7 ms·

Camera Zapping: Using Lasers to Temporarily Neutralize Cameras

86 points by rfreytag 11y ago

growt 11y ago
Reminds me of pirate cinema by Cory Doctorow.
jswrenn 11y ago
This feels much more offensive than the act of capturing video, but I can't justify that feeling. There's something so wonderfully disobedient about neutralizing cameras with lasers that I'm tempted to ask: is this legal? Does the potential for damaging the camera carry any liability? 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!
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
    - ugexe 11y ago
      Obligatory "this isn't reddit"
  - brk 11y ago
    This would be kind of impractical. It might work with older cameras, especially in indoor scenes. But modern cctv cameras have pretty good WDR (wide dynamic range) by default, and you'd likely find that your face gets better exposure than you think. It some cases, especially indoors, this hat could actually HELP the camera if the light from it bounces off nearby walls and then illuminates your face. Not to mention the battery pack and heat generation issues from such a hat would make it rather cumbersome to wear anyway.
  - itcmcgrath 11y ago
    That concept is used in Daniel Suarez's book 'Influx' to avoid AI systems doing facial recognition.
  - amelius 11y ago
    > Makes a lot of sense to make a hat with a very bright LED light source. Until you walk into that elevator with a mirror mounted inside. Or until you bump into other people.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    You'd be wearing an illuminated hat. You might as well just yell "HERE I AM". It would do nothing to stop your image being recorded. It may well just improve the quality of your image on the recording.
- snowpanda 11y ago
  >This feels much more offensive than the act of capturing video 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.
- dheera 11y ago
  > This feels much more offensive than the act of capturing video 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.
  - zdkl 11y ago
    > they shouldn't be in a public place... I beg your pardon?
    - drdaeman 11y ago
      Privacy is conceptually incompatible with public places. 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.
      - aw3c2 11y ago
        There is a huge difference between eye witness memory or elaboration and recording audio or video.
        gknoy 11y ago
        Indeed: eyewitness accounts are notoriously inaccurate, whereas video can be replayed.
olefoo 11y ago
A slightly more practical system for defeating surveillance cameras specifically. http://hackedgadgets.com/2008/02/21/ir-leds-used-to-defeat-security-cameras/ 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/17892 http://www.digikey.com/catalog/en/partgroup/ir-laser-module/...
- brk 11y ago
  That would only work for cameras in B/W or "night" mode. Most decent security cameras have a movable IR filter. In color mode, this IR filter is moved into the light path to filter out infrared light. IR light causes a purplish tinge to color video, and the easiest approach is to reduce the IR light hitting the sensor. 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.
- ams6110 11y ago
  Small drone with a paint gun. Fly up to the camera and paint over the lens.
  - JadeNB 11y ago
    I don't think that meets any of the three criteria: > 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.
gist 11y ago
Article dates to 2002 that should be in the subject line.
drostie 11y ago
I think people here will be really interested to know that this is an active technique in the "quantum hacking" world as well. As you probably know, quantum mechanics very often offers 100% security about creating shared keys which nobody else knows -- but there is a very active physics subfield called "quantum hacking" which says "well, but you're assuming that your device perfectly embodies these equations and the reality is it doesn't, so let's see what happens if we drive up the parameters to a non-ideal regime, can we run a Man-in-the-Middle attack then without you both knowing about it?" 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-burns-a-hole-right 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-battleground-in-the-war-against-quantum-hacking/ 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.
- JadeNB 11y ago
  I had never heard of quantum hacking, so went looking for more information. A !wiki search turned up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_key_distribution#Quantum_Hacking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_key_distribution#Quantu... . Do you know of any better / more comprehensive, layperson-accessible discussion?
  - abdullahkhalids 11y ago
    This for example http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100520/full/news.2010.256.html http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100520/full/news.2010.256.ht... This guy is really good. Some of the links here might be informative http://www.vad1.com/lab/ http://www.vad1.com/lab/ I am happy to answer any questions you might have.
    - JadeNB 11y ago
      > 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!
philwelch 11y ago
Roman Abramovich supposedly has a system like this on his yacht: http://www.wired.com/2009/09/russian-billionaire-installs-anti-photo-shield-on-giant-yacht/ http://www.wired.com/2009/09/russian-billionaire-installs-an...
- rosege 11y ago
  Yes he did - although I never heard of him turning it on. Also the photo in that article is of Pelorus which he sold quite a long time ago - I guess in 2009 Eclipse was still being built in Germany so they couldnt get a picture
vdnkh 11y ago
> not a single instance of permanent eye damage from laser pointers has been recorded anywhere 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. [0] http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c2982.full http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c2982.full
- learc83 11y ago
  Yeah, of course you can get eye damage from a 1W laser. That article was specifically talking about class IIIa lasers which are 5mW or less. Anything sold legally in the US as a "laser pointer" is going to be class IIIa.
  - bri3d 11y ago
    Please be VERY wary of "legal class IIIa" laser pointers purchased in the US. 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.
thunderstorm 11y ago
Camera Zapping, I saw this on an episode from Burn Notice and I thought it was more like science fiction. Guess that was pretty accurate!
hammock 11y ago
Does anyone make a system for license plates? And is it legal?
- gist 11y ago
  That's an interesting question actually. My guess, and I hate to guess, is that laws state the a license plate needs to be readable but most likely don't say that have to be able to be read by a camera since the laws were written before those were commmonplace and most likely have not been adopted as technology has changed.
  - Phlarp 11y ago
    Many states have pretty broad laws in this regard. For example in Minnesota the relevant law reads: "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."
strictnein 11y ago
"draft - not for distribution"
mschuster91 11y ago
Guess this is where the intro scene of Tron: Legacy was inspired ;)
discreditable 11y ago
Lasers which are strong enough can permanently damage cameras. There are a few videos of this phenomenon on YouTube. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T0j5azGVmw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T0j5azGVmw 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzyKLoEDb64 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzyKLoEDb64
brokentone 11y ago
Once while messing with a laser pointer, my brother and I pointed it at a camera in the entry to the grocery store with a monitor up. The monitor immediately went to snow which was quite unexpected for us. We switched the laser pointer off and the screen came back. 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-imager-burnout-&forum=153&topic_id=2324&mesg_id=2327&page= http://www.nikonians.org/forums/dcboard.php?potential-ccd-im...

86 points by rfreytag 11y ago

growt 11y ago

Reminds me of pirate cinema by Cory Doctorow.

This feels much more offensive than the act of capturing video, but I can't justify that feeling. There's something so wonderfully disobedient about neutralizing cameras with lasers that I'm tempted to ask: is this legal? Does the potential for damaging the camera carry any liability? 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!

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - ugexe 11y ago
    Obligatory "this isn't reddit"
- brk 11y ago
  This would be kind of impractical. It might work with older cameras, especially in indoor scenes. But modern cctv cameras have pretty good WDR (wide dynamic range) by default, and you'd likely find that your face gets better exposure than you think. It some cases, especially indoors, this hat could actually HELP the camera if the light from it bounces off nearby walls and then illuminates your face. Not to mention the battery pack and heat generation issues from such a hat would make it rather cumbersome to wear anyway.
- itcmcgrath 11y ago
  That concept is used in Daniel Suarez's book 'Influx' to avoid AI systems doing facial recognition.
- amelius 11y ago
  > Makes a lot of sense to make a hat with a very bright LED light source. Until you walk into that elevator with a mirror mounted inside. Or until you bump into other people.
- DanBC 11y ago
  You'd be wearing an illuminated hat. You might as well just yell "HERE I AM". It would do nothing to stop your image being recorded. It may well just improve the quality of your image on the recording.
snowpanda 11y ago
>This feels much more offensive than the act of capturing video 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.
dheera 11y ago
> This feels much more offensive than the act of capturing video 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.
- zdkl 11y ago
  > they shouldn't be in a public place... I beg your pardon?
  - drdaeman 11y ago
    Privacy is conceptually incompatible with public places. 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.
    - aw3c2 11y ago
      There is a huge difference between eye witness memory or elaboration and recording audio or video.
      - gknoy 11y ago
        Indeed: eyewitness accounts are notoriously inaccurate, whereas video can be replayed.

olefoo 11y ago

A slightly more practical system for defeating surveillance cameras specifically. http://hackedgadgets.com/2008/02/21/ir-leds-used-to-defeat-security-cameras/ 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/17892 http://www.digikey.com/catalog/en/partgroup/ir-laser-module/...

brk 11y ago
That would only work for cameras in B/W or "night" mode. Most decent security cameras have a movable IR filter. In color mode, this IR filter is moved into the light path to filter out infrared light. IR light causes a purplish tinge to color video, and the easiest approach is to reduce the IR light hitting the sensor. 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.
ams6110 11y ago
Small drone with a paint gun. Fly up to the camera and paint over the lens.
- JadeNB 11y ago
  I don't think that meets any of the three criteria: > 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.

gist 11y ago

Article dates to 2002 that should be in the subject line.

drostie 11y ago

I think people here will be really interested to know that this is an active technique in the "quantum hacking" world as well. As you probably know, quantum mechanics very often offers 100% security about creating shared keys which nobody else knows -- but there is a very active physics subfield called "quantum hacking" which says "well, but you're assuming that your device perfectly embodies these equations and the reality is it doesn't, so let's see what happens if we drive up the parameters to a non-ideal regime, can we run a Man-in-the-Middle attack then without you both knowing about it?" 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-burns-a-hole-right 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-battleground-in-the-war-against-quantum-hacking/ 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.

JadeNB 11y ago
I had never heard of quantum hacking, so went looking for more information. A !wiki search turned up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_key_distribution#Quantum_Hacking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_key_distribution#Quantu... . Do you know of any better / more comprehensive, layperson-accessible discussion?
- abdullahkhalids 11y ago
  This for example http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100520/full/news.2010.256.html http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100520/full/news.2010.256.ht... This guy is really good. Some of the links here might be informative http://www.vad1.com/lab/ http://www.vad1.com/lab/ I am happy to answer any questions you might have.
  - JadeNB 11y ago
    > 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!

philwelch 11y ago

Roman Abramovich supposedly has a system like this on his yacht: http://www.wired.com/2009/09/russian-billionaire-installs-anti-photo-shield-on-giant-yacht/ http://www.wired.com/2009/09/russian-billionaire-installs-an...

rosege 11y ago
Yes he did - although I never heard of him turning it on. Also the photo in that article is of Pelorus which he sold quite a long time ago - I guess in 2009 Eclipse was still being built in Germany so they couldnt get a picture

vdnkh 11y ago

> not a single instance of permanent eye damage from laser pointers has been recorded anywhere 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. [0] http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c2982.full http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c2982.full

learc83 11y ago
Yeah, of course you can get eye damage from a 1W laser. That article was specifically talking about class IIIa lasers which are 5mW or less. Anything sold legally in the US as a "laser pointer" is going to be class IIIa.
- bri3d 11y ago
  Please be VERY wary of "legal class IIIa" laser pointers purchased in the US. 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.

thunderstorm 11y ago

Camera Zapping, I saw this on an episode from Burn Notice and I thought it was more like science fiction. Guess that was pretty accurate!

hammock 11y ago

Does anyone make a system for license plates? And is it legal?

gist 11y ago
That's an interesting question actually. My guess, and I hate to guess, is that laws state the a license plate needs to be readable but most likely don't say that have to be able to be read by a camera since the laws were written before those were commmonplace and most likely have not been adopted as technology has changed.
- Phlarp 11y ago
  Many states have pretty broad laws in this regard. For example in Minnesota the relevant law reads: "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."

strictnein 11y ago

"draft - not for distribution"

mschuster91 11y ago

Guess this is where the intro scene of Tron: Legacy was inspired ;)

discreditable 11y ago

Lasers which are strong enough can permanently damage cameras. There are a few videos of this phenomenon on YouTube. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T0j5azGVmw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T0j5azGVmw 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzyKLoEDb64 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzyKLoEDb64

brokentone 11y ago

Once while messing with a laser pointer, my brother and I pointed it at a camera in the entry to the grocery store with a monitor up. The monitor immediately went to snow which was quite unexpected for us. We switched the laser pointer off and the screen came back. 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-imager-burnout-&forum=153&topic_id=2324&mesg_id=2327&page= http://www.nikonians.org/forums/dcboard.php?potential-ccd-im...