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.

  • Saigonauticon@voltage.vnEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Sure, why not? It would probably be good fun to talk product development with the CEO of Apple.

    Then maybe I can take a look at their implementation and see if I can secure it (standard consulting rates apply). Apple has a lot of good engineers, I bet they already know about the trivial stuff, so I could get right into the interesting problems.

    I mean, a naive implementation uses bluetooth LE, but presumably users could just turn bluetooth off (among other problems). I can think of better implementations that don’t require radio or internet to work. I think a smarter approach would be optical or audio encoding. That would make it reliable in concerts (where lighting and sound are tightly controlled), but not reliable enough in most police-state contexts (where lighting and sound are not tightly controlled). Fine tuning it further to ensure that it only works in the context of concerts should be pretty easy.

    I haven’t read the patent though, I don’t presently have access to BBC.