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Comment by ternbot | Hacker News Reader

There is one at 12th and Denny on Cap Hill (unless they took it down) - solution - use Snapchat - ID basic form of box - pachao

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A paintball could cover the camera lens pretty nicely.

But those cameras are FBI agents, and now you're pointing a weapon at a federal officer. If you think courts would never declare an inanimate object to be an FBI agent, then you'd probably also be shocked to hear there was a court case titled "United States v. Article Consisting of 50,000 Cardboard Boxes More or Less, Each Containing One Pair of Clacker Balls".

That's not even close to the same thing.

But destruction of government property is a crime.

of course not. it's mildly satirical. but for the record, I didn't say they were the same, I just implied that, clearly, bizarre legal theories about the personhood of objects are not off the table.

Absolutely. When making a "Barking" sound at a police dog can result in a charge of "Assault on a police officer", anything is possible.

Wait, you mean insisting I was reporting a crime to a police officer is not a defense in that case?

I'm not advocating destruction of federal property or assaulting an agent, don't get me wrong. I'm merely pointing out that this is one situation where the right to bear arms is lopsided in the favor of the people. You couldn't go toe-to-toe with the US Army, but you could cover a camera with a paintball pretty easily. The founding fathers would be proud.

I thought you were kidding

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Article_Consi...

> A paintball could cover the camera lens pretty nicely.

Surely that is illegal (destruction of property or something, with no reference to the fact that it is an FBI camera), whereas preventing the disclosure of something that you won't even acknowledge exists is probably harder to prosecute.

since they're biodegradable, and water soluble, this wouldn't work all that well... unless of course you're constantly coating it with them. Also they travel at a pretty high velocity, and would probably just damage the camera itself.

I would hope since they're outside, the lens cover would be durable. Otherwise a stone kicked up from a car would destroy it. But the paint being able to be washed away isn't really a problem if you're just trying to temporarily disrupt the camera's operations. If you destroyed it or permanently disabled it, they would probably very quickly replace it. But if you're about to do something you don't want the FBI to see, popping it with a paintball then later washing the lens cover would lend you a pretty reasonable amount of privacy.

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