Development of LED illumination-based spy photo-prevention system

Various crimes can be committed by using camera-equipped mobile device. In particular, spy photo and digital shoplifting are increasing rapidly. No direct countermeasures have been taken against these crimes, so potential victims have to prevent these crimes themselves. To overcome these problems for realizing safe society, this research demonstrates a crime prevention technology called spy photo-prevention System (SPS) that uses an LED visible light beacon to prevent a camera function for taking spy photos. SPS generates several beacons by changing the brightness intensity of an LED illumination. After the camera equipped device receives this beacon, the proposed system forces the camera function to stop automatically. In this paper, we develop a prototype of SPS, which is consisted of transmitter and receiver. The transmitter is based on a commercial LED illumination and generates visible light beacon. The receiver is used in a smartphone camera and has programs to control the camera function for receiving the beacon. The SPS prototype system can realize to prevent from taking spy-photos and give visitors experience of crime prevention effect.