If you don't want to take the risk destroying or spray painting the lense or solar panels of these devices, a picket sign installed right in front of it works pretty well while probably not getting you sent to jail. You may even be able to get away with ziptying a trashbag over it without too much fuss.
> You may even be able to get away with ziptying a trashbag over it without too much fuss
This isn't effective protest action unless you generate media that debates the downsides of the cameras. (If it just gets branded as vigilantism, you may wind up increasing support for them.)
This is excellent advice and a nice (theoretical at least) example of why protests and actions that don't necessarily "fix" an issue directly are important and not (necessarily) an ego trip for the protestors.
> why protests and actions that doesn't necessarily "fix" an issue directly are important and not (necessarily) an ego trip for the protestors
The point is to think through (and shape) the consequences.
Trash bag is nice but leaves interpretation to the viewer. Trash bag with a sign is better, but the ambiguity of the action together with the conciseness requirement of physical signage makes for a difficult combo. Trash bag with a QR code highlighting (depending on your town's partisan lean, of course) when "authorities in Texas performed a nationwide search of more than 83,000 automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras while looking for a woman who they said had a self-administered abortion, including cameras in states where abortion is legal such as Washington and Illinois" [1], or that Flock Safety "is building a product that will use people lookup tools, data brokers, and data breaches" [2] is better still. (Best would be something that concisely conveys the problem while blocking the sign. I'm not having anything readily come to mind...Lady Liberty holding her palm to the camera is kitsch.)
Still, just raising awareness is table stakes. Ideally such activity comes ahead of a petition drive, or town hall where a series of plants raise objections to the company.
[1] https://www.404media.co/a-texas-cop-searched-license-plate-c...
[2] https://www.404media.co/license-plate-reader-company-flock-i...
Probably why they are mounted 4 meters high
I have this 35 Watt laser I scored off aliexpress, it runs off 24V. I wonder...
For anyone who's actually wondering about this, 100-200mw is extremely damaging to camera sensors(also eyes) and doesn't cause birds to burst into flames from a stray reflection.
Most cheap pen-size laser pointers sold as "5mw" are actually 100+. As a general rule, if you can see the beam brightly when doing star pointing it's somewhere in this range
(but if Parent's laser is one of those sealed-tube Co2 lasers, it'll never touch the camera sensor itself because the beam doesn't go through glass. Might crack it after a couple seconds though)
It's a green stacked diode laser. Collimation is poor but at a couple of meters any kind of sensor will be slag in a few seconds.
I would be interested if anyone is prototyping vehicle mounted lidar with machine vision discrimination.
https://www.google.com/search?q=lidar+ccd+damage
I did always wonder if the sort of green laser pointer that could light matches would wreck the sensors.
The biggest use of these cameras in the UK is in car parks so that predatory parking companies can fine you £60 for going a nano-second over the time you paid for.
> I did always wonder if the sort of green laser pointer that could light matches would wreck the sensors.
It absolutely can.