• Murse@slrpnk.net
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    4 hours ago

    The likelihood that you’re going to get caught anyway, this might be a better situation for an “act like you belong” approach.

    Hi-vis vest, hard hat, a ladder, couple safety cones, and some tools. Just waltz right up and run a half-inch drill bit through the lens. Pack up and move on to the next one.

  • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    I mean, fuck flock. But really, truly, do not do this.

    I don’t give a damn about the Flock cameras. Set them on fire or steal them and sell them for scrap for all I care. But a laser powerful enough to quickly fry a camera sensor is going to be an extreme danger to human eyes. These type of lasers can be acquired fairly easily, but you don’t want to be using them in public outdoor spaces. At these power levels, even reflections of laser light can be damaging to human eyes. And when you shine laser light on a solar panel or camera lens, some is going to be scattered in random directions. Sure, you can make sure to wear laser safety goggles while doing this. But random bystanders won’t have that luxury.

    • mavu@discuss.tchncs.de
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      4 hours ago

      So very much this.
      These things should not be available to buy for the general public, or anyone without safety training and equipment.
      Remember: Don’t stare into laser with remaining eye.

      Edit: It is true that there are lasers that can damage camera sensors and not eyes, but they are infrared outside of the visual spectrum, and absorbed by the water content of the human eye. BUT STILL DO NOT USE LASERS OUTSIDE OF CONTROLED ENVIRONMENTS

    • stray@pawb.social
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      10 hours ago

      Apparently they can also set dark objects on fire and melt plastic, which has a lot of potential for unintended consequences.

  • electric_nan@lemmy.ml
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    15 hours ago

    Just smash. Doesn’t matter how. Smash smash smash. Or cover with paint or an oily plastic bag. Or just smash. They are always like 8 feet up. Smash.

    • gmtom@lemmy.world
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      37 minutes ago

      Just smash. Doesn’t matter how. Smash smash smash. Or cover with paint or an oily plastic bag. Or just smash.

      Basically my dating strategy as well

    • teslekova@sh.itjust.works
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      7 hours ago

      Yeah. Paintball gun if you want to be fun with it.

      Spray can on a stick (there’s tools for this at the hardware store, lets you press the button from down the other end of the stick) if you want to do it easily.

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    If you hit an airplane they will try very hard to track you down. If you hit too many cameras they will probably try to find you, too. They will use your purchase history, social media post history, and location, for instance. So, best to buy the laser somewhere far from where you use it, AND pay cash if you can.

    Not that I recommend this, but if you want to try, be smart about it. And, be careful.

    • Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      Purchase history is harder to check than you’d think. Use a giftcard on AliExpress and anyone outside of the federal level will be lost.

    • ReluctantMuskrat@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      That’s the problem with this really. You gotta be really careful you’re not caught on camera beforehand, and they have a lot of cameras. So unless you can just walk out of the woods near one and disappear the same way, you’re likely gonna have a bad time.

      • 1984@lemmy.today
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        11 hours ago

        I think its horrible that so many things are happening to us from our own government. They are supposed to be on our side but that was long ago now.

      • Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        A camera is a camera no matter the brand. Take a walk around your neighborhood and imagine the cone of sight each one has, eventually you’ll see one that doesn’t have another watching. From there it’s just a game of mine sweeper.

        • ReluctantMuskrat@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          You also have to be able to fry the camera without it being able to record you before you’re successful. Can you burn out the sensor from an angle of attack that still has you out of view? Maybe, maybe not. And how will you know for sure?

          • piecat@lemmy.world
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            3 hours ago

            I would think probably not. Light paths are typically reciprocal, ignoring scattering or dispersion.

            In other words, if photons from your body aren’t hitting the camera sensor, how are photons from the laser going to hit the camera?

            Unless you have an insane laser that shouldn’t be used outdoors, I doubt there will be damage from an indirect hit.

  • Spezi@feddit.org
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    16 hours ago

    It would be interesting to train an image recognition algorithm on detecting flock cameras, build a raspberry pi with two servos and put it all in a nice box to carry around. For research purposes of course.

    • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      It would be interesting to train an image recognition algorithm on detecting flock cameras

      Or just query nearby bluetooth devices:

      https://www.ryanohoro.com/post/spotting-flock-safety-s-falcon-cameras

      EDIT: Also, those things read bumper stickers in addition to license plates. I’ve often wondered if they check for injection attacks between character recognition and storing it in their database.

      Another edit: An attacker wouldn’t even need to put the sticker on their own vehicle. And a $20 thermal receipt printer (a “cat printer” as they’re known because the most popular model has cat ears and a cute cat face on it) can print on rolls of adhesive paper. I honestly wonder why no one uses them for sticker-based graffiti already. Probably because thermal prints don’t last long in sunlight.

      • Spezi@feddit.org
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        7 hours ago

        Just use a brother P-Touch with the 24mm rolls. They are pretty weather proof from my experience.

        • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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          7 hours ago

          I want to make this clear: I was not speaking about myself, but a hypothetical attacker. I don’t even know if such an attack would be effective.

          That said, the rolls on the cat printer are 57mm and would probably be easier to resolve on a moving vehicle, and it would only need to last long enough to be read by one camera. Plus, the P-Touch doesn’t look like a kitty cat.

  • slowmolaggins@thelemmy.club
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    19 hours ago

    In my town, roads have potholes deep enough to cause damage to cars. Many intersections have been down and operating as 4 way stops for months. But somehow there’s money in the budget to do this shit. I think some vandalism might be in order to teach priorities.

  • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    Yall make sure you’re not visible on another camera when you try this - it’s not like they won’t be able to figure out when and where you were when you did it. FLOCKs are usually in high camera-density areas like parking lots and strip malls and such, and there’s a lot of pressure to address vandalism against the surveillance apparatus.

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    22 hours ago

    I know that Xwitter is usually a reliable source, but 1000nm is outside visual range and therefore not green. Green lasers in the ~500nm range will absolutely damage a camera sensor, but you’ll need good aim and sustained illumination.

    • degenerate_neutron_matter@fedia.io
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      22 hours ago

      If you actually want to do this, look at the NUBM44-V2 laser diode. 7 watts of output power and around $30 on eBay. Another $50 or so for a driver, heat sink, and lens and you can burn out cameras in seconds (you can also burn out your eyes so a good set of laser goggles is essential).

      • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        Also make sure your friends have laser goggles, and that nobody is anywhere downrange if you’re trying this. It takes way longer to blind a camera with these than it does to blind a human/animal, and it will turn minor vandalism charges into felonious assault.

          • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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            20 hours ago

            “Heave rock at bad thing” really does cut to the primal core of the species. Thog not believe how much copper is in mammoth.

        • notabot@piefed.social
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          20 hours ago

          nobody is anywhere downrange

          Reflections can also blind, so make sure no-one, including you, are uprange, or siderange (to stretch a wordform to breaking point) either.

      • kayzeekayzee@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        20 hours ago

        Also worth noting that in a lot of places you’ll need a license to legally own and operate a class 4 laser like that Edit: I looked into it some more. This might only be true for commercial facilities. Idk though I’m not a lawyer

        • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
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          19 hours ago

          “class 4” is just the highest class, being over 500mw. Technically, the experimental lasers they use on warships are class 4 lasers.

          Most countries don’t restrict owning them, but they do restrict selling them. When you have one, it’s kinda like owning a kitchen knife, perfectly legal, but as soon as you do dumb shit with it, thats still on you.

          And class 4 lasers make it VERY easy to do dumb shit.

        • notabot@piefed.social
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          20 hours ago

          I don’t think a license is going to help you if you’re found walking around with a 7 watt laser hooked up to the relevant drive circuitry. They’re still going to presume you’re up to no good, and, when they find a camera with a burned sensor, they’re going to assume it was you. I guess the moral of this is: don’t get caught.

      • unitedwithme@lemmy.today
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        21 hours ago

        Probably don’t even need that much, my cheap eBay laser pointer from 20 years ago damaged one of my first smart phone cameras in a couple seconds because I aimed it directly in. It was red, too, not green. Both work though.

        I didn’t want to some in my rites so I thought the camera lens would be OK. It was indeed not OK.

    • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      They ostensibly meant mW rather than “nm wavelength” based on the image, but they might not be the brightest laser in the activist’s pocket.

      Edit:

      Jason Bassler is co-founder of The Free Thought Project and has been featured in such publications as Rolling Stone, Reason, Infowars, RT, MIC and The Tom Woods Show.

      Checks out.

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      535nm for most/all of my greens.

      I do have one of the old 1000mw Wicked Laser blues as well, however, which I think is 445nm.

      Oh yeah. And my engraver is 100 watts of infrared (1084nm?), not milliwatts, although the range is probably a bit crap for this sort of thing and it’s not exactly concealable. You’d also want to pack rather a long extension cord.

    • OwOarchist@pawb.social
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      21 hours ago

      Also, you’ll want one with a fair bit of power to it if it’s going to do any permanent damage.

      A typical ‘safe’ 5mw laser isn’t going to do shit, regardless of the color/frequency.

  • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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    17 hours ago

    I mean the whole point of flock is that they can track you everywhere. Destroying their cameras doesn’t destroy the footage.

    If you destroy their cameras they will just trace your movements backwards until they find a way to identify you.

    You need to find a way to do it surreptitiously so it’s not clear who is doing it, and they won’t be able to figure it out by process of elimination by seeing who is commonly present when a camera iss destroyed.

    • Eric@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      16 hours ago

      If this were really true, there would be no crime right now. Nancy Guthrie has been missing for months now despite the perpetrator being caught on camera in an affluent neighborhood where there would be many Ring, Flock etc. cameras. These companies overpromise and underdeliver as they all do. Their main purpose is get people to pay them. They are much less competent than they claim to be.

      • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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        15 hours ago

        Idk, I think they can probably do a reasonable job tracing a drone back to it’s takeoff location, and then tracking the person who brought it there back to their home, with decent coverage.

        That said I don’t know if I’m overestimating their ability regarding machine learning and AI - this is probably fairly labour intensive unless they’ve don’t a good job preparing all their data and they have plenty of compute.

          • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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            4 hours ago

            I mean if they can track a car around the city using their cameras, they can probably do the same for a drone. Even if you fly up out of view they could look for drones in a radius flying down into view and connect the dots.

            • einfach_orangensaft@sh.itjust.works
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              3 hours ago

              Resolution of those cameras is limited and they are usually angled down. Also they are not on private property. So it can be assumed that max detection rate of a average sized done is maybe 80m tops, after that the drone itself is smaller than a singular pixel of the cam. Meanwhile range of those drones can be multiple km.

              If u had said they can use the integrated wide band SDR recordings of cell towers to triangulate the remote controller…i would have given u a point, but triangulating a drone using cameras that look down is not credible.

      • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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        4 hours ago

        That’s an expensive way to get rid of a single camera, and they could theoretically track a drone around the city like they track people, and they’d track it back to you.

  • Kaligalis@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    Just use a paintball marker. It doesn’t destroy the camera, but you can paint the lens. They then have to have someone go there and clean it or wait until they get lucky with the rain cleaning it. It’s probably also less of a crime than actually destroying the thing.

    • Spezi@feddit.org
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      16 hours ago

      Much more visible though. A bystander can easily call the police on you if they see you damaging property, while a small compact laser can be hidden and its also not visible from the outside after the sensor has been destroyed. For research purposes of course.

      • FishFace@piefed.social
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        7 hours ago

        The laser spot from a 1W laser is bright enough to cause rapid, permanent eye damage. The beam will be bright, too. This is not subtle.

        • Spezi@feddit.org
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          5 hours ago

          During the day its pretty hard to spot a 1W laser and its harder to spot the source. Also, one wouldnt use his with people closeby, or would you shoot a paintball gun out in public when there are people around?

    • Rob T Firefly@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      Your would be a little more conspicuous marching around your neighborhood wielding a paintball gun than you would be with a pocket-sized laser pointer.

    • Zwiebel@feddit.org
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      11 hours ago

      These kind of devices (speed cameras etc) are typically coated so that paint just slides off

    • queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone
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      11 hours ago

      I wonder if you can fill paintballs with superglue or something else that adheres to plastic…

      I wonder if you could suspend particulate in the glue to make it even harder to see through. Sand, or glitter perhaps.