13 Responses:

1. Phil Waldorf Nelson says:

   10 years ago at 5:59 pm

   Not that you'd know anything about that.

2. Chip Oatley says:

   10 years ago at 7:59 pm

   100mW laser pointer gives the bearer standoff range so the camera cannot record the bearer prior to disabling. Or, use a standard mount on the laser screwed into the tripod socket of a binocular and you can kill cameras from hundreds of yards.

   • Simen says:

     10 years ago at 5:17 am

     I doubt that you could take out the camera from that range. The beam isn't focused enough to deliver any appreciable power density. As you can see in this video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuceDT2R4f4 ), the time between each balloon pop increases quite a bit at longer ranges.

     • Chip Oatley says:

       10 years ago at 8:25 am

       Popping balloons requires delivering sufficient heat to a small area of rubber to liquify that patch. Delivering heat by photons is a fundamentally different physical process than killing a sensor element by delivering enough photons to overcharge a number of transistors that are sensitive to overcharging.

       If the lasers at a concert - which are so underpowered that they can play across a crowd and are at least a few tens of meters away - can kill a camera sensor, http://petapixel.com/2013/07/13/video-20k-cameras-image-sensor-fried-by-a-concert-laser-in-just-seconds/ think what a 100mW laser can do. (100mW is quite energetic.) Having worked with lasers for a few decades it seems to me that even the moderately expensive high end commercial lasers (see Wicked Lasers) retain sufficient focus over a few hundred meters, though they do spread to single-digit millimeters at range.

       I have not tested this, so cannot be sure. It's worth a test.

       • Simen says:

         10 years ago at 11:31 am

         I was thinking about the ones from Wicked Lasers, actually. They list a beam divergence of 1.5 mRad, which should give a spot size of several meters. Concert lasers typically have a spot size of a few mm at 10 meters range. I know that the mechanisms for destroying sensors and balloons are entirely different, but both are proportional to the number of photons, aren't they? That said, you're probably right.

         https://www.wickedlasers.com/arctic

   • nooj says:

     10 years ago at 2:27 pm

     I would dearly love to be able to hit a button and take out a red light camera after I decide to make the light, but before I actually get there.

3. Chas. Owens says:

   10 years ago at 6:15 am

   The special purpose device from amazon doesn't give you plausible deniability though.

   • Ian Young says:

     10 years ago at 10:31 am

     They just have to type in 'spray can extender [subject hometown here]' into XKeyscore and there you are, with the rat-cage on your face, learning to love Big Brother.

   • jwz says:

     10 years ago at 11:43 am

     Even if it's a corkscrew, the process ends up dripping paint on absolutely everything.

     Or so I am told.

   • Anthony says:

     10 years ago at 10:17 am

     "Officer - I thought I saw wasps coming from it."

   • rattus_sapiens says:

     10 years ago at 3:10 am

     To recap - to take out the state's surveillance apparatus, the best option on the table is buying a plastic contraption from a globalised and decentralised corporation, itself part of the food chain of capitalism..?

     Plausible deniability be damned.
     Nor does it give you irony, it seems.

4. phuzz says:

   10 years ago at 1:19 pm

   I always preferred the idea of just taping a plastic bag over it, less chance of getting charged with vandalism that way.

5. thefowle says:

   10 years ago at 7:54 pm

   I'm told such a contraption is also useful for spray painting obnoxious street lights that shine into residences.