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Comment by amenod | Hacker News Reader

> But I’ve seen reports and articles where it’s possible to fire the Mac camera and shut it off quickly before the LED has time to kick on.

It should be trivial to delay LED's 'off' if it happens too soon after the 'on' signal.

There are many possible solutions if designers actually care about users' privacy.

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I did some basic testing (capture an image on a warmed up macbook webcam) and the LED lights up for ~1.6s for each capture. The bigger problem is that if you are looking elsewhere / not in front of your computer you wouldn't notice the capture.

Did it using this script: https://tenderlovemaking.com/2014/03/26/webcam-photos-with-r...

This might be specific to the MacBook Air but it seems trivial on the Mac to capture without an LED. E.g. open up Skype and go to settings and you’ll see live footage of your camera without the LED coming on. Am I overlooking something?

I wonder if it would be possible to wire the LED and camera module in series so that the only way for the camera to receive power is if the LED light is also on?

That’s actually what happens on current (as in since 2010) Apple laptops. The camera sensor can not receive power without the LED being on. Pre-2010, the design had a flaw and all the stories about “hacking the camera” that are legit, are about the pre-2010 design.

Presumably this would interact poorly with FaceID’s attention aware features. iOS periodically activates the front facing camera while unlocked to determine if you’re paying attention to the phone. This influences automatic screen dimming and alert noises.

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