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I've always asked for hardware safeguards, and I wish more people would demand them. I want the camera & microphone on my laptops & desktops to get their electr

by SiVal 9y ago

I've always asked for hardware safeguards, and I wish more people would demand them. I want the camera & microphone on my laptops & desktops to get their electrical power THROUGH an in-series LED, so it simply doesn't matter how the decision to start watching/listening is made, the device can't be powered on without making the LED glow. No other source of power except thru the LED. There would also be a hardware switch in the same series. Turn it off, and no power can reach the device, no matter what the software decides. Manufacturers could easily make the circuit testable, so if you tell the machine to start using its camera, it could test the circuit and tell you that the switch appeared to be turned off and show you a little diagram to help you find the switch in case you accidentally switched it off and didn't even know it was there. Most manufacturers who claimed to have this feature would do it correctly, because they would have to assume that somebody would disassemble a unit and damage their reputations if they faked it.

rlpb 9y ago
> THROUGH an in-series LED That's a pain electronically since the brightness of the LED would vary depending on the current drawn by the camera and/or microphone. In order to not blow the LED, the circuit may have to be set such that the LED wouldn't be bright enough to notice reliably when the camera is in a lower power (but still functioning) mode. You could easily get what you actually want by putting an LED in parallel with the power supply to the camera and/or microphone though. Then the LED would maintain a fixed brightness but wouldn't be able to be switched off unless the power to the camera/microphone is cut. Separately, it's possible to have unpowered microphones. I suspect laptop microphones are of the unpowered type (and amplified elsewhere). It's still quite possible to have a circuit which is hardwired to be incapable of passing the microphone signal without lighting an LED. I'm just saying that your "in series" demand is unrealistic, and instead you should prescribe what you actually want rather than specifying an electronic circuit that can't necessarily achieve it.

by SiVal 9y ago

rlpb 9y ago

> THROUGH an in-series LED That's a pain electronically since the brightness of the LED would vary depending on the current drawn by the camera and/or microphone. In order to not blow the LED, the circuit may have to be set such that the LED wouldn't be bright enough to notice reliably when the camera is in a lower power (but still functioning) mode. You could easily get what you actually want by putting an LED in parallel with the power supply to the camera and/or microphone though. Then the LED would maintain a fixed brightness but wouldn't be able to be switched off unless the power to the camera/microphone is cut. Separately, it's possible to have unpowered microphones. I suspect laptop microphones are of the unpowered type (and amplified elsewhere). It's still quite possible to have a circuit which is hardwired to be incapable of passing the microphone signal without lighting an LED. I'm just saying that your "in series" demand is unrealistic, and instead you should prescribe what you actually want rather than specifying an electronic circuit that can't necessarily achieve it.