! Take that G-Men! (Score:4, Funny)
[Remote Peer Quit Unexpectedly]
this is great (Score:5, Funny)
Re:this is great (Score:5, Funny)
Now, we merely need to mount these on the heads of sharks and.... Muhahahhaha!
Muahahahahha!
Re:this is great (Score:5, Funny)
Most slashdotters rely on their general appearance being enough to safely blind any nearby cameras.
Shame about the smell though...
oh man (Score:2)
cat's eyes are highly evolved to function at night via internal reflection
so anyone with a cat should get used to having a blind cat
Filters (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I wrong, or does this seem too easy to defeat?
Re:Filters (Score:2)
Re:You're wrong. (Score:3, Informative)
So why not use the infrared filter to prevent the detection of the CCD camera. Don't reflect the infrared light back to the detection device. Thus no camera detected and no visible light sent to wash out said camera.
Re:Filters (Score:3, Insightful)
This sucks (Score:2)
Countermeasure to the "Eye in the Sky" at casinos? (Score:2, Interesting)
IR Filter? (Score:2)
Theres still room for old tech. (Score:2)
Am I Wrong? (Score:5, Funny)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
Kjella
Re:Am I Wrong? (Score:3, Insightful)
not that i would know anything about robbing banks
Hopefully my cat has no glases ;) (Score:2, Funny)
So if I attach one of these things to my car... (Score:2)
There was something called chameleon plates a little while ago that did a similar thing. They reflected the light of the speed camera's flash so that they couldn't take photos of your license plate.
This is another step in that it is an active device in that it shines light into the camera.
Re:So if I attach one of these things to my car... (Score:3, Insightful)
Didn't affect the speed gun in the slightest. In my travels, I use a RADAR detector on long journeys, but in most cases, staying within 5-10mph of the speed limit (and driving an old man car! Grand Marquis) helps lots.
Alert for stuff worth recording? (Score:2)
use personal one in London? (Score:2)
they will have to license such a device as to prevent terrorists from being able to use them to avoid being identified.
just think, you are a wedding photographer, and a number of people forget to turn off their personal photo-obsfucators (Apples iNoPhoto). the horror.
Denial of service (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's think. Two people set 10-20 feet apart create independent sources of reflected infrared light that cannot be covered by the same beam -- the interposed populace will not be pleased
I know I sugested that about a year ago on /. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Thunderbirds (Score:3, Interesting)
The eye is a camera. (Score:2)
And, of course, the eyes of some animals (cats, alligators) are strong and precise retroreflectors. It's probably OK if they blind some stray alligator, but someone's beloved pet cat could be a problem.
Re:The eye is a camera. (Score:2)
Are you in the habit of taking your pet cat to tradeshows and product planning meetings? (I know *I* am, but this isn't about me!)
Re:The eye is a camera. (Score:2)
People too. (Score:5, Informative)
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:What About Shielding? (Score:2)
You mean like with a lens cap? Hm, that oughta work.
Re:fp (Score:2)
Re:A big fuck-you to big-government (Score:3)
On the other hand, I most certainly do agree that we need to be watching government use of public surveillance very, very closely. Not that this has much to do with the current topic, really.
Re:A big fuck-you to big-government (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Time for new laws banning such systems (Score:2)
Re:Not exactly mind blowing (Score:2)
I can see just one major flaw: You didn't read TFA, so you're babbling on about something that has absolutely nothing to do with the matter at hand.
Re:This only works if (Score:2)
Re:This only works if (Score:3, Funny)
In waiting for your response, I will be tucked away nicely out of sight.
Yeah, that's what you think...