How to ZAP a Camera: Using Lasers to Temporarily Neutralize Camera Sensors
Cameras are ubiquitous today, and, from a technology perspective, the revolution is just beginning. Video cameras are becoming smaller and cheaper while the Internet is enabling unlimited live webcasting. Web camera usage has grown from one in 1991 to hundreds in the mid-1990s to hundreds of thousands today.
Camera zapping is possible because cameras are not perfect machines. Two such imperfections are blooming and lens flare. Blooming is the technical term for when a portion of the camera’s sensor is overloaded, resulting in “leakage” to neighboring regions.
Lasers are near-perfect monochromatic light sources, in that they emit a single narrow wavelength, one pure color (actually some lasers emit several pure colors). The first lasers were made of glass tubes with polished mirror ends and had the additional feature of emitting collimated light, a parallel beam so precise that it could be extremely narrow (and therefore concentrated) or could converge to a microscopic point.
Several interesting facts and researched information will be found on camera zapping.
Following topics will be discussed in detail:
- INTRODUCTION
- BASICS
- Cameras
- Lasers
- Laser Safety
- HISTORY
- Art and Activism
- Anti-Surveillance Products
- Military
- FIELD TESTS AND PROTOTYPES
- LIMITATIONS AND APPLICATIONS
- DE-PRESENTATION
