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FBI director: Cover up your webcam

thehill.com

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Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#71

Post by sigmar »

takeda wrote: post #19
waterphone wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a bad thing to do, it's just hypocritical of him to value his own privacy but tell everyone else they need to give up theirs and let the FBI and NSA have access to everything they want to keep private.

Similarly Hilary advocates for banning encryption yet makes her staffers using Signal application to encrypt their correspondence. Our government is full of hypocrites.

>Similarly Hilary advocates for banning encryption

Does she? Her tech platform seemed pretty supportive of Apple's stance on encryption: http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/06/29/hillary-clintons-t...

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#72

Post by ubernostrum »

nathancahill wrote: post #7
waterphone wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a bad thing to do, it's just hypocritical of him to value his own privacy but tell everyone else they need to give up theirs and let the FBI and NSA have access to everything they want to keep private.

Why would you be concerned about the FBI or the NSA knowing about the content of your digital communiques if you have nothing to hide? Even the most ardent supporter of personal freedoms will admit that the government observing you over a network is the same as taking pictures of you with a telephoto lens on a busy street. The truth is the same: there are too many people and you aren't special enough to deserve perso…

You're probably trolling, but...

The reason why we don't give broad general search powers to the government (or at least, in theory don't give the government broad general search powers) is because the government can prosecute people, and given enough information they can find a reason to prosecute anyone. Which then fully opens the floodgates to selective prosecution: anyone who's disliked by someone in power will simply be prosecuted and likely convicted and jailed, because everyone will have done something that an all-seeing government can prosecute for.

Cardinal Richelieu is alleged to have said that, given seven lines written by the most honest of men, he could find something in them to create a capital offense and have the man hanged. I'd rather not live in a society where anyone has that kind of power.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#73

Post by matt_wulfeck »

6t6t6t6 wrote: post #6

From all they ways I can be spied, the webcam is the one that concerns me the least. At the end, all they will see is a bearded man staring to the front. May they be able to see me naked? Well, probably, but I honestly don't think that they will make a lot of money by selling my naked pictures... My wife tells me that I still look good, but I suspect that she is being nice to me. What would scare more is that they ma…

You're displaying a common trope I see sometimes with security:

> "because this particular thing does affect me personally, it doesn't matter. And because it doesn't matter to me it doesn't matter at all"

Blackmailing people with pictures taken from webcams is not theoretical. It happens[0] and it's good advice to tape up your cam. It may not affect you personally, but it may affect your wife, daughter, or sister in a much more sinister way. Believe it or not this kind of thing can ruin someone's life.

[0] http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240209018/US-teen-hacker...

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#74

Post by stephentmcm »

bradbeattie wrote: post #42
stephentmcm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? I'd hazard a guess that it's likely only marginally more accurate than lip reading?

http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/VisualMic/

Pretty cool. But I'll eat my hat if a regular webcam can pick up enough detail in regular lighting to do this. Plus 90% of the time the webcam will capture a users chest and the wall behind them, hardly useful for visual microphones.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#75

Post by orthogon »

What about the part where we stop buying products with integrated cameras?

What about the part where we stop buying devices that we have seeemingly no hope of control over?

What about that?

Is boycott a word too strong?

Gee, you're right.

We should all just give up, and accept that what we're sold, is that which we must buy.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#76

Post by Hilyin »

the_common_man wrote: post #37
Hilyin wrote: post #30

I guess this is just as good place as any to bring this up. In current OS X, you cannot disable your mic. You can turn down the input volume, but never disable. All malware needs to do is raise the input volume and it can listen to you to its hearts content. And its worse with your iPhone.

Can someone confirm if this is actually true? Sounds too far fetched that you cannot disable the mic (i.e not muting, I assume?).

Just look around on the internet, you'll find the same thing. I researched this a few weeks ago and was amazed.

You basically have to disable the audio driver in OSX to disable it, and doing that, means you can't play audio at all. And even that isn't enough, it technically can be hijacked at an even lower level.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#77

Post by deathanatos »

orthogon wrote: post #75

What about the part where we stop buying products with integrated cameras? What about the part where we stop buying devices that we have seeemingly no hope of control over? What about that? Is boycott a word too strong? Gee, you're right. We should all just give up, and accept that what we're sold, is that which we must buy.

I think you're being a bit quick to judge people here…

Having an integrated camera is obviously a lot easier to deal with, logistically, than lugging along an external USB camera.

I think a lot of the people here would love to have hardware-level kill switches for their video camera. And mic. And WiFi. (I would; I used to own a Thinkpad with a hardware kill switch for WiFi. It was useful, even aside from the privacy benefits.)

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#78

Post by WillPostForFood »

waterphone wrote: post #4
meowface wrote: post #2

I know this thread will probably get politicized, but I see nothing wrong (or necessarily hypocritical; he's law enforcement, not IC) with his advice here.

It's not a bad thing to do, it's just hypocritical of him to value his own privacy but tell everyone else they need to give up theirs and let the FBI and NSA have access to everything they want to keep private.

He might be wrong (about wanting to able to snoop), but it isn't hypocritical. He is saying protect yourself from illegal hacking by bad actors, but submit to legal snooping by the government. Again, he might be wrong about wanting various legal means to snoop on people, but not hypocritical.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#79

Post by sllabres »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #48
bradbeattie wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/VisualMic/

Interesting technique. This requires 60fps 1280x720 video. People would surely notice the slowdown. I wonder if it's possible to improve on this?

This was an interesting thing to see when it came out and keep people aware what is possible. Maybe there is even more possible using this technique.

But Nevertheless activating one of the many microphones around (mobile phones, phones, laptops, "echo" like devices, speech controlled televison) would concern me much more then.

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