Why smash them when you can harvest them. I’m sure they have components that can be sold.
> I found this on the side of the road and thought you might want it back.
This definitely takes more effort than smashing them does.
> Reduces what you can be charged with,
Does it? How? There's not even a return address to show that a person sent the parts back to Flock instead of just disappearing it.
> prevents Flock from getting insurance benefits
How? The camera doesn't repair itself. It still takes money to turn a pile of camera parts into a working camera on some street corner somewhere.
> and is all the more frustrating for them to deal with.
Is it? Is corporate frustration the goal? (Is corporate frustration even possible?)
Frustrating them is not the goal per-se, but it feels good, and may make them consider that market as not worth the cost of maintaining a presence there.
This isn't how the law works at all. You can absolutely still be charged with theft even if you return the item.
When I take your things and then mail them back to you, I have still stolen from you. That's still theft.
It's the taking part that constitutes theft.
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If I instead just smash your things in-situ, then that can be a different crime like vandalism.
A Little Brother solution: they want data, give them so much bad data the rest of their data becomes worthless. But it only works on a mass scale.