This feels like a good opportunity to remind folks:

If you use a matte black paint over the lens, it's far less likely to be noticed, and could go unnoticed indefinitely. If you visibly destroy, vandalize, or remove it, it gets noticed a lot sooner, making it a lot easier to connect you to the act. You also face lower penalties if caught if all you did was deface/obstruct the lens.

Also, practice your cardio, wear shoes with good traction that fit well, and always have an escape route planned

Pam. Use pam. Cooking spray. Fogs the lens and won't rinse off. The hardware isn't destroyed, but the device is useless until someone goes out and cleans it.

Could holding up a magnet against it also destroy the cam?

Huh, cool idea! Has this been demonstrated? You could still catch an obstruction charge, but not damage most likely, which is nice

Causing it to lose internet access would alert them sooner than black paint and magnets dont really affect modern devices since moving to soft disk drive instead of hard disk drive.

This just means that we need to keep cutting them down until the real ones are found.

But doesn’t the oil just run down over days? It’s oil.

Enough of it will probably stick well enough to render the camera unable to focus. Someone should try it and report back.

🎶 Gotta sock 'em all!

Similarly, (and perhaps even better in that it combines both) spray adhesive also comes in black. 🤘🏼

"Catch" being the salient challenge here.

You wanna stand there long enough to find out? 😅🫣

I know this is the "illegalism" community and all, but maybe there could be legal ways to throw a sabot in the gears. The kind of thing that even if you did it in full sight of a cop where they'd set up a raid, the cops couldn't actually do anything about it but harass you.

(Or make up spurious reasons to arrest you, but you could livestream the process to mitigate that. Not that there aren't other ways they could make your life terrible.)

I thought maybe something like the Flock Sock. But I've seen various articles indicate that even it would likely result in a criminal mischief charge.

Maybe a mirror that's removed from the camera itself and reflects sunlight into the camera, producing glare too severe for the camera to be useful. I'm no expert, but maybe just the fact that nothing is really touching the camera or damaging the camera would make a difference to its legality. Or maybe they'd claim that the extra sunlight on the CCD would damage it and still charge you with something.

Surely at least signs like these wouldn't result in any charges that would actually stick if it went to court. Those signs seem like they're intended to put on your own property. But maybe putting them on public property (where I think probably most flock cameras are -- at intersections and such) wouldn't be illegal in all circumstances.

I dunno. I'm only brainstorming, really.

that's what is alluring about anti-flock action, it feels like a problem that can be solved.

No