Apple could block iPhone camera at cinemas, concerts | Hacker News Reader

Apple could block iPhone camera at cinemas, concerts

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52 pointsjacquesm69 comments

Read this as "Police will block cameras at protests".

That's the thing. The feature will not have cinema locations hard coded, but query some kind of online editable database. Otherwise it'd be too tricky to maintain.

The article says the block will come from an infrared transmitter

And you can bet someone will work out how to send these signals and jam cameras at inconvenient locations.

Nice, maybe we can finally enjoy concerts in peace again. ;)

At what cost?

Straight from TFA:

The patent reads:

“A transmitter can be located in areas where capturing pictures and videos is prohibited (e.g., a concert or a classified facility) and the transmitters can generate infrared signals with encoded data that includes commands temporarily disabling recording functions.”

Ah, thanks. I must have missed that.

It doesn't make this 'feature' any better.

Taking a camera into a classified facility seems like a bad idea. It can't be that hard to find IR opaque, but visually clear paint. Especially if you're a nation state.

Glass blocks IR.

I guess we're on a 4 year cycle?

"Apple awarded patent for geo-fencing profile changes to stop you texting in the theater"

https://www.engadget.com/2012/08/28/apple-geofence-profile-p...

Any time restricting devices are entertained I worry about the potential for abuse. Would there be restrictions on these transmitters? Could someone easily make their own? I can imagine police departments that don't like the inconvenience of everyone having a camera in their pocket using these to shut down the recording of arrests or other police actions.

Exactly. Don't design mechanisms unless you're happy with every policy from the set of all possible policies!

If this were implemented against users' wishes, and caused serious inconvenience, it wouldn't be long before mass-market stick-on infrared cut-off filters were available

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_cut-off_filter

Just like you don’t develop an encryption backdoor for “only the good guys”, you don’t develop features like these and expect them to be used only as intended.

Keeping photos out of movie theaters might sound noble but this feature could be hacked by anyone who has a real problem with being photographed.

Then there’s the fact that the simpler implementation is less likely to have bugs. Once there are 12 ways for the camera to be “off”, how many sources of bugs must be checked to be sure that the camera won’t turn off when it’s supposed to be available, or vice-versa?

What if someone wants to record a crime happening inside a cinema?

The needs of content producers clearly outweigh this minor inconvenience. /s

I expect Apple to use the blocking patent to fight anyone who tries to implement a similar solution: it makes more sense than telling their customer what to do — although Apple has always preferred to exert control to protect quality, and those grainy videos and having their devices be treated as obstacles is very much not on-brand.

Using the information one to let users know where to find the professionally recorded live-feed (and possible reconstruction of any given spectator’s point of view) sounds like a better option.

Given Apple's recent crusade for security of their devices, I would not be surprised at all if they obtained this patent for the sole purpose of preventing other companies from creating similar solutions.

What the fuck? Seriously what the fuck? Am I the only one who thinks this is beyond absurd? Sure it's just a patent but it speaks clearly of what they think of their customers. I never owned an Apple product except my iPod Shuffle but the thought of not owning what I paid good money for is ridiculous.

Ironically, halfway through the article:

    Buy Now: Apple iPhone 6S (16GB) at Amazon for £523.99

I think your overreacting. Like you say - it's just a patent. The use cases (concerts/cinemas) might not be the actual use cases. Think of it as something like the feature some drones have to prevent you entering no-fly zones. In the end it all depends how they use the tech. If concert venues started using it they would lose a lot of business and see a lot of backlash. I could see this being useful in a location where you expect your privacy to be protected and some morons is snapping photos. Off the top of my head a polling centre. When I voted last week there were signs everywhere asking people to turn off their phones - and at the same time people were taking selfies. This isn't the best case for implementing but it's the best off the top of my head. Basically it would be useful in places where nobody is legally allowed to take photographs but it's difficult to enforce.

Even in the examples you mentioned I strongly believe one shouldn't mess with their devices. You can just take away their phones. My point is that they paid for the device so they get to use it however they want to. Whether they could use it or not depends on the setting they're in, not on whoever "sold" them the device.

Warning the user that it may be illegal to take photos is reasonable, but making a device that acts on the theoretical authority of someone else against its own/possessor is not. Taking your example of polls, it may be illegal for me to take a photo, but it may be my responsibility to do it anyways. For example, I may see visual evidence of large scale voting fraud within a polling station. It is similar for sensitive data and whistle-blowers.

> What the fuck? Seriously what the fuck?

Please stop overreacting, especially in this manner. Nothing says they're planning to implement it, for all we know it could be a preventive patent, so no other can use the technology without Apple's consent.

I'm not sure what the overeaction is. It is a statement of strong disbelief. My reaction was the same.

I don't swear much but you captured my reaction perfectly.

You are not owning what you paid good money for anyway so you shoudn't feel that bad. Most of the computer goods are now 'licensed'.

Agree, The person who wants to record a movie will record it anyway, they can take just a different device to the cinema.

I saw once in Berlin a young guy punching in the face an old men who just complained about his misbehaviour during the movie. I wish someone recorded that.

My point is, it will hurt iPhone owners, but not the people who wants to record illegally the movie, those will find a way.

It's not only that, imagine being blocked from recording a dangerous incident simply because someone has decided that copyright protection is more important than anything else.

This doesn't 'speak clearly of what they think of their customers' at all.

You don't know what they intend to do with this patent.

You are overreacting to something you are only imagining.

It's hard to believe they'd actually do something so hostile to their paying customers.

Well.. it could take the liability of copyright infringements from their paying customers.. but what would be the point?

It's only a patent, and old patent for that matter. Apple has many patents for stuff they never implement.

If they ruled it out, however, they wouldn't have obtained the patent in the first place

Except our patent system is so screwed up that may not be the case. For example, if you wanted to stop such idiotic policies being placed on users of any devices getting patent on doing it and then charging those that want to do it $500 million can prevent it from being done (for a few years anyway).

I am not saying that is Apple's thinking, I am just saying our patent system is so messed up that rich companies can spend a great deal to create tons of patents for things they have no interest in today because of the incentives in the broken system we have now.

Yes, because every patent a company holds is explicitly intended for public use. No one ever patents something because it's a new and unique idea right? /s

Strawman argument? All I said is that apparently they don't rule it out. Of course we cannot know for sure either way, but we should consider the context here. Apple, of all companies, is probably the most infamous for its policy of tight control over user devices. The idea itself is not extraordinarily hard to come up with, and yet it happens to be no other than Apple who thought it worthwhile to patent it. I think scepticism is perfectly justified in this case

This is why you don't buy DRM and root your devices.

Can I get that transmitter as wearable tech to prevent people from taking pictures of me?

Why is everyone excited about driverless cars again?

Major overreaction on this thread. Companies often incentives their employees to create patents. Often patents are use for protection purposes even if they never make it into the companies tech.

For Example: Company X sues Apple stating they infringe on a patent. Apple turns around and throws 10 patents back that infringe on their tech.

I understand this is just a patent, for a potential feature, However it implies that apple will happily bend to the desires and whims of the mpaa. Which is odd given their flat out denial to cooperate with govt entities to prosecute mass shooters and kiddy diddlers ... an interesting moral compass that Tim Cook has.

If only they would make it possible to enforce silent mode on concerts, that would be something.

I wonder if there'd be a halfway mode, whereby the commands to the camera would be something like "only take a picture in really poor quality mode". You could still get your pics, but the value would be nowhere near 'professional'.

The instant that this is done I will drop my iPhone and get another brand, probably for life.

another nail in the coffin being made for democracy

How so?

eg blocking people from recording police beating up or kidknapping protestors.. just as one of a zillion possibilities

While I agree that the fear of your scenarios is reasonable, the way the patent is described doesn't seem to really support that use scenario - they'd have to have an infared emitter pointing towards the camera presumably with enough juice behind it to be detectable by the camera from a variety of distances, and I don't think that you can power a mobile emitter like that easily right now. Maybe attached to squad cars, but it still appears directional from my understanding.

And all things being equal, it seems more likely that the police would take a much more practical approach of "take recording device" if they wanted to suppress information reliably.

I'm not saying no scrutiny should be given to apple on this, but it is a bit important also to keep discussions rational and free of emotional outbursts, if only to keep focus on the subject at hand.

Stuff like "nail in coffin" is just kind of overly dramatic for very real fears and concerns.

http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...

Maybe they are patenting it so someone else can't, thus the undesirable technology never comes into use.

Don't think that's what patents are for, but hey, I'll take it.

Google could do the same thing with android, and would be more likely to, IMO

Android is open-source, so you could just flash a ROM without that feature.

I'd argue that this is a bit too tin foily. But it is possible for camera manufacturers to build the logic into the camera's firmware.

For example, if it detects the infrared signal, it'll just send a blank feed to the phone's OS.

Good point. But the camera would need a processor then to decrypt the infrared signal, wouldn't it?

But they already have processors. Calculating white balance, compensating for lens characteristics, and converting the raw data into the format wanted by the OS. The GPS receiver handles all the calculations for determining position. Same with the accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer.

Oh didn't know that.

Could an infrared filter help in that case?

In this case if it used infrared, sure. But you have to remember that humans can't really notice the high frequency changes in light. There's plenty of scope to encode data in visible light.

I'm sceptical if this would be implemented it would be quite a negative selling point for mobile phone cameras. And I don't see why mobile phone manufacturers would consider implementing this functionality.

It's not tin-foilly at all. Scanners won't scan money.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/advice/8597875/Why-can...

Not so fast...without manufacturer support you can't do that. Also many parts of android are actually close-source. The only mobile open source OS that you can actually use, build, modify is Ubuntu

Can you tell me which part of Android (AOSP, not Google Play Services of course) is close-sourced?

The parts that people, manufacturers, carriers and Google themselves refer to by using the word "Andriod" in any context other than splitting hairs about AOSP.

I think on HN most people would say that Cyanogenmod is an Android ROM and that Amazon is using Android on their Fire tablets. Also there are many (mostly Chinese) manufactures which claim Android support without officially supporting running the Google proprietary Play services.

Android itself is fully open source. It requires closed-source blobs (mostly drivers) to work on most devices, and so does Ubuntu Touch; in fact, they get them from Android.: https://wiki.edubuntu.org/Touch/NewPorting#Retrieving_the_pr...

You also can install Google's proprietary layer of services and libraries, but that's optional if you're building it yourself.

I think that's required on devices that do not support ubuntu natively(i.e android phones) so I find it acceptable. It's also worth to note that most linux drivers are blobs as well...(unfortunately). Here[0] is the source for the kernel of bq aquaris(a native ubuntu phone) and the images maintained[1]. I've tried to reflash an android phone and get root access for 2 weeks without success. On ubuntu mobile it took me 2 hours. 0 https://github.com/bq/aquaris-E4.5 1 https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/phone/devices/image-channels...

I know 2 more use cases that have nothing to do with cinemas or concerts.

A past job I held was banking related. Cell phones were not allowed on the call center floor for fear of employees taking pictures of computer screens with customer data on them.

Install a few of these infrared transmitters; problem solved. Employees can still get texts / calls from family members / friends and customer data remains safe. You might need a lot of transmitters to get past the cubical walls, but if it's an investment the company is willing to make and the sensors are cheap enough - why not.

2 - a friend tells me she works for a US government agency and phones are not allowed in her building either. Same reason - to protect sensitive data; but the same, their about to have their first child and it would be important if she was at work and there was an emergency with the baby that she gets a call from whoever in a timely manor. Sure - you could call her office / extension but if she's not at her desk, in the lunch room (their instructed to leave phones in their cars), in a meeting, etc...

Most people don't abide by those rules; while I was there, we tried our hardest to enforce it. If IT saw a phone on the floor, we were told to report it; if security saw a phone, they'd have to hold it at the front desk, but people are sneaky - you can't search everyones purse, bag, lunch and you surely can't pat them down. Not with hundreds of employees coming and going all day. This could help fix all of that.

As I type this - can add taking pictures of a test in school and cheating. Add a few transmitters to a classroom.

Cell phone != camera.

I have $20 dump phone with no camera for exactly this reason. And it lasts 30 days on battery :-)

Infrared transmitters will not solve anything. Too easy to hack this with IR filters etc..

Right - but we are talking about Apple and we can assume this is for an iPhone or something else planned. Most people don't want to carry a 2nd phone and have a 2nd line / bill.

I think people are really over reacting to this, obviously, as I got a down vote. If it's used in inappropriate places; there will be backlash - ie: a restaurant, a child's recital. But for places with sensitive data or copy-written work - why not.

But you can use it for notation purposes - fake phone numbers and coded names, etc.

My sister worked for a call center for student loans. Not only were cell phones not permitted, but no coats, purses, lunches, and so on were disallowed. Paper use during calls was frowned on, and they had to be thrown away in special trash cans. Any cell phone could be used for notation purposes (fake telephone numbers to record sensitive information), so I doubt this sort of thing would change at all.

Schools can combat this. For example, I recently took a couple of tests for Norwegian language (I'm an immigrant, and the test is required after manditory language class). Solution? Purses, coats, etc piled at the front of the room. Visual checks by staff during the test. Computers were checked for use of non-test websites.

The friend with a baby on the way could easily have an on-site phone for such a thing.

Sure, folks are sneaky, and there are going to be a few that do such things for nefarious reasons. Most will follow rules if there is understandable reason (though many think the rules are silly because they are fairly honest most times). Unfortunately, most don't have such reasons. I can see this implemented a retail distribution center, for example, simply because having a phone on their body is against rules and not part of the job. Retail locations would consider it if it wouldn't negatively affect their customers.

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