this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2026
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[–] Ep1cFac3pa1m@lemmy.world 91 points 1 month ago (12 children)

I don’t want a tool to avoid Flock cameras. I want a tool that uses my Bluetooth to turn Flock cameras into bricks.

[–] punkcoder@lemmy.world 84 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Funny enough, bricks do that.

[–] Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 10 points 1 month ago

TIL breaks can assimilate others like the Borg.

[–] OwOarchist@pawb.social 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

If you want a tool that turns Flock cameras into bricks, all you need is a brick.

... Or wire cutters, or a big hammer, or an angle grinder, or a drill, or a large rock, or a can of spray paint, etc, etc, etc. They're not terribly resilient against physical damage.

[–] JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 12 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I've been thinking of buying a slingshot and some paintballs. For another, completely irrelevant purpose though, obviously.

[–] OwOarchist@pawb.social 31 points 1 month ago

Remember to mask up when you're going out playing with paintballs -- for covid safety! Wear sunglasses, too -- you don't want eye damage from the bright sunlight.

[–] flandish@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

problem is the camera sees you offing it. unless you bloc up way away, and not near your own stuff.

[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Need to figure out a small scale, cheap, EMP device that can be set off to fry the cameras and sensors, but nothing else that is around.

[–] CADmonkey@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The "Nothing else around" is the hard part of that.

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[–] janus2@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

maybe some kinda really directional antenna? like a laser but for the radio range of EM

need to have line of sight and accurate aim, however

[–] 5in1k@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)
[–] blargh513@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

I heard that certain laser pointers of a specific wavelength can cook most cameras.

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[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

One of those spray-can extension poles would probably work pretty well without drawing much attention, especially if wearing a hi-vis vest and hardhat along with maybe a rubber mask so they can't identify you. Buy a used cheap bicycle somewhere, spray all the cameras you can, then leave the bike on a street somewhere and walk to a secluded place without cameras to change clothing, and be picked up by a friend in a car maybe. Quite doable.

[–] TheDeadInternet@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Portable angle grinder.

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[–] adarza@piefed.ca 32 points 1 month ago (2 children)

just walking a mile down a road i haven't been down in years, i spotted two of them. there's been absolutely no local coverage about it.. and scanning local municipal and town meeting minutes for the last several years--not one mention of them.

[–] JelloBrains@piefed.zip 23 points 1 month ago (2 children)

They have a whole division for pushing HOA's to partner with them and "keep the places you call home safe." So it's not even just Governments you need to wonder about, HOA's can just install them. So if you can't find anything in Government documents, it's entirely possible a nearby HOA did it.

Flock Safety’s HOA security cameras help deter and solve crime, protect residents, and build trust with 24/7 tech that works with law enforcement to keep your neighborhood safe and connected.

Optional law enforcement access gives your board confidence with faster response times and alerts for known threats—while keeping full control in your community’s hands

Flock Safety’s solar-powered, LTE-connected neighborhood camera solutions install anywhere—no wiring, no utility bills, no IT headaches. We handle setup, maintenance, and support.

That's some of the sales pitch on their site about why HOA's should get them.

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 5 points 1 month ago

deflock.org shows some clusters in local neighborhoods that look like HOA driven installs.

[–] adarza@piefed.ca 3 points 1 month ago

they were on a street that is also carries state and u.s. highway designation, just past the municipal boundary. small town here, there literally are no 'subdivisions' or hoa anywhere around.

[–] 0ndead@infosec.pub 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

This is how Flock tells them to operate

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[–] friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 28 points 1 month ago

Clickbait headline. The tool is https://deflock.org/

[–] Apocalypteroid@lemmy.world 22 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Could have easily called that Flock Off

[–] RattlerSix@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago

That site is just a map of Flock cams. You can detect them with a tool called Flock You

[–] spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 month ago (3 children)

In Socal we're scanned by > 18 cameras just driving 8 miles to Costco.

[–] unitedwithme@lemmy.today 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Couldn't I just run for president and abuse my "power" like Trump, but instead of doing lots of bad I could do good? Id start by making all these executive orders to raise wealth taxes, ban invasive technologies, limit social media influence, or big tech's reach into buying out politicians, etc...

Think Robin Hood but on a presidential scale.

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You could try.

My wager is you'd be assassinated, but for a glorious and short time you'd be the most successful American president in history.

[–] unitedwithme@lemmy.today 5 points 1 month ago

Yeah, seeing how they wouldn't offer secret service to RFK Jr when he ran for the short time, I'd certainly be SOL. I'd imagine I get the ol' Russian "threw myself out the window" treatment or some other suicide thing..

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 4 points 1 month ago

Small little ruralish tourist town, we got em at Lowe's and Walmart, and 2 in one of the highest traffic areas. Thinking about seeing to sign for the meth heads letting them know there's valuable metal (gold) in dem ~~hills~~ cameras

[–] YabbaDabbaDipshit@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

How have the tweakers not handled it already

[–] CADmonkey@lemmy.world 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Burned into my mind is the reaction to my rural town's mayor when Flock was brought up:

"Have you seen the stop signs around here? Do you think those cameras will last any longer?"

Many of the local stop signs have at least one bullet hole in them. Armored mailboxes are commonplace. They want to put up something in the sticks that it isn't morally ambiguous to destroy?

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Armored…mailboxes? How can people suck that bad?

[–] CADmonkey@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They aren't shooting at them. It used to be a popular thing for teenagers to whack mailboxes from moving cars using baseball bats or similar implements. It was a bigger problem ~20 years ago.

Of course now you're likely to break your hand/arm/bat if you try it. I've seen several methods used to prevent damage to mailboxes, including cages made from rebar, stacks of mobile home rims with a mailbox in the center, mailboxes made from drill pipe, the mailbox at my house is made from 1/4" thick steel plate and the post it is mounted to is a piece of I-beam. It's bonkers. I think you could hit it with a semi truck and the truck would lose. I didn't build it, it was there when I bought the house.

[–] Technoworcester@feddit.uk 4 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I always thought mailboxes were a weird tv thing for rural areas. Don't you guys have letterboxes?

[–] CADmonkey@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

⚠️ WARNING: P.U.I ⚠️

Letterboxes are seen in cities sometimes, but in the middle of nowhere, everyone has a mailbox by the road. Sometimes they are clustered together, a bunch of boxes in the same place so the mail carrier doesn't have to drive a mile down some unpaved dead end road.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 month ago

Usually no

We tend to put our houses in the center of our properties and often don't have any front-yard fencing. Making the mail carriers walk all the way up to every house would be prohibitatively time consuming. Without a fence, we need to put the letterbox on a post, so we use a mailbox.

You don't even have to be all that rural. If you have a single-family unattached home that wasn't built in a developer plan, you'll end up with a mailbox on a post at the road to one side of your driveway. Unless a specific location has a problem with theft, we don't even have a locking system.

In the newer planned neighborhoods, they'll set up cluster mailboxes.

[–] DaniNatrix@leminal.space 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I like to decorate mine! Our previous one rusted out so I painted the numbers onto our new one (instead of using stickers) and then painted gold ginko leaves all over it with some bugs hiding around them.

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[–] unphazed@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Mine is made from 14g steel. Someone took out my last 2. Even threw eggs and canned foods at it a few times. No clue who I pissed off. Changed out the box, posted on facebook we upgraded it and installed a hidden camera, and they stopped. Funny thing is the post is 3in pvc pipe painted to kinda look like iron (I had to span 4 feet cause the box has to set over an asphalt ditch).

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Tire pressuse sensors broadcast unique ID's

we're so cooked :)

[–] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I knew there was a reason I didn't bother fixing mine.

[–] innermachine@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

Don't worry ur tpms ids aren't useful for tracking. Their not like exclusive to the car and in some data base, and not as unique as u may think. Their randomly generated either 10 digit or hex ID that u program ur cars tpms module to read. U can replace the sensors and run another randomly generated id and program module to see that as it's, or u can reprogram a sensor (or a blank) to have the existing ID. There is no real useful way to track anybody with it, the range is so shit on them and you would have had to already have scanned the sensor IDs on the car to know them, which surprise u have a licence plate and shit their already gonna have all ur info at that point. If ur getting tracked in a car, I promise you it will never be from the TPMS lol

[–] NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Is a webpage a "tool"?

I keep hearing from US friends that their best tool was getting involved and having Flock banned from their counties and cities.

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 9 points 1 month ago

But, are they only banning Flock (which is a good step), or are they banning all ALPR installs? Can they even ban them on private property? A lot of what I see on deflock.org near me isn't on the streets (though some is), most of them are actually looking at parking lots, many of big box stores like Lowes, random strip malls and shopping centers, a church...

[–] Curious_Canid@piefed.ca 6 points 1 month ago

I think we need to start holding paintball battles around Flock cameras. Just to provide the surveillance techs with some entertainment, of course.

[–] Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (7 children)

Deflock=where they are..... Start mob grouping the cameras.

Has anyone here tried caulking a super strong magnet on to one of the poles? They make squeeze caulk that can do multi surface.

Could also just start taking them out? Just start throwing rocks at them and using a hammer against the boxes. Spray painting the cameras. Idk, there's things people can do.

Make a program that's constantly making it seem like there's ghost devices and overload the list and it does it so much they can't use it. Ummmmm.... Let's get creative.

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