Yeah, you try setting fire to a bin in the City of London. See how far you get.

You'd probably be best off burning them by "recycling" some sort of timed firebomb. Ideally this would be done with something that has some plausible deniability (have somebody "recycle" some crumbled newspaper before you, then "recycle" a (modified?) cigarette butt).

Of course firebombing the cans is probably very more illegal than just dumping a can of lighter fluid into it and throwing in a match... I mean, even that is arson, nothing to sneeze at. You would have to balance the possibility of being caught with the punishment if you are caught.

I wonder how it would cope with a raspberry pi with wifi cycling through random cloned mac addresses.

I wonder how many write cycles its flash memory is good for.

If you don't like being tracked then don't practically scream your hardware's identity around. This is what you do when you use 802.11. Trying to legally regulate such things is like pronouncing your and peer's name in clear (even if you use cryptic language), in every sentence you say out loud, then telling others no not notice nor remember that.

Want the privacy the sane way? Go make vendors to introduce security features (like short-lived euphemeral MACs), so communicating party names won't be meaningful to others.

Unfortunately, nobody is competing on such features. There is simply no (even paid) alternative available.

There's always an option to enforce requirement of such features using the legal system.

If laws can and are (ab)used by governments and their TLAs to legally force equipment vendors and service providers to create various surveillance features and misfeatures (backdoors, security strength limitations), it's only reasonable that they must be used to create privacy-enhancing features for the public good, too.

How many people really know and/or understand that though?

My first thought was to agree, but my second thought was to wonder how much worse this makes things.

The mobile network already locates you well enough for the spooks to find out who you're meeting. I live in Melbourne; half our mobile network is owned by Singapore, and god knows how much was made in China. The spooks are scary, but the network has become essential.

No doubt computers accelerate threats to life and freedom, as they do to everything else. It got that way a long time ago, when IBM tabulating machines powered the holocaust. The problems are Singapore and China, which are being solved, and Australia, where parts of the solution are failing. Those solutions are human instead of technical.

Setting these things on fire probably leads to you becoming the subject of investigation by the local constabulary.

I'd suggest taking some bits from a discarded microwave oven, assembling said bits into a directed microwave transmitter and blasting the business end of the bin with a few hundred watts of microwave energy. For extra brownie points you could modulate the signal so it looks like an 802.11 transceiver on steroids.

Now you only need to 3D-print a box for it/connect it in some way to an Arduino or Raspberry Pi and you'll be lauded on hackaday.com!

What's the licensing situation for the 2.4GHz spectrum in the UK? In the US, they're part 15 devices that must accept interference from licensed users of that spectrum. Radio amateurs are licensed users of that spectrum.

While I doubt it's legal to get your ham license and pump 1500 watts into your least favorite Wifi network, I'd certainly enjoy reading about the resulting court cases. Federal jurisdiction, local jurisdiction... always entertaining.

Ah, but that assumes they know what you're doing. Microwaves have no qualms about passing through plastics, do they? Just don your best suit, carry an attaché case like an aspiring FleetStreeter and look interestedly at the ad under the snooping device. I don't think it takes 1500 W to bring it down - nor do I see how you'd achieve that power output from a discarded household magnetron - but a few hundred watts at close range will surely make the things' 'ears' ring.

If microwaves are not your thing you could try your hand at an EMP projector, even though it might be harder to make sure only the targeted device kicks the bucket.

Arson is a serious criminal offence!

You'd do better to steal the entire bin.

I would supposed wrapping it with a little tinfoil might get you down to littering.