Interesting idea. It seems to me that most things which would need to be protected from hidden cameras would be stationary and not require the operator to mount the detectors on his body, but starting with mobile constraints is often helpful.
I would like to draw attention to this gem of wit, easily the best I've seen in a long time:
> I think the idea behind this approach is sound (actually it's light)
So all the people blathering about camera in public have a moot point. All the whining does is prevent the fairly obvious camera being put into devices.
But if someone wants to record you in public otherwise, they will and there's nothing you or any of us can do about it.
I think your point is a little black-and-white — there's tons of behaviour that sits in the "technical possible but frowned upon" bucket.
It's like people listening to music without any headphones on the train — technically has been possible for ages but previously would've gotten you told to turn it off. Now it barely gets a raised eyebrow.
Can you prevent people secretly filming you? No, but most people still don't want it be become accepted behaviour, even if to you that's all just "whining and blathering".
The thing is, every beginner lockpicker makes a similar point when they realize how easy most locks are: "what's the point of locking my door if anyone can easily get in anyway?".
I think the same answers apply here: because making it harder to be casually recorded sends a clear signal that you don't want it, and now the act of recording goes from being an oversight to a deliberate act.
The idea of being constantly monitored by a megacorp tracking all my movements wih their swarm of cameras to feed us personalized ads is utterly dystopian indeed.
But I think the only valid way yo prevent this will be legislation though, it's not a fight individuals can win on their own.
"But I think the only valid way yo prevent this will be legislation though, it's not a fight individuals can win on their own."
It will need both. Secretly recording in the public is already prohibited in many if not most jurisdictions, but ad far as I know, not really prosecuted.
> most things which would need to be protected from hidden cameras would be stationary
Counter-sniper systems that scan for reflections from optics have existed for twenty years already. These are indeed meant for static operation in military bases and other fixed installations.
I remember seeing some celebrities in the late 00s / early 10s with IR-emitting sunglasses or accessories to flood the camera sensors of paparazzi and make it harder for photographers to get spyshots of them.
Would this approach work for these camera glasses as well, simply flooding them with so much IR spectrum light that their sensors simply can't see you anymore?
One of my future ideas was to have the detection trigger turning a bunch of IR LEDs on to do just this! I've only tested it a little bit against my phone camera (with around 5 850nm LEDs), but it didn't work super well (fairly bright but not enough to be useful). It did work much better in low-light though. My guess is modern cameras have better IR-cut filters, but like I mentioned I only tested against my phone and not the Ray-bans yet.
What about correlating transmitted wireless frames with a LED flashing pattern? If the glasses stream video with a variable bitrate codec over wireless, flashing vs. non-flashing should change bandwidth and therefore frame frequency. However, with searching over all channels this might be quite slow in practice.
I think fooling facial recognition systems and CCTV-cameras-at-night is easier than fooling professional photographers. Most photograhers' cameras have IR filters, after all. And nobody's got an LED brighter than the sun.
On this topic, is there any benefit of trying to fool facial recognition systems with these type of accessories and or wearables, would the system not just mark you as suspicious and keep an even better track of you
Of course it is a different thing if these are adopted by the masses
I heard about similar hats being used during the Hong Kong protests, but most modern cameras filter out IR anyway. Reflective jackets tend to work much better; they basically turn you into an overexposed bright blob on camera.
Super interesting project, at first I thought it would be a naive implementation of YOLO but I wasn't aware about retro-reflections. The papers he linked in the GH discuss very interesting ideas
Does anyone work on smart glasses for blind people yet? Something with blackened glass, obviously, that uses image recognition to translate visual input into text via (headphone) audio to the wearer.
That would allow for urgent warnings (approaching a street, walking towards obstacle [say, an electric scooter or a fence]), scene descriptions on request, or help finding things in the view field. There's probably a lot more you could do with this to help improve quality of life for fully blind people.
If the top-level poster succeeds, the resulting device could possibly disable devices that allow blind people to see. This could open up another liability channel.
Every time I read about smart glasses I wonder the same thing. Obviously the technology isn’t perfect, but it seems that even a basic pair of smart glasses with primitive image processing could be life-changing for a completely blind person. Yet as far as I can tell, most blind people don’t use technology at all for this purpose.
Unfortunately, the HN website is extremely unfriendly to users relying on assistive technologies (lack of ARIA tags, semantic elements etc.), otherwise there might be more blind people commenting here who could shed light on such things, no pun intended.
A much-needed project. Making yourself invisible to such privacy-invasive devices will be the need of the day. Of the two approaches you mentioned, blocking/jamming the specific wireless traffic would be pretty interesting, if possible.
Sorry I'm still confused. Do you have a reliable way to detect if a smart glass is recording or not? I never used smart-glasses regularly, but wouldn't it be "on" all the time if one is using it, so detecting the power-on and pairing is kinda useless?
Regular pairing, advertising and control likley use Bluetooth LE for simplicity and battery life. Streaming or transferring video likley use Bluetooth classic for increased bandwidth.
These are two different protocols with different radio behaviour.
So beyond detecting the glasses themselves, which seem like the focus of the project; detecting recording is feasible at the point of transfer to a phone.
The issue is distinguishing it from any other high bandwidth Bluetooth device nearby, such as headphones.
Thank you for the technical write up. I have no expertise in the BTE area but it's clear enough for me to understand.
The swap pattern is very interesting but even if it's silly, maybe experimenting with an actual camera to detect cameras may give you a good base line to what to expect from a working Rayban banner.
Interesting idea. It seems to me that most things which would need to be protected from hidden cameras would be stationary and not require the operator to mount the detectors on his body, but starting with mobile constraints is often helpful.
I would like to draw attention to this gem of wit, easily the best I've seen in a long time:
> I think the idea behind this approach is sound (actually it's light)
It's me. I want to be protected from hidden cameras from other peoples glasses.
Isn't the biggest mobile use case where you don't want to be secretly recorded in public? This was a big concern with the original Google Glass.
If I want to record you, you'd never know.
https://www.dpreview.com/news/4272574802/omnivision-has-crea...
So all the people blathering about camera in public have a moot point. All the whining does is prevent the fairly obvious camera being put into devices.
But if someone wants to record you in public otherwise, they will and there's nothing you or any of us can do about it.
I think your point is a little black-and-white — there's tons of behaviour that sits in the "technical possible but frowned upon" bucket.
It's like people listening to music without any headphones on the train — technically has been possible for ages but previously would've gotten you told to turn it off. Now it barely gets a raised eyebrow.
Can you prevent people secretly filming you? No, but most people still don't want it be become accepted behaviour, even if to you that's all just "whining and blathering".
The thing is, every beginner lockpicker makes a similar point when they realize how easy most locks are: "what's the point of locking my door if anyone can easily get in anyway?".
I think the same answers apply here: because making it harder to be casually recorded sends a clear signal that you don't want it, and now the act of recording goes from being an oversight to a deliberate act.
The idea of being constantly monitored by a megacorp tracking all my movements wih their swarm of cameras to feed us personalized ads is utterly dystopian indeed.
But I think the only valid way yo prevent this will be legislation though, it's not a fight individuals can win on their own.
"But I think the only valid way yo prevent this will be legislation though, it's not a fight individuals can win on their own."
It will need both. Secretly recording in the public is already prohibited in many if not most jurisdictions, but ad far as I know, not really prosecuted.
> most things which would need to be protected from hidden cameras would be stationary
Counter-sniper systems that scan for reflections from optics have existed for twenty years already. These are indeed meant for static operation in military bases and other fixed installations.
I could see these being worn by walking-around security in a place where filming by the audience isn’t allowed. Super cool.
I agree, I laugh out loud at that pun.
I remember seeing some celebrities in the late 00s / early 10s with IR-emitting sunglasses or accessories to flood the camera sensors of paparazzi and make it harder for photographers to get spyshots of them.
Would this approach work for these camera glasses as well, simply flooding them with so much IR spectrum light that their sensors simply can't see you anymore?
One of my future ideas was to have the detection trigger turning a bunch of IR LEDs on to do just this! I've only tested it a little bit against my phone camera (with around 5 850nm LEDs), but it didn't work super well (fairly bright but not enough to be useful). It did work much better in low-light though. My guess is modern cameras have better IR-cut filters, but like I mentioned I only tested against my phone and not the Ray-bans yet.
Have you thought about the potential eye/skin damage you would be causing with IR LEDS.
Potentially as much as none, because it's UV that does the damage?
I guess IR can be harmful (IR lasers, military grade IR LEDs). But yes, likely not the consumer grade IR LED.
What about correlating transmitted wireless frames with a LED flashing pattern? If the glasses stream video with a variable bitrate codec over wireless, flashing vs. non-flashing should change bandwidth and therefore frame frequency. However, with searching over all channels this might be quite slow in practice.
I have been thinking of a device to thwart license plate readers by dumping a ton of IR and/or visible light on the plate before it gets read.
Perhaps combined with some reflective coating? Retroreflectors are promising
Well, there's https://www.nii.ac.jp/userimg/press_details_20121212.pdf
I think fooling facial recognition systems and CCTV-cameras-at-night is easier than fooling professional photographers. Most photograhers' cameras have IR filters, after all. And nobody's got an LED brighter than the sun.
On this topic, is there any benefit of trying to fool facial recognition systems with these type of accessories and or wearables, would the system not just mark you as suspicious and keep an even better track of you
Of course it is a different thing if these are adopted by the masses
> nobody's got an LED brighter than the sun
It's low density silly fun but I did see these folk attempt to do such a thing with entertaining results https://youtu.be/m1S1r9I6DN4
I heard about similar hats being used during the Hong Kong protests, but most modern cameras filter out IR anyway. Reflective jackets tend to work much better; they basically turn you into an overexposed bright blob on camera.
I would love to actually buy a similar product (but a one that won't make you look like a Frankenstein)
How about Elton John's windshield wiper glasses?
https://fabukmagazine.com/elton-john-glasses-in-the-frame-at...
Super interesting project, at first I thought it would be a naive implementation of YOLO but I wasn't aware about retro-reflections. The papers he linked in the GH discuss very interesting ideas
Does anyone work on smart glasses for blind people yet? Something with blackened glass, obviously, that uses image recognition to translate visual input into text via (headphone) audio to the wearer.
That would allow for urgent warnings (approaching a street, walking towards obstacle [say, an electric scooter or a fence]), scene descriptions on request, or help finding things in the view field. There's probably a lot more you could do with this to help improve quality of life for fully blind people.
there's a lovely documentary by a blind British comedian about exactly this: https://connect.open.ac.uk/seeingintothefuture/
If the top-level poster succeeds, the resulting device could possibly disable devices that allow blind people to see. This could open up another liability channel.
Every time I read about smart glasses I wonder the same thing. Obviously the technology isn’t perfect, but it seems that even a basic pair of smart glasses with primitive image processing could be life-changing for a completely blind person. Yet as far as I can tell, most blind people don’t use technology at all for this purpose.
Unfortunately, the HN website is extremely unfriendly to users relying on assistive technologies (lack of ARIA tags, semantic elements etc.), otherwise there might be more blind people commenting here who could shed light on such things, no pun intended.
A much-needed project. Making yourself invisible to such privacy-invasive devices will be the need of the day. Of the two approaches you mentioned, blocking/jamming the specific wireless traffic would be pretty interesting, if possible.
> blocking/jamming the specific wireless traffic would be pretty interesting, if possible.
And probably highly illegal.
Yeah, true. Implementing this would be tricky.
Sorry I'm still confused. Do you have a reliable way to detect if a smart glass is recording or not? I never used smart-glasses regularly, but wouldn't it be "on" all the time if one is using it, so detecting the power-on and pairing is kinda useless?
Regular pairing, advertising and control likley use Bluetooth LE for simplicity and battery life. Streaming or transferring video likley use Bluetooth classic for increased bandwidth.
These are two different protocols with different radio behaviour.
So beyond detecting the glasses themselves, which seem like the focus of the project; detecting recording is feasible at the point of transfer to a phone.
The issue is distinguishing it from any other high bandwidth Bluetooth device nearby, such as headphones.
Putting myself in the shoes of a qa for a second...
What is the cheapest way for me to trigger a false positive on such a detection device?
And what can we do about it?
Rinse and repeat until the cheapest cost exceeds a standard pair of smart glasses.
I was thinking about this just the other day. You're on your way to implementing your own real-life stealth meter! Very cool!
Pretty neat idea! I love the BLE detection approach, would be pretty amazing if this works. I'll be following this with some interest!
Thank you for the technical write up. I have no expertise in the BTE area but it's clear enough for me to understand.
The swap pattern is very interesting but even if it's silly, maybe experimenting with an actual camera to detect cameras may give you a good base line to what to expect from a working Rayban banner.
This is seriously neat. Love the name too
Thank you! To settle a debate between me and a friend, do you think Ray-BANNED or Ban-Rays is the better name?
Ban-Rays. Ray-BANNED could be read to mean that you've been banned by Ray-Ban IMO, the opposite of what's happening.
Ray-Banned is a good pun, but might bring you legal trouble. I’d go with Ban-Rays
the former
Cool project, but I'd use the first mode to look for hidden cameras at Airbnbs!
next: smart glasses app to detect glasses that can detect smart glasses that have cameras
the esp32 in the side of the head should give it away
It's a lovely idea.
Can they detect Agency Glasses? 8)
Wearable Eyes Turn You Into Emotional Cyborg:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhvHxz1NePQ
>The device, called AgencyGlass, was developed by Dr. Hirotaka Osawa from Tsukuba University.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/wearable-eyes-agencyglass-emotiona...
Taping over the recording indicator is illegal.
Is there any way your device can find the MAC address of the glasses through bluetooth or something and file a lawsuit automatically?
Why is it illegal?
Do you have a parts list for what's in the zuck glasses?
Now integrate it with ink jet technology to spray the offending camera lens like a squid!
One more gizmo throwing IR at MY eyes? No, thanks!