NIRF: Detecting Cameras That Hide Behind Screen

Hidden spy cameras are a growing global threat to personal privacy. With the emergence of translucent screen technology, a new security risk has arisen: cameras can now hide behind devices' screens like TVs and monitors that are common in private places, e.g., hotel rooms. The screen's covering over the hidden camera not only makes the cameras behind it unnoticeable to human eyes but also makes existing camera detection methods less effective. Inspired by recent advances in representing real-world scenes accurately using neural networks, we propose Neural Infrared Reflectance Field (NIRF) to learn the intricate optical properties of the screen and the cameras hidden behind it. Through NIRF, we design a new camera detection system by leveraging the unique reflective properties of behind-screen cameras and screens. We evaluate NIRF with thorough experiments on five smartphones. Our NIRF archives over 90% detection rate and is robust to different conditions, including varied backgrounds, ambient light levels, screen protectors, and screen contents. Besides, we conduct a field study by deploying 18 common spy cameras behind a 65-inch translucent TV and recruiting 27 people to compare NIRF with commercial hidden camera detectors. NIRF achieves an 89.5% detection rate, significantly outperforming the best commercial hidden camera detector that only has a 14.4% detection rate of behind-screen cameras.