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Comment by rdl | Hacker News Reader

This is from people actively webchatting, but in general, for passive collection, I'm a lot more worried about my microphone than my camera. Even without tape over the lens, my laptop usually just sees my face or a blank wall, or a closed cover. It's not like I have my webcam aimed and lighted at my bed or shower or whatever, and in general, the level of compromising information from text or audio would be higher (sure, naked photos could be embarrassing, but there's nothing particularly unique about them at the national-security level).

I haven't heard much call for "physically disable microphone" switches, though. If anything things have gotten worse with laptops; at least with desktops it was pretty common to just not have a microphone connected. I suspect 99% of laptops have a decent microphone built in, no indicator light, etc.

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What we need are hardware switches which physically disconnect power and data from the camera and microphone.

afaik laptop webcams are usb, and mics are just two wires.. I always wanted to use the useless bluetooth switch of my laptop to turn-off my cam and mic, it seems pretty trivial

Oh wow. That's a good point. And my MacBook lights an LED when my webcam's active, but it doesn't for the microphone. Perhaps it should?

The LED light on the webcam is bypass-able. On many cheap laptops it is controlled in software (at the kernel level), but even on Macs where it is meant to be hardware enforced it can be bypassed:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/18...

Disabling the camera LED is a fairly standard feature in malware suites. Even a lot of USB webcams control the LED from software. The LED is just a feel-good feature.

Yes. It could be done better in hardware.

my laptop (Asus EEE 1215B) happens to have a physical slider that goes in front of the webcam (it also happens to be a bit loose and the tendency to slide to the "open" position if I pack it in my bags .. hmmmm ...).

however the point about the mic stands.

This isn't quite accurate. It can't be easily disabled on most laptops. The way to disable it on Macs is extremely sophisticated, and no malware currently does that, except maybe NSA malware.

You still shouldn't really trust it, but the situation is not how you're making it sound.

The only surefire way to disable your webcam is to place a little square of gaffer or electrical tape over it. Total cost: $0.01 and can be reversed in an instant.

(Doesn't help with the microphone)

I started doing this after seeing a guy selling widgets for it on Shark Tank. Though, I followed the shark's advice and just used a post it. But as someone whose laptop is pointed at their bed, this seemed like a necessity.

I assume you can disable the microphone with a microphone compatible headphone jack plugged in (and cut the cable off). Though it disables your speakers too.

I've mused over a null or noise-emitting mic adapter to plug in.

A physically switchable circuit should exist though, yes.

Actually: thinking more about this, you should be able to ha k the sound card to feed noise into the circuit.

What I want is a tablet with wireless, USB-host, and no mic/camera/etc. Maybe no speaker, but with a port for a headset for both). With physical tamper-evidence for the case, secure boot, etc. And trustzones.

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