51–60 of 66 posts
I remember reading that the Japanese iOS makes a loud shutter noise when you take a picture that can’t be silenced. It’s actually apparently a Japanese law. https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-turn-the-camera-shutter-sound...
Can the iPhone camera be accessed by applications without displaying some kind of viewfinder?
Yes, https://youtu.be/jTm4fjx_eZ0?t=532 this is done with React Native. I don't think nothing prevents you from rendering the camera UI preview component with an opacity of 0.0 I guess the main problem that no smartphone manufacturer wants to address is: People who take photos without permission to other people. It would be reasonable to enforce a law on all manufactures to add visible LED when the phone camera is be…
That isn't really what people are worried about here. The issue is when a rogue app decides to start recording video of you without you knowing -- having a camera indicator LED which is in series with the camera's VCC (like almost all laptops have these days) would solve that problem.
There are is a discussion we could have about whether taking a photo of someone in a public setting is something without permission is ethical (and whether the benefit of helping people in private situations would offset the downside of making it harder to discretely record evidence of wrong-doing). But that's not really what this discussion of having an indicator light is about.
I remember reading that the Japanese iOS makes a loud shutter noise when you take a picture that can’t be silenced. It’s actually apparently a Japanese law. https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-turn-the-camera-shutter-sound...
It's a law there because upskirting is a huge problem. I think OP was referring to an LED indicator so the phone owner/user could tell if the camera is in use by an app though.
(also not a law)
I just want a phone that has a manual physical toggle button that kills the power to the cameras if any apps need the camera they can just notify me to please toggle that switch. One of the nightly build that I put on my note 8 turns on the edge screen notification flash when the cameras are on every once in awhile I see that thing on no reason.
The Librem 5 will have 3 hardware kill switches -- for WiFi, Cellular, and Camera/Microphone.
It's a really exciting project and I hope other phone manufacturers integrate some of those ideas.
Is there an indicator on any other phone? Certainly none on my Samsung.
I don’t know of any phones with an indicator - but on the other hand I’ve never seen a laptop that doesnt have an indicator.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Librem 5 will have 3 hardware kill switches -- for WiFi, Cellular, and Camera/Microphone.
This is perhaps the most compelling reason to get that phone. Once it launches, I'll be watching reviews to see if it's usable as a phone. It's a really exciting project and I hope other phone manufacturers integrate some of those ideas.
I'm a little bit worried that their "Chatty" messaging app[2] (which is what the default Matrix client will be) is based on libpurple -- which is a library that has a pretty gnarly history of security issues[3]. It is using a plugin that the Matrix developers wrote[4], which I trust more -- but I'm still queasy about it.
I'm currently working on a Matrix-Signal bridge so I can continue using Signal once I switch to it (it won't have a native Signal app out-of-the-gate and I don't really want to run an Android emulator).
[1]: https://puri.sm/posts/massive-progress-exact-cpu-selected-mi... [2]: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/chatty [3]: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qkve5v/secure-mes... [4]: https://github.com/matrix-org/purple-matrix
I'm surprised not even a simple LED is present though. IIRC Macbooks LEDs are wired such that you can't use them without the current flowing through the LED
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> that kills the power to the cameras And the microphones, please :)
Apple seems to be taking steps in that direction https://www.apple.com/mac/docs/Apple_T2_Security_Chip_Overvi... All Mac notebooks with the Apple T2 Security Chip feature a hardware disconnect that ensures the microphone is disabled whenever the lid is closed. On 13-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air computers with the T2 chip, this disconnect is implemented in hardware alone, and prevents any software—even with root o…
I highly doubt Apple will ever implement a basic hardware switch, because of it's dead-simple nature. I find it highly annoying that Apple at times is like a German car manufacturer that likes to over-engineer shit.
If you make sure that all smartphone models use the same blinking frequency (perhaps 3Hz) and LED color then people would quickly learn what it means.
I remember reading that the Japanese iOS makes a loud shutter noise when you take a picture that can’t be silenced. It’s actually apparently a Japanese law. https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-turn-the-camera-shutter-sound...