Russian Billionaire Installs Anti-Photo Shield on Giant Yacht

No. Money laundering is useful. (And it's illegal. I want to sell useless legal things.)

Agreed, this description makes no sense. If you're talking about a point & shoot camera, or any camera with a live preview where the CCD is continually exposed, then it might work. But a plain old SLR is going to expose its CCD for maybe 1/1000 of a second on a sunny day.

I have seen a system like this that worked by detecting flash photography, and firing a flash back at the source of the original flash. If you react quickly enough to a flash, you can blind the CCD while it's still exposed, ruining the image. Can't find the link right now. But if you don't use a flash, then that system doesn't work.

You're exactly right (though I'm no expert). SLRs use contrast detection focusing. I have no idea how you could detect a CCD at any point in space all around you for the tiny fraction (1/1000 wouldn't be uncommon outdoors on a sunny day) of a second that it's exposed, _and_ react to it in that same time span. Sounds to me like someone just scammed a rich idiot out of a bunch of money.

IANAN. The sensor detection sounds pretty unlikely. But what about some other possible methods:

The end of an SLR lens is domed/convex, and slightly reflective (even the best ones are slightly). The lens would have to be pointed at the ship for the system to care about it. In that state, shining a laser at the lens and detecting the reflection would pick up the reflection profile of the convex surface (you'd need a 2d array of sensors to pick up the range of return angles as the laser moves from the center of the lens), and finding the center would be fairly easy - so you'd know where to fire. How many other reflective convex surfaces have their axis of rotation pointed straight at the boat?

I imagine this is mostly a problem when in dock, or at anchor, where the paparazzi are probably all in one location (or a few), so the search space could be very quickly narrowed down by a human.

Seems like a pretty frivolous way to spend money, but at least it's being spent.

No expert, but is it possible that this technology could be coupled with cameras using an object recognition algorithm? Once it had narrowed the space, it could then scan.

Auto-focus on most cameras (those that use phase / contrast detecton AF, at least) doesn't emit anything, unless you mean emissions from the circuitry used to control it. Some cameras have a AF assist light for helping the AF in low light, but that won't come on in daylight.

You do need to focus at distance with long, fast lenses.

The laser is the light cannon.

Not the CCD. Handheld detectors (like this one http://www.lightinthebox.com/Super-Sleuth-Camera-Detector_p5...) work by strobing an array of very bright LEDs and looking for reflections from lenses. I've seen manufacturers claim it's good out to 900 feet and I see no reason it wouldn't work in principle, but a shrewd paparazzi could probably just set up a few ordinary mirrors around his observation point and confuse the system that way.

Sounds like a repurposed military anti-sniper device or similar. Then again maybe the whole thing is just exaggeration designed to give paparazzi nightmares about having their retinas burned.

Exactly. And what of cameras that use CMOS sensors (like most DSLRs)?

Or old-school film-shooting paps?

Sharks with lasers of course...