Apple's New Patent Could Allow Others to Disable Your Phone's Camera

Recently the United States Patent and Trademark Office awarded Apple a patent originally filed by Apple in 2011. Ostensibly aimed toward allowing iPhone users to gather more data about objects in their physical environment using a small projector element, the technology, if implemented, would also enable third parties to disable users' iPhone cameras within certain geographical spaces.

Though Apple has announced no formal plans to implement this technology, the prospect of them doing so is of great interest and concern to folks interested in copyright law, civil liberties, and transparency. Content production organizations could look to leverage this technology to disable phone recordings in movie theaters and concert venues, and thereby prevent unauthorized recording of copyrighted works. Indeed, with Twitter's Periscope already a popular tool for personal video broadcasting in real time, such an occurrence is easily foreseeable. Apple’s patent might well be far more convenient than having attendees put their phones in special Faraday bags . Our database contains around 20,000 Periscope takedown notices, and orders of magnitude more links, indicating that there is a persistent desire on behalf of rights holders and enforcement agencies to block possible infringement that may occur through personal live videostreaming. This new technology could enable preemptive enforcement, potentially reducing the need to work through the DMCA or other mechanisms. But like so many other automated tools, disabling all phones in a certain location is a one-size-fits-all, and leaves no room for legitimate uses.

The possible uses of such a tool extend beyond merely enforcing copyright, of course. The possibility of venues, private individuals, or governments preemptively shutting down citizens seeking to document real-time events, especially controversial ones, is sobering. Imagine a Senate majority leader flipping the disabler switch as (s)he ordered the happened, in fact, but the possibility of it being easy and portable is a big step forward, or backward, as the case may be.