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Comment by _bxg1 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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