Smartphone LED detects hidden cameras with AI (chosun.com)
164 points by geox 2 days ago
thimble_io 6 minutes ago
Wonder if it handles the really tiny pinholes effectively. For now, a thermal camera feels more robust for peace of mind.
kragen 3 hours ago
People normally do this by scanning a 10mW 832nm laser with a mirror, according to Dan Gelbart in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MtRxX0crjU. The lecture is 77 minutes, covering nonlinear junction detectors, digital calipers, the US-embassy bug in Russia, laser microphones bounced off windows, and geometric errors from material relaxation. The bit about camera detectors is close to the end. Works for eyeballs too.
Lensless sensors (for example, using compressed sensing, or Hadamard shadow masks) can presumably defeat this, but also, watching from far enough away should defeat it. Hard to do that inside a pervert's AirBNB, though.
mitthrowaway2 3 hours ago
The junction detector is a truly brilliant idea that, unfortunately, is probably rendered nearly useless now that everything in the world has embedded electronics in it.
paul7986 3 hours ago
For Meta they need to detect people giving wearers the finger to stop the glasses from recording or taking pics ha
I do wear my Metas frequently though would never get the finger cause Im not a creep.
testfoobar an hour ago
Our culture has definitely changed from when Google Glass wearers were referred to as Glassholes.
It appears that more people have just accepted that they will be filmed anywhere and everywhere.
I miss the old days.
gruntled-worker 7 minutes ago
Wendell58 10 minutes ago
Using the phone's existing LED for this is clever. Wonder if the 'AI' is genuinely learning or just a sophisticated reflection analysis.
carlostkd 6 hours ago
Until someone develops hidden cameras with AI that will be auto turned on couple of hours later after detecting presence at that time a scan was already performed and nothing was found.....
zack6849 4 hours ago
this works by looking at the physical characteristics of the lens, so on or off should work regardless, you could have something with some kind of internal shutter to cover the lens maybe
gruntled-worker 10 minutes ago
Another strategy that's often used is to cause motion then detect the resulting transmission spike. That's also defeatable of course (cache+burst, CBR, etc).
The ideal detector should incorporate multiple methods. Someone should make a site that rates these for each detection method then adds them into an overall score.
fidotron 9 hours ago
If this worked with IR, and so non visible, it might be even more useful.
Great idea though.
RyJones 3 hours ago
Walk around your neighborhood and see who has security cameras.
Security camera through PVS14 https://youtu.be/gEWniEhtE2k
baking 8 hours ago
But then you would need an IR camera instead of using the phone's camera. An IR camera should be able to find some hidden cameras passively by detecting a heat source.
numpad0 an hour ago
There are SWIR, MWIR, and LWIR cameras among IR cameras. SW is just regular camera with the filter removed and they can't see heat. Somewhere between SWIR and MWIR are uncooled IR cameras that use MEMS heat sensor ish arrays built on top of a camera sensor that can actually see heat by differentiating between previous and current frames, with the caveat that they cannot do it indefinitely but must use a mechanical shutter to periodically cool down to operational conditions.
MWIR and LWIR cameras are often cooled and uses more exotic sensing mechanisms, sometimes even vacuum tube based, nowadays usually semiconductor based but not regular CMOS. Some require mechanical shutters obscuring view every other frame(that, I think, is where BHOT/WHOT switch came from; it must be switching whether to show odd or even frames).
You need the MEMS types or better to see heat; they're more often referred to as thermal cameras than IR cameras. They are also unable to see through regular soda-lime glasses, that might pose its own challenge as well.
hammock 8 hours ago
Can’t phone cameras pick up IR?
superxpro12 7 hours ago
HnUser12 7 hours ago
lightedman 8 hours ago
askvictor 6 hours ago
Pining for the days when phones had IR blasters (e.g. galaxy s6); that would work perfectly for this
molybd3num 6 hours ago
some more modern phones from xiaomi still have IR blasters
IshKebab 8 hours ago
Why would that be more useful?
evilduck 8 hours ago
Perhaps to avoid tipping off the entity recording you by blasting their hidden cameras with bright lights. Granted, the PoC device in the article is not exactly subtly looking, but if you could turn it into a sleek device it would be more useful. Not playing your hand while you're under surveillance lets you control the information they're receiving.
Though the bigger issue with my theory is that while most cell phone and webcam devices have IR filters, many surveillance cameras intentionally do not.
dylan604 8 hours ago
rgj 8 hours ago
Eisenstein 2 hours ago
Can't a thermal camera can do this? It should be able to detect any difference in ambient temp, even a few degrees, and a CMOS sensor gets warm, not to mention any wireless transmitters, power sources, and ICs. Turn off everything in the room and walk around with a ~$100 ali express handheld thermal camera.
brunoborges 9 hours ago
I wonder if it works with smart glasses.
numpad0 an hour ago
this is an old trick and works with any digital camera units. the flash reflects on the silicon behind lens or something. the operator is normally supposed to look across the area of interest through a special glass like a witch doctor to spot cameras using their skill and training, rather than letting an AI do the fun part.
thesuitonym 8 hours ago
You don't need this to detect smart glasses, they're very obvious.
stronglikedan 7 hours ago
For now, but there's really no point in detecting them anyway, since there are plenty of truly concealed options for those that really want to be pervs.
dbspin 6 hours ago
doodlebugging 8 hours ago
Proctologists agree on this one thing that smart glasses can never conceal.
throwaway81523 2 days ago
Cool, but we need that for microphones.
poly2it 8 hours ago
Anything can be a microphone:
tamimio 8 hours ago
Yeah I don’t think this will be effective, cameras can be put in certain angles that it can see with being seen, or how police do it, entirely behind clothes or similar fabric where it can see through and identify but not seen even if you’re looking straight at it.