If you're wondering about blocking it off, though, that's much harder than the camera. You'd basically have to open the laptop and unsolder the mic capsule -- or mount a little white noise generator right over the mic, but then you can't close your laptop. :-)
edit: Not sure why this is getting downvoted. The price difference is unlikely to have much to do with the physical costs involved. Political campaign stores typically have inflated prices as they're fundraising efforts.
I'm obviously kidding around.
I would presume the LED is wired directly to the module's power. Then, it would be physically impossible to turn on the camera, without the LED becoming illuminated. (And, in my opinion, obviate much of the need for these silly stickers.)
It would also be an odd design for Apple to make the camera's LED indicator an independently controllable component.
[0]http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/18...
Edit in Reply: Not necessarily. It's probably still possible on modern Apple hardware, albeit with a lot of firmware hacking, according to the authors of the paper: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/117937/how-to-use-i...
Here's the paper describing the flaw: https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2...
As a software developer I'm regularly ashamed by the inaccessibility of computer technology. The non-technical individual's inability to control what happens to them and around them in regards to electronics and software is rapidly outstripping their capacity to act in their own self interest.
It's kind of depressing.
I agree that this is a pretty regrettable state of affairs that we basically can't trust anything with a turing-complete processor in it somewhere.
Apple and others have decided they will happily save 1 millionth of a cent for a proper hardware solution and instead relegated camera LED indicator control to software. And obviously, it is impossible to prove that software will not activate the camera without also activating the LED.
[0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1893116150/nope-live-fr...
Those machines came with a camera that had a little door you could slide to cover it, so at least he had that protection.
Yes. Here's one in the closed position.[1] That feature seems to have disappeared.
There was a time when people were bothered about phones where the switchhook didn't physically disconnect the microphone. All the Western Electric phones had a hard disconnect when the phones were hung up. Many digital office phones don't have that, and can be used for eavesdropping.
[1] http://www.tamayatech.com/ProductImages/S/SGI-0138737XXX.jpe...
Yahoo only decided to provide the option to enable encryption sometime in 2014 after they found about it and it's pretty shameful on their part.
There's mention of MS too with Kinect but I'm not sure if it was sending out encrypted video or simply using weak encryption.
"You must post a Privacy Policy and that Privacy Policy must provide notice of Your use of cookies that are used to collect data. You must disclose the use of Google Analytics, and how it collects and processes data."
- Used to claim the Civil Rights Act went too far before he started thinking maybe he wanted to be president.
- Says he will sell off a bunch of our national parks to the highest bidder.
- Invented his own bogus Ophthalmologist certificate and certified himself.
Come on HN, you're better than this.
