I've written a bunch more on the link (+photos are there), but essentially this uses 2 fingerprinting approaches: - retro-reflectivity of the camera sensor by looking at IR reflections. mixed results here. - wireless traffic (primarily BLE, also looking into BTC and wifi)
For the latter, I'm currently just using an ESP32, and I can consistently detect when the Meta Raybans are 1) pairing, 2) first powered on, 3) (less consistently) when they're taken out of the charging case. When they do detect something, it plays a little jingle next to your ear.
Ideally I want to be able to detect them when they're in use, and not just at boot. I've come across the nRF52840, which seems like it can follow directed BLE traffic beyond the initial broadcast, but from my understanding it would still need to catch the first CONNECT_REQ event regardless. On the bluetooth classic side of things, all the hardware looks really expensive! Any ideas are appreciated. Thanks!
I would like to draw attention to this gem of wit, easily the best I've seen in a long time:
> I think the idea behind this approach is sound (actually it's light)
But I think the only valid way yo prevent this will be legislation though, it's not a fight individuals can win on their own.
tldr: I wish I could tell you there is a simple tldr
In Europe there is very much an expectation of privacy in public. But that expectation is not absolute, it competes with various other rights and public interests.
For example you can make street photography without blurred faces, because art trumps privacy in this instance. If you start making photos of individuals instead of areas then privacy wins out again and you need consent. A surveillance camera is not creating art, so it doesn't have that excuse going for it and needs a really good reason to be pointed at public areas (and "I fear someone's going to break into my private home" is generally not a good enough reason). And even if you can set up the surveillance camera, operating it requires complying with the GDPR, which has a lot to say on that topic
There are many nuances in privacy law, not just pertaining to photo vs. 24/7 recording, but also expectation of privacy, intent, etc. Taking a photo of some random touristy area with people there is ok, singling out a person is not. Same for eg. taking a panoramic shot of a city where someone just happens to be undressing by the window in one of the buildings in the photo, vs using a telephoto lens pointed at that persons window... so, were you taking a touristy photo vs intending to violate their privacy.
Same nuances, mostly regarding intent appear in other laws too.. you can walk in public, you can stand in a public location, you can work the same shift as your coworker and walk the same path as them, since you both finished work at at the same time. But under slightly different circumstances that same "walking down a public road" or "standing in a public location" can be interpreted as eg. stalking if done with different intent.
That's why there are signs at every store entrance about video surveillance, even though it's private property, they must give info to customers who the contact person for the recording is and they need to have some kind of a retention policy defined for those recordings, and even then they cannot record in areas where people expect privacy (bathrooms, dressing rooms, etc.).
So yeah, taking a random photo of your street is not problematic, since it's "random" and done for other reasons (eg. tourism) while recording 24/7 is gathering enough data to be possibly problematic. Some streets (eg highways) are under video surveillance, but there are signs saying that when you enter the highway: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Mj3GjA7m8BLwUfs77