I think we're all missing the point of the article. The author isn't claiming that free software is immune to this either (think about the flaw hiding in plain

I think we're all missing the point of the article. The author isn't claiming that free software is immune to this either (think about the flaw hiding in plain sight in OpenSSH for years). The author is saying that if you want to protect yourself from image / audio capture without your consent, make sure you can physically deactivate those features on your hardware in a way that software cannot physically re-activate them, i.e. mechanical switches.