The amount of damage it could do depends on your laser. And your camera.

Opening a door with a hairpin is a common cliché in books, movies and video games. If you are a fan of Better Call Saul, you might have seen a different way of escaping a more technologically advanced capture. In the episode called "Wiedersehen" (Season Four Episode Nine), Werner Ziegler uses a laser pointer to blind a security camera. His escape is only discovered when Mike Ehrmantraut notices some dead pixels on the monitor feeds and finds the pointer. Only it was too late, and Ziegler had already escaped. The trick is clever — but does this work in real life? Well, kind of.

Laser pointers can blind security cameras. In some cases, they can even damage them permanently. However, this would require a combination of three things: a very powerful laser, an older camera and an extremely steady pulse. Possible, but difficult. In most places, it is also illegal. In 2021, a Clearwater man got arrested for pointing a laser at several surveillance cameras owned by the Church of Scientology. The laser did not destroy the cameras, but it did leave dead spots on their lenses, resulting in over $2,000 in damages. Still, the cameras were able to catch him red-handed.

Lasers emit concentrated beams of light at a high intensity. Cameras, meanwhile, are built to convert light into electrical charges, which are then processed and turned into digital video frames. For this reason, security cameras are more susceptible to strong lights than the human eye.

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