Got a friend. Ashton Kutcher was his neighbor. I observed that you could bollix the rangefinders on cameras by flooding an area with IR. He was all in - apparently Ashton had talked to him at length about the desirability of thwarting the paparazzi. So I bought some IR illuminators and started mocking up. This was maybe 2014.

Yeah, no. They preflash now. Meanwhile only the absolute fucking cheapest cameras don't have an IR filter built in. IR has been severely deprecated in security, in phones and in newsgathering/photojournalism. Low-light performance is such that you don't need it.

I've got twelve-year-old Axis cameras up at the birth center. They don't even see in the IR spectrum. I've got a couple that do - but their low-light performance is such that they effectively never switch to IR. And I mean - I've got a couple 4K cameras that stream at 30 frames per second that I bought on Amazon for $90. I'm a long goddamn way from Area 51.

I suspect Apple uses IR for face recognition because it's less sensitive to makeup. Doesn't matter for any purpose other than failing to unlock your phone. So for the rest of us, you have two choices, basically: go Juggalo or buy an ugly shirt.