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The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

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Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#91

Post by mclovinit »

Kliment wrote: post #78
mkl wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some Lenovo ThinkCentre all-in-one PCs have a physical sliding webcam cover, and you can see at a glance what position it's in. Microphones are harder to handle in such a low tech way, though.

Shorting the two wires of the mic together with a low-value resistor will do what you want, or you can have a physical disconnect switch. It's very easy to modify a mic in this manner if desired. You can even have the switch built into the sliding webcam cover. On digital mics it's a bit more complex to mute without disabling, but the brute force solution is to disconnect their power line in the same manner. Then aga…

That last point is interesting. Even with an RF detector, an accelerometer may act as a cheap room bug. Heck, if automobiles use them to detect when an airbag should be deployed, why not just use them as bugs in cars? Now I'm scaring myself.

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#92

Post by jandrewrogers »

This can't be unfamiliar to the director of the FBI. I have tape on my laptop cameras placed there by intelligence agencies as a prerequisite for bringing my laptop inside their security perimeter, albeit in a quarantined space.

The reason I was given for the tape when asked was interesting, since they obviously didn't care about the microphone. Supposedly it was possible for the camera to capture people in the facility in the background and through glass that could be matched with facial recognition. The very fact that certain people were seen inside their facility could be sufficient to expose secrets they wanted to protect. Audio, on the other hand, just captures ambient noise in quarantined spaces which isn't that interesting since the discussion is not classified. In that sense, the camera has much greater range than the microphone. Which makes some sense.

But surely the Director of the FBI would know this.

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#93

Post by Drdrdrq »

rdl wrote: post #86
Drdrdrq wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think there is a market for 10k of those?

Not as random laptops, no.

If you see a market oppurtunity like this, I suggest you go for it. There are many companies which will make you a custom laptop for such a quantity. Good luck!

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#94

Post by SixSigma »

rdl wrote: post #29

I care about audio so much more than video, and text/keys/etc captured from the machine even more. As long as my screen and keyboard are out of the frame of the camera, I don't really care about it getting RATed. At worst, you'll see me naked, or making angry/etc. faces at someone on irc or email. While embarrassing it would be less bad than most of what you could accomplish by stealing actual information. OTOH, carr…

> Mostly because there's no real alternative to carrying smartphone yet.

And yet somehow, I manage

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#95

Post by krylon »

50CNT wrote: post #57
rdl wrote: post #29

I care about audio so much more than video, and text/keys/etc captured from the machine even more. As long as my screen and keyboard are out of the frame of the camera, I don't really care about it getting RATed. At worst, you'll see me naked, or making angry/etc. faces at someone on irc or email. While embarrassing it would be less bad than most of what you could accomplish by stealing actual information. OTOH, carr…

Some laptops already have physical switches for wireless connectivity, couldn't you just add one of those that cuts power to the onboard microphone and camera?

At work, two of our users have Asus notebooks (I forgot the model, though) where the "On/Off"-switch for the camera just moves a piece of plastic in front of the lense. Maybe it also turns of the camera, but once the lense is covered it doesn't really matter any more. I like the idea, and since it must be rather cheap, too, I wonder why not more companies do this.

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#96

Post by white-flame »

kobayashi wrote: post #6

>"I saw something in the news, so I copied it. I put a piece of tape — I have obviously a laptop, personal laptop — I put a piece of tape over the camera. Because I saw somebody smarter than I am had a piece of tape over their camera." Such a telling statement. It's my belief that this man does not adequately comprehend the magnitude of the issues at hand. General Hayden, on the other hand, is a man whom I believe to…

I went back and watched his whole talk. His entire appeal is that everybody arguing against him is stuck on emotion and won't let go of their incorrect notions. He characterizes all those arguing against him as lashing out that gubment shouldn't be poking into their tweets and instagrams, and that they are being irrational and need to open up their minds. He believes that all the people at technical companies are falling back to this emotional trap and won't actually address the greater issue of balancing privacy and law enforcement.

He really doesn't understand the actual underlying argument, which is the technical and mathematical fact that a system will either be unreadable by global 3rd parties, or will be readable by global 3rd parties.* It truly is either fully secure from both criminals and government, or it is open for criminals and government to have unchecked free access to our data.

The guy studied chemistry. It's not a "conversation" whether or not particular chemical reactions occur under particular conditions, but fact. Similarly, this is not a "conversation", but fact:

The reality we are faced with is that this easily accessed global communication network carries and connects to basically everything private and public, and all our knowledge of encryption leaves us without a viable "government only" access tool to data.

Any conversation needs to start from the recognition of that technical reality, not before. Comey is tossing this impossible request over the wall to tech companies, completely acknowledging he has no idea how any of that works but that they'll "figure it out", and views that as the way forward.

[* = This is considering that breaches of a mandated government-only back-door to encryption will inevitably happen, be it a leak of keys, attacks on the algorithms, or international information politics weakening the system as a whole. The precedents for these scenarios are plenty.]

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#97

Post by krylon »

rdl wrote: post #29

I care about audio so much more than video, and text/keys/etc captured from the machine even more. As long as my screen and keyboard are out of the frame of the camera, I don't really care about it getting RATed. At worst, you'll see me naked, or making angry/etc. faces at someone on irc or email. While embarrassing it would be less bad than most of what you could accomplish by stealing actual information. OTOH, carr…

My mother used to be a police officer, and she once came back from a visit to the department of the interior in our federal state (of Germany) and told me about a room they had there (maybe several) for meeting where sensitive issues are discussed. What sets them apart - among other things, I guess - is that there are no phone lines, no network, and for meetings people are not allowed to bring telephones/smartphones, tablets, or computers of any kind.

So, yes, the audio thing is something to worry about.

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#100

Post by robk »

rdl wrote: post #38
shurcooL wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did I understand what you said at the end correctly, are you willing to commit to buy 8 million dollars worth of laptops?

Yes. (and then sell them, obviously, ideally for much more than $8mm)

This is a perfect scenario to test the demand will kickstarter
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