Earlier quoted context omitted.
The purpose of a webcam is to spy?
I was thinking more of Alexa type devices.
Where’s it been shown that Amazon Echos spy on you?
Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us
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Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us
#22It's too bad there's not a company with enough funding and incentive to make equivalents that don't need to phone home. Ones that are competitive in price, functionality, etc.
The recent HN post about Mozilla's IOT offering was encouraging: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19695595
Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us
#23Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us
#24Janie Crane: “An off switch?”
Metrocop: “She'll get years for that. Off switches are illegal!”
—Max Headroom, season 1, episode 6, “The Blanks” https://www.maxheadroom.com/index.php?title=Episode_ABC.1.6:...
Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us
#25It's too bad there's not a company with enough funding and incentive to make equivalents that don't need to phone home. Ones that are competitive in price, functionality, etc. The recent HN post about Mozilla's IOT offering was encouraging: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19695595
While that would be ideal, I don't personally mind the phoning home if it only happens after the wake word and if the cloud service greatly improves the response capabilities it might otherwise have. Yes, the word can be heard by mistake, but that's just the risk trade-off I make.
I think a physical off switch would be good. At the moment I just unplug my Alexa if I'm particularly concerned it might hear something sensitive.
I know many HN readers are far more privacy-conscious than I am, but that's just how I think about it. I personally consider cybercriminals and people who dislike me far greater privacy and security risks to me than tech giants or even the US government.
Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
That's different. While still very bad, one is omission, and one is full-on deceit.
Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us
#27To suggest an alternative, all devices capable of internet communication must allow their traffic to be decrypted by their owner (how that password gets set is up to the individual device). This would allow owners who care to set up a man in the middle and confirm that all outgoing (and maybe even incoming) traffic to the device is what they expect. Any outgoing message that is not decryptable or not expected would be a red flag (which the vendor could try to explain if it is a non-spy message like an unusual error code).
Cryptographically I believe it is possible to encrypt a message such that either the user's key or the vendor's key can decrypt, but I'm not 100% sure.
Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us
#28This sounds similar to the "do not track" setting in browsers ... which was respected by almost no websites. Why would it work this time? (Physical switch or not)
Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us
#29Such suggestion seems like something that could be whispered to EU commissioners as a protection for consumers.
Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us
#30To suggest an alternative, all devices capable of internet communication must allow their traffic to be decrypted by their owner (how that password gets set is up to the individual device). This would allow owners who care to set up a man in the middle and confirm that all outgoing (and maybe even incoming) traffic to the device is what they expect. Any outgoing message that is not decryptable or not expected would b…
Easier is to just let the user compile and reflash the firmware themselves.
But yeah you could give the user access to the devices private keys and certificate store.