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...
"Genious Gray Hat creates open-source software to repurpose second-hand flock cameras for personal use; Flock cameras start flooding Craigslist and eBay"
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.
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.
So you're saying my 5W laser could work? On it.
Wondering if something like this would be enough?
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
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.
You should always leave your phone at home for that kind of thing. The same goes for protests.
Well, don’t commit crimes with person items on your body of any kind.
A paintball gun is a good option
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?
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?
mostly just eyeballed it. to be honest, the nozzle/water tank were both pressurized to about 50psi, and it didn't take a lot of accuracy. I used a pump-and-spray canister that I made a new top for, to take a pneumatic line coming off a pancake air canister as the charging bottle.
the nozzle itself was at the end of boom that could point straight down (it could elevate between 0 and -90 degrees,) (the line to the nozzle was just the flexible hose coming off the weed sprayer normally.)
The hardest part is dealing with the constantly changing CoG as you spray.
If I hadn't already had the big boi, I'd have figured something else out, but i did, and it worked well.
As for noise... its' a freaking huge helicopter... so yeah. it's noisy. it wasn't a gasser though, so there's that. (It was a homebuild thing that happened because my hobby shop had a deep clearance on the rotor blades and hubs- the disk is 1m,)
if your goal was hitting flock cameras, I'd recommend strapping a paintball marker to a 250. (or a quad if you prefer, but I'll save that rant for elsewhere.) just stay away from systems that go through the internet or are made by companies that 'automatically' register you for a sUAS license with the FAA. They typically nark. (Especially DJI.) And a lot of those systems will frequently prevent you from flying in "sensitive" areas, even if it would be otherwise legal.
I’m much more into printing my parts, soldering my own components, and using the “dumbest” tech available.
… Honestly this is mostly because I don’t want them telling me where I can and cannot fly… And also tracking easily. It’s not like I’m flying over airports or anything. I do take the laws mostly seriously. But if I want to, I don’t want there to be a Geofence.
If flying paintball marker sure does seem like a fun project though… Do you think they will let me play on the field with that? Lol
A paintball marker is just as effective.
Does a paintball marker destroy the device permanently?
Problem is that you are on camera, not really problem, just be careful
I heard Flock and other traffic cameras have had issues lately with people using paintball guns on them. Something about how easy it is to buy those and they can be quietly used. Real shame these punk kids keep vandalizing these corporations products, it must be terribly expensive.
Real shame these punk kids keep vandalizing these corporations products, it must be terribly expensive.
Yes, expensive for you and the other taxpayers who pay for them.
I can only speak for me, but I'm happy to keep making the state replace expensive cameras. More time focused replacing them means less new ones, and less uptime.
We can't choose what they spend the money on, but we can collectively let them know when they fuck up.
Ring is partnering with Flock so I'm in the process of replacing my Ring cameras.
Here's the legwork I did, feel free to add to this:
Blink is out because they're also Amazon and if Ring is partnering with Flock, it's only a matter of time.
TP Link Tapo - Four 4K cameras w/ local network storage. $629.95. "5BLACKFRIDAY" code drops it to under $600.
Eufy - Four 3K cameras w/ Network storage. $749.95. They have a more advanced camera that has a fixed 4K but only a 2K pan/tilt and that setup with local network storage is over $1,000.
Arlo - $18/mo. subscription. No thank you.
Wyze - No network storage, SD cards only.
Aosu is notably cheaper ($429.99 for 4 cameras + network storage), but is only a 2K camera, and in a security situation, I can't imagine that being a good idea. 😟 The price is GREAT though, so I guess if all your footage is close up, it would work well. If you need to read a license plate at distance? Er, em...
I'm really happy with Reolink Trackmix cams.
That's pretty slick too! Only drawback I see there is that the home hub is SD card based and maxxes out at 1 TB and other systems have 2.5" drive bays or NVME slots.
But hey, anything is better than Flock adjacent! 😉
They have this NVR with a 2tb HDD https://m.reolink.com/product/rln12w/ And the pro version of the other one is HDD too https://m.reolink.com/product/reolink-home-hub-pro/
They are software based and either have bluetooth or wifi. Can't some wise person hack them and/or brick them?
The result would be more of your tax dollars going to Flock, for repairs or replacements.
The correct solution would be to ban them.
Don't underestimate the tactic of making it untenable by increasing the expense.
Gotta convince maga to tariff surveillance cameras
It will be easier to ban them if they are shown to be ineffective because of constant vandalism. There's much less incentive to keep them and it becomes an easy win for politicians.
Yup. "We don't have the funds to replace them this year." Next year, "We're not going to buy new ones because they'll just get destroyed and we'll have to replace them again."
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