I remember a while back Apple filed a patent that allows concerts to disable iPhones cameras if a certain signal is emitted from the stage. Apple never implemented this, but my pessemistic ass always try to think of worse case scenarios, like being used by government. Do you think this could occur in the future?
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36672001
You can search “Apple Concert Disable Camera” and find more about it.
This seems like it would probably be trivial to defeat either via legacy tech or simply by removing/disabling the receiver, interrupting the signal itself, hacking the firmware, etc.
Police could try to counter this by using lights (either visible or anything a camera’s sensor can pick up) to blind the cameras, but then people could also start doing stuff like using polarizing filters to minimize this, hiding cameras, or some other more clever method I’m not smart enough to think of.
Now, with thoughts like these I now don’t have any faith in humanity
If the tech were to be made widely available I would welcome it very much. There are plenty of spaces where people really shouldn’t be filming, mainly the gym, that would benefit from a passive and mandatory camera deactivation for all smartphones.
On the other hand, giving this to the government or law enforcement obviously is a massive breach of civil rights and the citizen’s ability to exercise control over their public servants.
