151–160 of 218 posts
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Some laptop do. Most? I'm not so sure of that.
Do MacBooks?
"iSeeYou: Disabling the MacBook Webcam Indicator LED"
https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2...
They eventually quit (now we can use Lync to do video calls, even) but a lot of people now put little sliding windows over their cameras (you can get them at conferences these days, branded with the Splunk logo or whoever's giving them out)
EFF sells a sticker set specifically for this purpose: https://supporters.eff.org/shop/laptop-camera-cover-set
I don't really understand the webcam paranoia. If my computer is completely compromised, somebody watching my face is the least of my worries.
The first Apple iSight cameras, back in the days of Firewire, had this nifty mechanical iris that covered the lens. A twist of the bezel ring and it opened, another and it closed. Granted, just that feature was 6 times the volume of a modern webcam and probably three times the cost, but it did perfectly address people's discomfort with the eye staring at them. For some reason, the ear listening to them doesn't seem t…
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> they know the metrics they need to hit to advance within that organization This is really the one. It seems like the country is in a crisis of metrics. Nobody trusts anybody to do their job anymore so everything has to have a surrounding bureaucracy with the stated purpose of keeping everybody honest but having the actual consequence of setting many misguided and contradictory rules and then strictly enforcing an a…
Wish I could upvote you a million times. Many supposedly capitalistic organizations are in fact like miniature Soviet Unions.
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I have no reason to believe that he's a snake - quite the opposite. He seems to be a man with strongly held convictions and a keen eye for reason. I certainly don't always agree with him, but he's thoughtful and thorough, as can be observed from his many interviews and his recent book. I can respect a person without agreeing wholeheartedly with them, and such is the case for Hayden. Comey, on the other hand, seems to…
I am hesitant to engage at this level, but - you just couldn't be more wrong about Comey. I know him to be every bit as thoughtful and reasonable as your glowing description of Hayden. That doesn't mean I agree with all of his positions, but he is one of the smarter people I've met, and I do not believe that is an indication of how sheltered my life has been. I also know him to be perfectly capable of acknowledging w…
Well, I'm not sure if my comment about "the worst kinds of cops" is necessarily hyperbolic or even emotional, but I can see how it does make having 'purely rational discourse' more difficult. Surely, a singular focus and unwillingness to consider the validity of alternative perspectives is not unique to some members of the law enforcement community, but I think that the shorthand I employed does cut to the core of my understanding of Comey; He doesn't understand this issue as well as the technology experts who, virtually uniformly, disagree with his position on crypto.
[0] Hayden did rebuff that characterization, though I think the public forum might have had something to do with it.
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"Stop using it altogether" isn't a viable option, because it's not this particular laptop whose security is questionable, it's every laptop.
That may be true, but again, what do you care about more, your files and key strokes, or your webcam. If you have tape over your webcam but you still use online banking, you are a fucking idiot. You either have faith in the security of your computer, and log into your bank (risking hackers stealing all your money) or you don't. But if you don't think twice about saying anything you want in front of your computer or l…
I have no personal information on it
and you bet I have tape over the camera. Not just because of security, but many communications apps simply turn it on by default when you start a session... Lync, WebEx, Hangouts etc...
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This is a pattern you see in a lot of high-performing people. They aren't particularly interested in the 'big picture'. They may say they are, they may think they are, but on a practical, day-to-day basis, it's irrelevant. They know the mission of their organizational unit, they know the goals that need to be accomplished to achieve that mission, they know the metrics they need to hit to advance within that organizat…
> they know the metrics they need to hit to advance within that organization This is really the one. It seems like the country is in a crisis of metrics. Nobody trusts anybody to do their job anymore so everything has to have a surrounding bureaucracy with the stated purpose of keeping everybody honest but having the actual consequence of setting many misguided and contradictory rules and then strictly enforcing an a…
I care about audio so much more than video, and text/keys/etc captured from the machine even more. As long as my screen and keyboard are out of the frame of the camera, I don't really care about it getting RATed. At worst, you'll see me naked, or making angry/etc. faces at someone on irc or email. While embarrassing it would be less bad than most of what you could accomplish by stealing actual information. OTOH, carr…
To me, Comey is a man who has lost the goal in pursuit of his particular mission. Defense, intelligence, policing, all these things exist in order to uphold the constitution, protect the "American ideals", etc. Many of his statements pretty directly show that he doesn't care about the collateral damage to innocent people's privacy or any founding principles, he just wants his mission to be unhindered. It's the same m…
Something else to consider: Comey is also the man who famously rushed to the bedside of a very ill John Ashcroft who was being asked by Alberto Gonzales to reauthorize the warrantless wiretapping [now known as STELLAR WIND] to stop it because he felt it was illegal. Like he actually threatened to quit and was acting AG. [1] I'm no way trying to defend his agency's actions on encryption - it's chilling and probably on…
With people like this, I'd just really like to get them alone in a room, off the record, and probe their beliefs, motivations, why they did things, etc.
I wonder what it was like to work with Comey at Bridgewater Associates.