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I'm surprised the flock cameras aren't being disabled in a more subtle fashion. All it takes is a tiny drone with a stick attached, and at the end of that stic
by mullingitover 8mo ago
I'm surprised the flock cameras aren't being disabled in a more subtle fashion.
All it takes is a tiny drone with a stick attached, and at the end of that stick is a tiny sponge soaked with tempera paint. Drone goes 'boop' on the camera lens, and the entire system is disabled until an expensive technician drives out with a ladder and cleans the lens at non-trivial expense.
A handful of enterprising activists could blind all the flock cameras in a region in a day or two, and without destroying them, which makes it less of an overtly criminal act.
Obviously not advocating this, just pointing out that flock is very vulnerable to this very simple attack from activists.
- dyauspitr 8mo agoWhy wouldn’t you advocate it? A much easier way of doing this is using paintballs with the appropriate paint.
- martin-t 8mo ago> Why wouldn’t you advocate it? Because advocating things which are moral/ethical but illegal is often against the TOS :( We need laws which are explicitly based on moral principles. Barring that, we should at least have laws which treat sufficiently large platforms as utilities and forbid them from performing censorship without due process.
- michaelmrose 8mo agoYou think we should give people being moderated on a forum due process? How would we ever run forums if every contentious and necessary moderation action could lead to a 5k-50k legal bill.
- salawat 8mo ago...How can we run a government when every contentious and necessary moderation leads to a 5k-50k legal bill? Oh wait... Maybe that's the problem.
- idle_zealot 8mo agoThe goal here by activists isn't to directly physically disarm every camera. Like with any act of protest, it's at least as much about the optics and influence of public opinion. Visibly destroying the units is more cathartic and spreads the message of displeasure better. Ultimately what needs to change is public perception and policy.
- mullingitover 8mo agoSure, but por que no los dos. One or two cameras getting bashed is basically a fart in the wind for flock, and I'd argue that it doesn't actually move the needle in any direction as far as public opinion goes. Those who dislike them don't need further convincing, those who support them are not going to have their opinion changed by property destruction (it might make them support surveillance more, in fact). But hey, it's provocative I guess. On the other hand flock losing their entire fleet is an existential problem for them, and for all the customers they're charging for the use of that fleet. Their BoD will want answers about why the officers of the company are harming shareholders with the way they're operating the business. Cities that have contracts with them may have grounds to terminate them, etc etc.
- andrewflnr 8mo agoIf it's about sending a message, I think using a drone to defeat mass surveillance is quite evocative.
- themafia 8mo agoYes. It will invoke the state to pass even more draconian laws surrounding useful technology. You want to evoke the people and not the state.
- reactordev 8mo agoThat poor printer in Office Space…
- primax 8mo agoIt had it coming.
- tiagod 8mo agoGoring them is about sending a message.
- robotnikman 8mo agoSomewhat related, I'm pretty sure there was a guy in China who did exactly this as protest against their surveillance. Seems effective.
- cheonn638 8mo ago>All it takes is a tiny drone with a stick attached, and at the end of that stick is a tiny sponge soaked with tempera paint. Drone goes 'boop' on the camera lens, and the entire system is disabled until an expensive technician drives out with a ladder and cleans the lens at non-trivial expense Americans don’t care enough Too busy enjoying S&P500 near 7,000 and US$84,000/year median household income
- stavros 8mo agoWhy would I fly an expensive drone close to a camera, fumble about for a minute trying to get it painted like a renaissance artist, when I can get a paintball gun for much less?
- shawn_w 8mo agoSo you can do it without your image being captured by the camera?
- stavros 8mo agoThe camera doesn't have a 360 field of vision, besides COVID masks aren't uncommon now.
- bigiain 8mo agoWhere I am (Sydney Australia) we have fixed speed cameras that automatically create speeding fines to drivers going too fast (well, technically the registered owner of the vehicle via ANPR). They eventually had to equip pretty much every speed camera with a speed camera camera, usually on a much higher pole to make vandalism more difficult.
- stavros 8mo agoOof, I really hate this automated enforcement. Might be time to get a paintball gun.
- lotsofpulp 8mo agoWhat else could make life safer at a realistic cost for people outside of vehicles?
- stavros 8mo agoWhere I live, the speed limit keeps getting reduced so the city can make money off of fines, especially because nobody follows speed limits that are ridiculously low for wide, straight roads where following the limit would make traffic ground to a halt.
- toomuchtodo 8mo agoYou can put a garbage bag over them if you don’t want to sawzall the pole and dispose of the hardware.
- jimnotgym 8mo agoWhat you want is for this to become a Tiktok craze.
- soulofmischief 8mo ago> A handful of enterprising activists could blind all the flock cameras in a region in a day or two, and without destroying them, which makes it less of an overtly criminal act No, that would likely end in a RICO or terrorism case if it continued. Just because the cameras aren't destroyed doesn't mean CorpGov won't want to teach a lesson.
- vorpalhex 8mo agoYou want to fly a multi-hundred dollar device loaded with radios that constantly broadcasts out a unique ID and possibly your FAA ID and use it for crime? Or even better yet, get arrested halfway to trying to dip your drone into paint on a sidewalk? Just throw a rock at the stupid thing.
- logankeenan 8mo agoDo all drones do this now? Is this required by law for manufacturers to implement?
- eichin 8mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_ID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_ID in the US (FAA) at least.
- tastyfreeze 8mo agoDrones over 250 grams or for any drone operated commercially under part 107 registration is required. But, its easy to just build your own or desolder the id chip if you dont want it.
- 05 8mo agoIt’s easy to build your own, but it’s impossible to build one to be as stable as a DJI one, or as cheaply. E.g. with an FPV drone hitting the lens would be much harder (but you could use spray instead of a stick to make it easier). Removing remote id ‘chip’ is plain impossible since it’s implemented by the same radio that does video link.
- pixelmelt 8mo agoHad a friend who worked on designing systems to pick these signals up around airports
- jimnotgym 8mo agoIn 1950s UK every country kid had a catapult in their pocket. Maybe that is what we should do. Give the kids catapults and tell them not to use them on Flock cameras. That is usually effective at making kids so stuff
- api 8mo agoIn Minecraft it’s well known that lasers of even moderate power can ruin camera sensors. Only in Minecraft though.
- uoaei 8mo agoReflections are a concern regarding bystanders' eye safety, be safe.
- michaelmrose 8mo agoWhat is the threshold for eye vs sensor damage and am I correct in assuming that duration is a factor. Basically less juice for a longer duration ruins a sensor but humans blink? For science.
- kotaKat 8mo agoI picked up an Axis security camera rated for ALPR use (the Q1700 series) and it has a safety warning telling me I shouldn't look at the built in IR LEDs for more than a minute...
- dsl 8mo agoLIDAR has been screwing up traffic cameras.
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago> All it takes is a tiny drone with a stick attached, and at the end of that stick is a tiny sponge soaked with tempera paint I (EDIT: hate) Flock Safety cameras. If someone did this in my town, I’d want them arrested. They’re muddying the moral clarity of the anti-Flock messaging, the ultimate goal in any protest. And if they’re willing to damage that property, I’m not convinced they understand why they shouldn’t damage other property. (More confidently, I’m not convinced others believe they can tell the difference.) Flock Safety messages on security. Undermining that pitch is helpful. Underwriting it with random acts of performative chaos plays into their appeal. > flock is very vulnerable to this very simple attack We live in a free society, i.e. one with significant individual autonomy. We’re all always very vulnerable. That’s the social contract. (The fact that folks actually contemplating violent attacks tend to be idiots helps, too.)
- encrypted_bird 8mo ago> I haste Flock Safety cameras. Was this a typo? If not, what does "haste" mean in this context? (I'm not messing with you; I'm genuinely wondering.)
- JumpCrisscross 8mo agoIt was a typo. Fixed.
- malfist 8mo agoOh please. Its tempera paint. It'll probably wash off in the next rain.
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago> Its tempera paint. It'll probably wash off in the next rain If they do it right. If they don’t, it doesn’t. And between the action and the next rain, Flock Safety gets to message about vandalism.
- Hizonner 8mo ago
- SoftTalker 8mo agoThe point of civil disobedience is to get arrested. That's what calls attention to the injustice of the thing being protested against.
- michaelmrose 8mo agoThe point of resistance is commonly to harm the counterparty in a fashion that the perpetrator finds morally acceptable such as to disincentivize them not convince them. Vietnamese vs US Grunts not cute useless protestors holding signs that threaten to hold different signs longer.
- Starman_Jones 8mo agoYou're both partially right, and that highlights the difference between nonviolent and violent resistance. You are incorrect in saying that a resistance is always trying to disincentivize the counterparty. Even in your example, the NVA didn't overrun their counterparty (the US military); they convinced enough of the US voting public (which is very much a separate entity from the US military) that "Peace with honor" was a viable, preferable option.
- uoaei 8mo agoThat would be detectable by the FAA and they would send the FBI after you, unless you used a junk toy drone but that would not cover much distance between charges.
- petre 8mo agoBecause destroying them sends a different message. People want them gone, not merely disabled. They're not joking or messing around with drones and tempera about it. Using a firearm to wreck the camera lens before tearing the whole thing down would be nice though.
- Rapzid 8mo agoThe should disable them all in an area and pile them on a platter in a public space. Like a CiCi's takeover.
- kybernetyk 8mo ago>All it takes is a tiny drone with a stick attached, and at the end of that stick is a tiny sponge soaked with tempera paint. This must be the most hi-tech solution to a low tech problem I've seen this week ;)
- mzi 8mo ago> soaked with tempera paint Or even etching liquid, then you need to replace the lens.
- tamimio 8mo agoI wouldn’t suggest doing that, it will result in more regulation restricting drones. I joined before few workshops that included the government too, and there were discussions about requiring a whole license every time you modify the drone, not limited to the airframe, but the flight purpose and payload. So you can imagine in the future, modding or repurposing your drone could be a “federal crime” if you don’t go and re-license the drone every time you change the payload.
- wolvoleo 8mo agoShooting them with a paintball gun might be a lot simpler and has the same effect. Just needs paint that's a bit harder to remove
- kotaKat 8mo agoSilly string is fast, cheap, easy, and fun when it freezes onto the camera in colder environments. Maybe some spray foam?
- rationalist 8mo agoSeems like it would produce a lot of litter on the ground before covering up the lens adequately.
- mock-possum 8mo ago“All it takes is a tiny drone” Alright you buy one for me and I’ll consider it