[Brinworld] UK firms tout camera phone blinding tech

[Thomas Shaddack]

> Safe Haven works by transmitting a signal in a localised environment
> such as a school, swimming pool, office facility or factory, which
> "disables the camera functionality of devices in the nearby
> environment", the companies claim.

If there will be a dedicated receiver circuit in the phone, operating on
other than cellular frequencies, it will be fairly trivial to shield or
jam or damage it. (Some countries, I think something Far-Eastern, want
legislation to force the manufacturers to make the handset emit loud tone
when taking the picture. A tiny switch enabling/disabling the transducer
takes care of it rather easily. A non-tech approach could be to make the
same tone popular as a ringtone, psychologically immunizing people against
paying special attention to it.)

If it will be a firmware update, it is matter of couple days or at most
weeks until rogue firmware versions with blocking disabled pop up all
around - especially if one of the blocked functions will be SMS messages
in schools.