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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.
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
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'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!
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."
>
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...
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
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.
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.
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 ?
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.
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.
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.