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Comment by jrochkind1 | Hacker News Reader

The surprisingly positive aspect of this is that a piece of system software which is checking for location, which there is no toggle for in System Services, which nobody even new existed at all...

...still makes the the Location Services icon flash! The Location Services icon really does flash when anything uses Location Services, apparently.

This is no trivial thing to be thankful for, and hardly something I'm confident will be universally true forever.

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Yeah, there's been cases where "This light means the webcam is active" and "This hardware switch toggles the WiFi on and off" were overridable.

Well, then again, I don't want an Alexa or Google Home, but I don't mind having an always-on Android phone with a microphone and 2 cameras...

> I don't mind having an always-on Android phone with a microphone and 2 cameras...

I'm not happy that I don't have the option of a hardware switch to disable the cameras and mics on a phone, but I can do everything a smart speaker does without bugging my home in the process.

If a company like samsung, LG, or Motorola offered a phone that really took user privacy seriously I think they'd find a lot of people would be interested, but until then I just have to assume my phone is spying on me at all times and I limit how I use it and what data I enter into it as a result.

The reason I bought an iPhone was that in my eyes I'm picking the lesser evil: only Apple is spying on me. While in Android's case it's Google, the smartphone vendor (Samsung, Huawei etc.) and hell knows how many others.

I of course don't have an irrefutable proof but judging by circumstantial evidence, news and PR, it's the best conclusion I can reach for now.

But I'm pretty sure my iPhone is spying on me anyway.

This is one of the reasons I'm considering switching to iPhone for my next phone, FWIW.

I’m on iPhone for a daily driver for similar reasons but considering switching to a Galaxy S9 running Lineage (to better boycott China), FWIW.

You might be better served by a Xiaomi phone. They have a very active dev community and apps and ADB tweaks that boycott the private data telemetry to China and Google are introduced and updated regularly. Or at least they were last I checked a year ago. :D

I’m particularly interested in boycotting Chinese made products to the best of my ability. That’s why I’m trying to switch off iPhone. I don’t see how a phone designed and produced in China would serve that goal.

I understand. I am simply pointing out an option for the price-sensitive folk who also don't mind going the extra mile to fight for their privacy and reduce tracking.

I personally prefer my iPhone.

> I'm not happy that I don't have the option of a hardware switch to disable the cameras and mics on a phone

Librem 5 is the phone you're looking for. Or a Pine Phone.

I've looked into Librem phones from time to time over the years and every time I check the phones are unavailable, usually back-ordered. I'm sure they've managed to ship something at some point but I haven't seen anyone IRL who has one. Pine seems to be about the same (maybe available next year although even then you'll likely be using an OS that's in beta). Not encouraging.

As much as I'd love to support these kinds of products they just don't seem ready.

People just started receiving their librem 5 phones.

I think the early pinephones are shipping too or very close to it

> but I haven't seen anyone IRL who has one

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21696130

If you prefer a bit of OS polish while Librem improves, why not using AOSP on a Pixel or Xperia device?

It'll be some time before I replace my current device, but once I do I'll be looking for something that supports LineageOS or Replicant although that'd still leave the hardware suspect.

You can't really say it's a phone when phone calls are broken.

The mute switch on Amazon's Alexa hardware is supposed to be a hardware switch.

Once that's pressed the microphones are physically disconnected. The devices light up red to indicate this. (Not sure if all the more recent Alexa products still have this though)

I just learned about the mute switch yesterday. It's nice that they have one, but keeping your smart speaker mic off 100% of the time severely limits it's usefulness where as you can disable the smart assistant on your phone and still have a perfectly functional phone.

Do you have a reference of a case where this was violated? I had thought that Apple at least actually had real hardware paths to monitor webcam activity, unless the hardware was physically compromised.

Close; there's a precedent for it having been subverted via firmware compromise:

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurit...

No, the Mac cam light is software activated.

Just read that there have been updates since this time:

https://daringfireball.net/2019/02/on_covering_webcams

> Here’s an answer I received from a former engineer at Apple who was intimately familiar with the software drivers for Mac webcams: "All cameras after that one were different: The hardware team tied the LED to a hardware signal from the sensor: If the (I believe) vertical sync was active, the LED would light up. There is NO firmware control to disable/enable the LED. The actual firmware is indeed flashable, but the part is not a generic part and there are mechanisms in place to verify the image being flashed. […]"

(“That one” being the MacBook comprised in the “iSeeYou” paper.)

It’s been hardwired for quite some time. There is still firmware on the sensor controller but it’s signed and verified now so you can’t just flash whatever you want to it.

True, although that software now runs on an specialized secure coprocessor

I think you're giving them just a little too much credit for implementing, essentially, a product that works as expected.

And the reason for that is partly because so many companies make products that don't work as expected. Or worse they make products intentionally designed to mislead users, most of whom have very little understanding of what their device is actually telling them.

More importantly, the super-users like yourself who know when they're being deceived by symbology in UI design don't get up in the companies face when you DO discover "hey, this symbology is misleading!" Granted, companies are intentionally vague when documenting such features so that you'll essentially shame yourself into not asking "what does this little symbol actually mean?"

When confidence that anybody else's products work 'as expected' is essentially zero, and doing the right thing comes at a significant extra cost, I think this is reasonable.

> The Location Services icon really does flash when anything uses Location Services, apparently.

That's not necessarily true, though.

It's just as likely the developer who implemented the feature forgot to set the "flashIcon = false" parameter in some low level API and nobody noticed. Without access to the source code we're just taking Apple's word for it.

You're treating this as evidence the location services indicator can't possibly be inhibited currently, laughable.

No, they're saying that this is evidence that it is currently not inhibited, and even called out that this may not always be the case.

Except it's not evidence of that at all. It's only evidence that this particular location services user didn't attempt to inhibit the indicator.

There can just as well be existing location services users, currently using location services without your knowledge, when you're relying on a flashing widget on the screen as your source of truth.

Evidence, not proof.

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