A Citizen’s Guide to De-Flocking Your Neighborhood
“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Preface:
Like ridding your back yard of wasps – you can swat them one at a time, or you can locate the nest and destroy them all in one fell swoop.
Swatting sucks. It’s slow, you get stung sometimes, and they just keep making more.
In ridding our neighborhoods of mass surveillance cameras (such as Flock), I strongly advocate for the next approach. Some of you will still want to swat wasps. I’ll include a few notes to help keep you safe and free if you choose this path.
Physical Removal – the slow, dangerous, ineffective, and incredibly cathartic method:
Green Lasers: I’ll begin with this one because it’s a popular idea. It’s sexy. It’s futuristic. It makes you feel like Luke Skywalker – and – it doesn’t work. Let’s just get this out of the way right off the bat. TECHNICALLY SPEAKING – a 1,000mW green laser can wreck the sensor inside a Flock camera, the conditions have to be perfect – continuous exposure at close range for several minutes. In a lab or a workshop, you could easily rig that up. In the real world, there’s just no way you will be focusing a green laser with the needed accuracy and persistence to wreck the sensor. Beyond that, green lasers emit some other invisible light that can reflect and blind innocent passers by.
Before I list the pros and cons of the other popular methods, you need to know that Flock cameras have anti-tampering sensors. When they sense tampering / vandalism, they “phone home” and call police to the scene. You should be prepared for this possibility.
Signal gathering: Some installations include technology to “listen” to all of the signals around them and log those as well. If you are carrying a cell phone and some bluetooth ear buds, you are already emitting several different kinds of signals that can be “heard” and logged.
If you must engage in physical removal, keep yourself safe and free by:
– leaving all electronic devices home. Keep your person “signal free”.
– night camouflage: black shoes, black pants, black hoodie. No logos. Use a mask to cover your face.
– Glasses: Protect yourself from facial recognition by using the right eye coverings. Most facial recognition tech relies heavily on the top third of your face, especially your eyes. At night, Flock cameras use Infrared light to “see” in the dark. It’s invisible to the human eye, but to the Flock camera, it creates a well illuminated scene. Wear glasses that are specifically designed to block Infrared light (not UV light, that’s a totally different kind of light). Zenni Optical sells a line of glasses with their special “Zenni ID Guard” coating that renders your eyes unrecognizable to IR based facial ID systems. You absolutely need to be wearing something like this.
– Situational Awareness: In many cases, one flock camera will be watched by another. Be sure to scout the situation before hand and be aware of any cameras, of any kind, that may see and record your patriotic actions. Virtually all forms of physical removal / disablement of Flock cameras will trigger a tampering alarm. Have a plan to vacate the area quickly, quietly, and out of the view of any other cameras – and for christ’s sake, do NOT let your getaway car get scanned by some other Flock camera on your way home. Stay invisible.
Tools: from spray paint, to reciprocating saws, to handheld 5” band saws, to circular saws (very effective), the internet is full of suggestions on what tools to use and what blades work best. I’m not going to provide a shopping list here – those are easy to find, and it’s not my recommended method.
– a word about “anti IR sprays” for your license plate
Obscuring your plate is a great way to get pulled over ASAP just for that – and that can open a whole other can of worms. Most of us agree that minimizing contact with law enforcement is always a good thing. Rustoleum 214944 is a reflective coating that will NOT protect your plate during the day, and will draw attention to your plate hella fast. Your plate will glow at night, and get you pulled over very quickly. Let’s not be doing that.
Political Removal
First things first: Get connected:
Join DeFlock.org
You’ll find a number of great resources, from updates on national initiatives, to a map of every camera in every city of America. Very helpful to know where they are.
Vocabulary:
The real problem is mass surveillance. Flock is just one brand of these kinds of systems – it’s the most talked about brand. Axon, Signal Trace, Vigilant, Motorola, Rekor, Genetec are other vendors. When you talk to your elected officials, please talk about mass surveillance cameras “such as Flock”, and understand that some cities are taking down their Flock systems to quell the public only to replace them with an Axon system.
Contacting your elected officials, TODAY, is one of the most important things you can do. Everyone knows that this is a toxic issue and nobody wants to get voted out of office over some silly little Flock system. Hold their feet to the fire.
To make this as easy as possible, I’ve created a page containing a sample letter that you can copy, fill in the blanks, and paste. I also have a tool that will pull up all of your elected officials, with a few tips on sending an effective email to them.
Scan here:
[insert QR code]
In a somewhat separate issue – Here in Utah, the Shark Tank billionaire, Kevin O’Leary was making strong headway on building a datacenter campus twice the size of Manhattan (not exaggerating). Local activists held local politicians accountable for devious tactics to green light the project. One of the most powerful politicians- Senate President Stuard Adams – was primaried and lost. He absolutely did not see that coming. Other politicians with data center on their hands lost their jobs, too. Here in Utah, our “public servants” are officially on notice.
Make it happen in your community.
We have power at the local level. This problem occurs at the city and county level – and the solutions will be best executed a this local level.
Hold your elected officials responsible. Organize and rally against them if they do not agree to remove mass surveillance from your community.
Find the cameras.
Find the vote.
Fire those responsible.
This is how we restore sanity and liberty to our streets.