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Comment by Fifer82 | Hacker News Reader

This is almost certainly a silly question, but if I can't ask here, then who else will know?

Is there any methods out there which would let me fry surveillance cameras? EMP is a thing, but I have no idea of how that works. Can I fit an EMP into my pocket or do I need to drive a Truck worth of equipment? Is there some laser I could use to damage the lens or digital "eye" in the camera for good?

I am not a criminal, my life isn't that exciting, but I was wondering what tools are out there to combat surveillance cameras?

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Most current FR systems are required to operate through existing camera networks - organizations do not want to replace their existing cameras networks for the addition of FR. Those cameras have issues with illumination dynamic range - meaning an easy mitigation is to wear one of those baseball caps with blinky leds on them, as well as some eyeglass frames have (fashion) leds on them as well. Those small lights cause the camera to adjust for the brightness of the leds, causing the face to have reduced dynamic range - enough of a reduction to make FR on faces captured in this situation to be highly unreliable, if a face can be recovered at all.

That is really good information! I would look a bit weird but it is discreet and no one would know the true purpose or make the connection.

Not going out in public. Disabling surveillance cameras is considered vandalism and / or destruction of public property. And I'm sure the FCC and co won't like it much if you were to have a jammer to disrupt signals in the air either.

Yeah but aside from the legal aspect, what are my technical options?

You need to find them first. At this point, this is already moot.

Electric jamming won't work if they are wired.

Once a technology becomes pervasive and mature enough, it is no longer a question of finding hacks, workarounds, or tricks to fool the system. You might be able to do it for a time, but eventually your luck or attention will fail you and you will lose. ("Losing" may or may not have serious consequences for you, depending on how far you fall outside of social norms.)

When a technology becomes powerful enough, the only real solutions available to you are political, or in other words the so-called "four boxes of liberty". Or you can drop out of society, which unfortunately most often requires joining a tiny niche community full of weird social dropouts. Or you can just accept it. None of these are ideal, but hey, at least you have options...

It's interesting that a post asking a very hacking-like question is being downvoted on hacker news.

I mean, this is the kind of stuff you would have found on phrak, 2600 and the likes back in the day.

(no snark, just an observation)

A strong laser would probably work, (uv or near uv maybe?)

http://www.ilda.com/camera-sensor-damage.htm

I have a few crappy old cameras laying around, if I can find my purple laser pointer, I'll test and see what happens.

I don't know if you could have an EMP device focused enough to fry a camera without wrecking all the smartphones in the area. Maybe a powerful laser could be used to blind the sensor instead? Seems more practical to me. I wouldn't advise trying any of that though, I doubt you'll achieve much and in the current climate I wouldn't be surprised if you ended up with terrorism charges or something.

Is a EMP spherical in shape or directional or is that purely a design choice?

Have you tried an AR-15?

In the UK they are pretty tough to get a hold of and not very discreet or quiet! Although certainly a viable solution!

Typical American, when the only tool you have is a gun, everything looks like something to shoot.

We Brits are quite capable of removing cameras

https://www.crewechronicle.co.uk/news/local-news/speed-camer...

https://www.expressandstar.com/news/2018/04/13/police-appeal...

Spray-paint, maybe?

Too close and awkward? By the time I scrambled up a 20 foot pole, citizens would already call the police on me for weird behavior.

Put on a hard hat, retroreflective vest, and tool belt with lineman tools, and they won't even notice you were there.

Present an unremarkable, expected pattern, and the brain will forget you just as easily as it forgets an individual fern in the forest. In that sense, the lowest 10 feet of the climb is the most risky, as most people don't look up that often.

Paintball markers are likely a better choice, but very high cameras will still be out of reach. And then there is the issue of finding the cameras, but something like http://www.jet-protect.com/CS300Klanding.html can help...

What is that and how does it work?

I am also interested, it looks a cool machine but seems secretive. looks like stage lighting laser.

Public documentation is hard to impossible to find.

It was discussed on Bruce Schneier's blog, on which the topic of camera detection comes back regularly.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100611052640/http://nexgadget.... https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/04/detecting_bei...

a drone carrying spray-paint

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