Okay, but it's not as if installing stuff on poles has meaningful public oversight even when it requires hard-wiring. It might make such deployments ever so slightly more likely by reducing the labor costs a little bit, but is otherwise entirely irrelevant.

If there's ever public input into that sort of stuff at all, it doesn't come at the putting-hardware-on-poles phase; it comes at the budgeting or procurement phase. And even then, that's only if there's a specific project with a specific budget line-item: at the political level of "we're proposing to spend $X million on a contract with Y vendor to provide Z service," no politician knows or cares whether the shit is hard-wired or plugged into a socket, or whether that changes over the course of the contract! It's nothing but a minor implementation detail.

...Actually, speaking of which, I should correct myself: complaining about it may not damage your credibility after all. But that's because most politicians' eyes are just gonna glaze over before they even understand what the fuck you're talking about well enough to nitpick.

Chris Voute describes that in his EMP weapons series

You should try, for science!

would it not be enabled by putting it on the end of a long stick?

Unfortunately due to the inverse square law, they don't have a very long range.

Possibly for the better. Last thing you need is people accidentally hitting a plane with one of them.

People already do it with lasers. Something that destroys the electronics would be even worse.

I posted one above, however given the height of many of these installations, I think the common piezo+coil demo mounted on either a telescopic floodlight bulb changing pole or a payload drone modified to shield the controller board (otherwise plan to replace the boards) would be simpler safer and cheaper.

Edit: actually since it’s a drone you can just suspend the coil by a string and rely on inverse square for shielding. Much lighter. Cheaper drone or stronger pulse.

Because you need a fuckton of energy to produce an EMP capable of damaging anything. Unless you have access to military grade warheads or a low yield nuclear device, you can forget about it.

"A NEMA node is an IoT controller that twists and locks into a standard receptacle on streetlights. Based on standards from the National Electrical Manufacturers Association - Wikipedia, these hockey-puck-sized devices turn municipal streetlights into an active mesh network for remote lighting control, energy metering, and smart-city sensing. The NEMA node slots into a socket (often ANSI C136.41 compliant) on top of the fixture. It sits directly between the power supply and the light to manage:Lighting Control: Dimming, remote switching, and automated photocell operation.Diagnostics: Real-time monitoring of energy consumption, voltage, and lamp faults.Smart City Sensors: Integration with environmental monitors (air quality, noise), traffic counters, and cameras. NEMA devices are widely deployed across North America and provide a plug-and-play platform for upgrading municipal infrastructure."

Basically instead of bitching about genuine surveillance they're trying to get people up in arms about a type of connection that's typically used for totally innocent things but may potentially be abused. It's like bitching about power outlets because someone could connect cameras into them instead of bitching about the flock cameras already there.