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Comment by SomeCallMeTim | Hacker News Reader

If it turns out that one of the installed apps was taking pictures without the user's knowledge, then that's one reason to like the permissions that Android shows you for every app you install: No app can take a picture without requesting the proper camera permissions, and I'm not going to install a game or a music player that requests camera permissions (or anything else totally unnecessary). (For those who don't know, the list of permissions an app requests is presented to you before you install any app.)

iPhone/iPod/iPad users can correct me if I'm wrong and iOS pops up some kind of warning when an app turns on the camera -- I know it pops up a warning under some circumstances at least.

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Unless I'm mistaking, an API that let's an app take pictures without the display betraying what's going on doesn't even exist. I don't even think any API exists to take pictures — that doesn't involve the touch of a finger on the display.

Can't explain it though.

In iOS 4, such APIs do exist. I blogged briefly about it here http://www.bunnyhero.org/2010/08/17/thoughts-on-ios4-camera/ (I used the API for a test app that uses the front camera to detect how much light is shining on the iPhone http://www.bunnyhero.org/2010/08/15/turn-your-iphone-into-a-... )

But why would Facetime be using this? It seems unnecessary.

The theory is not that Facetime is using this API but that another malicious app is using it to take pics without the user consent.

Then Facetime is loading those pics on startup because they were the last pic taken with the phone.

Hmm, okay, but doesn't that sound kind of strange too? Why would FaceTime use an image from the camera roll instead of one from its own cache?

The linked thread says the image being displayed is not in the camera roll. so maybe some sort of weird caching issue?

Yes, there is an api to take a picture without pressing the screen. It's called -(void) takePicture and it's part of the uiimagepickercontroller class.

http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/UIKit/...

If I remember correctly, Color is eventually planning to passively gather audio information as you walk around in order to better know where you're at and what you're doing. Wouldn't it be funny if it was the app causing this?

Are you serious? That's the creepiest thing I've heard yet. Why would anyone want that?

They do this already. It allows the phone to detect whether you're in the same place as someone else: if two phones are hearing similar sound, then you're likely to be next to each other. Color shows you photos taken by people near you. Audio is one signal for detecting who's near.

Note: GPS sometimes doesn't work indoors, where there's no line of sight to the satellites in the sky. Cell towers and Wi-Fi work, but aren't as precise.

Huh. Depending on what they do with the audio input, that might be illegal in Massachusetts. (Our wiretap law requires all parties to consent, and it applies to any covert audio recording, not just phone conversations.)

The last post in the thread makes it sound as though an app wasn't even on the display when it happened ("I hit the button to see if anyone called me (no one did) and drove off" - and then later the picture is of him when he hit the button). iOS wizards: if you have an app up, hit the screen lock, and then later hit the home button, is the app unfrozen then, or does it wait until you unlock? I would guess waiting for the unlock based on how it looks on my iphone.

If it does wait til you unlock, it's probably an iOS bug. If it doesn't, let's look askance at their list of installed applications, particularly the ones that use the camera and that people were likely to have been using shortly before locking their screen (a guess, based on their lists: facebook).

The iPhone doesn't issue a warning when the camera is turned on. Like the others though, I've never seen a case where an app took a picture without showing me the camera and hitting a button myself, so I don't know what's going on.

And I doubt permissions would fix anything for most users - users tend to agree to anything.

The app in question is a video calling app. You would be giving it camera privileges if you intended to use it.

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