This feels like a double edged sword. On one hand, yay, now I'll know for sure that the camera is on and I'm being watched.
On the other hand, we know that the light is obviously software controlled, so now we're going to get people used to the idea that "light on == camera on/ light off == camera off", and then when the camera gets inevitably hacked, people will be a lot less cautious if the light is off, assuming the camera is off.
"About the glowing red light on the pre 12v Bus which was my constant 'little worry' on many night trips: there were many, many explanations. All seemed valid and I really appreciate them all, but the cat who seemed to have the best grip on the problem suggested painting the button with heavy red fingernail polish so I couldn't see the dim glow, but could still see when the light actually came on."
i think the obvious solution would be to have the light in series with the power to the camera, so that in order for the camera to be on, the light will also have to be on
Early macbooks tried to do something like this, but got it wrong. The camera unit had a bunch of pins, including a "STANDBY" pin which turns off the sensor, and they wired the green LED directly to the standby pin.
But then in 2013 some researchers figured out that actually the camera unit is an entire system-on-a-chip, with a configuration register accessible on an i2c bus, so they could write some malware which first re-configures the camera to ignore the standby signal, and then turn it on...
The paper notes that many camera units have a separate power connection for the CMOS sensor itself, which would be more secure. And I hope later-model macbooks have fixed it. But I guess this shows that it possible to get even seemingly bullet-proof solutions wrong.
(As a more practical problem, I have also seen suggestions that it's possible to turn on the camera, take a photo, and turn it back off again too quick for the LED to be noticable, and if you do that several times per second you could capture low-frame-rate video without the green light, so even a hardware solution might not be perfectly secure.)
> As a more practical problem, I have also seen suggestions that it's possible to turn on the camera, take a photo, and turn it back off again too quick for the LED to be noticable, and if you do that several times per second you could capture low-frame-rate video without the green light, so even a hardware solution might not be perfectly secure.
It's trivial to add a capacitor or hardware timer to illuminate indication light for some time after the camera loses power.
Your wording implies more-recent Macbooks no longer bother with this security feature. I believe I've read elsewhere they actually switched to a custom control board which renders this hack impossible. Is that not the case?
Even when they thought it was a hardware button it was still a software one just at a deeper layer? Good cautionary tale!
Wonder if malware could do reconfigure some chips (not necessarily macbook one) to go into parasitic power mode or something, that is when the power is supposedly off they keep running with power taken from some data connection.
This is how Power Nap works. Even though the lid is closed and your laptop is supposedly asleep (on battery or AC), the software can still wake it occasionally.
You appear to be suggesting that a temperature sensor and a MacBook in Power Nap mode use similar amounts of power. That is not the case.
Even in the webcam case, powering the camera CCD would take significantly more power than is supplied by the data line. You can derive this for yourself without taking one apart by realizing that the power is supplied separately for a reason.
Further, it's not the case that this would work when the power is "physically shut off". If there's no power then there's no power.
The obvious solution is to make this a regulatory requirement.
You want to sell cameras in this country? The on indicator light must be hard wired.
With exception for some professional grade equipment, or the ability to physically cover the indicator light when the recording environment requires it, for whatever reason.
If I want to buy a camera to place in my own home without having it light up (and without having to mod it), that's my business.
I understand what you're getting at: you want to protect average people from predatory device manufacturers who would make an Internet-connected camera and then spy on their customers.
But requiring non-disableable lights by law has unintended consequences.
> If I want to buy a camera to place in my own home without having it light up (and without having to mod it), that's my business.
> I understand what you're getting at: you want to protect average people from predatory device manufacturers who would make an Internet-connected camera and then spy on their customers.
> But requiring non-disableable lights by law has unintended consequences.
Just wanted to mention, it's illegal to sell a phone with camera in Japan that does not make an audible shutter sound. Japanese people don't seem to be too bothered by it.
Like the freedom to do with your possessions pretty much what you damn well please as long as you stay within the limits of the law.
Besides, in the best case we would get what we had with DVD-players almost twenty years ago. Each DVD-player sold could read only the DVD's released in its region. Until you entered some code with the remote control; then it could play every DVD you threw at it.
This is one of those comments that, from my perspective, tries to sound smart by saying "Ah! Implementing you're idea will inconvenience me and have unintended consequences! GOTCHA!"
But seems to intentionally disregards that I did try to address your concerns in my previous comment.
I did write "With exceptions for some ... equipment, or the ability to physically cover the indicator light when ... recording ... for whatever reason."
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Of course, and that's how most webcams work. But my point was with this particular camera, they clearly didn't build it that way, but now they're going to make people think they did, and that's what is dangerous here.
I originally got an Amazon Tap instead of an Echo because it required hitting a button to listen.
Then they added an all setting that let me toggle the always on capability and I realized it was just a software button and that in theory it could listen in whenever and I'd never know. The lack of reliable user controlled methods of limiting recording devices is disappointing. Is there some sort of sound dampening material that could be made into a cover for devices like this?
But we won't know for sure. As you say in the next line, it's software controlled, so it could be showing the light and recording nothing, or vice versa, or behaving as documented.
On the other hand, we know that the light is obviously software controlled, so now we're going to get people used to the idea that "light on == camera on/ light off == camera off", and then when the camera gets inevitably hacked, people will be a lot less cautious if the light is off, assuming the camera is off.