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Turning a Blind Eye to Big Brother
SiliconRedox writes: "An article in the NYTimes (user reg.) details what many of us who have worked with video or electronics have known for quite awhile: Shine a laser beam (or infrared, but the article doesn't get into that) at a video camera, and you can effectively blind certain viewpoints of the camera. The article follows one man trying to cope with the surveillence society by removing his own image from everyday video footage using this technique. The most interesting part? What kind of culpability does the individual or institution have in utilizing this kind of technology?"
Isn't it just as much your right to be not seen as it is to seen? Wearing black such that people can not see you is just the same as blinding a camera.
so the x10 camera i put up in my bathroom can be twarted by anyone with a laser??? what a jip
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
I do believe that it is well within someone's right to not have their picture taken if they don't wish it to be. Or at least have a warning on the entrance of an establishment that you are being videotaped. I think the law that says you don't have to inform someone that you're videotaping them, but that you do for audio is bogus. The law needs to be changed, it's an invasion of privacy no matter how you want to look at it, if someone doesn't want to be videotaped, then they shouldn't be videotaped, there is no grey area. You should be informed before proceeding that you are under video survailence.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
And lets not forget the liability of shining a laser in someone's eye. Even though he mentions he's using low powered laser pointers, those still have the potential of harming someone. And in our sue happy society, we don't even have to wait until it actually does harm someone. All it will take is a greedy lawyer to start up a class action lawsuit.
Good job moderators [/sarcas], but if you really want to get in, just remeber the NYT Random Login Generator. It won't work directly from the website anymore because the Times has blocked all requests from his site, but just download and run it from your machine, click the button, refresh once and you're in. Works like a charm.
I bet he has scopophobia (the fear of being seen) :)
While Mr. Naimark acknowledged that he had some ethical discomfort about his project because his information could be useful to terrorists, he decided to go ahead.
.02
"My interest and motivation is to provide the creative community with some stimulating and provoking stuff," he writes. "These are stimulating and provoking times."
I have ethical problems w/these devices being put into place to watch me. They have absolutely NO place in public areas. I do NOT like the fact that people are there watching what I do.
VMS sites in PA have bothered my for some time. They are going to "only watch traffic patterns". Oh fucking bullshit. They are going to say that until they are in place and in use for an undetermined amount of time. Once the devices are there they are going to use them to track speeders and other lawless individuals.
We do NOT need machines tracking us or doing the job of the police. If the cop isn't paying attention, or isn't there when I blow by their hiding spot in the middle of the road at 105, tough.
There's NO reason to have feelings against radar jamming (the cops cheat to find out how fast you are going, why shouldn't we cheat and not let them know how fast we are going?), blocking out video taping in public places of people, etc.
That's my worthless
My guess? Someone will do this while they rob the 7-11, the technique will become "terrorist" (or whatever) & nobody will care [enough] about the Big Brother potential of the cameras.
To blind a CCD or other imaging device, infrared beams won't cut it. You need high enough energy photons that guarantee virtually every photon entering will produce an electron-hole pair in each type of detector. That means at the very least, inside the visible range. Preferably just beyond into the ultraviolet. If I swamp out the reds, a smart technician could just look at the other colors to determine what's going on.
So, you really want ultraviolet. Just barely into that range will work. That would ensure all the detectors were swamped and thus nothing could be done to get an image out. Now, someone please let me know when ultraviolet lasers and high-powered LEDs are avaiable on the market. Well, maybe I'll let you all know when it's done since that's something I'm doing for my PhD work ;)
Long, cute, or funny Sigs are just another form of over compensation, used by geeks, nerdz, etc.
Hell, just think what damage Saddam could do to orbiting US spy satellites if he had a half-decent laser and some idea of where to aim it.
Hey, maybe in light (pun) of this guy's antics, the RIAA will now lobby congress to outlaw all laser diodes over a certain wattage (in the name of "homeland security" you understand). This would make CD writers illegal. Look Ma, no piracy problems!
Oh, dear, there are too many good ideas in this thread that the fringe-lunatics could grasp onto.
Argh, that text is nearly unreadable (no line spaces and such)... try the Google Partner link to bypass the login.
It's not destruction of anybody's property if it's temporary, which is what the article suggests.
In fact, if he copyrights his own image, he's actually enforcing his rights, and any attempt to make the camera capture his image will then be a DMCA violation...
Point a digital camera at one of those IR cordless headphone transmitters. What do you see? Why, really bright spots where those almost invisible to the human eye LEDs are! And those LEDs are really low power. High power IR LEDs pointed at a camera might not knock it out for good, but it would glare-blind it.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
I ride the buses here as well and am strongly in favor of the cameras, as a means of fighting pickpockets, harassment, graffiti, and other crime. Anyone who wants to blind these cameras should consider the consequences.
sulli
RTFJ.
"I'd hope that Big Brother wouldnt spy on us outside our legal rights"
The article mentions hidden video cameras in the bathroom [toilet] of hotels. I have actually seen these in UK service-stations (2mm hole in smoke detectors), and everyone who hears about them is disgusted at the concept.
Larger-scale, towns all over the country are rushing to install cameras. Our high-street has a particularly prominent mast being installed, which looks far too spookily like the panopticon in its placement. They don't solve crimes, they don't prevent crimes, they don't make the streets safer.
This has been proven. Video cameras covered the alleged kidnapping of a girl in our town last year, and they were no use whatever with the police investigation. We have video-footage of several thefts, and car-vandalism, again, these have not been used to solve any crimes.
Local councellors are pleading with government for money to install these things without even a clue as to their lack of effectiveness at any sort of real crime.
Italian-job style jammers may be nice playing with these cameras, ultraviolet ones like the US Army is using to permanently blind people would be better, but what can people actually do if the local council (and every other) says you will live in a surveilled society and put up with it?
While I'm glad someone is out their pushing back at all the video taping aimed at us, I don't see why this is such a huge problem. I agree everyone has a right to privacy. But when you enter a public place, you give up some of your rights of privacy. No one is putting cameras in your house or invading your privacy.
How is it invading anything to watch you where you are already watched anyway (by humans)?
Uninnovate - Only the finest in engineering.
Silicon is basically transparent to light of wavelengths longer than about 1000nm, so only very near-IR will work. The LEDs and photodiodes that let you surf from your LaZBoy with a remote operate at about 800nm, and a CCD is sensitive enough at this wavelength to be affected by an 800nm laser -- but this is invisible so you aren't going to find laserpointers in this "color." (Experiment -- shine your remote at your handicam... see anything? Cool, eh?)
Anyway, many surveillance cameras are black and white, with no color filtering or separation, so really, any color laser is useful as long as the CCD is sensitive to it. The quantum efficiency of most CCDs peaks around 400-600nm, but it is still quite high at the most common laser diode wavelength of 650nm, so there isn't really a problem. At 300nm and lower, CCDs are virtually blind without expensive processing called "backside thinning," and you won't see backside-thinned devices on common surveillance cameras because they are very expensive.
Yes, color surveillance cameras are more and more common. For a color camera, a strong enough laser beam will still overwhelm a color CCD that uses a mosaic filter (as opposed to a three-chip camera with beamsplitters). This works because the princple that the author uses is that of "blooming." Basically, if your bright source creates too many photoelectrons, the excess flows over the walls of the pixels (which are really just potential barriers, not physical walls) into neighboring pixels. Make even a one-pixel source bright enough and you can flood a whole region of the array. Since the readout electronics can't tell which pixel any given electron originated in, it just looks like one big, bright extended source on the image.
This phenomenon is often encountered by anyone who works with focal plane arrays or uses data collected by them... ever seen an astronomical photograph with long bright lines emanating from either side of the brightest stars on the image? That's blooming, and it looks like bars instead of a smudge because astronomers pay extra for CCDs with "antiblooming" sinks to the substrate -- think of them as drains between pixel columns. But the chipmakers can't put drains between rows because that is the direction in which the pixels are shifted to be read out. In addressable pixel devices, like CMOS active pixel sensors, 2D antiblooming is easier, but it cuts down on the available area for collecting light, so it often isn't used on inexpensive CMOS APS chips found in surveillance applications.
Three-chip color cameras are only used for professional video production -- they're just not cost effective for surveillance or consumer applications when color mosaic CCDs are so much cheaper. There may be some high-end consumer cameras with three-CCD technology but they aren't common at all.
Of course, all bets are off for military applications -- only the military and their suppliers know for sure what's in their surveillance gear, and I suspect that they have already contended with the problem of laser-blinding CCDs used in night vision.
I can see the fnords!
I ride the buses here as well and am strongly in favor of the cameras, as a means of fighting pickpockets, harassment, graffiti, and other crime.
An example where these cameras are NOT having any measureable deterent value can be found here where bullies on school buses still physically beat other students knowing full well they are being videotaped. I'm not sure there is a huge difference between child-aged bullies and adult petty criminals...
GMD
watch this
No they don't. Casually shining a single laser pointer across someone's eye is not going to cause anyone any damage - unless they punch you out for it.
Most laser pointers are less than 1 milliwatt in power. That's really, really low. Factor in vibrations and movement and there is no way your going to damage an eye.
The reason a laser can harm your vision is that the eye sees a laser beam as a point source - it is unable to focus on it directly. Instead, the eye focuses to infinity. The beams light is also virtually parallel, allowing for the entire beam to be focused onto one very small part of the retina.
The good thing here in terms of pointers and safety is that any movement of the beam in relation to the eye (be it a person in motion, or the natural jitters in your hand) will cause the focal point on the retina to move.
Thus, in order for a laser to damage your eye it must have sufficient power to burn quickly - the spot being affected changes before cumulative affects can take place.
Laser pointers don't have that power. Short of bolting someone's head to a table, along with a pointer, then forcing their eyelids open, AND keeping the eyeball still, it's not going to happen.
This is not to say that staring into your pointer for kicks is a good idea! Don't do it. Don't do it to others. Don't say I told you you could. If nothing else it is incredibly annoying. But it's not about to permanantly blind anyone.
Now, if you have an unusually high powered pointer (ie those groovy YAG pens) you might be talking a different story.
I've had much nastier beams in the eye than any laser pointer will ever generate - luckily I've gotten away with it too.
Frankly I'm much more worried about these yahoos who are taking a wad of them and bundling them together and pointing the results at low flying helicopters or other aircraft.
Note to anyone tempted to do this: lasers in the sky make a very nice YOU ARE HERE indicator. You're basically pinpointing your position for the Cops. None to bright (ack, pun) if you ask me.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
Any use of my image with out my consent will be punishable to the full extent of the law.
Plantiff "We have here your honor is video tape footage of the defendent attempting to steal a Macintosh Computer worth over $3,000 from his local CompUSA a dozen video games also a leather chair, a box of M&M's and even the store manager's goldfish.."
Me "Your honor, those images are copyrighted 2002 Treeluvinhippy and they do not have written consent of the copyright owner. I motion that the video tapes be removed as evidence and returned to the copyright holder immediatly. If the tapes are allowed as evidence I will have to force to remmind your honor about the FBI warning agaisnt public viewings of copyrighted materials. Your honor is most certainly familar with such warnings
as it appears at the beginning of every purchased video cassete. You know the one with the blue background and white letters threating five years imprionment and/or a $25,000 fine, certain death and other such unpleasantries."
>
Adults can go to jail for assault, kids can't if they're under 17 and don't commit a serious enough one. BIG difference.
sulli
RTFJ.
Am I a rapist, that you must know where I am at all times?
Am I a burglar, that I must explain my reasons for being in a particular place at a particular time?
Am I a murderer, that I may not move about freely of my own accord?
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
I've always thought it would be possible to construct license plate frames that bathe a license plate in infrared and/or ultraviolet light, thereby making it "invisible" to speed control cameras (or, for the truly criminal out there, tollboth cameras), or any other CCD device. Would such a scheme actually work? Maybe put some sort of "diffuser" over the license plate to better diffuse the energy...
I've always wondered what would happen if you put a horizontally-polarized plate of plastic over a licence plate...it would still be visible if you stood behind it and looked forwards, but if you're at the angle that photo-radar cameras look from (say 40 degrees in the UK) than it would be blocked.
:P
On another vein, what about putting an LCD screen in front of the plate, with a photo sensor to detect the flash of the photo-radar camera. Kinda like the thing that they put on satellites to block them being blinded by lasers (but much cheaper)
Cue The Sun...
Ah. Mister KFG has learned the first lesson in the art of not being seen. Don't stand up. Mister KFG, would you stand up now? KA-BOOM!
-----Chaz
It is really not that easy to put in line filters at 635, 650, 670 (need that one, too), and 532 without really losing a high fraction of the desired signal. And that impairs the ability of the cameras to work in low light, which is a big deal for survalence. While a given laser has a very narrow linewidth, cheaply manufactured laser pointers have wild variations in the actual laser frequency, and cooling or heating the diode can shift that even more. Bare diodes are available relatively cheaply at probably 20 different wavelengths between 600 and 800nm.
If someone seriously wants to block out all handheld laser pointers, they are going to have to throw out everything over 600nm, as well as 532 in the green. That is hard to do with high enough extinction that the laser doesn't overwhelm the CCD while maintainting high sensitivity.
Here's Michael Naimark's current draft article:
How To ZAP A Camera
ObMSFT-Jab: ...or maybe he just thinks security through obscurity is a good thing.
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute chat with the average voter."
--Winston Churchill
Why don't we just take screenshots from current movies and post them on our shirts, that way the cameras will be making pirated copies of movies and the MPAA will go sue them all. I would say use song lyrics, but the RIAA is busy suing all of the radio stations: http://www.theonion.com/onion3836/riaa_sues_radio_ stations.html
It's a thing called "privacy," and it's not something to be given up lightly. Letting the police enter any home at will would, no doubt, find some evidence that would help solve crimes, but most people think there should be some limits on police powers.
Allowing the government to attach tracking devices to all citizens would prevent a few crimes, too, I think. Should we all go downtown to get our implants tomorrow?
For any hideous crime you can identify, there are some steps law enforcement could have taken ahead of time that would have prevented it, if only the general public didn't mind having their rights trampled. That's not a reason to hand over the house keys to the government.
Many people today, especially in the US, seem to have gotten it into their heads that they have something like a "natural right" to privacy.
I will acknowledge that a pretty good argument can be made that we have a right to privacy regarding the most intimate portions of our lives and our bodies. But that's a far cry from expectations of privacy in the public sphere--such as the expectation that one has a right to walk down the street unobserved and unrecognized. Part of what it means to be a member of society is to be accountable for one's actions within that society--anonymity should be the exception, not the rule. Look at how anonymity affects the level and quality of discourse all over the Internet. This is why I have used my real world identiy as my online identity for many years now.
From the article:
There is a perfect two-word response to this: Rodney King.Jesus, God, People, it's the New York friggin' Times, fer chrissake!! Just register and get on with your lives! Your individual liberties and right to watch Babylon Five re-runs are not being compromised.
This is like a goddam circus! You should see yourselves! It's better than anything on The Onion, and scarier...
I don't relish the idea of being watched in public anymore than the next person. But, I doubt using technology to observe people in public places is an invasion of privacy. (Private bathrooms are another matter.) Public seems to me the antithesis of private.
In principle, how is this different than getting a glance from a cop on the beat? Yes, you can see the cop, and you probably won't see the cameras. But, so long as notice is given that an area is under surveillance, the legalities are probably handled.
Another precedent: Police checking for speeders. They watch us; odds are we don't see them.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
"I've become Big Brother, but I didn't mean to be," Mr. Graham said. "It's just that there's no money in education or scientific collaboration."
Good to know that personal principles are no match for market economics. Whew.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
The main problem as I see it with the whole "put video cameras all over public areas" is that we as humans tend to judge the subjects in these recordings by a different standard than we judge ourselves. This is a well studied phenomenon. We do things all the time that when viewed by others are seen as worse than how we see those same acts.
How many times have you heard the words "I can't believe I did that!" or "I don't really do that, do I?" after watching themselves on a video tape.
It's pretty easy to judge others, but we almost never apply the same standards to our own behavior.
You could see the jurors in that child beating in the parking lot vilifying the woman and taking away their child, but going home and smacking their kids around. Not until someone tapes them and confronts them with it, would they realize how bad it looks. But I... I didn't mean... I uh, um, etc.
Did they hit their kids? Yes. Should we as a society start playing self-righteous Church Lady with video tape evidence at all instances?
Emphatically, No!!
Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy.
...Or just think of all the potential presidential candidates that would be disqualified for being nose-pickers.
Worker on phone with headquarters
"We can't support that candidate, sir. He was caught on a Walmart security camera rooting around in his nose."
"No, we couldn't supress it. CNN's already got copies. You think Ford's stumbling was bad... Sir, we're going to have dump him. Inviable candidate. Need to find someone with shorter softer nose hairs and less mucus buildup."
"Yes sir, we'll start looking for a clean nose right away. There's nothing more important in a presidential candidate natually clean nasal passages."
Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy.
Indeed. The temporary blindess (the same as if a flash bulb had gone off in your face) can cause issues when controlling all sorts of vehicles.
One of the major fears of law enforcement is precisely this problem. I've written about this before on /., but the scheme goes like this:
- Terrorists (or your bad guy of the day) purchases a 3watt solid state YAG laser (yours for only $12,000) and a pair of scanning galvos. Now he has a powerful, portable rig than can run off an AC inverter or other portable power source. Lets say this rig is mounted to a van.
- Go park your van at the end of a runway and proceed to scan the laser back and forth across the cockpits front window. With a tight scan pattern you are highly likely to scan across the pilots eyes.
- This won't blind the pilot for any long period of time... but final approach and near touchdown are critical stages in a landing. Startle or distract the pilot and you might be able to crash the plane.
- While everyone is responding to the crash you drive away... leaving no evidence.
Nasty, nasty thought.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
In most countries (US, Europe...), the law says that you can take pictures in public places, but selling them or broadcasting them is something else entirely: anyone who can recognise himself on a picture can oppose its use. 'Recognisable' must be taken in a very broad sense, for instance if you take a picture of Big Ben at 2:13 on a given day and there's one tiny person at the bottom, that person will be able to say: 'it was me waiting there at that time', then you need that person's permission.
This means that whenever you take a picture with someone in it, you should have them sign a 'limited time use' form (unlimited has no value).
So the person who takes the picture owns it, but the person on it can oppose its use. This means that if you take a picture in a crowd and a dork goes: "Hey you! You can't take my picture, gimme that film !", he has no right to ask you for the film, although all you can do with the pic is look at it at home.
That doesn't help the current argument much though.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
The number of home burglaries commited by hot babes is on the rise.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
My variation is to attach a number of small IR LEDs to the underside of the bill of a baseball cap, aimed so as to direct the light towards your nose and cheekbones, to confound facial-recognition camera systems.
In the winter this could provide some minimal added protection against frostbite :)
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
The police in my area use intersection cameras to record red light runners. these cameras take a snap of you if you go into the intersection during a red light, and you get mailed a ticket later.
Even though the camera is in public view, and you could argue that you have as much right to illuminate it as it has to take a picture of you, I think the police would like to talk to you if you started doing this with a laser, no? What do you think?
Perhaps you didn't read the story on these speed cameras then? At least as they're being used in the United States, they're not trustworthy at all. The big problem is, they're installed and maintained by 3rd. parties.... *not* by the police themselves. In fact, these commercial companies taking care of the photo radar cameras are getting kickbacks from each fine levied against a speeder. Therefore, it's in the best interest of the company to generate as many tickets as possible with their systems. (EG. Not really sure you can read all the letters on the license plate in that photo? Oh well, let's just assume that fuzzy letter is an E, and issue a citation against the owner of that plate.)
How do we know the things are even calibrated correctly? Oh, we're supposed to *trust* the companies contracted with the police depts. to ensure their systems are accurate! Of course, how silly of me.
Bleah.... Surveillance is fine by me, but automated systems trying to take the place of human judgement never work out very well.
A security camera in a store does not (at least in the current form) actually determine your guilt or innocence, and places its own call to authorities. It merely records what it sees on tape, for humans to review later. That's a bit different from an automated photo radar system that selectively snaps pictures of those it determines "guilty" because they operated a vehicle outside its parameters. Such systems require much closer scrutiny.
I find it offensive if someone is trying to record everything I do. I like my privacy. I don't commit crimes, I don't even download mp3's. Why should I let the government treat me like a criminal when I haven't even been charged of a crime. And they would be treating me like a criminal if they used cameras because that constitutes surveillance! Surveillance is defined at http://www.dictionary.com as:
1. Close observation of a person or group, especially one under suspicion.
2. The act of observing or the condition of being observed.
So if I am under surveillance, I must be under suspicion. What am I under suspicion for? I haven't committed any crimes, no one has even accused me of anything. Why am I upset? I guess you could say that I don't like being treated like a criminal when I have done nothing wrong.
Ladies, if you are worried about indecent individuals who are now legally able to look up your skirt you now have a solution. Simply purchase a pen-laser, a little duct tape, and attach it to your underwear aiming at a downward angle. Any potential peepers will end up with a bad case of the blinks and hopefully very unpleasant itch for awhile. Camera will be blanked out.
Actually, I originally meant this to be somewhat humourous, but I wouldn't be surprised if I see these in the next lingerie magazine.
Not that I, um, read lingerie magazines or anything... they're my girlfriend's... - phorm
I was looking for these earlier today - not for jamming Big Brother, but for use in a display of color-change gem materials. Most gem materials change fine under fluorescent light, but some work better between 395 and 400nm, which these LEDs will cover admirably.
Lemon curry?
A camera tapes you. If one tape-reviewer doesn't know who you are, he can ask around until he finds someone who does. The tape can be matched with other tapes in the area to see where you were and where you're going. The tape can be stored so that, a few years from now, the 'eventually will be better than 50% accurate' facial scanning system will identify you.
Not insignificant differences, especially if you live in a large town where the chances that any individual officer knows you is vanishingly small
(1) People rewrite a memory each time they play it: the stronger the emotion involved in a memory, the more likely it is to be inaccurate. A recent study asked people about their 9/11 memories: a huge % of people remembered watching the one tape of WTC North being hit on 9/11 itself, even though that tape didn't come out until the next day. Similar research occured with Challenger: a professor had students write down their memories on the day after, and then two years later asked them about those same memories. Less than 25% of students remembered most or all of that day correctly. Most had at least one major detail wrong. Except for the very rare person, we don't have anything like a video camera in our brain. Or if we do, the video camera is run by a 5 year old- never stays focused on one thing for very long, and easily distracted by bright, shiny or chocolately things.
It appears that laser jamming of optical devices has some very interesting legal ambiguities.
Consider this situation:
My neighbor goes out and buys and X10 camera and puts it on the front of his house. My house is directly across the street. I don't want a camera contiuously looking at me so I buy a $10 tripod and a $10 laser pointer, and aim it right at his camera. I leave it on continuously, making the camera worthless.
Is this legal or is one of us doing something illegal? I'm sending unauthorized photons onto his propoerty. He's recieving photons from my property without authorization. Neither one seems to be explicitly ilegal.
Seems like a couple lawyers could have a lot of fun with this one. What who you do if you were either the neighbor or myself? What is instead of being a neighbor's camera it was a camera at a local park, across the street?
Of couse, in reality, they'd probably think the camera was broken, replace it a few times, and then give up.
Life is too short to proofread.
Quite interesting reading this discussion - in the UK we've had cameras everywhere for some time now and the excuse is always that it "would have prevented [insert recent crime]". Problem is they have been proven to not really affect the level of crime, but can seriously improve investigations.
If governments could get away with it, we'd all be subcutaneously tagged with GPS tracking devices with cameras in our homes, this, naturally would also "would have prevented [insert recent crime]" which is the generic argument that "they" use.
We've sadly had a few prominent child abductions and murders recently in the UK, and I predicted that someone would bring out some form of implanted child tracking device. Lo and behold the nutter Kevin Warwick has the same idea and uses it to get some publicity.
So we all get our kids chipped... now - how many people think that once it becomes "standard practice" to have children chipped at birth, how long will it be before it's illegal to remove the chips?
Oh hello Big Brother - you're late.
Go straight back to life without entering public places. Do not collect the bones.
Seriously, this is a real matter. "Collecting photons" is off the point like all matter being energy is off the point when it hits your body at 300mph.
When someone can analyze someone else's actions without risking the same, that gives the analyzer power over the victim. In a "civilized" society that power would be spread equally. Not sharing the power leads to despotism, which, in turn, leads to anger. Anger leads to things taking each other apart. Very much like in that 300mph example. Or "Fight Club" for that matter.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
Then the camera, being a good trusted DRM-compliant appliance, will realise it has no licence to look at you and promptly shut itself down...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Well, gosh, you've proven it there. Because in those incidents the cameras didn't "solve" the crime, clearly cameras are useless. But I'm curious: What information would they have without the cameras?
My point was that CCTV footage has rarely to never been used to solve crimes. The specific example being a TV camera watching a girl's kidnapping. Despite being able to identify many people walking down that street, no clues were ever provided which helped to find the person.
More famous example: we've all seen the CCTV footage of two teenagers kidnapping a young boy from a shopping mall. Can anyone tell me how useful they were then? Did security staff react? Did the police react? No, they showed it on the evening news.
Example from work: Colleague's car was vandalised. In a well-lit private carpark with cameras every 50 metres. Nobody was ever caught.
Another example from that same office: same well-lit, surveilled car park. Stack of unix machines were stolen from the office, and carried through bushes to a car at the nearby motorway. Cameras missed it all. Nobody was ever caught.
Personal example: my bike was stolen from luggage-van of a train. Station CCTV cameras have a clear, close-up view of the faces of each and every person involved in that theft. Was the bike found? No. Were any of the thieves found? No.
Your point seems obvious: surely cameras are better than no cameras. A chance piece of evidence is better than no chance. That is arguably true, but only if you discount cost.
Outdoor high-street surveillance cameras cost a lot more than anything you'd use in your office-security. High-res cameras, remote-control servos, and the sheer installation cost of taking up the street and planting a tower in it add up to a lot of cost. I see quotes of $4000 upwards for even the smallest cameras, without installation or cabling.
Policemen on £40,000 per year are then paid to watch these cameras. At several policemen per installation (often in a control room shared between several towns), that's a lot of money per hour. Add the cost of data-connections and the control-room itself, plus a beaurocratic overhead.
The reason this hindering, rather than being irrelevant to safety, is: This is money not being spent on improving the safety of our streets. Good street-lighting, building design, town design, police patrols, special constables, neighbourhood-watch, these are the measures which are proven to reduce crime, and these are the measures which are having their funding cut to pay for CCTV cameras.
What use is a town with not enough money to keep a police station open, if they have five-thousand-pound camera installations in every corner of every road? Even places as large as Nottingam, it's not unknown to have 3 or 4 police on duty at night, to cover vast swathes of the city. Break-ins occur at the same time/same place every night, and there was simply not enough police resource to send a guy there to arrest the burglars. Response times of many hours are typical. "Sorry we're late, but you're looking at the night-watch, both of us" a young policeman told me last time they responded to a call, 9 hours later.
I hope that some of those answers clarify my question a bit better: surveillance cameras are bad not because of the implicit somebody-watching-you (police patrols watch you too), but because they simply don't work, and divert valuable resources from schemes that do work.
So, in answer to "But I'm curious: What information would they have without the cameras?"
They'd have information from the patrol cars driving around.
I'm sorry, but this is bull. If supermarket scanners were capable of such damage, do you really think they would be allowed? No bloody way. I'm not sure which kind of scanner you are talking about, hand scanner of the kind built into the table, but there is no way it burned you. Absolute puppycock. The only possible way such a thing could have happened is if you'd been mucking about inside one of the large scanners and got beamed. Even then it's very, very, very unlikely. Don't believe me? Go tell your story on alt.laser where many a professional laserist & optical engineer hang out. They'll tell you the same story. In fact someone recently posted a comment along those lines, you'd have loved the response. I can scan a 5watt laser across your eye and you'd be totally fine. In fact, I used to do it routinely as part of laser shows. It's based on power density and exposure. A beam that held in your eye would burn cannot if it is in motion at sufficient speed.
And contrary to your assertion that any movement "will cause the eye to move" -- people have a natural tendency to look directly AT a bright point of light.
Not so. If you notice something you tend to look at it. But if you look towards a bright light (or have on projected at you) then your "Blink Response" takes over. You actually turn away and/or blink. Try it, flash a camera bulb at someone not expecting it. They'll avert their eyes.
Also you must consider the movement of the bodies... just try holding a laser pointer still on one spot at any distance. I guarantee you that it will move about no matter how hard you try to hold it still. The natural twitches in your hand will magnify the further you try to project that beam. Add in any movements of the person being beamed (be it of the body or of the eye itself) and you have a huge range of motion.
If you don't think this is a hazard, try it on yourself first. Remember not to stare into laser beam with remaining eye.
I have. I guess you missed that part of my original post. I used to routinely work with high power lasers (5-7 watts typically), both Pulsed and CW. Even a 5 watt CW laser is safe to scan across an audience, as long as the beam remains in motion. I wouldn't point a static beam of that power at anyone though.
You quote a standard, old, industry joke. That doesn't mean a pointer will do it.
As to the "you are here" nonsense, the beam from a laser is itself invisible. It is only made visible by passing thru something reflective, like clouds, fog, or smoke.
Not quite. The beam isn't "invisible" so much as it's just not aiming into your eye. Since the beam travels in a very straight line, there are no photons being directed away from this path and into your eye. Something must deflect the photons towards you. This is why haze is a favorite.
But guess what, high humidity can give enough air born particles of water to help diffract the beam. As can engine exhaust from, say, that theoretical helicopter. (BTW, I used that example for a reason - it happened)
Additionally take into account the fact that in order to see a laser beam it must enough photons have to be deflected towards your eye. Thus a laser will appear much brighter to someone looking towards the source, than to the person holding the source. Why? For the person holding the source photons must be reflected back the way they came. To someone looking towards the laser they only need to be diverted a few degrees.
Also, since we are talking about pointing it towards someone's eye, their eye is very near the beam - photons need only be deflected slightly from their original path to enter the eye. Not so for the person holding the laser, they require a much greater change in direction.
This is also why a laser appears dimmest when viewed at right angles - the photons must be deflected at a right angle to it's original path to be seen. This is the least likely angle of reflection.
Unfortunately it is people such as you who are responsible for the ridiculous draconian laws of the CDRH in regards to the use of lasers. The US is the only country in the world where audience scanning is illegal. The variance laws are also way out there. It's a shame, done correctly a laser show is a beautiful thing.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'