“Genious Gray Hat creates open-source software to repurpose second-hand flock cameras for personal use; Flock cameras start flooding Craigslist and eBay”
A 1w laser will permanently blind you instantly. You can buy/build them very cheaply and easily, but a class 4 laser isn’t a toy.
For perspective, the regular red laser pointers from your local store are like 5mW at most.
A 44w laser is probably an IR fiber laser used for tattoo removal or some industrial application. You can get them cheap, but they are not handheld. Also lasers that powerful tend to be pulsed.
Nichia makes 5w+ 445nm diodes that are small enough to fit in a flashlight
I’m familiar. The 44W lasers I mentioned are blue diode lasers from consumer-grade laser cutters/engravers. They actually consist of multiple diodes with some optics that combine all the beams into a pretty small kerf. Last time I checked I was only able to find IR diode lasers up to 2W. I’m hoping to get my hands on an IR diode laser some day that I can stick on my CNC mill and make it a laser cutter as well but realistically those will have to be 2 separate devices. An IR diode laser would be a lot more stealthy for taking out Flock cameras…
Somewhere I have a 1W blue handheld laser that I bought in college and used to light blunts with. Wearing laser shades, of course.
At a place I worked at for a little while they had 16kW fiber lasers that could cut through steel like butter. It was magical.
Problem is that many are clustered and in high-traffic areas. There’s a triplet of them in one area near my neighborhood, covering entrance and exit of said area, so it’s impossible to avoid detection.
I bet they’d search for cell location records, in order to find who damaged the cameras. I hear that even turning your phone off won’t help. Surely they’ll be caught unless someone also leaves their phone at home.
instead of destroying it, wrap it in duct tape or something like that, because afaik obstructing a camera owned by a private company which happens to be placed on public property is not illegal
I figure sniping them from a long distance would be a good tactic. Of course, I neither own a rifle nor have any sort of marksmanship training so I could be wrong.
Well, be careful… You would not want to miss and have that bullet hit someone.
But it does start an interesting conversation: what are some ways, that don’t involve guns, that could take one out from a relative distance or… If they had to get close, take it out quickly?
Unfortunately, blowing something up is always a good idea until you lose a hand.
You’re unlikely to be able to carry enough payloads to destroy every camera cluster that witnessed the drone in flight (unless this is a drone swarm), and you need to do this from a distance to be effective. If you’re close enough that it would be easy to destroy the camera, return the drone to sender (without footage of the drone’s return flight), then leave, you’ve effectively just given a localized guess of your identity from the immediate area near the destruction.
The ideal way to do this would be similar to Ukraine’s use of drones vs tanks - payload, far away operator, one device per target.
I definitely think there could be a situation where a drone could have some kind of spray paint device connected to it and the drone could be used to access difficult locations, like over freeways, something high up, or even just for some anonymity. Blocking the view of the camera I think is the number one goal. Obviously creating policies that prevent these cameras from existing would be best, but I just don’t see any of that happening in the United States at least for the next few decades.
I used a bregen clone (it’s a big R/C helicopter, sometimes used for aerial photography/film) to deal with a box elder infestation that was causing problems.
Soapy water, inside a sprayer that may or may not have been based on ww2 era flamethrowers. (The water tank was charged from a pressurized air tank.)
i suspect some of them are the newly installed speed cameras in low-traffic areas. yea its rather suspicious to have one where there is almost no pedestrians or rarley any traffic to justify have a speed limit camera.
Disable them by removing them yourself.
See the problem there is that it doesn’t scale. You can only take down so many cameras.
Now if you convince the local scrappers that the things are full of copper…
Well, don’t sell yourself short—one camera per person destroys them all. It’s gotta start somewhere.
I’m sure those cameras would probably resell somewhere. Sell them back to flock 🙃
Sure. If all you can do is steal one camera, then steal one camera.
But…
Steal one camera, stop surveillance for a day. But teach a cracky to steal cameras for cash, stop surveillance for a generation.
Haha cracky 😂
Made me lol, too!
“Genious Gray Hat creates open-source software to repurpose second-hand flock cameras for personal use; Flock cameras start flooding Craigslist and eBay”
I wonder if a laser of some sort could mess up the camera sensors
Lasers are absolutely capable of this. A 1-watt laser could probably do it and, last time I checked, you can order 44-watt lasers online.
A 1w laser will permanently blind you instantly. You can buy/build them very cheaply and easily, but a class 4 laser isn’t a toy.
For perspective, the regular red laser pointers from your local store are like 5mW at most.
A 44w laser is probably an IR fiber laser used for tattoo removal or some industrial application. You can get them cheap, but they are not handheld. Also lasers that powerful tend to be pulsed.
Nichia makes 5w+ 445nm diodes that are small enough to fit in a flashlight
I’m familiar. The 44W lasers I mentioned are blue diode lasers from consumer-grade laser cutters/engravers. They actually consist of multiple diodes with some optics that combine all the beams into a pretty small kerf. Last time I checked I was only able to find IR diode lasers up to 2W. I’m hoping to get my hands on an IR diode laser some day that I can stick on my CNC mill and make it a laser cutter as well but realistically those will have to be 2 separate devices. An IR diode laser would be a lot more stealthy for taking out Flock cameras…
Somewhere I have a 1W blue handheld laser that I bought in college and used to light blunts with. Wearing laser shades, of course.
At a place I worked at for a little while they had 16kW fiber lasers that could cut through steel like butter. It was magical.
May I introduce you to Styropyro
So you’re saying my 5W laser could work? On it.
Wondering if something like this would be enough?
Class IIIA Laser Output is <5mW
Doubt it, <5mW is a laser pointer and I don’t think is powerful enough to damage an eye.
Looked into that, and I wonder if the damage is significant or just a couple of dead pixels
Maybe something like a small battery powered laser engraver could zigzag across the lens and eventually damage the sensor.
However, to get that power from a distance would be large and prohibitively expensive for most people.
Good thinking though… a damaged sensor might be difficult to diagnose at first, leading to a longer replacement period.
Problem is that many are clustered and in high-traffic areas. There’s a triplet of them in one area near my neighborhood, covering entrance and exit of said area, so it’s impossible to avoid detection.
Remove the devices. Like, go up to it and destroy it.
Obviously, wear a mask and common clothing
I bet they’d search for cell location records, in order to find who damaged the cameras. I hear that even turning your phone off won’t help. Surely they’ll be caught unless someone also leaves their phone at home.
Well, don’t commit crimes with person items on your body of any kind.
You should always leave your phone at home for that kind of thing. The same goes for protests.
A paintball gun is a good option
Or just come up to it outside of it’s FOV and wrap that fucker up
I addressed that already - there are three of them within 100ft of each other, and two of them are on the same post.
Here’s a pic:
White truck + high viz vest. Take the whole pole from the bottom.
That doesn’t help when there are more than one.
I figure sniping them from a long distance would be a good tactic. Of course, I neither own a rifle nor have any sort of marksmanship training so I could be wrong.
Well, be careful… You would not want to miss and have that bullet hit someone.
But it does start an interesting conversation: what are some ways, that don’t involve guns, that could take one out from a relative distance or… If they had to get close, take it out quickly?
Unfortunately, blowing something up is always a good idea until you lose a hand.
Having never flown a drone - a drone?
A drone would work, but you would have to stomach the fact that it would be a one-way trip for each unit, otherwise it would be easily tracked.
Easily tracked how, given that the point of the flight would be to destroy the tracking devices?
You’re unlikely to be able to carry enough payloads to destroy every camera cluster that witnessed the drone in flight (unless this is a drone swarm), and you need to do this from a distance to be effective. If you’re close enough that it would be easy to destroy the camera, return the drone to sender (without footage of the drone’s return flight), then leave, you’ve effectively just given a localized guess of your identity from the immediate area near the destruction.
The ideal way to do this would be similar to Ukraine’s use of drones vs tanks - payload, far away operator, one device per target.
I definitely think there could be a situation where a drone could have some kind of spray paint device connected to it and the drone could be used to access difficult locations, like over freeways, something high up, or even just for some anonymity. Blocking the view of the camera I think is the number one goal. Obviously creating policies that prevent these cameras from existing would be best, but I just don’t see any of that happening in the United States at least for the next few decades.
I used a bregen clone (it’s a big R/C helicopter, sometimes used for aerial photography/film) to deal with a box elder infestation that was causing problems.
Soapy water, inside a sprayer that may or may not have been based on ww2 era flamethrowers. (The water tank was charged from a pressurized air tank.)
i imagine that was pretty loud. Did you use some kind of FPV screen to target or just eyeball it from the ground?
A paintball marker is just as effective.
Does a paintball marker destroy the device permanently?
i suspect some of them are the newly installed speed cameras in low-traffic areas. yea its rather suspicious to have one where there is almost no pedestrians or rarley any traffic to justify have a speed limit camera.
The upside is some are installed illegally and have no legal recourse just littering their shit on public land.
Problem is that you are on camera, not really problem, just be careful