Mike Temporale
09-20-2005, 06:00 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.com.com/Crave+privacy+New+tech+knocks+out+digital+cameras/2100-7337_3-5869832.html?part=rss&tag=5869832&subj=news' target='_blank'>http://news.com.com/Crave+privacy+New+tech+knocks+out+digital+cameras/2100-7337_3-5869832.html?part=rss&tag=5869832&subj=news</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have come up with an inexpensive way to prevent digital cameras and digital video cameras from capturing that secret shot. The technology they've devised detects the presence of a digital camera up to 33 feet away and can then shoot a targeted beam of light at the lens, according to Shwetak Patel, a grad student at the university and one of the lead researchers on the project. That means that someone trying for a surreptitious snapshot of, say, a product prototype or an amorous couple gets something altogether less useful--a blurry picture (or a video) of what looks like a flashlight beam, seen head on.'</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/images/Temporale-20050920-CameraKiller.jpg" alt="User submitted image" title="User submitted image"/><br /><br />Instead of forcing people to leave their phones at the door, or choose a phone without a camera (which is getting very hard to do), this product will blast a beam of light at any camera it finds in the room. It's still early, but I'm sure they can scale this up to handle a couple dozen cameras at once. It's a good step forward, and hopefully we can finally see the end of the embedded camera issue. :) Here is a <a href="http://news.com.com/2300-7337_3-5869857-1.html">link</a> that shows you more details about how this technology actually works.