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Next Up: the Jamming Wars
chicksdaddy writes "ITWorld has an interesting opinion piece on the next privacy battleground, which they say will be over citizens' rights to use jamming technology to (forcibly) opt-out of ubiquitous surveillance, as sensors pop up in more and more public spaces and private homes alike. 'Given the rapid pace of technological change, we don't know exactly what the future holds for us. But one thing is certain: personal privacy is going to turn from a "right" to a "fight" in the next decade, as individuals take up arms against government and private sector snooping on their personal lives.' The article mentions some skirmishes that have already occurred: employees using GPS jamming hardware to prevent employers from tracking their every movement, and the crush of new business for encrypted voice, video and texting services like SilentCircle (up 400% in the last two months). 'Absent the protection of the law, citizens should be expected to do what they do elsewhere: take matters into their own hands: latching onto tools and technology to give them the privacy that they aren't afforded by the legal system. However, there may not be an easy technology fix for ubiquitous, unregulated surveillance. Writing in Wired this week, Jathan Sadowski warns that the tendency for individuals to focus on securing their own data and communications and using technology to do may be misleading. 'The problem is that focusing on one or both of these approaches distracts from the much-needed political reform and societal pushback necessary to dig up a surveillance state at its root,' Sadowski writes."
Exactly. The right to bear arms didn't do Edward Snowden or Bradley Manning a fat lot of good either.
Modern cameras are easy to detect and destroy without leaving any physical evidence. All you need is something capable of sending out a pulse of near-infrared light and then looking for the highest return signal. Visible light will work too, but since we're being sneaky and all. All digital reflect light in the same direction as it is received; an optical quality not found naturally.
Um, are you trying to say that digital cameras are retroreflectors? If so, they are not.
Now, it's possible that the sensor is -- though I've seen no evidence of this -- but don't forget that the sensor is generally behind some lenses and possibly a shutter.
I do recall a system being deployed in movie theaters designed to prevent filming of the movie with IR signals, but this doesn't require that a digital camera be retroreflective -- instead it just relies on the fact that digital cameras are sensitive to IR and our eyes are not. Using such a device it would be pretty easy to make pictures taken not come out (as long as the IR source was very close to what you're trying to protect) but it won't damage your camera unless it's so incredibly powerful that it's uncomfortable for humans to be near.
an optical quality not found naturally.
Um, yes it is. You mentioned cat's eyes already, but there are other things that exhibit this property naturally as well.
Just shoot a high power laser on a very short duration wherever this quality is found, and you'll burn out the CCD of any nearby digital camera. Be warned however; while this won't happen to humans, animals like cats have eyes which produce similar effect.
Yes, cats have retroreflective eyes.
But any laser strong enough to damage a camera CCD (especially through a closed shutter, or a camera not even pointed at the laser) will also damage human eyes. And cat eyes, though the retroreflective property isn't why.
I don't know where you're getting your information, but you seem to have misunderstood much of it.
Yeah, people never get red-eye in photos.
Sigh. Red eye is caused by the ABSORPTION of light, not the REFLECTION of light. A retroflector is what is in a CCD, and in a cat's eye. example of red eye example of cat eye. Note the difference.
Today's classroom science explanation brought to you by Jah-Wren Ryei, the idiot moderator who +1'd someone talking out of their ass, and wikipedia. Stay tuned for more exciting science later in this thread, where we'll go in detail to explore the behind the scenes technology that makes camera 'jamming' a reality, and why for some strange reason only people who have read books on optics can understand... it doesn't detect and blind human eyes.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
http://science.slashdot.org/story/07/04/23/2218246/busting-the-mythbusters-yawn-experiment
You really shouldn't use pseudo-science performed by special effects artists as a reference.
Why not? Unlike the badly done yawn experiment, the license plate experiment was done by testing license plate cameras with a wide range of products, including the one the parent mentioned. The camera had no problem capturing the plate (much to my surprise, for that's the one product I thought would work).
Any time the result can be proven in such a manner, where the products are tested plus the claims on why the products are supposed to work are debunked, I'd trust the results. Whenever they start "testing" with too many variables, the bad science is pretty obvious, and using it as a reference is just silly.
If Mythbusters was known to fake results, that'd be one thing... as it is, they just often have faulty tests (and then get plenty of feedback on what they did wrong). That's the scientific method at work -- you just have to supply your own critical thinking.
Just shoot a high power laser on a very short duration wherever this quality is found, and you'll burn out the CCD of any nearby digital camera
As someone who has directly shined a 300mw laser directly into a security camera for about 30 seconds from less than 10 feet away, I am going to call bullshit because it didn't damage the camera at all. It did bind it while the laser was on it, but that was it.
300mw isn't the highest power laser there is by a long shot, but it is already way above the 5mw limit considered safe, but even lasers have beam spread such that shining a multi-watt laser from "miles away" is going to massively reduce the energy density.