Nah, the CCD isn't exposed except when the shutter is pressed, and when it's not exposed there's a mirror blocking it.

The bit that has puzzled me about this way of blanking a shot is that since CCDs are sensitive to IR light, the cameras are made with very strong IR filters mounted over the CCD. I'd expect that to do a pretty good job of filtering out an IR beam.

I just put my TV remote an inch from my old 3MPixel camera and the infrared LED was picked up quite brightly.

What I'm wondering is how does this system detect the CCD? Would a polarizer on the lens defeat the detector?

To answer my own question, apparently camera imagers make good retroreflectors, like few normal objects do. So they detect the light reflecting back in that special way. Some have pointed out that that might not work against DSLR cameras because the CCD is blocked by a mirror that only swings up a split second before the exposure. This system would have to have an extremely quick reaction time to detect and blind a DSLR set with a short shutter speed.

Any laser would show up as a point source in a particular location on the image - easily removed with a little editing. It's elementary optics.
An astronomy hobbyist.

I suspect this will work as well as the "missile-proof windows to combat piracy". I suppose if one agrees that a bullet is a missile that statement would be true but then even that "glass" is only bullet resisting.

Google for "Capture Resistant Environment" for an interesting Georgia Tech page about this stuff. They're apparently just using a common slide projector to successfully blind the cameras.

Boy will Jerry Jones be pissed. The ship cost as much as the new Cowboy stadium

Nah, you guys are all wrong. He bought that anti-photgraphy thing from Jeff Tracy, the founder of International Rescue. They used it for years on Thunderbird 1
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