How Your Digital Camera Might Be "Neutralized"

Leave it to those wily researchers: The geeks at the Georgia Institute of Technology have devised a way for video or still digital cameras to be "neutralized" by a new technology they've devised.

What does neutralized mean? The system would beam a thin stream of white light directly into the camera's lens. The camera would be so flooded with light that the image it captured would be completely washed out.

Now a prototype, the system works by using a scanning laser or other sensor to sweep the area, looking for the telltale reflection that digital camera lenses create. Because of the unique shape and reflective properities a camera lens has, this is really a quite simple proposition. The only problem comes in doing this on a large scale: Protecting a small work of art is easy, whereas canvassing an entire trade show convention would be much harder.

Still, given the perceived problem of video piracy, protecting movie theaters from camcorder-wielding pirates is probably the first place we'll see a product like this, should it ever make it to the commercial markets. Perhaps entire cities will be close behind.