
A request/demand to all gadget makers - thrownear
If your gadget contains a mic or a camera, provide a hardware indicator (for example. A small led besides the camera or mic) to indicate that the corresponding recording device is active.<p>I want to request the tech crowd that we boycott all (new?) devices that does not comply with this simple requirement.
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brudgers
If the indicator is programmable, it's no more accurate than anything else.
Physical disconnection is the closest thing to certainty.

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thrownear
No, not programmable. That was what I meant "hardware indicator". Maybe I
should have said "hard wired". If the device is active (even if there is
nothing receiving the output), it should be indicated without exception.

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brudgers
The screen is hardware. It's wired to the camera. Both are independently
addressable via software. Making a small screen consisting of only a single
LED and moving it close to the camera doesn't change that...so long as the two
are hardwired and one or both are programmable, there's no certainty.

Short of removing the camera from the device, physical disconnection is the
next best thing. To put it another way, a camera can shoot at 1/2000 of a
second. That's quick enough that a person will miss the blink of an LED even
if it's activated 10 times as long as the shutter is open. So any indicator is
going to have to programmed to show future and/or past events to conform to
the human time frame...or as some might say is the case with all things
photographic, it has to be programmed to tell a lie to be useful. It's just a
matter of whose lies it tells.

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PhasmaFelis
> _Making a small screen consisting of only a single LED and moving it close
> to the camera doesn 't change that...so long as the two are hardwired and
> one or both are programmable, there's no certainty._

This doesn't make any sense. Do you not know what "hardwired" means?

Rig the light so that it is turned on any time the camera is transmitting to
the CPU. This is a physical interface, not a software one. You can hack the
camera software any way you like, but anything that receives an image from the
camera will activate the light.

> _Short of removing the camera from the device, physical disconnection is the
> next best thing. To put it another way, a camera can shoot at 1 /2000 of a
> second. That's quick enough that a person will miss the blink of an LED even
> if it's activated 10 times as long as the shutter is open._

So activate it longer than that. Why is this a problem? You can easily wire
the light to activate for a minimum of one second (or more, if you like) any
time the camera transmits even a single frame.

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chei0aiV
That doesn't work, for microphones, provide a physical switch and for cameras,
provide a physical cover.

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sogen
Nice idea

