It would take a law since as it stands it would defeat the purpose of these devices: to spy.
Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us
11–20 of 200 posts
Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us
#12It would take a law since as it stands it would defeat the purpose of these devices: to spy.
The purpose of a webcam is to spy?
Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us
#13Meh. Houses still have windows, and people still have binoculars, but we seem to get by fine with blinds. Tape over your webcam, unplug Alexa, or turn off your phone if you want more privacy.
More importantly, there is a social norm that you don't look through people's windows with binoculars. Of course police, spies, or creeps might do it, but that's incredibly rare. Unfortunately, the social norm (and business model) of the modern web is that companies build ever-more-powerful binoculars to constantly stare. That's the real problem we need to fix.
Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us
#14Note that a physical switch can be overridden just as easy as a soft switch, the vendor can just put a soft switch in parallel with it and you would never know it. The hard switch could turn off the display, speaker etc. while the processor and radio can stay on.
Hopefully this would easily be detected, and the brand damage from the resultant public shaming should be enough of a deterrent. But maybe it's really well hidden and eludes detection, or people just don't care and there is no brand damage, or maybe even there's no "real" brand to damage (OEM crapware).
I’d imagine a vendor bothering to put an off switch will know that a simple teardown will show if it actually disconnects the device or just signals software to do it. The effort and expense would be for nothing. Most users would never bother to care about the off switch anyway, and the ones that do will know the truth.
Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us
#15Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us
#16Note that a physical switch can be overridden just as easy as a soft switch, the vendor can just put a soft switch in parallel with it and you would never know it. The hard switch could turn off the display, speaker etc. while the processor and radio can stay on.
Hopefully this would easily be detected, and the brand damage from the resultant public shaming should be enough of a deterrent. But maybe it's really well hidden and eludes detection, or people just don't care and there is no brand damage, or maybe even there's no "real" brand to damage (OEM crapware).
What's the brand damage from the resultant public shaming of e.g. Google Nest Guard' 'hidden' microphone?
Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us
#17Thanks to Purism laptops and phone for taking the lead on kill switches for sensors, https://puri.sm/learn/hardware-kill-switches/
Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us
#18Note that a physical switch can be overridden just as easy as a soft switch, the vendor can just put a soft switch in parallel with it and you would never know it. The hard switch could turn off the display, speaker etc. while the processor and radio can stay on.
I like the way the lens works on the new Lenovo Thinkpad camera. It slides sideways, thereby blocking the camera. That's how I like to see it done
Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us
#19Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us
#20So how would do that with routers, which in the UK conveniently pass a copy to NSA of all communication, with phone baseband devices (qualcomm), with PC CPU's which all have mandatory "lawful" backdoors?
The webcam and microphone is only half of the story.