Camera Zapping: Using Lasers to Temporarily Neutralize Cameras
naimark.net
naimark.net
The study referenced is from 2000, before the time when high-power lasers were available on the internet. There's a study here which states that green lasers can cause lasting retinal damage [0]. As much as I want a sweet laser I'd probably zap myself playing around with it.
Anything sold legally in the US as a "laser pointer" is going to be class IIIa.
A few years ago, ICE and the FDA started cracking down on the importation of high-powered laser pointers. Instead of fixing the problem, it meant that every single imported laser is marked "Class IIIa" regardless of its actual output power, since the border agents rarely (if ever) test the actual output of the devices.
I had a friend test a green laser pointer purchased online in 2010 with a "<5mW" warning label on it using a ThorLabs optical power meter. It measured 41mW. A basic diffraction grating test also revealed a massive amount of dangerous IR leakage.
Here's for example a pop-science article about using camera zapping on Vice Motherboard:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-new-quantum-hack-just-bur...
The solution to this was to include a filter which prevented oversaturation at the target wavelengths, but it turns out you could just blast it with some other wavelengths...
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/530181/the-next-battleg...
So it's a really fun-looking discipline, lots of groups hiring postdocs for it etc.
This guy is really good. Some of the links here might be informative http://www.vad1.com/lab/
I am happy to answer any questions you might have.
I don't have time to learn about this now, unfortunately, but I'll put these resources on my list. Thanks for the reply!
http://hackedgadgets.com/2008/02/21/ir-leds-used-to-defeat-s...
Not as noticeable to bystanders. Much more passive approach that can be maintained for as long as necessary.
Not as likely to get the police called on you.
Combining the two approaches could work http://www.digikey.com/catalog/en/partgroup/ir-laser-module/...
In night mode, the camera drops the color processing and just yields a B/W image. In this case, the IR cut filter is moved out of the light path, allowing the ambient IR light to hit the sensor and provide more exposure ability than you would get from just the visible spectrum IR light.
> Not as noticeable to bystanders. Much more passive approach that can be maintained for as long as necessary.
> Not as likely to get the police called on you.
Lastly, just because you could use lasers to neutralize cameras doesn't mean you can. In trying to to make a point about the ubiquity of cameras, the author reveals a challenge in fighting them:
> Video cameras the size of postage stamps can be procured for under $100, and will certainly become even smaller and cheaper.
Blocking cameras is one thing; finding them is another!
This idea is shifting though, we've steadily been leaving behind a place of having cameras predominantly being used to prevent theft, towards a situation of mass government surveillance on the street level (think license plate scanners etc). To me personally, that is more offensive at this point.
On this note I've been thinking about whether there's anything actually offensive about capturing video in a public location. You're just capturing photons thrown at you. If someone doesn't want to be captured, too bad, they shouldn't be throwing photons at you (read: if they want privacy, they shouldn't be in a public location).
The human eye is a camera; the only real difference between your eye and your Canon is in material composition. One is made of organic material, another made of silicon and glass. In the future, I see this boundary blurring, whether in the form of digital prosthetic eyes for the blind (which inevitably would possess the hardware ability to capture video to a file) or in being able to understand, capture, and save neural signals out of our biological eyes directly. It will happen and is just a matter of time. So we might as well create a unified ethical framework now, built around the fact that the human eye is a camera; the act of seeing is videography; the act of remembering is data storage.
I beg your pardon?
If one doesn't want that the fact they've been at some public location, doing something, they shouldn't be there. Forcing bystanding observers to not remember or not disclose the facts they have observed is somewhat odd idea.
But love it or hate it, but it seems that we're grasping wearable computing. And that includes stuff like hearing, vision, memory or navigational aids, and such things depend on recording what's going on around the wearer. So, while today there's a clear distinction we're just bound to hit the issue some years in the future. And given that some tech is already there, said future doesn't seem to be too far away. Then the difference would be much smaller. Probably even non-existent if we'd get anywhere close to what transhumanistic sci-fi pictures ;)
And this means a war between concepts - freedom to absorb and process information, and freedom to control your personal information.
I'm not sure there is any objective approach for ethical problems, so, I guess, it would be just a matter of taste, chance and circumstances.
I am aware of tourist photos and photos by friends. It is reasonable to expect that I'll be in occasional photographs where I am not the subject. I know that. It is reasonable to expect that I won't be the subject of photos without my knowledge or included in detailed photographic records just because I went to a public place. Detailed imagery of your whereabouts and activities should never be expected and should only be legal with a warrant.
I think that this is especially pertinent for children who are not able to make the decision to grant these rights, the permission for a photograph or video cannot be rescinded on majority, but the person could make different decisions about where they go, what they wear and how they behave, with limited responsibility for the prior decision to do something else.
Would it be acceptable for a person in public to wear one of these, but not one of the others?
My sense is that if you want privacy in public, you should wear the matte black mask.
There's a huge difference: With a camera, you can record the photons and share them. The barrier to entry for privacy violation and harassment has via "captured photons" has never been lower.
It's very well done and wonderfully dystopic. Soon™
I think that another important difference is that Canon-recorded images can be stored, archived, and consulted indefinitely, and by anyone, whereas human-recorded images cannot.
That would be a perfectly reasonable position if there weren't laws against blocking photons. (Mask bans)
That is true when it comes to merely being seen, but not being recorded. Being in a public location naturally implies consent to be seen, but it does not imply consent to be recorded artificially. (This includes any augmentations to human abilities from future technology, as someone mentioned this in a later comment)
This is quite different than the effect noted here, assumedly the sensor observed a signal out of range and passed that downstream.
I have also heard of people getting permanent banding on their point and shoot sensors from sun-focused time lapses [0]. So my question becomes, while this may be interesting from a privacy perspective, to be able to stop cameras from being able to see you temporarily, what is the potential to permanently damage a camera?
[0] http://www.nikonians.org/forums/dcboard.php?potential-ccd-im...
"The person driving the motor vehicle shall keep the plate legible and unobstructed and free from grease, dust, or other blurring material so that the lettering is plainly visible at all times. It is unlawful to cover any assigned letters and numbers or the name of the state of origin of a license plate with any material whatever, including any clear or colorless material that affects the plate's visibility or reflectivity."