LiShield Can Block Smartphone Cameras for Privacy’s Sake – IEEE Spectrum

Phttps://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/consumer-electronics/audiovideo/lishield-can-block-smartphone-cameras-for-privacys-sake

Rules that prohibit photos or videos can prove almost impossible to enforce when nearly everyone carries a smartphone. But a new indoor privacy system has shown how the power of smart LED lighting could prevent people from taking illegal videos of a live events. LiShield has a capability to corrupt digital camera images and videos without interfering with human eyesight.

The prototype privacy measure uses a smart LED to give off a high-frequency flickering pattern that interferes with the camera sensors on mobile devices such as smartphones. Such flickering creates a vertical striped pattern effect in the photo or video frames taken by digital smartphone cameras without interfering with human eyesight or harming human eyes. 

Such a privacy system is imperceptible to human eyes because it uses high-frequency flickering patterns beyond the limits of human eye sensitivity at around 80 Hertz. The current LiShield prototype relies upon custom-built smart LED hardware and software. Even if bars do not make video unuseable, such barcodes could then be automatically detected by the online servers of social media networks.