21. @Hockeytree: let me put some of this in perspective for you. Take a 1 watt light bulb and look at it. No worries. Now take a 1 watt laser and look at it. No eyes. A laser is concentrated light(to put it simply) and it would be enough to blind most cameras even with their IR filtering.

Posted at 2:19PM on Aug 13th 2007 by ehrichweiss

22. If it did work and it was a professional cctv system it would alarm when the image washes out. Same for the paint balls blacking out the camera.

Also, a professional job would have at least two camers covering an area and each of those camers would be in eachothers view.

Posted at 9:56PM on Aug 13th 2007 by Paul

23. ir would work, many security cameras are ir cameras as well. to make it a non ir camera, they actually have to insert a filter. and we're not talking heat here. we're talking near visible light ir. like the led in your tv remote. an ir laser could very well blind the camera.

Posted at 1:29AM on Aug 14th 2007 by charc

24. why waste the money on a cell and a sensor when you can get alarm clocks for $1

Posted at 2:44AM on Aug 14th 2007 by BoB DoLE

25. @ Snorkle

nice! i like that idea better than that security camera one... let me know! :)

Posted at 3:43PM on Aug 15th 2007 by tbare

26. #20 To turn off a Streetlight a laser wouldn't work beacuse although it is concentrated light the dome that covers defuses the light so a laser would be just as effective as asking it to turn off. Now if you could get above it and shine a light on it, thats a whole 'nother story.

This is pretty cool but I don't get what he left out.

Posted at 9:43PM on Aug 15th 2007 by Hellblazer112

27. Seems to me that if you were to use a slightly broad-beam (not a laser, or maybe a laser with a special lense-- broad beam in order to compensate for oscillating cameras) light, outside of the visible spectrum for the human eye, you might fool the camera into adjusting its contrast until it is too low to make anything else out. This would probably only work with outdoor cameras intended to work at day an night, however, sense it wouldn't make sense to do that for an indoor camera where light is relatively constant. Then of course there is the issue of motion detectors, which you might set off if you use the same wavelength of light it uses, or by simply forgetting about them and moving under them. To be used in a practical situation, you would probably have to find a target which does not use motion detectors-- a common scenario in places where guards or especially guard dogs are in place (which present their own problems, but still manageable).

Posted at 3:43AM on Aug 16th 2007 by doogle

28. A more in depth exploration of this can be found at http://naimark.net/projects/zap/howto.html (linked from the wikipedia site on CCTV)

It seems to be somewhat efficient but a far cry from actually blinding the camera. As can be seen on the site, and I did a bit of testing at home and came to the same conclusions, filtering the red spectrum of the image reduces the effect quite a bit but not totally which is a bit surprising since laser light is highly monochromatic, I suppose the CCD and compression add some artifacts that elude the filter (the source of the light looked more yellow than red.)
This method could probably be used to obscure a portion of the image, such as a face, but could hardly blind a security camera (those are probably better built than your average digital camera/ webcam) completely.

Maybe this could be improved on by adding a dispersion lens at the laser, since the light is very coherent the lens could be adjusted depending on distance to cover the entire camera lens.

This seems a bit silly to use against security cameras anyways, I would think a bright red spot on the monitor would catch the securityguards attention.

Posted at 3:41PM on Aug 16th 2007 by elbarto

29. the point isn't to stop a guard from realizing what is going on. the point is to destroy evidence that might lead to your capture by obscuring your identity.

Posted at 9:27PM on Aug 16th 2007 by john

30. omg the cia is going to come and take you hostage! totally weapons of mass destruction.

Posted at 6:12PM on Aug 17th 2007 by nathan belomy

31. i say if your gonna bloody steal somthing just f###### grab what you want and go for gods sake F*&^! by the time the bloody laser has the (one coler of the) camera blinded they will have seen you! unless that thing wth the ither two colers worked maybye find a good spot outsid and get it fom there... btw we dont need Goddamn technology taking over our sport. com on! it s all about slite of hand i happen to have it to a pretty good art (not after triel and error) ;)

so if it works great other ill stick with my method

you know those security thigs by the door? we need like a jammer for those dont work for a while am not good with electronics but freind sent me here, mabi its bullshit and i dont need one

Posted at 2:44PM on Sep 6th 2007 by Bob smith

32. I can't say whether this will work or not, but almost nobody uses IR cameras. They use IR sensors. And these IR sensors are tuned to a specific size and heat, and possibly height above ground, so if you wear an emergency "space blanket" blanket around you, or take a dip in a pond wearing some water absorbing clothes, you may pull it off, but then remember to cover your top body and head. These sensors are set for weight of the animal, 20-35 kg or 5-15 kg, or other, but places with more than a few thousand dollars cash may have sensors tuned to go off on even a rat, so the best way to avoid it is to recon openly and break in through the roof and walls.

but I recommend going the path of least resistance and be a smalltime crook instead, that will save your ass from prison-gayness in the long run.

Posted at 10:02AM on Sep 29th 2007 by Kilroy