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Show 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!
- dotancohen 10mo agoInteresting 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)
- aqme28 10mo agoI could see these being worn by walking-around security in a place where filming by the audience isn’t allowed. Super cool.
- _ache_ 10mo agoI agree, I laugh out loud at that pun.
- anilakar 10mo ago> 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.
- arionmiles 10mo agoIsn'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.
- littlestymaar 10mo agoThe 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.
- lukan 10mo ago"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.
- hackingonempty 10mo agoIn the USA, at least, the right to record in public is protected by the First Amendment.
- ajsnigrutin 10mo agoIn 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".
- circuit10 10mo agoYou 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?
- october8140 10mo agoIt's me. I want to be protected from hidden cameras from other peoples glasses.
- vigilanti 10mo agoProject Codename: Allen Funt Project Description: Glasses that have a speaker and appropriately say “You’re on Candid Camera!” when it detects others being recorded.
- shmel 10mo ago... by using your own glasses with a hidden camera? Sounds like a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun.
- skripp 10mo ago”I would feel pretty silly if my solution uses its own camera. So I'll be avoiding that.” From the GitHub link.
- paul7986 10mo agoThe solution to this (smart glass privacy debate) is Apple releasing smart glasses that automatically anonymize anyone in your photos/videos who isn’t a friend or family member with you at the time (it could be done automatically as Apple knows your friends/family members' faces already). All else appear as random faces, completely removed, a blurred out crowd to whatever privacy config options they offer and you choose. Not a creep here and use my Meta glasses to record my normal non-creepy life and life experiences. They are really convenient and useful (just suck cause they break easily either from software updates to water splashes)!
- Lucasoato 10mo agoThis isn't a solution, they would still have the data. Companies can't be trusted, they'll do what is more convenient for them, we need to remove the problem at the root by not allowing people to take pictures/videos if not permitted.
- kakacik 10mo ago[flagged]
- daveoc64 10mo agoSwitzerland 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!
- ghaff 10mo agoAnd even in those few places where publishing identifiable photos of people is theoretically illegal, I'm sure it happens thousands or even millions of times a day. I don't shove a camera in people's faces but you'll find plenty of pics in my public feeds that have identifiable people in them, including from many countries in Europe.
- lan321 10mo agoRelax Rambo
- _ache_ 10mo agoThank 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.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- Scramblejams 10mo agoCool project, but I'd use the first mode to look for hidden cameras at Airbnbs!
- dmead 10mo agoDo you have a parts list for what's in the zuck glasses?
- wowamit 10mo agoA 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.
- aDyslecticCrow 10mo ago> blocking/jamming the specific wireless traffic would be pretty interesting, if possible. And probably highly illegal.
- wowamit 10mo agoYeah, true. Implementing this would be tricky.
- aDyslecticCrow 10mo agoImplementing 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.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 10mo agoAt the end of the day, legality is what society settles as an acceptable way of running itself when all the stakeholders reluctantly agree or at least don't protest too much. Right now the 'costs' are sufficiently low that no one cares. As with most things, I suspect that there is a threshold ( though likely much higher than I have previously anticipated ) at which normal person would be unwilling to go as if anything changed.
- aDyslecticCrow 10mo ago
- arionmiles 10mo agoPretty neat idea! I love the BLE detection approach, would be pretty amazing if this works. I'll be following this with some interest!
- baobun 10mo agoTangentially related it's also useful to quickly gauge if your smarts-wielding neighbors are home or not so noise levels can be adjusted accorsingly (:
- okincilleb 10mo agoThis is seriously neat. Love the name too
- nullpxl 10mo agoThank you! To settle a debate between me and a friend, do you think Ray-BANNED or Ban-Rays is the better name?
- bjord 10mo agothe former
- rendaw 10mo agoBan-Rays. Ray-BANNED could be read to mean that you've been banned by Ray-Ban IMO, the opposite of what's happening.
- louthy 10mo agoRay-Banned is a good pun, but might bring you legal trouble. I’d go with Ban-Rays
- okincilleb 10mo agoBut you’d agree Ray-Banned is better
- louthy 10mo agoOnly because I’m a pun addict. Don’t take my biased opinion on board.
- okincilleb 10mo agoI think Ray-BANNED is the better name, by far.
- sspiff 10mo agoI 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?
- nullpxl 10mo agoOne 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.
- spacedoutman 10mo agoHave you thought about the potential eye/skin damage you would be causing with IR LEDS.
- card_zero 10mo agoPotentially as much as none, because it's UV that does the damage?
- thih9 10mo agoI guess IR can be harmful (IR lasers, military grade IR LEDs). But yes, likely not the consumer grade IR LED.
- consp 10mo agoAt some point it pretty much becomes a microwave. Radiation get absorbed and turned into heat. On a small scale not very helpful or harmful. On a larger scale nice to heat your food with but not your head.
- mcny 10mo agoPutting 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.
- zamadatix 10mo agoBefore putting yourself in the mind of QA, you have to be 100% sure on what the goals and priorities of the product is supposed to be in the first place. Only a subset of use potential cases will be worried with false positives, but this approach says to drive the cost greater for all potential use cases.
- jeroenhd 10mo agoBluetooth packets similar to smart glasses and IR filters used by a popular brand should probably be enough.
- byyoung3 10mo agonext: smart glasses app to detect glasses that can detect smart glasses that have cameras
- AmbroseBierce 10mo agothe esp32 in the side of the head should give it away
- d--b 10mo agoTaping 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?
- hammock 10mo agoWhy is it illegal?
- jeroenhd 10mo agoI don't think taping over the indicator is illegal. The zuckerberg glasses supposedly detect attempts to cover the indicator, though.
- nickthegreek 10mo agoit’s not illegal. meta raybans will detect the tape blocking a light sensor and not allow you take photos.
- threecheese 10mo agoThat is a feature Meta has implemented, but those protections were quickly defeated.
- nickthegreek 10mo agoThey were not quickly defeated. And as it stands currently, I thought there was only 1 somewhat involved hardware mod that worked. as opposed to any spy cam that you can guy purchase from amazon for a fraction of the cost.
- threecheese 10mo agoMy social media algorithm may be tricking me into thinking it’s more ubiquitous than it is, but i was fed quite a bit of content about it until I ‘dislike’d it into oblivion (its a norms change i am not aligned with).
- kanak8278 10mo agoIt's a lovely idea.
- SamDc73 10mo agoI would love to actually buy a similar product (but a one that won't make you look like a Frankenstein)
- DonHopkins 10mo agoHow about Elton John's windshield wiper glasses? https://fabukmagazine.com/elton-john-glasses-in-the-frame-at-100-optical/ https://fabukmagazine.com/elton-john-glasses-in-the-frame-at...
- 9dev 10mo agoDoes 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.
- anonymousiam 10mo agoIf 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.
- jonners00 10mo agothere's a lovely documentary by a blind British comedian about exactly this: https://connect.open.ac.uk/seeingintothefuture/ https://connect.open.ac.uk/seeingintothefuture/
- p-e-w 10mo agoEvery 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.
- 9dev 10mo agoMakes me wonder just how big the market for such a device would be, and if it would attract investors…
- aprilnya 10mo agoI’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.
- DonHopkins 10mo agoCan they detect Agency Glasses? 8) Wearable Eyes Turn You Into Emotional Cyborg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhvHxz1NePQ 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-emotional-cyborgs https://spectrum.ieee.org/wearable-eyes-agencyglass-emotiona...
- thrdbndndn 10mo agoSorry 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?
- aDyslecticCrow 10mo agoRegular 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.
- Anon1096 10mo agoThey don't stream to your phone when taking a video or picture. The data is on device and transferred later. It also uses wifi direct not BLE. It seems many many people on HN have absolutely no clue how the meta glasses work lol, there's barely any accurate information in this thread.
- nullpxl 10mo agoLike I mentioned in the text, I haven't looked into Wi-Fi yet. The picture/video -> transfer through the app is correct, and why an alternative method for detecting actual recording is necessary, but I'd expect to see that most events like battery status updates would be over directed BLE, since the initial boot + battery status is broadcast. And likely BTC for streaming audio. I'm unfamiliar with Wi-Fi Direct specifically, are you familiar with the process of scanning for active Wi-Fi Direct services?
- Anon1096 10mo agoSorry don't mean to demean your effort, I read the GH post and like the hacker spirit :D. It's the rest of the people in the HN comments with 0 clue. I like my glasses and don't really agree with your goals (nor see the point of letting you know when someone's wearing them; in my city your device would be beeping constantly) so I'm not interested in helping unfortunately. But I do wish you luck, as I said I like the spirit.
- DonHopkins 10mo agoNow integrate it with ink jet technology to spray the offending camera lens like a squid!
- foormanek 10mo agoOne more gizmo throwing IR at MY eyes? No, thanks!
- zppln 10mo agoI was thinking about this just the other day. You're on your way to implementing your own real-life stealth meter! Very cool!
- egeres 10mo agoSuper 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
- icoder 10mo agoComparable 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.
- Intralexical 10mo agoThere's no reason why stealth technology should have to advance faster than detection technology. In fact, in many applications with strong incentives to advance both stealth and detection capabilities, the modern world has trended towards being increasingly transparent. If we culturally/economically wanted it, I'm sure we could all have cheap nonlinear junction detectors in our pockets.
- keepamovin 10mo agoI 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.
- ghaff 10mo agoIt's probably inevitable over time. "Smart" AR glasses that are indistinguishable from just a pair of regular glasses seem like something inevitable over the next decade or two.
- objcts 10mo agois this the future we actually want???? or one that is truly inevitable and can’t be stopped?
- ghaff 10mo agoWant? I don't know. Outside of draconian regulation and punishment I don't see how you really stop aside from some level of social pressure/norms which can work to a degree. (No, you don't film/livestream the dinner party among friends that you are at.) People post photos from social events all the time. That ship has mostly sailed. Video and audio is mostly just an additional increment.
- keepamovin 10mo agoJust wait for the bionic eyeballs!
- ghaff 10mo agoA few years back there was a prototype contact lens at HotChips for AR. I assume video/audio recording in jewelry of various types today would be fairly straightforward at least in conjunction with recording on a wireless device in a pocket or transmitting over cellular in some manner. Of course, audio recording (wearing a wire) has been practical for decades.
- elng11 10mo ago[dead]
- jeffrallen 10mo agoAn eye for an eye and soon everyone's blind...
- FartyMcFarter 10mo agoHow is this an eye for an eye? Doesn't seem like the expression fits here.
- nothrowaways 10mo agoIt is interesting to see the consensus that nobody is enthusiastic about meta Ray-Bans except Zuckerberg. It's creepy.
- benbristow 10mo agoThe only real usage I've seen is on Instagram reels etc. where people are using them in red light districts like in Amsterdam to film the women.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- willidiots 10mo agoI have them and like them. I don't wear them constantly, but on days when I'm doing something interesting, they help me document much more than I otherwise would.
- bryan_w 10mo agoI've seen a plumber use it to document a repair that he was doing. Being able to record in tight spaces seems to be a good use case for this tech I've also seen a home inspector use them to document issues with a new construction There's also a ton of people using it for cooking videos
- ChrisMarshallNY 10mo agoI 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.
- asw_rer 10mo agoThat’s a really interesting project! It sounds like you’ve already explored some creative approaches with IR reflections and BLE traffic.
- Bender 10mo agoSemi-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.
- downboots 10mo agoInfrared LEDs, or a green screen if you have enough access
- avidiax 10mo agoYou could make a moire pattern, but it would probably be pretty hard to get it flat enough on a shirt, and it wouldn't be distinct enough to get interpreted by AI.
- thenthenthen 10mo agoI saw some painting a while a go, looked just like random dots, so I took a picture with my smartphone and that revealed a portrait! Pretty amazing, must have been some moire thing indeed
- Intralexical 10mo agoCompare human cone cell spectral sensitivity to the camera modules inside the glasses. [0][1] Usually digital cameras have some major differences from human eyes, particularly near UV and IR. Find dyes with spectral albedo that integrates to the same strengths for (most) humans' cones, but not for the glasses. Though human eyes have pretty good dynamic range, and some degree of variation. Maybe add dithering around the edges. [0]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cone-fundamentals-with-srgb-spectrum.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cone-fundamentals-wi... [1]: https://www.strollswithmydog.com/camera-spectral-sensitivity/ https://www.strollswithmydog.com/camera-spectral-sensitivity...
- jessepasley 10mo agospiderman-pointing.jpg
- nomdep 10mo agoAre 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.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- hedayet 10mo agoI 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.
- fortran77 10mo agoWhen 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.
- fortran77 10mo agoI 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.
- camillomiller 10mo agoI think it's time we normalize carrying mini EMP devices.
- amelius 10mo agoIsn'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.
- elif 10mo agoI 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.
- wussboy 10mo ago[flagged]
- sillyfluke 10mo agoSorry 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.
- ktallett 10mo agoI am curious what you would do if you found it detected glasses that did have a camera?
- stuckkeys 10mo agoI know some cameras have IR filters but is there something similar that can emit enough brightness to render the person as a white spot?
- storus 10mo agoYou can find devices on ebay that should detect cameras by using a polarized glass and LED lights as cameras tend to reflect back well and you'd see a shining spot where sensor is.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]