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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

#151

Post by int_19h »

monocasa wrote: post #142
craftyguy wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And UL was kind of a joke from having dealt with them personally. UL may be a 'joke', but it does keep a lot of sketchy electronics out of the market (at least in the US). In my personal experience dealing with them, bad hardware design is more to blame for a bad experience with UL than the UL process itself (which, is brutally long, but just might be for a reason..)

We just had a situation where they insisted on a design that they admitted was less safe in context but fit their standards better.

That's exactly what I would expect from a standards-based certification. But it's also why it's useful - "it is safer" is much easier to fudge (see also: Boeing) than "it is in compliance with this 40-item check list". Either way, it sets the baseline, so there's a net benefit so long as most products would be below that baseline without market pressure to certify.

Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us

#152

Post by int_19h »

snaky wrote: post #16
cobbzilla wrote: post #5

Earlier 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?

I think we're still finding that out. Have you noticed the attitude towards large tech companies among the general public lately, especially those whose business models are entangled with privacy issues?

Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us

#153

Post by int_19h »

kiallmacinnes wrote: post #128
lucb1e wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can turn that off, though. Not that I trust it to work, but at least legally you can deny that. Do you happen to know about GPS? Because my phone sometimes picks up GPS faster than should be physically possible (knowing a thing or two about how GPS works), and sometimes it takes a normal amount of time. I have GPS turned off almost all the time, don't have a Google account logged in, everything I can deny to Goog…

Most phones use Assisted GPS. It's a combination of cell tower triangulation and GPS. You'll get a potentially inaccurate "GPS" location based on the cell towers and signals you can see, and this will eventually turn into a real GPS lock. As I understand it, this cell tower location actually helps achieve a real GPS location faster that would be normal - but I'm unsure how that would work .. I'd be guessing at best ;…

As I understand it, roughly knowing your position lets it get a lock on enough satellites faster, because, given position and time, it knows where they're supposed to be.

http://gpsinformation.net/main/gpslock.htm

Also, I believe that part of the reason why Google wants that SSID info is because they can later use it for location purposes as well, making that initial position determination more accurate than with just the cell towers alone. In general, the more environmental data they can correlate with accurate GPS coordinates, the better they can predict location when GPS is unavailable.

Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us

#154

Post by devoply »

jetrink wrote: post #71
rudolfwinestock wrote: post #24

Janie 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:...

“Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. [...] Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it.” - George Orwell, 1984

Stupid sexy Chromecast. It's good there is no microphone in it like the Nest... or is there?

Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us

#155

Post by deno »

dymk wrote: post #21
api wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking more of Alexa type devices.

Where’s it been shown that Amazon Echos spy on you?

https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Amazon-reveals-priva...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-10/is-anyone...

Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us

#156

Post by ntauthority »

zrm wrote: post #94
wutbrodo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my first thought when seeing Sanger's initial tweets about this. Someone else replied to the tweet pointing it out, and his response was along the lines of "that's not an off switch, it just blocks it". I'm not really sure why blocking the camera isn't strictly _better_ than a physical off switch, at the very least from a trust perspective

Depending on what the cover is made of, it may not be opaque to infrared, which some cameras support. Also, microphones.

I feel that this is one of the reasons that the IR camera option on ThinkPads does not have the covering functionality.

Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us

#157

Post by drivebycomment »

kiallmacinnes wrote: post #128
lucb1e wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can turn that off, though. Not that I trust it to work, but at least legally you can deny that. Do you happen to know about GPS? Because my phone sometimes picks up GPS faster than should be physically possible (knowing a thing or two about how GPS works), and sometimes it takes a normal amount of time. I have GPS turned off almost all the time, don't have a Google account logged in, everything I can deny to Goog…

Most phones use Assisted GPS. It's a combination of cell tower triangulation and GPS. You'll get a potentially inaccurate "GPS" location based on the cell towers and signals you can see, and this will eventually turn into a real GPS lock. As I understand it, this cell tower location actually helps achieve a real GPS location faster that would be normal - but I'm unsure how that would work .. I'd be guessing at best ;…

For non-assisted GPS, the GPS device needs to download orbital information from the satellite directly when first powered on - with only ~50 bits/s of bandwidth, it can take a while - minutes to tens of minutes. With Assisted GPS, the GPS device can download the satellite orbital information and almanac directly from AGPS server (e.g. cell phone tower), usually at much higher bandwidth - as those local, always-running servers can constantly download and cache all satellite information.

Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us

#158

Post by jsilence »

The USB spec has a part where USB devices can be turned on and off by software on a USB hub. Unfortunately almost no USB-Hub implementation/device supports this part of the spec. I have been looking into this for a while with the goal of watchdogging and powercycling unreliable USB devices. The seemingly only USB hub at that time was unfortunately not on sale any more, even back at that time.

Maybe this could be a nice kickstarter, a smart USB hub that can be integrated into the smart home/IoT world. I'd buy it.

Since it is separate software, not the webcam software, that is switching the webcam off, we would not have to trust the webcam software maker to fullfill the promise.

Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us

#159

Post by watwut »

HALtheWise wrote: post #101

Am I the only one who has far more sensitive content visible on the screen and filesystem of my computer than through its camera? I feel like, at least for the threat models that I consider likely, if someone manages to hack my laptop and get (for example) microphone access, the thing I am most worried about is that they will use acoustic analysis of keystrokes to recover my banking password, not that they will hear…

The worry is more about stalkers and abusive partners. Abusive partner using it to further control you or hear that you plan to leave or hear that you talk with someone he disapprove (e.g. vuctim breaking out of isolation and distorted reality victim is in).

Those situations are physically dangerous when they happen.

Re: Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us

#160

Post by lixtra »

teddyh wrote: post #134
justinjlynn wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Max Headroom was an extremely subversive program and I continue to be amazed it was actually greenlit, produced and broadcast on mainstream television - in the United States for primetime broadcast, even!

I will provide some speculation, but first some back story, as I recall it: Max Headroom was, to start with, a collection of special effects to make a British talk-show host seemingly generated by computer, but still able to interact live with guests, etc. (A little bit of the same niche which the early muppets occupied, actually. See the early appearances of Rowlf the Dog on American talk show TV, for instance.) Any…

Or they just saw huge amounts of advertiser’s money and didn’t think about the content as long as advertisers didn’t object.
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