Slashdot Mirror
LCD Monitor For Your Eyes Only
Bryan_Casto writes "USAToday has an article about Sceptre's new LCD monitor, which hides the screen image from anyone not wearing the glasses that come with the monitor. The screen appears white to ordinary eyes, but with the polarized glasses, the desktop comes into view. "
An even cheaper attack: Buy a second pair of glasses.
Gee, I can only think of one good use for this....
Well, two. With this monitor you could deathmatch
right next to someone, and you wouldn't be able
to cheat by looking at the other guys screen.
(if the glasses are not compatible)
IMHO, this is only one step up from the "Cone of Silence".
hehe. When people would want to borrow my calculator (an HP 42S) I would say, "sure" and begin to explain that it wasn't like a normal calculator, and the details of Reverse Polish Notation. Then they would say, "uh... nevermind." and give it back.
Subject says it all.
Hey, I remember this too. Back in '93 or '94, I picked up a stack of old PC magazines that a library was throwing away. At least one of them had an ad for this.
It needs to show something that makes it look like your doing work, like an Excel spreadsheet, instead of just the white.
Awesome idea! That would be really cool!
My father's laptop has a viewing angle of like, 1/1000th of an inch. You can't see it unless your head is exactly right _there_ you can't see anyways.
Save money, buy old LCD monitors : )
Come on! 'They Live!' wasn't bad! It was pretty good paranoid sci-fi. The ending wasn't too good, but it had one of the best 'fight-your-buddy-in-the-alley' scenes I've ever witnessed. Even better than Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy duking it out in '48 Hours'.
There would be a difference: if windows malfunction, there is still a text saying "General protection fault"+some meaningless numbers; or, with NT, fills the whole screen with meaningless numbers; I know this for sure, since I see it almost every day...
Imagine that the display is such that for scan one (shutters open) the 'normal' screen is shown. Then for scan 2 (shutters closed) an 'inverse' screen is shown.
A person wearing the shutter glasses would see only the 'normal' display scans, and would therefore see the desired display.
Anyone not wearing properly sync'ed shutter glasses would see a white display (or whatever the 'inverse' function was designed to cause the screen to look like)
Note that for this application, unlike for the 3D display, the shutter glasses would not have each lens alternate - they would both be on & off in tandem.
... it seems to me that all this "privacy" here and privacy there results in more and more crap people try to make money with. Not worth an article as yes, such filters are as old as Noah and if you're in photography you've probably got one ... in short, yawn. Back to using pencil and paper ... no-one who could decipher my handwriting 8)
I have a pair of polarized glasses.
They cost me 10 bucks at WalMart. Some fucking security.
Many sunglasses are polarized. This is stupid. Polarized glass is not hard to come by, the "special glasses" aren't all that hard to get your hands on. There is no security with this.
Bees dont see polarized light. They see UV.
So this wouldnt work at all.
This is just another form of secuirty through obsucrity.. which we all know will never work. Mostly because the bad people dont only want the hunt but rather prefer the hunt. So I go out and buy a polirzed lcd.. how long will it be before all the black hats cary an extra set of glass on them.. then what am i gunna do??.. "Excuse me can you please remove your glasses.. yes you.. 2 rows back..thank you" This has got to be the lamest idea ever.. I can see how it happened..
Engineer: Look at this cool trick!
Marktiod: Hm.. I bet I can sell that.. , its ahh.. ahh.. Secure screen
Engineer: uh.. what ever.. Ill laugh about this tonright.
What are these "doors" you speak of?
Sincerely,
a confused cubicle slave
But you still can't jack off :-(
Heh, I'm getting this! I will be able to view porn when my parents are at hope. Hope it works with Xfree
I used to flip that plastic over on all my calculators in grade school. Fun! :-) And strange... You realise why the calculator is black on white rather than the other way around...
What if someone from the next cubicle pointed one of those pinhole cameras at the screen with the thin polarization filter of a calculator over the lens? (wow look! too many words in a sentance make for too hard reading... :-( ). I think you'd get to see all the info, PLUS the pinhole would be discreet enough to be unnoticeable.
I'd say not. I was outside, using my laptop, and I had my sunglasses on! ARGH! Black screen? Was it broken? I had to tilt my head 45 degrees before the image came back... Polarization seems to be pretty tolerant.
Are polarizing screens kind of bulky (from a laptop sorta view)? I wouldn't want to carry a 5 lb. polarizer around all day.
Oh man... I'm laughing hard at that one! Is it really true?
Don't worry, as soon as this is popular, there'll be polarizing lenses for video cameras (already there for "real" cameras!)...
What about polorized sunglasses? Or Driving glasses?
Yea but everyone will think you're screwy for staring at a blank screen! And you can't tell them it's NOT blank otherwise they'll just show up with their sunglasses.
Of course you couldn't realy play Quake without people knowing. Your hands would still be on your keymap, instead of a touch-type position.
Also you'd be more tense.
Why not fill in-between frames with noise?
As others have pointed out, it looks as if it won't stop anybody with the proper polarizing filters.
:). So you keep your standard two eye vision, and you add s-video/SVGA.
;).
A better idea would be to implant people's brains with a video grid, hooked up to suitable parts of the brain. Then people will have erm s-video/SVGA inputs
Couple this with an advanced version of the recent mindreading device used on those mice (where they can get a drink of water just by thinking about it).
Then mesh it with a PDA like application, and a multiband video camera (low IR, high IR,visible light etc).
Scenario:
You meet someone who seems familiar to you, but your wetware fails you. You use your "thought macros"
Think->"Yo E-brain!"
Think->"Match extvideo"
View->You "see" picture of person with brief identifier at bottom, with t-link "View Details".
Think->"View Details"
View->You see more details about person- "thought-links" to business card. Also why, when and where was the last encounter.
Think->"Thanks E-brain, that's all!".
View-> You see "E-brain:Auto updating new encounter, as preset".
All in about 5 seconds.
The thought-macros are just data/text/functions associated with thoughts as detected by the advanced version of the mouse device. Ala rudimentary speech recognition.
You could have thought macros like "Top left pic, and second from right, Nope, next one, AGH! Undo!" and so on.
I figure this idea is now published publicly (prior art), so other people can't patent this anymore right? Anybody can get on with it..
It's rather an obvious and evolutionary advance.
Still all these dumb PDAs are archaic, laughable and klunky in comparison.
Unfortunately young brains are the most likely to adapt to the interfaces, esp the video. And the idea of sticking things into babies' brains is rather unethical.
Of course the military could have other ideas... Unfortunately.
. I've a number of ideas, but I'm in no position to implement most of them - coz they're about so many diverse things. I had the idea about the waist-brick computer plus video glasses way back when I read about "Private Eye" in Byte. Private Eye was a monochrome display. Heh took about 10 years for someone (IBM) to finally release something like it. If I have 10 ideas I can't spend 100 years pushing them right? Seems rather inefficient to me.
That's why I'm just giving this idea away. I doubt I'll have any opportunity to do real good stuff with it. Maybe in 10 years we'll see something like it. The industry is quite slow sometimes
Cheerio,
Link.
A really cool feature would be if you could switch back and forth between the "Visible" and "Invisible" modes. I'd imagine wearing those glasses all the time would quickly become tiresome. Of course I have 20-20 vision, so maybe those people who wear glasses would have a better tolerance.
It says you can see your "Windows desktop". I wonder if they plan to have Linux support any time soon,, (i'm joking)..
I have seen a successful tempest attack against a laptop with no monitor connected. I also have doubts about the effectiveness of "shielded" cable since most are designed with keeping *human noticable* noise *out* of the signal and are not designed to keep tempest detectable signal in. If you are really paranoid and the video cable shielding is strong enough to keep noise out, I would recommened leaving a noise source (popcorn popper, blender, etc.) on.
... Put on the included pair of special eyeglasses, however, and the ordinary white screen magically transforms into your Windows desktop...
/dev/hda1' command several years ago. And I don't think I'm that anxious to pay $1199 to get it back...
How in the world does it do that??? I haven't seen my windows desktop since it vanished into nothingness after I issued the 'mke2fs
I recall that someone did market a pair of high-speed shutter glasses similar to what you describe. The 'shutters' themselves were actually LCDs that would darken and turn transparent (this solves the vibration/mechanical problems that another response to your post talked about).
The application for these glasses was to darken the lens over each eye in an alternating sequence that was in sync with alternate displays on the screen to allow for truly awesome 3D displays (so I was told).
I see no reason why the same technology couldn't be used to obscure the screen from unintended viewers in a more secure way than polarization.
I remembered that a few weeks ago and for a while was wondering if you could use something like that for 3D displays by having polarized lenses over each eye that are 90 degrees to each other.
I wonder how you'd use a laptop that had been modified for use with the special glasses if you wanted to lie down or otherwise sit at a funny angle while using it. One of the advantages of laptops is that you can sit in odd manners while using them, but with this modified screen the image could disappear if your head is at the wrong angle (because the magic glasses have polarized lenses).
Apparently all you need to do to avoid mooching is carry an HP in high school and a TI in college.
:( )
(Or you could carry a slide rule... nobody ever asks to borrow my slide rule... but slide rules aren't programmable
I think that may have been the worst movie I've ever seen. We were watching it one night at Vermont Tech, 'cause there wasn't anything else to do, and we only got one channel... they kept going to commercial break, showing *one* commercial, then going back to the movie...
We were sitting around yelling, "More commercials! No! Not the movie! Ahhh! We want to see more commercials!" at the TV screen.
Aren't most of the Anti-Glare Filters polarizers. I know that the Polaroid screens are, but not sure about the others. Wouldn't that be a solution for not wanting to wear the glasses all of the time. Just slap the polarizer on, and when you need to go into secure mode, pull it off and put on the glasses.
What company is going to buy this for their employees? I think 1) most bosses want to know if their employees are working and not going to girlie sites and 2) if people are surfing the web when they're not supposed to they'll be logged on the server anyway.
No one will buy this at home. If you're single, you don't need to hide anything. If you're married your spouse will want to know if your doing something you shouldn't. (Will cause many headaches and arguments.)
The only possible customer would be those working on confidential/secret/top secret documents and I doubt the Govt. is going to spend extra money for this.
I think this monitor will have a very small clientelle. Maybe conspiracy theorists...
Misfit
IBM had a ThinkPad that lacked a polariser in its display. You used the included polaroid glasses (or used your own) to view the image on the screen. They probably still have it, but I haven't seen it anymore for a long time now.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
Yes, partially polarizing sunglasses will let you partially view it, i.e., the contrast is not great but you still get the picture.
"Excellence for all the world to see"
Ironic, eh?
This will be great for our sysadmin/netadmin. Instead of having to painfully minimize his porn sessions when someone walks by, he can just wear his glasses all day. Neat!
Until, of course, there's a sunny day and everyone comes in wearing their polarised sunglasses... oops! Security by non-obscurity, anyone? :-)
fish and pipes
Most polarization displays use rotational polarization, not linear. That is, the curl of the photons matters, rather than the... the whatever it is that is affected by linear polarization. :) Rotation doesn't matter in such situations, nor does which way the polarizer is plunked down (corkscrews remain with the same winding no matter how they're put down); the only real drawback (again, for this situation) is that you have to have two distinct polarizers rather than being able to have two of the same and just turn one 1.57079632679489661923132169 radians.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Is this real security or something to stop nosy people in the office (like the article says)? I'm not sure if a tempest attack will work against a flat screen, but there has got to be something similar if not. Does this screen protect against something like Tempest?
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
According to previous posters, this works by taking the top polarizing filter off the LCD panel and putting in some "sunglasses" instead.
So, don't look directly at the panel. Look instead at its reflection in the surface of the desk. Most surfaces reflect polarized light. This is why Polaroid sunglasses work at all; they reduce glare by mounting polarizers at 90 degrees to the polarized axis of the reflected light.
Since the light coming off the panel is already polarized, when it bounces off the surface of the desk (which is a natural polarizer), the display's reflection should be somewhat intelligible. They have an exhibit demonstrating this sort of thing in San Francisco's Exploratorium.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Unless they key each set of goggles to a specific screen, which they can't :-)
A very silly screen.
--
Infuriate left and right
Most sunglasses are "polarized" these days. You could probably use them to spy on the person's screen without drawing any attention to yourself.
Another form of security through obscurity?
--
Seems to me if you're going to go to all this trouble you should just have a head-mounted display.
sounds rather worthless to me... anyone w/ polarized glasses can see everyone else's screens. this is barely a step above talking in pig latin for "secrecy".
This is just a normal LCD display with the front polarizer removed. Anyone else with a polarizer could see it too.
I saw this at Comdex 99 (Toronto, ON) and it was truly great. You could not tell at all what was on the screen, except when looking through the special glasses. Although this isn't entirely new (I've heard about it for over a year) it was nice to see it in person.
;)
Of course, people would start getting frustrated. Why, you could be viewing porn right on the subway and no one would notice
tried it with a desktop-calculator (liquid-crystal-
display) and removed the film in front of the
glass with the liquid in it.
then you only can see the digits if you place
the previously removed film in front of your eyes.
ff this principle is usesd in this displays then
you can build one on your own. just remove the
film... done.
Meme of the day: I browse "Disable Sigs: Checked". So should you.
The problem with wearing these in public, like on the subway, is that you also get to (unfortunately) see all the other signs that already use this technology subliminally. All those "Obey" and "Sleep" and "Marry and Reproduce" signs would get depressing after a while.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
This system does only prevent anyone not having those glasses (glasses aren't unique from what I know) to view the content of your screen. And I'l bet everyone you want to hide it from will wear a pair of those glasses...
A better solution (That does exist, but not for the public market, from what I know) is glasses with a built in projector that projects the picture onto the back of the eye-globe... No one except you can see what it projects, and you can get as large picture as you want (A 2m^2 screen at a distance of 1.5m, or any other size and distance).
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
1. Remove the polarised panel that is on top of the actual lcd screen. (may not easy or even possible)
2. Buy polarised sunglasses.
3. Surf to playboy.com
This can also be done with calculators and digital watches etc. (I've done it)
first of all, although it may seem so, it's not secure. anyone with polarized glasses can look in on this. and if you're in an office that uses these things, and everyone has polarized glasses, well then forget it!
also, do you have to keep your head perfectly vertical at all times? that sucks. (i don't know how lcd's operate.)
- pal
I remember reading about a company that did this to laptops in PC Magazine years and years ago. You'd ship your laptop to them, who would modify the screen, and ship it back to you with a pair of those special glasses.
Everything old is new again...
--John Riney
jwriney@awod.com
More high tech -
NASA realized in the 60s that traditional pens were useless in the microgravity, unpressured environment of space - there was no "down" for the ink to flow to. A million-dollar contract was awarded to a high-tech firm who solved the problem in a high-tech way by creating a pressurized ink cartridge which forced the ink out, even in outer space. The Russians, facing the same problems but strapped for cash, sent their cosmonauts into space...with pencils.
In high school, my friend removed the appropriate film from his calculator, as others here have described.
This was in the early '80s, when `Friday the Thirteenth part III in 3-D' was out, as well as other 3D movies that used polarizing glasses. So one eye saw black-on-white and the other eye saw white-on-black.
Even better, the glasses that he needed to view his calculator were decorated with fireplace-pokers with blood dripping from them, hockey masks, etc. He also had glasses from `Jaws 3 in 3D' and a Molly Ringwald movie called `Space Hunter' (iirc) -- but the two were *combined* into one pair of glasses. So this had shark fins and space ships on it. Man, I envied him.
at least ones that don't do graphs. You can also reverse the screen to get cool greyish-white numbers on brownish-black. Definitely impressed my friends back in junior high!
Get off my launchpad!
Some IMAX movie theatres already use this technology. I have been to one in Irvine, California USA that uses glasses that are polorized, and they are constantly synched via infrared. The glasses actually use LCD's of their own to turn them on and off, one on each eye, flashing at different times. I actually got a pair with weak batteries (I think that's what the problem was, I forget it was a few years ago) at the beginning of the first time I went and it messed things up pretty good.
Anyway, you thought up a neat idea and the technology already exists - it could definately be applied to this privacy idea somehow I'm sure.
--Sonet
paul.levitz(AT)hbcsd.k12.ca.us
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. --Benjamin Franklin
This is nice, but it would realy be nice if you could mask the contents of the screen so only part of the screen would be hidden. Now picture this, imagine if you could have n glasses and each would show diferent parts of the screen. This would must certainly would be nice for "hot seat" games, I don't know if it would have any other utilities. :-)
--
"take the red pill and you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabitt hole goes"
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
You didn't got my idea. The computer would choose witch parts would be shown and with part would be hidden (to be revealed with a specific glass) by software.
--
"take the red pill and you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabitt hole goes"
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
This wouldn't keep other people from looking at your screen. All they'd have to do is put on their own pair of polarized sun glasses. It aint a countermeasure if all I have to do is spend $5 at a fishing store.
:)
Though the polarity of the sunglasses wouldn't necessarily be the same... you'd have to turn your head sideways
"Is there really a Canada, or are all those guys just kidding?"
Great! Now all i need is a Laptop....
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
I did this with my old ThinkPad 350C it looks pretty sweet. I fully recommend that anyone with an old portable that they want to play around with gives it a shot. The trick is getting the screen cover to pop off, some models are harder than others. But if you can get the top polarized filter out you're golden. Then just replace the top filter with a piece of clear sturdy plastic about the smae thickness (plexiglass works great of you can find it that thin.) Get a pair of old school snowboarding goggles and cut out circles from the filter you removed and fasten them to the inside of the goggles and WALA! Stealth computing. It looks pretty fly when you're hacking away at your portable and there's nothing but a blank screen in front of you.
And if you really wanna be smooth, try painting over the characters on the keyboard so you have a completely blank terminal in front of you. My thinkpad looks cool this way.
AC Clarke's "Rendezvous with Rama" has an example of something like this - he wears a pair of, for lack of a better term, "decoder glasses", and only he can see what's on his screen. Difference was that these seemed to be encoded, so that you wouldn't simply need a polarizer to create this effect. Is there any work being done in this area, sort of a "visual encryption"?
I have a laptop and I get a little nervous about people staring at my screen all the time, watching everything I'm doing.
I know they're just curious but it's unsettling. It's like people who constantly stare at you in public. I don't like it.
This stealth laptop thing looks like a really good idea. Try putting it in a HOWTO and announcing it on Freshmeat.
A lot of people will probably thank you.
Hmmmm....
Polarization by LCD's and glasses is not as accurate as you seem to imply. A small change in angle will only change the image slightly, not make it disappear. For that, you need a rather large change in angle (probably > 10 degrees).
So, anyone with polarizing glasses and a flexible neck, or anyone with an adjustable polarization filter (as used on camera's) will be able to read the display.
Also, this is not really `new'. It has been around for at least a year by now...
Cheers//Frank
--frank[at]unternet.org
Wouldn't the colours go all funky if you tilt your head by 90 degrees? I know mono LCDs invert if you rotate or flip the polarizer, so I'd imagine a colour one would be interesting.
Personally, I'd find it rather tedious and annoying to have to wear all the glasses at once so I could see the entire screen, because I wouldn't want to have to constantly switch glasses to look at different parts of my screen.
However, I think it's an ok idea, but if it can be done by oneself, I certainly would instead of buying that gizmo for all that money. It's a major rip-off. I have an LCD screen on my laptop, but I don't worry about it, or about what people might see. If it's that big of an issue, do it on paper so you can destroy the evidence. =)
Insert mind here.
All that a shutter does is not show the picture for a certain amount of time. Which is good for 3D applications but won't work for that security kind of thing. All you have to do is not wear any such glasses, and you see the picture quite clearly. Probably with less flicker than someone wearing those shutterglasses.
bla
Yes, I know this (I assumed, rather incorrectly, that by me saying "shutter glasses", that everyone knew I was meaning LCD shutterglasses, versus mechanical contraptions - which the first replyee seemed to think, and which was done - sorta - on a Vectrex)...
As far as polarization needing more than a small turn - yes that is true, didn't even think about that. I also though later that LCD shutter glasses might not even work properly, unless perhaps they were times to the horizontal refresh, and not the vertical.
I guess I need to get back to thinkin'!...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
The way these things work, obviously, is by polarization - IIRC, the LCD elements are sandwiched between two polarizing sheets - the first sheet gives the light (from the backlight) a twist 90 degrees, and the second gives another 90 degree twist. What an LCD element does is give a third (actually, a second) 90 degree twist to allow the light to be seen...
Now, if the polarizer on the front and back of the LCD could be positioned at a different angle (and at very minute steps), the 90 degree twisty thingy would still work (since the LCD is probably standard), but you would need the glasses to be at the same angle in order to view the image. These glasses, of course, would be matching glasses to the LCD (order many pairs!), and if the manufacturer varied the angle at small angles (and even possibly a different random angle on each LCD made in sequence), then each monitor would be unique (sorta like Master Lock Combo Locks are unique). However, I doubt any manufacturer would do this...
There are, of course, problems with such a system - mainly, you need to hold you head level - any deviation and the screen goes blank (of course, this affects the current set up). You would also have co-workers running around the office with polarizing sunglasses on waggling thier heads crazily (Ow! My neck! Workman's comp!) - I don't know which would be funnier; guessing who is looking at pr0n or watching the head wagglers!
Anyhow - no matter what - this is security by obscurity at best. But how about this...
What if the glasses were active - say high speed shutter glasses timed to the refresh rate of the monitor. Now, if the monitor refresh rate could be changed on the fly, using some kind of method whereby it could read some code from the glasses being used to view the monitor, and it would lock onto a sync generated by the glasses or something to change the refresh and the flicker speed of the glasses to match. Then, only the first person viewing the monitor would see what he should see! Does this sound feasible?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
This makes me wish I had some important information from my work so I could wish I had one of these. Now, with all the recent news about cypers making deals with governmental police forces, would they get these glasses too? Maybe some camera lenses so that if they nees to "shadow" a suspect, they can see what they are doing on their computer... most likely pr0n
=P
The Secret Government Ego Project
Maybe we'll all discover that our managers are from another planet after all. No wonder they just don't get us...
They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change in me.
They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change in me.
"No, really, I'm using it for... confidential information..."
Wah!
This is old news, why is it being reported again?
Do you have ESP?
It would be interesting to put up a color display of flowers that are currently in bloom and see if any bees are attracted to the (blank to humans) screen.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
... in high school. Removed the polarizer from my calculator to keep mooches from borrowing it all the time. "Can I borrow you Calc?" "Sure, here" "Oh, it doesn't work" "Oh really? I'll have to fix it." When I needed to use it, I slapped it back on and voila!
BFD...
I used to take the polarizer off calculators when I was 8 so only i could see it.
People, their what's for dinner.
Cool idea.
But aside from viewing porn, playing quake without your mom knowing, or combining it with PGP to hide _everything_, it doesent have to much application. eventually, these may be used like passwords, your pair of glassed can see things others cant, like on a public screen facing a city. just look at it and see your own private message.
--- Hey, Jesus is coming! Everyone look busy
I know that the science of polarization doesn't support it, but what if the "stealth screen" were blue instead of white? Then I suppose the USA Today article referring to hiding "your Windows desktop" would have to explain:
... blue screen ... stealth mode ... blue screen ... normal Windows malfunction.
Glasses off
Glasses on
I have a pair of partially polarizing sunglasses. Would something like that be sufficient to view the display?
Seems like a cheap but weak solution. Some others here mentioned some neat ideas like encryption glasses that talk to the monitor. That sounds unecessarily complicated. Just get glasses with LCDs on them, nobody else can see, and its simple.
:)
OR, you could close your door.
hi tech that one
-I go to Rice, so figure out my email address