I wonder how resistant the cameras are to strong handheld lasers. I suppose they could harden them against some common wavelengths with filters, but that'd affect the image clarity in normal use.
I assume you're concerned about reflections from the camera lens or housing? My assumption is that these cameras are typically on tall poles, painted matte black, and silhouetted against open sky.
> I have worked with watt class lasers before
Surely an attacker wouldn't need that much here though... Well, unless they want to remotely sear some graffiti too.
Most of his work was dealing with and accounting for reflections that left the machine. If you have a prism that’s sending 95% of the light where you want it to go, when it’s a multi watt laser you can’t just let that 5% go wherever it wants. You will blind someone. So his job was getting black bodies in all the right spots to absorb the lost light.
His safety goggles looked like even more expensive Oakleys of that era and they were (much more expensive).
Please, don't play with lasers. At all. Even supposedly "safe" lasers can output far more light than expected.
How can one know what is dangerous for the eyes or not? Years ago I got an "IR illuminator" (from aliexpress, probably) that I wanted to use with my raspberrypi NoIR camera, for fun. Say filming myself during the night to see how much I move while sleeping, or making my own wildlife camera trap.
But I was scared that it could be dangerous and never used it (I tested it in an empty room, but that was it).
Is there a safe way for a hobbyist to get an IR illuminator and be sure that I won't make somebody blind with it?
https://www.cehrp.org/dissection-of-flock-safety-camera/
https://www.arducam.com/product/arducam-ov5647-noir-camera-b...
Well who could've seen that coming.
If you don't believe me, just look at the CCP. It already happened there.
They disagree on the authority, not the methods, and help the two institutional parties cooperate to destroy civil liberties by accusing their counterparts of abusing ("weaponizing") civil rights to commit crimes, spy for foreign governments, and/or abuse children.
It just depends on if you're on the up portion of the K or the down stick. The larger picture might show an increase but if you split the data apart one leg is actually declining while the other is growing.
I would suggest you go look at polls. Dems have been polling in the dirt among their own party since they decided to usurp Bernie in 2016 and embrace the rich, Repubs have been polling in the dirt since Trump took office last year.
Absolutely no one is happy about the state of America. You can argue semantics, but it's pointless navel gazing at the larger national issue. No one, of any political affiliation, believes the government can govern. It's probably the single uniting factor across all political stripes. No one is happy. No one believes America has gotten measurably better in the last 10-15 years, and everyone is suffering in one way or another. The flock/authoritarian bent is simply the last gasps of a neoliberal government that has realized there's no easy way out of the last 40 years of anti-citizen policies.
- Flock decision-makers and customers holding ethics as a priority, and not taking the actions they are due to sense of duty, community, morals etc
- Peer pressure resulting in ostracization of Flock execs and decision makers until they stop the unethical behavior
- Governments using legislation and law enforcement to prevent the cameras being used in the way they are
What has worried me for years is that Americans would not resort to this level. That things are just too comfortable at home to take that brave step into the firing lines of being on the right side of justice but the wrong side of the law.
I'm relieved to see more and more Americans causing necessary trouble. I still think that overall, Americans are deeply underreacting to the times. But that only goes as far as to be my opinion. I can't speak for them and I'm not their current king.
But also if a small portion of Americans disparately plan to do stuff like sabotage surveillance camera, it's still newsworthy.
Politics is like water boiling - it’s just going to be little bubbles at first but all of a sudden it will start to really rumble.
Doesn't breakdown in rule of law happened when a corporation (surely) bribed local officials to install insecure surveillance devices with zero concern for the community living near them?
It really comes down to whether you consider an individual’s right to privacy more important than your state’s security. Neither is really a perfect options in this case, but having the Flock camera means some part of your property is under the panopticon of local law enforcement that could arrest you (loss of privacy).
Going with chinese tech, you are probably more private in regards to your own government, but you’re probably having some negative effect on state security based on the marginal benefit of CCP surveillance/ potential malware in your network.
The dichotomy is false. People could have cameras which report to no one, but that’s less useful for all governments involved.
If enough people can be convinced that those cameras are somehow helping Trump, you’ll find a lot of people in here and Reddit saying “yes”, I’ll imagine. Before this we had people vandalizing Teslas because of Elon.
All this shit flows downhill from Citizens United.
That was the wellspring of all this shit.
I don't like all this surveillance stuff, but Flock is just the tip of the iceberg and "direct action" against Flock is just as likely to backfire as it is to lead to changes. More importantly, once you give folks moral license to do this stuff it's hard to contain the scope of their activity.
You don't want to give people "moral license" to do this broadly, but we've hit a point where there are no options available that don't have downsides. Stated another way: Taking no action can also be unethical.
I believe in surveillance, but Flock is just the tip of the iceberg and rolling out mass public surveillance is just as likely to backfire as it is to lead to changes. More importantly, once you give folks moral license to do this stuff it’s hard to contain the scope of their activity.
Everything you said is true, but I suspect, also irrelevant, because options short of vigilante justice aren't going to be seen by the public as viable for much longer (if they're even seen so now). America's social contract is breaking, and existing institutions make it clear, daily, that they will strengthen that trend rather than reverse it. And as JFK said, 'Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.' That doesn't make the violence laudable, or even desirable. It is simply inevitable without seemingly impossible positive change from an establishment that is hostile to such.
Yearly reminder to read:
https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/kurz-the-discourse-of-vol...
[1] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/record-low-crime-rates-are-...
This is absolutely the right thing to do.
Remove and smash the cellular modem in your car while you are at it.
I don't have facebook, X, or tiktok installed on my phone.
https://darkanswers.com/how-your-location-is-sold-to-adverti...
[0] https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=video+r...
There's more of us then there are of them - so their wealth can't protect them from everything. They can and do buy privacy so there must be something worth protecting that the masses can expose using their same methods.
"Could I be making wrong assumptions? No I'm a hacker, it must be everyone else who is wrong."
Police states are like autoimmune diseases under the hygiene hypothesis. They'll keep ramping up their sensitivity until they're attacking everything, even when it's benign.
There are other ways to sacrifice your privacy for a sense of safety that doesn't impose your 'understanding of right and wrong' on the entire public.
Until recently very few people could articulate the real risk this tech posed, now you can literally see it play out (depending where you live)
hackernews682•1h ago