- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
Imagine all that effort put into catching someone smashing a stupid camera, it could’ve been used on a pedophile or something.
You’ve been warned, they’re high on the lookout for Flock vandals now.
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Meyer faces charges of grand theft, criminal mischief causing at least $1,000 in damage and damaging computer or electronic equipment. His total bond was set at $7,500.
I’m sorry but which is it? Did he destroy a fake camera or did he destroy some real equipment worth money? You can’t have it both ways you fucking pigs.
They can and do.
Give that man a fake sentence.
How can they charge him with destroying computer equipment if the camera was fake?
Bullshit charge
Does he have a bail fund?
Meyer faces charges of grand theft, criminal mischief causing at least $1,000 in damage and damaging computer or electronic equipment.
Furthermore, nothing was stolen, so charging him with both grand theft and criminal mischief seems like a duplication of charges. Also, a fake camera is surely not worth over $1,000.
Its a “throw the scary book” level of charges that look good on a press release.
And also trying to pressure him into a plea deal by offering to drop some of these bogus charges if he pleads guilty to one or two real charges. (They really don’t want this one going up in front of a jury trial.)
Its not like one of the most unified sentiments right now for everyone is a shared hatred of flock cameras
It was a fake camera, but it was made of gold for some reason 🤷♂️
It’s Florida the facts are how they decide they are
If you point a fake gun at a police officer they put a real bullet in you. As far as I’m concerned, when the police point a fake camera at you, you take them at their word and assume malicious intent. This was not a crime. Awful but lawful.
Oh no, this absolutely was a crime and absolutely illegal.
Unlawful, but a moral, responsible and respectable action. One which any reasonable and sane person would likely do the same.
If the police didn’t pay for it then who is the crime against?
this is atrocious, the police aren’t concerned with criminals, theyre concerned with control, dead ass hope the worst for the boys in blue over their now. they do not serve the people or the state in my eyes anymore, they’re Gestapo.
There’s no way this guy is guilty. I was playing checkers with him at my house when the alleged crime occurred.
I remember it clearly, at this particular time I was also playing rock paper scissors with him.
Officers he can’t possibly be guilty because that was the same time he was snorting cocaine out of my navel.
Imagine all that effort put into catching someone smashing a stupid camera, it could’ve been used on a pedophile or something.
Now I’m just imagining them putting out a fake child as a pedo sting.
Catch a Predator is a real thing
*was a real thing.
They stopped doing it after one of the people they caught committed suicide.
Perverted Justice and other spinoff vigilante groups are a thing the police still respond to. And the police themselves also do this. They just did this in San Francisco recently. But maybe To Catch a Predator with what’s his face Hanson was stopped.
Call me when they get these on the show.
That’s what they do though
Isn’t that Dateline?
Is he wearing another jacket over his school uniform jacket? That would be a dress code violation in most schools.
IIRC he’s wearing the uniform jacket inside out because he thought they were boring. (As to why the lining is that crazy looking, I have to assume the answer is “it was the 90s”.)
lol I didn’t watch the show much. Wearing the uniform incorrectly would also be a dress code violation.
He was exploiting how badly written was the dress code, he also wore a necktie as a headband because it didn’t specify where to wear it.
This is a new kind of autism.
You’ve been warned, they’re high on the lookout for Flock vandals now.
halloween is going to be fun
Give yourself some range and use a laser pointer.
Now they’ve messed with Florida Man. I don’t feel sorry for them.
People reading this article and replying with smug gotchas are simply not getting fascism as a concept.
I think someone needs to develop a portable, focusable beam-EMP device. So, you know, those soft, vulnerable electronics inside certain devices can be disabled remotely, invisibly, without such the need for inelegant tools such as angle-grinders and box-cutters.
I’d also say re-used Bluray/DVD lasers to burn out the camera CCD, but that would need to be done very carefully, only angling from above, to avoid risk to aircraft and definitely care to avoid any people nearby.
(I wonder if Flock cameras have some sort of laser-filtering on their lenses?)
Do Flock Camera towers use aluminum in any critical, ground-accessible parts? I hear mercury does nasty things to aluminum. But it’s also toxic so would need to be handled carefully.
Not sure if EMP is practical, but a small drone with a laser requires much less power and wouldn’t do the camera’s sensor any good. A drone with a can of spray paint could also cause problems. So I hope no one does either of these.
With all the cameras being re-patriated by good citizens, I’m sure a number of them already made their way to skilled hackers, tinkerers.
And given how amateurish Flock was with their most recent PR event (a reporter tried to attend, got rejected almost last minute, Flock even went behind his back to cancel his hotel booking, so our guy went full out and with a metric fuckton of RF equipment, monitored the event’s signals. WiFi, Bluetooth, wireless mics (which they often left on and just broadcasting out into the wild), I have a feeling that the whole Flock ecosystem is riddled with security issues.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some incredibly dumb stupid kill switch built into the firmware that can be triggered by something as simple as an ESP32.
What about a drone with a can of thermite
Okay, but seriously, who has enough rust just sitting around to make that shit? You’re like the third person I’ve seen talk about thermite, and that shit is ridiculous to make.
Then you have to go through all the trouble of somehow igniting the thermite and getting it away from your drone…
The same can really be said for a can of spray paint. I want to see someone actually design that shit before I’d believe it’s possible. Maybe someone with a lot of tinkering time, but not the majority of us just trying to buy parts from a hobby store.
Doesn’t take a whole lot. Visit a local auto shop and ask about the buildup around the brake rotor lathe.
I wouldn’t have thought of that as a source. I was thinking along the lines of having to manually mortar and pestle (well, not an actual one, because they wouldn’t do metal) rusted hoods and such that you could yoink from a junkyard. That would actually be harder nowadays, with all the plastic and not-iron/not-steel metals being used in cars.
I used to work at an auto shop. We “accidentally” put a hole in the concrete floor by taking the oxyacetylene torch to a crushed soda can and a chunk of rusted metal shavings from the lathe. We absolutely knew what we were doing. It was glorious.
who has enough rust just sitting around to make that shit?
Amazon dot com.
Exactly where every enterprising vandal should source their highly specific weapon of destruction…
and that shit is ridiculous to make
It’s literally just rust and aluminum powder in a 1:1 ratio
Drone with a water balloon full of paint. Aim for the solar panel.
Block the panel, the batteries don’t charge, the camera doesn’t work.
What about a satellite with an array of nuclear weapons? Thermite is such overkill, and risks harming the surroundings.
Good idea, if we blot out the sun with nuclear winter they can’t recharge.
Why not just build a star-destroyer drone and aim it at the sun? Then Flock can’t just wait it out and rebuild.
That’s a good point, but what if some remnant of humanity survives and rebuilds on another planet, and one of the survivors remembers having seen a flock camera? We should destroy all matter in the universe. Or find some way to accelerate heat death?
For the latter, could I suggest building a very large fridge and putting the universe inside it? We can attach it to a drone if that helps.
Most EMPs only cause momentary disruption, usually causing the device to reboot. To cause permanent damage, you need a massive amount of power in that EMP device. (Also, the strength of the EMP falls off very quickly with distance, so if you want it to work at any significant range, then you’ll need exponentially more power.)
And by a lot of power, I mean this thing is going to at least be backpack-sized. It will probably end up being too big and too heavy for one person to easily carry.
Unless maybe you want to get really fancy with some chemically generated EMP? But that’s going to be a lot harder to make directional, and it will probably be a one time use device.
(Also, if you get caught, this strategy may earn you some extra-spicy federal charges.)
I’d also say re-used Bluray/DVD lasers to burn out the camera CCD
Sources I’ve been able to find put a bluray laser diode’s power at about 0.0126W.
To maybe cause damage to camera sensors, you’re going to need at least 1W, more likely 3-5W before you start seeing any real damage. To cause damage to a camera CCD at distance, you’re going to need hundreds of watts and you’ll need to focus the beam far better than most high-power lasers do.
Again, a device capable of disabling cameras at range will be large. Lasers with that kind of power are at least the size of a large suitcase, and that’s without adding in the necessary batteries and power supply.
And it would be highly irresponsible to go shining such a high-powered laser in an uncontrolled public setting. Stray reflections could easily cause permanent eye damage to yourself and/or innocent bystanders.
(And even when a camera is damaged by lasers, it tends to result in only a few dead pixels. The camera’s image might still remain usable unless you blast it very thoroughly.)
If you want a technological means to disable Flock cameras, I’d recommend trying to hack them instead. Every single one of them has a wireless connection that could – at least in theory – be used to hijack control of the device and shut it down. Though that will only disable it until someone turns it back on.
For an actual, practical way to disable them at a distance, you’re going to want projectiles.
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Paintball to the lens
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Pellet gun to the lens (hoping a cracked lens will make the camera’s image unusable)
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Shotgun loaded with birdshot (birdshot is generally safe to shoot at an upward angle because it won’t have enough energy to harm anyone when it comes back down)
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Just throw rocks and bricks at it
With the latter two, I’d actually recommend aiming at the solar panel rather than the camera itself. These cameras are known to track phones and other devices, and damaging/blocking the camera lens won’t stop that. But damaging the solar panel will stop that – once the batteries run out, all of the camera’s functions will shut down.
And on that note – if you’re going camera hunting, of course leave your phone at home! Preferably, leave it playing a long youtube playlist. The youtube play history combined with the phone’s location history could give you a convincing alibi.
Great info. I only vaguely recall seeing some youtube videos or something showing that DVD or Bluray lasers could damage CCDs, but it was almost certainly in a desktop-lab situation, at a range of only a few meters. Inverse-square law strikes again!
Solar panels… yes, target the power source not the electronics themselves (then again, why not both?)
Small kamikaze drones launched from a safely out-of-view location? Now we’re getting into full insurrection territory.
No matter what the method, they’re going to get legislation classifying it as ‘terrorism’ I am sure.
Drones have a registration number attached to it so that would need to be removed. They’re also FAA regulated so they’ll slap some felony charges on there.
Not DIY hobby drones.
Small kamikaze drones launched from a safely out-of-view location?
For a ‘small’ kamikaze drone, I’d recommend experimenting with lighter-than-air flight – balloons/blimps. You could make a small radio controlled blimp with significant lift capacity for far cheaper than you could build a quadcopter-style drone with the same payload capacity. And they should work well as long as you’re not dealing with excessive wind.
And your balloon/blimp can be filled with cheaper, more effective hydrogen rather than helium (much more expensive and less lifting capacity) or hot air (much less lifting capacity). Since it’s meant to be disposable, nobody cares about the risk of it catching fire and burning/exploding. Hell, that might actually contribute to its destructive capabilities. Hydrogen is so easy to get that you can feasibly just make it yourself with simple hardware store parts.
You don’t need fancy control electronics, either. Any toy RC car’s parts could be repurposed for it, including battery and motors.
These cameras are known to track phones and other devices, and damaging/blocking the camera lens won’t stop that. But damaging the solar panel will stop that
Or double-tap with the shotgun. Or triple tap to hit the control box as well
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Complicated methods don’t scale well and tend to amp up the punishment you’ll get if caught. They also make it easy to develop a profile of you.
A slingshot can be easily hidden/disposed, is stealthy when used, and dirt cheap.
Don’t do this off of your Roblox server. And don’t do it if you don’t know where the person who’d be stopping you is. Alibi should be established before hand.
Someone mentioned gallium in another thread. Safer than mercury to handle, but you’ll 1.) have to hope that the pipe is aluminum, and 2.) have to expose the aluminum because it will likely have a coating on that would prevent the gallium from weakening the aluminum.
Oh, and 3.) it will likely take a while for any effect to show.
I’d also say re-used Bluray/DVD lasers to burn out the camera CCD, but that would need to be done very carefully, only angling from above, to avoid risk to aircraft and definitely care to avoid any people nearby.
Just look behind it and don’t point it at aircraft. If you can’t see them they’re either not there or behind clouds that will block a laser beam.
I bought a high powered green laser for this.
Fake flock heal hero.
Give them time. They’ll probably say they found CSAM on him at some point. Of course it won’t be true.
