Tracking and Disabling Smartphone Camera for Privacy

With people's easy access to various forms of recent technologies, privacy has decreased immensely. One of the major privacy breaches nowadays is taking pictures and videos using smart phones without seeking permission of those whom it concerns. This work aims to target privacy in the current mobile environment. The main contribution of this work is to block the smart phone camera without damaging the smart phone or harming people around it. The approach is divided into stages: body area detection and then camera detection in the frame. The detection stage follows pointing of laser(s) controlled by a microcontroller. Tests are conducted on built system and results show performance error less than 1%. For Safety, the beams are devised to be harmless to the people, environment and the targeted smart phones.