Show HN: Glasses to detect smart-glasses that have cameras
github.comHi! 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!
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)
It's me. I want to be protected from hidden cameras from other peoples glasses.
Project Codename: Allen Funt
Project Description: Glasses that have a speaker and appropriately say “You’re on Candid Camera!” when it detects others being recorded.
> most things which would need to be protected from hidden cameras would be stationary
Counter-sniper systems that scan for reflections from optics have existed for twenty years already. These are indeed meant for static operation in military bases and other fixed installations.
Isn't the biggest mobile use case where you don't want to be secretly recorded in public? This was a big concern with the original Google Glass.
The idea of being constantly monitored by a megacorp tracking all my movements wih their swarm of cameras to feed us personalized ads is utterly dystopian indeed.
But I think the only valid way yo prevent this will be legislation though, it's not a fight individuals can win on their own.
Do not expect this from the UK. That fight despite millions of signatures was batted down:
The UK is introducing passed legislation that citizens' digital IDs are owned by a Google or Apple smartphone.
The UK already have such laws active and in force that company directors must submit their information through an app available only from Google or Apple. It is clear 'digital IDs' will go the same way.
It's not about age or attribute verification. It's about tracking. Which Google excel at, the only alternative Apple and their opt-in.
Governments are quite happy making citizens have megacorps track their lives.
In the USA, at least, the right to record in public is protected by the First Amendment.
In most eu countries, you can record in public, but gathering identifying data ("making a database") is strictly regulated, and that includes faces from those photos. You can't even point a security camera at public areas (ie. outdoor camera recording the street infront of your house), because that's enough data to make it a "database".
You can record in public, but you can’t point cameras at public areas? That seems contradictory
Or is it the fact that it’s always recording that makes the difference or something?
Short answer is its complicated and will vary from member state to member state. My parental unit had a dispute with neighbor over where his camera is pointed and filed some motion to see what he does with it ( 'not making a database' part ), but the law was mostly toothless as the enforcement of it lacked. On the other hand, the dispute part of the real estate was handed real toot sweet, because everyone and their mother cares about outcomes in those.
tldr: I wish I could tell you there is a simple tldr
The kinetic solution starts at misdemeanour.
"But I think the only valid way yo prevent this will be legislation though, it's not a fight individuals can win on their own."
It will need both. Secretly recording in the public is already prohibited in many if not most jurisdictions, but ad far as I know, not really prosecuted.
If I want to record you, you'd never know.
https://www.dpreview.com/news/4272574802/omnivision-has-crea...
So all the people blathering about camera in public have a moot point. All the whining does is prevent the fairly obvious camera being put into devices.
But if someone wants to record you in public otherwise, they will and there's nothing you or any of us can do about it.
The thing is, every beginner lockpicker makes a similar point when they realize how easy most locks are: "what's the point of locking my door if anyone can easily get in anyway?".
I think the same answers apply here: because making it harder to be casually recorded sends a clear signal that you don't want it, and now the act of recording goes from being an oversight to a deliberate, sometimes punishable act.
It becomes an oversight to a deliberate act only if the recording person knows that he was detected. So that means that your anti recording glasses should signal 'no recording' in some way. Otherwise it's not really useful.. But at that point.. You can just stick a qrcode on you with the message 'no recording please look away from me'.
I think people are getting lost in the weeds here. The idea with detection is not to prevent public recording, it's to _know_ you're being recorded so you can act accordingly.
I think your point is a little black-and-white — there's tons of behaviour that sits in the "technical possible but frowned upon" bucket.
It's like people listening to music without any headphones on the train — technically has been possible for ages but previously would've gotten you told to turn it off. Now it barely gets a raised eyebrow.
Can you prevent people secretly filming you? No, but most people still don't want it be become accepted behaviour, even if to you that's all just "whining and blathering".
I could see these being worn by walking-around security in a place where filming by the audience isn’t allowed. Super cool.
I agree, I laugh out loud at that pun.
You have no right to record me or my family, pedophile or not. In fact where I live its illegal.
If not responding to polite request, closed fist at non-trivial speed aimed directly at your face is the next inevitable step against predators of any kind, non-trivial risk of losing sight due to broken glasses is part of the deal.
Your choice.
Switzerland is quite unusual in that regard.
I would imagine most Hacker News users live in places where recording or photography in a public place is not illegal.
Your suggestion of violence certainly isn't legal in most places!
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.
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?
Well, there's https://www.nii.ac.jp/userimg/press_details_20121212.pdf
I think fooling facial recognition systems and CCTV-cameras-at-night is easier than fooling professional photographers. Most photograhers' cameras have IR filters, after all. And nobody's got an LED brighter than the sun.
On this topic, is there any benefit of trying to fool facial recognition systems with these type of accessories and or wearables, would the system not just mark you as suspicious and keep an even better track of you
Of course it is a different thing if these are adopted by the masses
> nobody's got an LED brighter than the sun
It's low density silly fun but I did see these folk attempt to do such a thing with entertaining results https://youtu.be/m1S1r9I6DN4
One of my future ideas was to have the detection trigger turning a bunch of IR LEDs on to do just this! I've only tested it a little bit against my phone camera (with around 5 850nm LEDs), but it didn't work super well (fairly bright but not enough to be useful). It did work much better in low-light though. My guess is modern cameras have better IR-cut filters, but like I mentioned I only tested against my phone and not the Ray-bans yet.
Have you thought about the potential eye/skin damage you would be causing with IR LEDS.
Potentially as much as none, because it's UV that does the damage?
I guess IR can be harmful (IR lasers, military grade IR LEDs). But yes, likely not the consumer grade IR LED.
What about correlating transmitted wireless frames with a LED flashing pattern? If the glasses stream video with a variable bitrate codec over wireless, flashing vs. non-flashing should change bandwidth and therefore frame frequency. However, with searching over all channels this might be quite slow in practice.
I have been thinking of a device to thwart license plate readers by dumping a ton of IR and/or visible light on the plate before it gets read.
Perhaps combined with some reflective coating? Retroreflectors are promising
I heard about similar hats being used during the Hong Kong protests, but most modern cameras filter out IR anyway. Reflective jackets tend to work much better; they basically turn you into an overexposed bright blob on camera.
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.
> blocking/jamming the specific wireless traffic would be pretty interesting, if possible.
And probably highly illegal.
Yeah, true. Implementing this would be tricky.
Implementing it is trivial. you can just overlook the radio from openWRT and drown out every 2.4-2.5 gHz device in a 100M radius.
Doing it targeted is more difficult since it does frequency hopping, but you could probably reverse the frequency hopping algorithm to target specifically Bluetooth and force high packet loss.
This is still illegal for radio jamming reasons, and also patent infringement since a misbehaving Bluetooth device has not gotten permission to use Bluetooth patents held by SIG.
I would love to actually buy a similar product (but a one that won't make you look like a Frankenstein)
How about Elton John's windshield wiper glasses?
https://fabukmagazine.com/elton-john-glasses-in-the-frame-at...
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.
I’ve heard stories of people using the Meta smart glasses to help with reduced vision, i.e. asking the LLM assistant what you’re looking at, asking it to read a label, etc. The LLM assistant can see the camera feed so it is capable of doing that.
However things like the urgent warnings you mentioned don’t exist yet.
Hearing about the way people with bad vision use these glasses kind of changed my viewpoint on them to be honest; for the average person it might seem useless to be able to ask an LLM about what you’re looking at, but looking at it from an accessibility standpoint it seems like a really good idea.
there's a lovely documentary by a blind British comedian about exactly this: https://connect.open.ac.uk/seeingintothefuture/
If the top-level poster succeeds, the resulting device could possibly disable devices that allow blind people to see. This could open up another liability channel.
Every time I read about smart glasses I wonder the same thing. Obviously the technology isn’t perfect, but it seems that even a basic pair of smart glasses with primitive image processing could be life-changing for a completely blind person. Yet as far as I can tell, most blind people don’t use technology at all for this purpose.
Unfortunately, the HN website is extremely unfriendly to users relying on assistive technologies (lack of ARIA tags, semantic elements etc.), otherwise there might be more blind people commenting here who could shed light on such things, no pun intended.
Makes me wonder just how big the market for such a device would be, and if it would attract investors…
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?
Regular pairing, advertising and control likley use Bluetooth LE for simplicity and battery life. Streaming or transferring video likley use Bluetooth classic for increased bandwidth.
These are two different protocols with different radio behaviour.
So beyond detecting the glasses themselves, which seem like the focus of the project; detecting recording is feasible at the point of transfer to a phone.
The issue is distinguishing it from any other high bandwidth Bluetooth device nearby, such as headphones.
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.
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
Pretty neat idea! I love the BLE detection approach, would be pretty amazing if this works. I'll be following this with some interest!
Tangentially related it's also useful to quickly gauge if your smarts-wielding neighbors are home or not so noise levels can be adjusted accorsingly (:
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.
I was thinking about this just the other day. You're on your way to implementing your own real-life stealth meter! Very cool!
This is seriously neat. Love the name too
Thank you! To settle a debate between me and a friend, do you think Ray-BANNED or Ban-Rays is the better name?
Ban-Rays. Ray-BANNED could be read to mean that you've been banned by Ray-Ban IMO, the opposite of what's happening.
Ray-Banned is a good pun, but might bring you legal trouble. I’d go with Ban-Rays
the former
Cool project, but I'd use the first mode to look for hidden cameras at Airbnbs!
next: smart glasses app to detect glasses that can detect smart glasses that have cameras
the esp32 in the side of the head should give it away
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?
Why is it illegal?
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!