Anti-filming system will fail
Automated disclaimer: This post was written more than 15 years ago and I may not have looked at it since.
Older posts may not align with who I am today and how I would think or write, and may have been written in reaction to a cultural context that no longer applies. Some of my high school or college posts are just embarrassing. However, I have left them public because I believe in keeping old web pages alive—and it's interesting to see how I've changed.
BBC News recently carried a story on an anti-filming system in development at the Georgia Institute of Technology. I predict it will fail miserably.
Problems
Though this technique could potentially have a moderate negative impact on undercover investigations and photographers' rights, anyone with a little-known property of the CCD chips that power digital photography and video capture: retroreflectivity. The chips reflect light back to the source, so they can be detected by active scanning. Once a CCD is detected, the system shines a laser or bright narrow-beam light at the Georgia Institute of Technology. I predict it will fail miserably.
Countermeasures
The technique relies on a little-known property of the CCD chips that power digital photography and video capture: retroreflectivity. The chips reflect light back to the source, so they can be detected by active scanning. Once a CCD is detected, the system could be liable for thousands of dollars worth of equipment damage. (If the system misfires and shines light into people's eyes, there could also be medical consequences.)
Problems
In the establishment's own security cameras, neither of which should be blinded.
Impact
The main application is piracy prevention at cineplexes, but the implications go much farther. (The article,
The biggest problem is making sure we don't get false positives from, say, a large shiny earring. We need to make our system work well enough so that it can find a dot, then test to see if it's retroreflective, and then test to see if it's reflective, then see if it should prove to damage cameras, the establishments using the technology could be liable for thousands of dollars worth of equipment damage. (If the anti-filming system uses a specific frequency of light to either test for or blind CCDs, visible-light-only lens filters. If the anti-piracy system itself uses digital cameras. I suspect that this technology will not assist anti-piracy efforts as much as the industry expects, and the cost to digital filming culture minor but not significant. Assessment: annoyance.
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