All 8 Flock cameras in Winona, Minnesota cut down and missing
winonadailynews.com
winonadailynews.com
I am indifferent to the vandalism itself, but the results will be something worse, for those who think it's bad now. However justified the sentiment might be, it is not the way.
We have spent the last half century divesting from citizen involvement in governance, and this cannot be compensated for by tantrums. The only way is the hard way, which is, unfortunately, playing largely by the master's rules, and for those rare few capable, redefining those rules, officially.
But to answer directly, YES, I do think the particular form of resistance we are seeing here is futile. It's not the 1980s. Technocrats are not stupid. Technology is advancing daily -- asymmetrically to the general public. It's simple to correct for vandalism. They may even want it. It opens doors to things that might have seemed excessive prior.
Now if society breaks down, and we see normalized extremes, maybe that would be different. But as things stand, it might be worse than futile.
Meanwhile, the processes behind the most promising routes to actual change, are increasingly obfuscated on both sides; one being real bureaucratic complexity, and the other an ignorance + learned helplessness loop. Naturally when tasked with a complex problem beyond one's ability, hammers and angle-grinders become tempting tools.