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Comment by hc-taway | Hacker News Reader

1) physical kill switch for camera (as in, it breaks the power or data connection to it, physically) or at least a physical cover.

2) physical kill switch for the microphone

These are very much not "nerd" concerns, either. I see a lot of non-techies with stickers over their laptop cameras.

[EDIT] teachers in particular spread the "put a sticker over the camera" practice, in my experience, both before and during the pandemic. The last thing they need is to be responding to some student message late at night and accidentally snap a picture or start a video chat. That could easily be career-ending, and they wisely don't trust software safeguards to prevent that. Yet they do want the camera, sometimes. Not having a kill-switch or cover built in sucks.

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In addition to a kill switch, it would be great to have a switch that affects 1) the physical device 2) the OS switch and 3) the Teams/Zoom/Webex switch.

Regularly we have people in meetings forgetting one of those switches (the physical switch being on the headphones) and trying to talk without being heard.

OS just needs to know about that switch state and report it to apps if necessary.

This is great -- most people skip over the last use case. But it seems like very useful to have.

It seems that option #1 is mainly used because it is easy, and we might not fully trust #2 and #3? (Not because of evil doing, but because of bugs, and unlikely case of hacks).

If you're on MacOS, open 'Audio MIDI Setup' and look at 'Built-in Microphone'. You can tick the 'Mute' box next to 'Master' and your microphone is now muted independently of Teams, WebEx, or whatever.

It's not a physical switch, but it's a good second safeguard. Teams is even polite enough to tell remind you that you're muted because it can detect this.

A slightly folded post-it note also works well as a camera cover that's easy to remove and easy to replace if you lose it. I also find that when I'm about to join a call and my video's dark pink (rather than black), it's a good reminder I have my 'shutter' in place and haven't noticed, despite it being physically in front of my face.

Software switches are always hackable. Never ever rely on one.

Half of hacking exploits would go away if there was a physical write enable switch on device ROMs.

People's threat model isn't always some malicious hacker with access to their machines. The vast majority of the time people simply want to be sure that the video conferencing software they deliberately installed on their non-compromised machine isn't accidentally transmitting the sound of them eating lunch to the call they deliberately joined. I'm not sure pushing back on tips about how they can reasonably accomplish that because "software solutions can be hacked!" is particularly helpful.

Because it seems every day I read about some software hack draining away all the information on a "secure" computer. "Secure" software is a fantasy. Hardware switches are secure.

As much as I'd still like a physical mic kill-switch on MacBooks (if any company has its interests aligned with privacy-signaling, it's Apple), this is a very useful tip, thanks for sharing!

>> or at least a physical cover.

I want a mechanical microphone switch too. Being seen can be embarrassing but being caught saying something can end your career instantly. See that school board that all had to resign after they were caught badmouthing parents.

Of course, let's not forget that the core problem here is the "end your career instantly" part, not the design of the microphone.

Just because something will end your career if overheard doesn't mean that it was something bad. Think of a lawyer on a long zoom call. What if they answer a client call and that conversation is pickup up by the zoom computer? Or what if someone in my office asks for login/account info and that conversation gets pickup by zoom? Or a system administrator sitting through a long zoom meeting about pension plans who accidentally has a side conversation about security issues on the production server. These are everyday acceptable office conversations that, if broadcast to zoom accidentally, can end a career far faster than looking unkempt on a webcam.

Sending a video feed that you don't want to send is not okay, even if it doesn't put you out of a job. The excessive severity is just exacerbating something that would be a problem anyway.

By which I assume you mean that the core problem is that they were casually denigrating the parents rather than trying to work with them?

Sometimes people vent. While I am not aware of that particular situation, bitching to your friends about some situation is different than live broadcast

I don't know how a mechanical microphone switch would have helped in that case.

That seemed to be a UX issue. The board was on a call with other members, and didn't realize that there was another participant. Some news stories just called it a "hot mic" issue because it is easy to glance and get an idea of what the story is about, but that's not exactly what happened.

An external microphone with a physical push to talk button would be a pretty perfect UX if that is your worry.

And trusting that the internal mic is actually off.

Good point, my work-from-home "laptop" is a desktop I built so I guess I'm pretty sure there is no internal mic .

Although this might not be simple enough for typical users a (On)-Off-On toggle switch (momentary in one direction, latching in the other) would be perfect for this.

Not sure what incident you're referring to, but school board is an elected position. Politicians, of all people, should not expect job security and need to be transparent and accountable to the voting public. They don't deserve privacy at all, at least not in their professional capacity. I like privacy, sure, but I achieve that by not running for public office.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/21/us/california-school-board-re...

If you’re saying things that can end your career instantly, be more careful about what you say?

So you don't share confidences with a trusted friend? I'm sad for you.

I'm not going to lie, the assumption that everybody necessarily has career-ending confidences to share with their friends is very strange to me.

How people bond with their friends is by sharing confidences which builds trust between them.

They are not confidences if saying them publicly won't come back and bite you.

> everybody

I didn't say everybody, you don't need to turn it into an absolute to make your point.

I heard about an entertainer for kids who had a radio show back in the day. At the end of one session, he thought the mike had been turned off. But it was still hot, and he groused to the studio "That ought to hold the little bastards for a while."

Career ending.

What the heck are you people saying that could end your career?

I say things that would get me fired but not things that would prevent me from ever getting hired again.

The goalposts of what is considered career ending is always moving. Something you say today could not be career ending, but it could be career ending when somebody digs up dirt on you in 10 years.

Just look at the whole wokeness movement which has taken root in the last few years and compare what was acceptable to say in 2010 vs what is acceptable to say in 2020.

My work Laptop is an older ThinkPad and it has a physical sliding camera cover as well as the F4 key which functions as an all purpose mute button for the microphone. The F4 key even lights up when enabled. So these options definitely exist, to some degree.

my new Lenovo X1 Extreme has both of those things. I actually didn't notice the F4 microphone toggle before, thanks for the tip!

One issue is that laymen know enough to not trust that switches are true kill switches, but don't generally have the skill set necessary to verify for themselves what their hardware has in that regard.

A piece of tape is a very low technical skill system that you know will cut off a video feed.

Transparent casing with the wires running to a slightly to large mechanical toggle switch that switches all wires. Then it looks like someone went out of his way getting it right.

I would like to see prisoners provided with in transparent laptops. Take away the lithium battery if worried.

Does not necessarily work on the microphone though.

Lots of companies distribute their employees laptops with a little plastic slider to shutter the camera, so it's further than not-just-nerds - corporate IT decisionmakers are recognizing the need too.

Trouble is, lots of laptops are subtly (or not so subtly) damaged over time by extra stuff being closed in the lid. Apple laptops, notably, but plenty of others too. It'd be much better for it to be built-in. Covers also ruin the (absolutely wonderful and hard to do without, once you're used to it) True Tone feature on Apple laptops, so they'd need some kind of secondary ultra-low-res never-exposed-as-a-real-camera color-temp sensor to properly support either built-in or add-on camera covers or kill-switches while still letting that work.

(I'm basically agreeing and elaborating, not correcting you, since your point isn't that that's a great solution, but that it's more proof that more than just security geeks and computer nerds consider this a problem)

In fact last year when it was okay to meet your benefits providers in person, one of them handed out plastic stick on webcam covers you could slide back and forth with their logo on it.

I'm disappointed that Apple hasn't seen fit to put a physical camera cover on their webcams like recent Thinkpads.

These items are so trivial and so obviously cause consumers angst by being missing that I can only presume the near universal lack of them is an intentional ploy to train people to be used to being on camera so that various additional invasive techno-gadgets can be introduced over time. A "market" would have produced "choice" but we have to stick with tape.

It was extremely obvious what they were doing when Google Glass was released without even a glowing video indicator.

The HP Spectre x360 line has had a physical kill switch for the camera for the last 3 generations. It's a slider on the right side of the laptop. The new gen ones also come with a system wide mute button although I believe that is software only.

A band aid makes a better cover as it doesn't leave gluey residue on what's already a crummy camera.

similarly, the gentlest grade of painter’s masking tape avoids sticky residue too. electrician’s tape isn’t bad either (the black tape is also less conspicuous).

Over the long term, masking tape hardens and cements to the surface. Very nasty to try to remove. It is not for long-term use.

i believe all tape does some version of this eventually. i wasn't thinking it would be left on permanently, but possibly on the order of months before being replaced. in any case, something like scotch delicate surface tape[0] was what i had in mind when posting my prior comment.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008BWIR8G

Not just non-techies. I use a band-aid (doesn't leave adhesive on the lens) because toggling the video settings on Win10 is a pain in the ass.

Isn’t it funny people use and hand out camera covers but a mic that can hear the sounds of an entire apartment is forgotten about? :)

Heres a crazy idea.

Use a web based video conferencing solution. Close the browser and close everything.

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