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Comment by venomsnake | Hacker News Reader

Can you carry a small laser on you that can fry the sensor? It is not that hard to make it invisible and automated.

No, a small laser won't fry a normal camera. And how will you know where all the cameras are anyway? Also that would be very illegal.

A green laser will happily burn out sensors, but you'd have to really work at it to burn up all of the sensor because the laser light will typically only fry a couple of pixels at the time.

It's not a magical 'point and fry' solution, more like a take up position and stand around for half an hour or so while the laser systematically hits every bit of the sensor long enough to fry it. A hammer would be a lot more effective (assuming you can reach the camera).

What it can do quite easily is mess with the AGC / white balance while a big part of the image is obscured by a bright green blog. As a temporary effect this may be good enough, and has the advantage of not being property damage.

> A hammer would be a lot more effective (assuming you can reach the camera).

So would a can of spray paint.

For confirmation: [1] is a video of someone assaulting their webcam with a 1.5w blue laser. All it does is create a few horizontal lines, burn a few tiny marks on the image, and discolor the highlights.

[1]: https://youtu.be/zNUgO1Npihk?t=130

I've seen products such as hats with infrared LEDs mounted on them; if the sensor doesn't have an infrared filter in front of it, it looks like a person's head is just a bright light.

Those hats fail really hard. An IR led looks like a point of dim light on cam. You need hundreds of them to achieve an obliterating effect.

You often see the hat. You rarely see what it looks like to various cameras.

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