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Comment by kbrosnan | Hacker News Reader

For a user to be affected by this they woul need to:

* They would need to visit a website using webrtc

* Grant Firefox the Android camera/microphone permissions

* They would then be prompted to allow the website access to the camera and microphone

* For this to be a persistent problem the user would need to check a box that says "Remember my decision for this site" this is unchecked by default in the above dialog

As comments here and in the bug there are cases where leaving the camera active is useful so this is not as cut and dry as the title leads you to believe.

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Sorry but you make it sound like its four independent actions which lowers the overall probability. While in reality this whole sequence of actions is a very common thing for a user to do.

> you make it sound like ... lowers the overall probability

I think that depends on whether you interpret the comment as trying to mitigate the perceived magnitude of the issue, or provide clear and concise information on what the issue entails.

I read it more as a "here's what the preconditions are, and there's some question as to whether the issue is actually a bug or not", and not "you have to do this for it to be a problem, so it's less bad than you think", so the wording didn't seem problematic at all to me.

FWIW based on how it was written I interpreted it as the latter "you have to do this for it to be a problem, so it's less bad than you think", so glad you clarified that wasn't your intent.

To be clear, I didn't write that comment. I don't blame you for thinking that though, I actually almost added a postscript immediately after I commented to note that I wasn't the original commenter since the usernames looked similar, but figured I would just let it go and respond/edit if someone made the mistake. :)

I hope someone has a stat on how many HN replies are by third parties. Now breakdown by hamming distance of usernames from GP :) :)

It's not "preconditions." It's one condition. That the user wants to visit a website that uses the camera. The rest are details of that one condition. He might as well have said things like "turn on phone" "install the firefox app" "short-press the firefox icon" (to launch it).

I think the bigger story is that this is possible for an app to do at all on Android, in a way such that the user might not realize it can happen/is happening.

I agree. What does iOS do about this? Does it just not allow locked phones access to the camera, or provide a prompt at lock, or something else?

I'm curious too. I assume it's better, but I don't know firsthand. I tried googling it and every result was about manually opening the Camera app from your lockscreen.

Also not an iOS developer, but I think that apps enter a “suspended” stage when you close them or press the power button to save battery life. If you look at apps’ crash logs, you can see that they are occasionally killed by a system process for using too much CPU or other resources when they’re in the background.

There are definitely constraints on background activity, but I don't know for sure whether that applies to the camera, and I don't know what its precise relation is to the screen being locked

Some other comments here seem to indicate (at least in recent models?) that it's a visual indicator light on the phone that the camera/mic is being accessed. That might be sufficient, although I might also like a small audio cue on lock (or camera engage/disengage while locked).

Unfortunately, I doubt Android will ever be able to rely on a separate visual indicator of recording, since that's another hardware component and probably hard (if not impossible) for Android to enforce.

I remember in the old Nokia days and early android days when the camera shutter sound couldn’t be disabled (peeping Tom rules) adding an indicator similar to what webcams have could be possible heck you could potentially use the flash LED on its lowest setting.

Some phones don't have such fine grained control over the flash, in my case (Galaxy Note 10+) it still is like a flashbang.

The visual indicator is only in beta right now, but it will be coming to all iPhones 6s and newer in the fall.

This seems like an area where regulations would be helpful. All persistently internet connected mobile devices with cameras must have one hardware activated status LED per camera, visible to the user. Same should go for microphones actually.

You are hit with popups asking for permission.

Even the Apple Watch remote camera app asks you to unlock the phone first so it seems like it’s not possible.

If there's an active call, which allows recording while in the background there's always a red bar at the top of the screen while the phone is recording.

If there's not, the app looses access to the camera while the app is backgrounded/the phone is locked.

I understand an app losing access to the camera in the background is a security feature. But, it is also really annoying when you want the person to see you while you’re doing something else on your screen.

One feature that’s been in the iPad for a few years and coming to the iPhone in the fall is picture in picture where a video call doesn’t take up the entire screen and as long as PIP is enabled, you can have your video call minimized and do something else.

I think it should be possible, but should be very obvious to the user when an app is doing this (and should require extra permission to be granted).

Consider that I might want to record an encounter with law enforcement on the sly, and also want to keep my phone locked to make it harder to tamper with if it's seized.

Regardless, an app like Firefox should not be doing this, or even offer it as an option. There are certainly legitimate use cases even for Firefox, but I think with a web browser there's too much possibility for abuse and security/privacy issues to make it worth it.

> Regardless, an app like Firefox should not be doing this, or even offer it as an option.

Why shouldn't I be able to use a website called imgettingpulledover.com on Firefox instead of an app to do the same thing that you just described?

EDIT: posted this before the edit, edited version makes sense.

> I think it should be possible, but should be very obvious to the user when an app is doing this (and should require extra permission to be granted).

I disagree with the permission part, I hate how everyone's solution to any problem is to just add a toggle or another level of complexity to the app.

But the solution to the first part is easy and something that already exists all over Android. Simply have a persistent notification saying "The camera is currently active" which can't be dismissed until the camera is turned off. This is used in newer version of Android for any background task doing non-trivial work, really.

Android phones that have LEDs should activate the LED whenever the camera is active so that people are aware it is on (especially the front-facing camera). Much like how MBPs do it.

The problem is that a lot of modern ones do not. My past 4 or 5 Android phones did not have LEDs. My second to last, a Oneplus 7T Pro had a pop-up camera which was great for knowing when something was accessing camera without your knowledge (it happened a few times). I'm now on a Oneplus 8 Pro and no popup and no LED so it's a step back in that regard.

We really need hardware LED indicators for phone cameras.

Honestly it does not matter how many conditions need to be met, there is simply no reason for a web browser to be able to do this under any circumstance.

You might argue about a video surveillance app which you install and which you explicitly grant the permission of filming while the lock screen is on, for example with an old device which you want to use as a security camera, but that is a completely different use case.

So regular Google Hangouts / Meet and Jitsi Meet users then?

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