
Russian Billionaire Installs Anti-Photo Shield on Giant Yacht - ashishk
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/russian-billionaire-installs-anti-photo-shield-on-giant-yacht/
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die_sekte
Man, I should get into the business of selling useless things to billionaires.

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EinhornIsFinkle
Insiders call that business money laundering ;)

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die_sekte
No. Money laundering is useful. (And it's illegal. I want to sell useless
legal things.)

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Mankhool
I believe that the system is actually detecting the lasers that the cameras
use for range-finding, and then using a laser to blind the sensor.

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old-gregg
All cameras I've ever owned used purely passive, optical autofocus with rarely
activated IR assist off the flash unit, which only fires when it gets _really_
dark and works only for distances under 10-15 feet.

From the article it's completely unclear to me how could that possibly work:
those "lasers" would have to scan _every square inch of the landscape_
(possibly a couple square miles) at the rate of about 100-1000 times per
second in order to blind an SLR camera during the day.

Any experts here?

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machrider
Agreed, this description makes no sense. If you're talking about a point &
shoot camera, or any camera with a live preview where the CCD is continually
exposed, then it might work. But a plain old SLR is going to expose its CCD
for maybe 1/1000 of a second on a sunny day.

I _have_ seen a system like this that worked by detecting _flash_ photography,
and firing a flash back at the source of the original flash. If you react
quickly enough to a flash, you can blind the CCD while it's still exposed,
ruining the image. Can't find the link right now. But if you don't use a
flash, then that system doesn't work.

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streety
I think you mean this: <http://ahprojects.com/exhibitions/anti-paparazzi>

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papersmith
I'm curious as to how a second-hand private yacht ($1,200 mil) can be worth
more than the build cost of the largest cruise ship in the world ($700 mil).
Don't watercrafts depreciate like crazy?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Queen_Mary_2>

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yangyang
This sounds like complete nonsense:

"Lasers sweep the surroundings and when they detect a CCD, they fire a bolt of
light right at the camera to obliterate any photograph"

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mseebach
Especially since the CCD is only exposed for a fraction of a second while the
shutter is open and the image is captured. It'll have to be scanning at a
crazy fast rate (35 mm square at 200 meters, 30+ times a second?) .. and good
luck getting the light cannon pointed in the right direction and fired before
the shutter closes.

What I reasoned when I read this, was that the system would detect whatever it
is the auto-focus emits, and point a laser/sharp light in that specific
direction, obscuring any further pictures, and at least forcing the
photographer to move. Of course, it's ridiculous easy to hit with a denial of
service attack, and even easier to circumvent -- just don't use auto-focus,
which isn't needed at distance anyway.

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yangyang
Auto-focus on most cameras (those that use phase / contrast detecton AF, at
least) doesn't emit anything, unless you mean emissions from the circuitry
used to control it. Some cameras have a AF assist light for helping the AF in
low light, but that won't come on in daylight.

You do need to focus at distance with long, fast lenses.

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jrg
At a distance you'd stop-down the lens aperture, stick it in manual focus, and
set it to somewhere around infinity.

(and big, fancy yachts are always moored somewhere sunny, off the coast. So no
problem there.)

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yangyang
Depends how long a lens you're using. You'd need a pretty fast shutter speed
at 600mm+.

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prat
>"intermeddling with goods belonging to someone else, or altering their
condition, is a trespass to goods and will entitle the photographer to claim
compensation without having to prove loss."

The goods belonging to someone else (paparazzi) ARE photographs with a bolt of
light. How can a photographer's photo be altered with a bolt of light if it
was created with a bolt of light in it in the first place.

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ErrantX
That sounds like years of litigation nightmare waiting to happen.

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chaosmachine
This same technology was supposed to be installed in movie theaters to stop
people from filming the screen. I don't think it ever happened, though.

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mingdingo
Could you counteract this by taking a photograph from behind a one way mirror?

You could still get photos, but the raft's light would be reflected back. Or
so I presume...

EDIT: Two way mirror is the technically correct term.

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abentspoon
No. A CCD only records the light that comes from the boat, the same way film
and your eyes operate.

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yangyang
Original Times article:
[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article68...](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6841380.ece)

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callmeed
Dust off the film camera. Take that, Roman.

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raquo
I bet he also has a small army onboard.

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cellis
Safe bet, as IIRC he had missiles installed.

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vaksel
can't the paparazzi just switch to video?

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philwelch
Video cameras use CCD's as well.

