Good, fuck this panopticon dystopia shit.
Also, some guy sliced the entire pole and left a message:
hahaha get wrecked ya surveilling fucks
They sell battery powered angle grinders at Harbour Freight.
Paint ball guns with permanent ink ammunition works too.
powerful laser pointers can burn camera sensors out too
Just please wear properly rated safety glasses and keep them away from bystanders.
i prefer the one in the picture by a commentor, permanently remove the flock camera.
Pay cash
Wear a mask
And smoke a little grass?
Definitely eat ass
No need to be crass.
Damn that’s aluminium, not steel. You can do that with an angle grinder, reciprocating saw, or even a mapp gas torch
I can definitely cut steal with my angle grinder.
But what about steel?
“crime”
This news man lol
Killing nazis is also a crime. Both currently, and throughout nazi Germany. Do with that information what you will.
Guess who else also needs to be “vandalized”
hahaha get wrecked ya surveilling fucks
lol
panopticon
Great word choice.
It’s quite common to hear we’re living in a digital panopticon. See modern philosophers.
Can’t have shit in Detroit.
looks like he tore it off at the end after slicing most of it.
lol that’s so cool!
This is exactly what this company deserves, to be smashed out of business and history.
Reminder: If you destroy a camera, be aware that other cameras in the area may be recording you as well. Protect your identity.
Leave your fucking phone at home too.
Faraday bags work… But test them.
I got a cheapo $7 Chromebook sized bag that seemed to work for my SOs iphone. We don’t use NFC so I couldn’t test that.
No BT, WiFi, or Cell, and probably no GPS.
I only did casual testing.
The screen still showed the signal having low bars for WiFi and cellular, but it didn’t actually receive a signal at all when trying to call or use the net, not even with the top of the bag open a sliver and my hand in there.
If the device was off or in airplane mode and in the bag, I’d be comfortable assuming it was safely hidden from tracking.
I haven’t thoroughly tested my various personal devices, but I expect identical results.
I think everyone should probably have a bag like this around, in a go-bag or something, just in case. And it’s safer to have your phone available than not, as long as it’s secure (use a pin or password to lock it, use encryption, put emergency info on it for first responders).
If you’re going to use a Faraday bag, use it regularly, like every day at random times.
Imagine you are being accused of a crime. The crime occured at 8pm. The phone records show that your phone went dark at your house 7pm and then reconnected at 9pm at your house. The crime scene is 1 hour away from your home by foot. Records show this is the only time your phone went dark in a very long time.
So if you bag your phone (aluminium foil bags work pretty good too), do it regularly, randomly, and don’t bag it and unbag it immediately before leaving or after getting home
Fun fact: lots of them have exposed cables that should not be cut with a long arm pruning pole found in your grandmother’s shed.
Another thing you should never ever do: mix paint and dot3 in a handheld pressurized garden poison sprayer.
Why shouldn’t dot3 mixed with paint? Just so I know why to avoid it.
Brake fluid would etch the glass of the lenses. Cleaning the surface wouldn’t return the camera to service. Better than paint would be any other substance to thin out the brake fluid for application, particularly if it were less noticeable than paint. That would cause the repair order to come in from lost data collection rather than a report of vandalism, denying them creeping time and that sweet, sweet data. Definitely don’t do that.
I didn’t know that, and I have used liters of the stuff. Learn something every day.
Is it just Dot3? Dot4 is more common these days.
BTW, kids, we are talking about brake fluid, so don’t go spraying it on your camera lenses!
guessing because it goes through the sprayer
Why not?
Because that would be illegal, and advice in easy-to-acess ways to sabotage fascism should not be shared anywhere.
my neighbor hood has one right at the entrance. I make a point of flipping it off every time i pass it. Also, If you were curious how many of these violations of privacy are around you. Here you go- https://deflock.org/map
Everyone should start 3d printing faces of Epstein and take them everywhere they go
No curiosity here. I just assume I’m being monitored everywhere I go now, though I keep my phone in a faraday bag when I’m not using it, so that at least is something.
All a person can do now is manage the problem incrementally. I love the idea of people sabotaging doorbell cams though.
This is too defeatist for me. I am upset to see these all over town, but too small minded to do anything about it. I want to start something to pressure community leaders to change, but i worry that i’ll make a lot of noise then drop it like i do with everything. I’d love to join with a group.
Follow that link above. There’s a few great online communities around this. One involves keeping these camera out of places that don’t have them yet, for example.
Check out Benn Jordan and Louis Rossman on YT as they are two people spearheading this from a social standpoint. Louis specifically regularly provides links to contacting your legislators about it, including things to say to them. It’s faster and easier than you’d think to do.
On a macro scale I do think the privacy ship has sailed. Seeing the leaked illegal footage in the Guthrie case confirmed that the big tech companies are spying on us, storing the footage permanently, and leaking it to the government covertly upon request. I don’t think it’s unfair to presume that both ruling parties know and love this, which means we’re never turning back that clock.
On the local level, though, change is still eminently possible. I actually drafted an email to my HOA this morning about getting these doorbell cams banned in my building.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s reasonable to give up in the face of it.
You should make it as hard as possible for them to track you, use private OpenSource software, advocate for it and don’t be afraid if direct action, like destroying these cameras. The more people that do it, the harder it will be for them to do something about it.
Oh, I do.
I just don’t trust the majority to do anything meaningful themselves. It’s why recycling doesn’t work and why Democrats and Republicans keep getting elected. Our only power now is local.
Yup. And also we should advocate for our rights more locally. Organize with other people, raise awareness and do direct action.
I think the most effective form of resistance is relationships and new local organisations and new structures that resist the forces of the state and of capitalism.
If you are looking for some ideas, maybey you can look here or do your own research.
both ruling parties know and love this, which means we’re never turning back that clock
Stop this defeatist attitude. Yes, the Democrats are working for the ruling class. That doesn’t mean we’re so over, it just means we have to adapt our strategy. “Vote blue no matter who” is a dead strategy. Electoralism itself is at best harm reduction. We need to build a new movement from the ground up for the working class.
Can you share the email draft? How does one convince a bunch of (most likely) MAGA morons to restrict doorbell cams? They love surveillance and ICE.
A black trash bag, a roll of duct tape, and a ladder are not destructive but still very effective.
Just be aware, many of these cameras have multiple other cameras pointing at eachother. Also the map cant be trusted to show all cameras. my neighborhood alone, has at least 4 that dont show up on the map.
Multiple black trash bags, then.
Also, if you know of some that aren’t mapped (and are actually flock cameras, not city) you should add them.
Ehh then your destroying a persons property. And they might not know how bad they are.
Seems to be an American thing only.
China and the UK lead the surveillance world.
Tell hood he should take that thing down!
Well, that’s actually better than I thought. I wonder if Seattle got rid of them? Home Depot (Pieces of Shit) and an Amazon building that overlooks the interstate seem to be the only ones in Seattle proper.
Just gonna leave this here for anyone so inclined
Yeah I’m based in one of the highest density ALPR regions in the country, this would just be going off constantly lol
Well, the CEO did openly invite and approve of this. In his own words, Flock cameras aren’t forced on anyone. So the only logical conclusion is to destroy them if so desired.
Fuck centralized surveillance.
I would like to have a brief discussion with whoever downvoted you.
I think it was accidental.
That’s the beauty of downvotes: no f-ing context on why people disagree with you or if they even do and are just holding a vendetta from somewhere else, since they aren’t forced to indicate why.
The account enjoys making a lot of very questionably inconsistent downvotes over their far fewer upvotes and even comments their own suggestion on how to sabotage Flock surveillance cameras in the thread yet doesn’t seem to be an edgelord in their own comments, so who knows. Unlike upvoting, where you presumably agree with a comment, downvoting provides no context as you have no clue why or how much they disagreed with something. Presumably the statement was too simplistic to resonate with their refined tastes, which to avoid the downvote should presumably have been stated with the collection of words they would favor as an argument, if they ever bothered to make it.
I think >50% of my up votes are me swiping right to go back but missing the screen border by a tiny bit, causing the jerboa swipe to vote to kick in.
so who knows, maybe they just accidentally hit the downvote arrow while scrolling?
Yeah, accidental voting happens to me when I’m using my phone. Kind of inevitable unless someone uses an app where voting is done through pulling left or right as opposed to tapping.
I don’t take is so personally. I have someone periodically following me around downvoting everything I write too it appears. It’s pathetic.
I don’t take any particular downvote personally, I just have a problem with the whole unregulated concept of downvoting is, and I think there’s a reason why the same networks that brought it into popularity over the predecessors that didn’t have are also the ones rampant today toxicity, cult-on-demand bubbles, circlejerks, and the like. Lemmy is the one platform where downvoting really isn’t worth anything - well, at least unless the piefed guys have a say in it, from my understanding. If it ever became popular to try to act like the upvote/downvote ratio means something in Lemmy, it would be far easier to manipulate and take advantage in contrast to non-federated platforms, and I already commonly see accounts with almost no comment or post participation since a few months just being used to slap upvotes and downvotes on an hourly basis.
It would just be so simple to improve, but people just keep trying to clone the same flawed systems that made them leave other platforms.
There’s one a block from my house, and three blocks from my work, so they can see me coming and going each direction.
…BRB
There’s two on each of the roads to my favorite local freeway and there’s two in the parking lot of my local hardware store
Similar to what happened in Hong Kong a few years back when the CCP introduced metal telephone poles chock full of monitoring equipment and cameras.
Offtopic, but it’s sad how all discussion about Hong Kong just slipped away into the void. I think this is the first time I’ve seen it mentioned in almost a year.
One of my friends just didn’t even remember it happening, he thought I was making it up at first.
It’s sad, but I don’t think there’s much else that can be done. I guess it’s all running how the CCP wants it now? (Or are there still protests we just don’t hear about?)
Beijing inserted candidates into the local elections, won power and passed sweeping National Security laws which allowed for mass arrests and the breaking up of pro-democracy institutions. The key people in the movement were jailed. New laws, mass arrests and detainment effectively ended protests.
TL;DR: it was crushed.
Hong Kong’s now just another Mainlander city… with British characteristics.
That’s a microcosm of what they want to do in Taiwan.
I just learned HGTV has a Jan 7 2026 show called “Neighborhood Watch”. It’s like America’s Funniest Home Videos, but it’s all doorbell/security cameras. User-submitted, I think. I absolutely refuse to believe this was a casual idea from HGTV as they struggle to maintain viewership. There’s no way this isn’t funded by one of these companies, meant to continue making everyone comfortable with constant surveillance and increasing the desire to have constant recording devices to catch these one-off comedic moments.
Tagline: “Everywhere you go, cameras are recording. Your neighbors are watching.”
“Sabotage”
Yeah, it’s a weird way of spelling “liberation”.
Pesky German dissidents sabotage military equipment, 1944.
This behavior from companies is so predictable that I’m perpetually disappointed in my fellow human beings for ever buying this equipment.
There are a lot of people in positions of power whos paychecks rely on them not understanding things.
How would you take such a camera down without being spotted and tracked? Do they not look in all directions?
Not asking for all the technical details on how to take one down, just curious how so many can be taken down with so few arrests after. I guess it’s a matter of good disguises?
Leave your phone at home.
Don’t drive your own car there, and don’t get an uber.
Ride a scooter, bicycle, or walk.
Wear a dust mask, headphones (to prevent ear pattern recognition) and safety glasses.
Wear a high vis vest while working on the camera. The retro reflective strips show up as dazzling white on infrared cameras, washing out the image. It also helps make any witness assume you’re a legitimate worker
Wear dark clothing with no logos over the top of something dorky, like a white Ralph Lauren shirt and golf shorts. Ditch the dark clothing if you even sense you might be stopped on the way home.
Put duct tape on the soles of your shoes to make the shoe prints indistinct.
Wear gloves, rigger gloves are fine, latex if you have nothing else.
Work quickly, never run (unless your under disguise is a jogging outfit).
if you see a cop, security, or any person that suspects you, believe in your heart and soul that you haven’t committed a crime. Find a way to delete the act from your memory, become an innocent person in your own mind.
Emotional escalation to cop should be indifference, confusion, irritation, indignant, suspicion, and when detained or arrested, lawful but otherwise silent cooperation. That’s how innocent people behave when suspected or accused of a crime. Once detained, say nothing except your name, age, DOB, address, license number ect and “I don’t know, I need to speak to a lawyer.” Even though they will ask you a thousand questions to try to get you to implicate yourself. There is nothing you can say that will talk you out of cuffs.
Specifically say you are invoking your right to silence and specifically say you are invoking your right to council.
If they continue to pester you after this, it’s a violation of your rights and a lawyer will have more ammunition to defend you.
If they come back hours later and try talking to you again, you invoke them again. After a significant period of time (whatever the cop decides) they can try again to “see if you’ve changed your mind.”
But just staying silent is not the same in the courts as invoking your right to remain silent.
People tend to want to talk and fill silence. You’ll have to control your urges and learn to be comfortable in silence.
Also, don’t sweat too hard because covering/uninstalling cameras like this is misdemenor-level vandalism (don’t take the cameras, they cost enough to warrant felony grand theft charges).
You’ll have a bond and the bond will be low enough that most bail bondsmen will bond you out on promise of payment even if you don’t have someone outside ready to come get you.
If you’re caught, you’re looking at a few months of probation and restitution. If confronted by police, stay calm, follow orders, “I don’t want to answer questions without a lawyer” and “<Your name>” are all you need to say. Do that an you’ll be right back home opening a gofundme in no time.
Don’t do crimes though, obviously.
Yeah, don’t say you don’t know if you do, that’s lying, which is a crime in this situation. You can answer crime related questions with questions (avoidance). But don’t do that for everything. If they push, start asking if you’re free to go. If they say no, invoke the 5th.
Don’t do their jobs for them.
Don’t answer any questions that could incriminate you. Or talk to them in general. But be polite when you do speak.
Only tell them your name or provide other required identity information. Don’t say where you are going or coming from. Don’t explain anything. Don’t tell stories. Don’t lie.
They usually face one direction. And don’t place them to watch each other afaik.
Well, that might change after this though.
Even if they do, don’t be a dumbass and have your phone on you and be completely covered and approach the device via analogue method (e.g. walking, bicycle without a serial, etc).
As an aside, I’ve been toying with the following idea:
I like to refurbish bicycles for my own use. The idea I’ve had is to buy cheap Facebook marketplace / Craigslist bikes, disassemble, grind off the serial, and paint in a uniform and non identifiable (or at least less so) and reassemble, replacing wear parts. Put them into the community to use however they see fit, cheap enough to ditch without caring.
Community bikes are not a new thing. They had them in my hometown through most of my youth and teen years, and may still. I don’t live there anymore. 🙁
They had a strong bike community, and a bike store and repair shop off a main ped/cycle path through town, just outside downtown. It had a lounge and was the primary source of the community bikes and their maintenance.
Paint the bikes all a similar bright color, not white, and get stickers made with info about use and contact info for pickup and repair.
Like, “I’m a community bike, use me as you like, leave me somewhere responsibly when you’re done with me, so somebody else can use me too. Contact for pickup or repairs 555 RIDE 4ME”
Thank you for that. I love it. But can I ask why paint a bright color? I would think flat black is what the current environment calls for.
It’s going to get picked up by a kid or a drunk guy and end up in the nearest body of water.
The idea of a bunch of surveillance cameras watching other surveillance cameras only to prevent vandalism of the surveillance cameras…
it’s sorta like llm agents in a social network talking amongst themselves, innit?
Who watches the watcher’s watcher?
I’ve seen them installed in pairs that watch each other. I also see them in the vicinity of store security cams or intersection cams. I don’t know of one in my area that isn’t in range of another camera.
Wear appropriate clothing/face covering. Bring paint. Paint lenses. Then dismantle camera.
I would wonder if it would be illegal to promote your live of the country by hanging a giant flag directly in the viewing path of the camera. Would you get arrested for being too patriotic?
Balaclava and crowbar combo?
They’re not omnidirectional. You can just walk up from behind it.
right, but you do have to approach it. I think the question is more “how are people not being tracked from blocks away”
Yep, that’s the direction I was thinking. The whole point of these cameras is to track people, including you, meaning that they can track everyone in the area before and after a camera is destroyed. It seems to me that the logical time to destroy a camera is when few other people are arround to stop/witness someone destroying a camera, but that also means there are few people to track and therefore it’s easier to single out whoever did it.
Use Deflock maps to avoid them. Ride a bike. My city is full of rogue natural trails so I can get around pretty easy without coming across them. Even if I did I have an indistinct bike with no logos. Typical balaclava, hat, sunglasses, etc.
Dress like an ice agent (but only for a brief moment please)
You mean wear something generic, unidentifiable and add some body armor?
Yeah but skip the axe body spray so people know you aren’t really an ice agent.
Uhhhh I think the better question is how are they?
They are beginning to disguise them in cones, barrels and small ones on a pole as small as rebar.
Yes, that’s why we have https://github.com/colonelpanichacks/flock-you
Benn Jordan has done great videos on this stuff
