Saturday, September 17, 2005

Privacy-enhanced computer display

Photo of glasses decrypting otherwise jumbled computer screenIn my experience, airline flights are often unproductive because I'm very wary of showing confidential client information to everyone who has a chance to oogle my laptop screen. I've seen privacy shields, but the guy who can glance between the seats is probably within its field of view. Now, the clever folks at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs have come up with a combination of hardware and software that limits what can be read to the wearer of special ferroelectric glasses. I don't pretend to know what that means from a scientific point of view, but it looks promising and the photo from the MERL website makes sense. For more info, check out: MERL � Privacy Enhanced Computer Display.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

And what if the person sitting beside you or behind you also has a set of the glasses? This seems like it would be secure until it became popular enough for wide distribution of the glasses.

privacylawyer said...

You're right. Until they can be tuned or matched to a particular unique video driver, I think it will only have a real application if you are the only person on the plane (or wherever) who has one.