Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Billionaire Adds Laser Shield To Yacht

Posted by samzenpus on from the charge-the-ion-cannon dept.

IamSmee writes "Russian Billionaire Roman Abramovich's 557 ft yacht, Eclipse, now boasts a paparrazi-foiling shield of laser beams. From the article: 'Infrared lasers detect the electronic light sensors in nearby cameras, known as charge-coupled devices. When the system detects such a device, it fires a focused beam of light at the camera, disrupting its ability to record a digital image. The beams can also be activated manually by security guards if they spot a photographer loitering.'"

3 of 16 comments (clear)

  1. How does this work? by Profane+MuthaFucka · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'll tell ya. Optics systems have a property called retroreflection. Shine a laser into a lens and some of it will return right back to the source. A scanning laser can find the location of an optical system pointed at it quite quickly.

    You could even do it with a bright IR flash and some image processing to look for the focused reflection. Just like spotting a racoon by the side of the road at night. Then you point your disruption laser at the target.

    And in warfare, it's quite easy to use this property to find biological optical systems. AKA, eyeballs. Much stronger lasers can then be pointed at the targets to melt them.

    --
    Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
  2. Time to dig out those old film cameras! by jcohen · · Score: 2, Informative

    If the laser beams only detect and disable CCDs, then, in theory, conventional cameras should be unaffected.

    --
    "Imaginary solutions to real problems."
    1. Re:Time to dig out those old film cameras! by FCAdcock · · Score: 2, Informative

      Not at all.

      The picture is either old, or of a different ship.

      The system has nothing to do with the little red light, it senses the light processing unit of the camera and blinds it with a laser. You could cover up that little red light all you wanted and it wouldn't have any effect, your photo would still be crapped. No digital camera, didital video recorder, even camera phone will work.

      A poster above asked if it would affect a regular film camera and no, it wouldn't. Not unless the system was manually aimed at the camera. The system can't detect film cameras to disable them on it's own, but manually aiming in at one would still flood the film with light and return pictures of nothing.

      My question is about the legality of such a device. Lord knows he couldn't pull up to port in England (or any other location with govt. monitored CCTV cameras) and disable their systems without some major issues. If there was a bank, govt. office, or other importany building nearby with security cameras it wouldn't be legal to disable them either.

      Which pretty much means that you can't use this system in dock, so you can only use it at sea, and really, how many paparazzi are out at sea?

      And what is this guy doing on this ship that he doesn't want pictures taken of it?

      --
      --Forest C. Adcock--