If you click through to the follow up article, you’ll find that the city covered the cameras with black plastic.
Sometimes low tech solutions work pretty well. And since the cameras are under contract to the city, on city poles, I doubt there’s anything the feds can do.
And here I was about to post this completely unrelated link: https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Thermite
I find that camera sensors often fail in close proximity to 2 watt láser diodes. It’s very strange.