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I'm sure nobody will like this idea, but cameras and microphones should have a physical switch that kills the power and data feed, in my opinion. So you would
by LinuxBender 7y ago
I'm sure nobody will like this idea, but cameras and microphones should have a physical switch that kills the power and data feed, in my opinion. So you would have airplane mode and trade-secret sharing mode. Power should be diverted to an LED so that people can see you have disabled camera and microphone.
- dorkinspace 7y agoI love this idea and would pay extra for a phone with hardware switches for camera and mic! Then again, I'd also buy a phone that had no camera but that is damn near impossible today.
- tkifnn 7y agoMost smartphones are easy to take apart and remove the camera.
- avian 7y agoI just stick a piece of black tape over it. It doesn't even void the warranty.
- sjustinas 7y agoLibrem 5 has kill switches for camera, audio and data. https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/
- jmccorm 7y agoUp until now, I've been focused on hardware (non-firmware) status lights which show outbound cell traffic, outbound wifi traffic, microphone data, and camera data. You know what? I think I'd like your physical kill so much better. It could cleaner to implement, too. If the manufacturer couldn't offer it, I'd be happy to do business with a modder who could. An existing exterior button like the iPhone's ring/silent switch seems like an ideal starting point to work a third-party hardware solution around. But given what little free space exists inside these devices, here's hoping that solution is more wiring than components!
- ta345635636 7y agoCan't think of anyone that would object to the idea, indeed I think it should be the default. I'm so sick of reading daily the scummy tactics these tech giants are using to hoover up private/personal data, and then reading their little acolytes on HN defending them ("Oh, it's probably just an A/B test, nothing to worry about!" or "It's too hard to monitor what our company is doing, even when presented to hard facts on the daily, what's a dev to do!").
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ChuckMcM 7y agoIt would be nice to have that feature. On the down side switches are expensive and can fail though so they add warranty cost and another 'hole' in the case. That said, a phone case that covers up all of those bits until you expressly open access to them would probably sell well.
- sdinsn 7y ago> switches are expensive Uh, no they aren't.
- Arbalest 7y agoThe switch itself may not be, but the mechanical effects (hole in case, board space, waterproofing, design testing and as GP said, warranty) makes it expensive.
- Teever 7y agoHow come they can make a thin, power sipping high resolution OLED panel for like $100 that fits in a phone but they can't make a reliable switch that ensures privacy?
- Flockster 7y agoAnd the iPhone is coming with an mechanical switch since the first one, even in the waterproofed phones from the newer generations.
- Arbalest 7y agoThat's a business case problem. Not enough people are asking for it. It's expensive because it lowers their margin by a notable (maybe not huge) amount. No one said it couldn't be done, just that it's effort for too little payoff.
- vageli 7y agoI have no horse in this race, but switches are constantly manipulated physically, and can see more abuse and stress because of that.
- kgwxd 7y agoI'd love one that had just a standard headphone/mic input. Maybe even separate headphone and mic jacks like on a PC. No camera, no built-in mic.
- xyzzy_plugh 7y agoJeff Bezos wanted this (though unsure if it was his idea) for the original Amazon Echo. The "mute" button was originally transparent, revealing the circuitry of the switch, enabling users to visually verify that the circuitry of the button severed the microphone in order to power the red mute LED. I don't think it's that nobody _likes_ the idea, I think the problem is that very few people really care. You see this in products everywhere. Rough edges sacrificing the user experience which could be technically solved but are punted in favor of More Important Things.
- thelittleone 7y agoValid points although I suggest “very few people” could be hundreds of thousands or even millions at the scale of consumer phones and thus I submit “a very small percentage” as a more fitting description.
- seph-reed 7y agoAs much as I love math and logic, sometimes I wish it would go fuck itself with all this "majority" shit. It's really putting a hamper on my ability to have any optimism that things might ever change.
- kardos 7y ago> Jeff Bezos wanted this (though unsure if it was his idea) for the original Amazon Echo. What happened to this feature? If Bezos wanted this it would be there.
- zaroth 7y agoThat’s an excellent point. I see zero reason to believe this story is true. Sounds more like urban legend.
- xyzzy_plugh 7y agoI'm happy to show you the prototype. I don't know why it was axed, but my best guess is that it aesthetically looked pretty bad, and it was probably a pain to produce at high yields. Also, I can imagine users finding it more confusing than an obvious well-labelled button.
- carty76ers 7y agoAmazon’s Echo devices have this(according to both an engineer who posted here on HN about a year ago, and according to their privacy page)
- alkonaut 7y agoA good start that would be trivial on ALL smartphones would be to simply notify when the camera and mic is active by using an icon. This is already the case for Location services, I can't see why it could be used for audio/video recording. Add to that an Audit log where I can see that application so and so used the camera at time X, and I'm at least able to tell whether I have been spied on after the fact so I can get rid of the application in question.
- LinuxBender 7y agoThat is a good start. That said, anything done in software can be conditionally disabled. So this assumes that the malicious behavior does not have root level access on the phone. But I agree, it is a start and is much easier and cheaper than requiring hardware changes.
- mlacks 7y agoThe iPhone does this, at least for the mic. Cortana would randomly turn on the mic even while I wasn't in the app, when I opened the app it stopped. I uninstalled it.
- m463 7y agohttps://puri.sm https://puri.sm laptops (and soon phone) are designed in this way. A switch for the microphone and camera, and another for the radios.
- CaptSpify 7y agoThose switches are software under the hood though, at least as far as I can tell. I installed freebsd on my purism laptop, and it no longer shuts off the camera/microphone.
- hombre_fatal 7y agoReally? The marketing says they are hardware switches: https://puri.sm/products/librem-13/ https://puri.sm/products/librem-13/ > Two hardware kill switches, microphone/camera and wireless/bluetooth > Now with a physical toggle switch, when your camera and microphone are switched off, you know they are off. Wireless and Bluetooth are combined in a second hardware switch to control all your radio signals inbound and outbound. That would be a flat out lie if it wasn't actually a hardware switch which is hard to believe for a company whose entire identity and reputation is tied to these exact features.
- leethargo 7y agoMaybe they mean that the switches themselves are hardware, but the deactivation is implemented in software, only triggered by the (harware) switch.
- CaptSpify 7y agoI don't have video/audio working on this install, so I'll try to get that set up later and make a video. I do have a video of the wifi in action though: https://tmp.thekyel.com/month/wifi.mp4 https://tmp.thekyel.com/month/wifi.mp4 I reached out to them a couple of times, and they asked if I had rfkill installed, I told them no, but it shouldn't matter if it was a hardware switch. They told me that they would look into it, and then never responded after that.
- toomanybeersies 7y agoI saw a laptop for sale that had this feature the other day, so there must be some amount of market demand for this.
- caleb-allen 7y agoMy thinkpad has a toggle over the webcam. I don't think it cuts the connection but it does physically cover it
- jpwgarrison 7y agohttps://puri.sm/ https://puri.sm/ makes great laptops with hardware switches. I have one, love it, and reluctantly accept that this market will always just be the same ~1400 nerds.
- justaguyhere 7y agoI like the idea. In addition to that, we should just not use Facebook at all. They do something shady, we plug that hole. Then they do something else shady, we plug that hole and the cycle will continue. We're long past the stage of trusting these gigantic for-profit corporations to behave or the gov to watch its citizens back.
- rchaud 7y agoBlackberry used to sell modified versions of their phones without cameras or the sound recorder app, to corporate and security-conscious clients. Common sense product to sell if your sales channels are B2B rather than B2C.
- matteocontrini 7y agoSome HP Spectre x360 models have a physical switch for the camera.