I assume you're concerned about reflections from the camera lens or housing? In my mind, the archetypal camera is mounted on a nice tall pole, silhouetted against open sky, and painted matte black.

> watt class lasers

Surely those would be excessive for someone attacking the sensor, unless they want to remotely sear some graffiti by burning away paint.

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).

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?

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.

But also if a small portion of Americans disparately plan to do stuff like sabotage surveillance camera, it's still newsworthy.

They'll stop once the police (or ICE, more likely) start dishing out horrific punishments for it.

All this shit flows downhill from Citizens United.

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.

the threat has to be credible, which is where things like this, and luigi are quite valuable

[1] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/record-low-crime-rates-are-...

Having lived or spent time in a lot of 3rd world shitholes, including a civil war, I've only really felt freedom in places with lawless lack of government, never places with 'rule of law' -- that always gets twisted for the elite.

Of course the same happens in lawless regions, but power is fractured enough, there is a limit on power they can wield against the populace, as the opposing factions ultimately are a check on any one side oppressing the population to leave. They can't man machine guns at all the 'borders' and ultimately corruption becomes cheap enough that it is accessible to the common person which arguably provides more power to the common man than representative democracy does.

I think this element of factions in competition was part of the original genius of the '50' states with the very minimal federal government. But the consolidation of federal power and loss of the 10th amendment and expansion of various clauses in the constitution means there is now no escape and very few remaining checks.

I don't have facebook, X, or tiktok installed on my phone.

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.

There obviously isn't a future without crime. This is just a tool to make it easier for police to do their job and deter criminals somewhat, but that is probably marginal.

There will always be kidnappings, there will always be property damage. Having technology available to make it easier to solve those crimes seems obvious to me.

edit: I live in Dallas so, although we sometimes hear gunshots when the Cowboys score a touchdown, i'm not in an active war zone.