alt Hacker NewsShow HN: Glasses to detect smart-glasses that have cameras
Hi! Recently smart-glasses with cameras like the Meta Ray-bans seem to be getting more popular. As does some people's desire to remove/cover up the recording indicator LED. I wanted to see if there's a way to detect when people are recording with these types of glasses, so a little bit ago I started working this project. I've hit a little bit of a wall though so I'm very much open to ideas!
I've written a bunch more on the link (+photos are there), but essentially this uses 2 fingerprinting approaches: - retro-reflectivity of the camera sensor by looking at IR reflections. mixed results here. - wireless traffic (primarily BLE, also looking into BTC and wifi)
For the latter, I'm currently just using an ESP32, and I can consistently detect when the Meta Raybans are 1) pairing, 2) first powered on, 3) (less consistently) when they're taken out of the charging case. When they do detect something, it plays a little jingle next to your ear.
Ideally I want to be able to detect them when they're in use, and not just at boot. I've come across the nRF52840, which seems like it can follow directed BLE traffic beyond the initial broadcast, but from my understanding it would still need to catch the first CONNECT_REQ event regardless. On the bluetooth classic side of things, all the hardware looks really expensive! Any ideas are appreciated. Thanks!
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I look forward to the social media rage meltdown shorts that widespread adoption of this tech will precipitate. I think I'm kidding. I should be kidding. But I am curious...
Question for people who resonate with this: whenever someone is holding their cellphone at an angle that "could be inferred" to be imaging you, how do you feel and think?
I grew up on Earth before the cellpocalypse (phone zombies, etc), and went through a stage of noticing all these new 'cameras' everywhere, but then I stoppped attending to it.
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?
Sorry for not responding for your request for tech advise and instead commenting on the idea:
1. I would want this.
2. If possible, if the detecting device could be clipped on somewhow and not force me to use different (sun)glasses might be my necessary condition unless you're selling glasses that I like as much as my curreny ones.
3. If I could demand anything, I would demand you pair up with someone who has some streetcred in the privacy tech department (streetcred as in a known public personality with trackrecord on being on the right side of these issues or known to be advocating for them).
Here's why: if Meta decided to add this feature to their glasses, if I found a way to shut down all the other shit, I might go and buy their glasses. Which means if you are sucessful, if I were Meta I would buy you out and shut you down. Hence the public personality or who have you to prevent you fron doing this.
Semi-related question. Is there a method to print a picture on a t-shirt that can only be viewed by a camera and not be the naked eye? If so I would like to print images on the front and back of the shirt that would get the glasshole or cell phone cameras banned from their platforms.
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.
Comparable to what I read someone say about AI the other day: we're living in the small sliver of history where smart-glasses with cameras are technically feasible yet are still (kind of) detectable.
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.
I could see the guards at the courthouse, wearing these.
Cameras are so small, these days, that I don't think it's realistic to be able to detect them. I just go through every day, assuming that I'm on Candid Camera.
I would love to actually buy a similar product (but a one that won't make you look like a Frankenstein)
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?
Are there any smart glasses being developed for people with prosopagnosia or really bad face memory?
I often bump into people I know on the street but can’t place their faces. A lot of them get offended when I don’t immediately recognize them, even though I remember who they are—just not what they look like.
I think this generation will be remembered for how desperately it tried to cling onto privacy over our public image well beyond what should have been the reasonable time to acknowledge its passing.
Isn't there some kind of fluorescent effect that you can use? I.e., send one very specific wavelength onto the camera sensor, and receive one other very specific wavelength back.
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.
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
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.
It is interesting to see the consensus that nobody is enthusiastic about meta Ray-Bans except Zuckerberg.
It's creepy.
I was thinking about this just the other day. You're on your way to implementing your own real-life stealth meter! Very cool!
That’s a really interesting project! It sounds like you’ve already explored some creative approaches with IR reflections and BLE traffic.
When I worked for a big Hollywood media conglomerate, there was a project to detect cameras in theaters. (There was a piracy problem where people would record the movie on a camcorder). It worked by detecting the IR filter that’s in front of the CMOS detector in almost all cameras. It’s a retroreflector for UV range. Shine a UV light to the audience and look for spots of light. I’d imagine this would work for cameras in any darkened environment even today.
Cool project, but I'd use the first mode to look for hidden cameras at Airbnbs!
I love both names - ban-ray and ray-banned.
I have no experience in this area, so I’ll just ask a noob question: Can we make it so that if someone is looking at me through smart-glasses without my consent, my glasses respond with some form of interference that gives them a tiny headache?
And if I do grant someone consent to record me, I can just turn my glasses off.
And of course, my glasses don’t record anything, so they wouldn’t be hurting my own eyes.
spiderman-pointing.jpg
next: smart glasses app to detect glasses that can detect smart glasses that have cameras
I think it's time we normalize carrying mini EMP devices.
I have a pen camera and a key fob camera. These are widely available. Obviously they won’t give you real time intel on what you’re looking at, but if you’re worried about being surreptitiously recorded, smart glasses are just a small part of the problem.
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?
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!
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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)