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FBI Director James Comey: Cover Up Your Webcam (thehill.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the sticky-note dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: The head of the FBI on Wednesday defended putting a piece of tape over his personal laptop's webcam, claiming the security step was a common sense one that most should take. "There's some sensible things you should be doing, and that's one of them," Director James Comey said during a conference at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "You go into any government office and we all have the little camera things that sit on top of the screen," he added. "They all have a little lid that closes down on them. "You do that so that people who don't have authority don't look at you. I think that's a good thing." Comey was pilloried online earlier this year, after he revealed that he puts a piece of tap over his laptop camera to keep away prying eyes. The precaution is a common one among security advocates, given the relative ease of hacking laptop cameras. But many found it ironic for Comey, who this year launched a high profile battle against Apple to gain access to data locked inside of the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino, Calif., terrorists. Many viewed that fight as a referendum on digital privacy.

5 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Some sensible things by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "There's some sensible things you should be doing, and that's one of them,"

    Another sensible thing you should be doing is using encryption.

    And voting out anyone who thinks that the FBI's warrantless wiretapping is sensible.

    1. Re:Some sensible things by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I wish manufacturers would include a physical switch that simply disconnects the webcam (most use an internal USB connection for both video and audio) by physically breaking the link. No possible software bypass.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    2. Re:Some sensible things by clodney · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Things like SELinux or Mac's Gatekeeper or any Unix-type OS can be set so that only specific applications have access to certain hardware.

      I wouldn't trust Mac, as it's closed source. But I don't blindly trust my Linux-based systems, either, as they run on closed hardware. Comey and the Three Letter Agencies have made open hardware all the more necessary.

      Open Source is perhaps modestly more trustworthy, but things like the obfuscated C contest and the fact of very long lived bugs in core elements like SSH prove that open source is no panacea. Whether done by the US or somebody else, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that there are intentional backdoors injected into lots of open source projects, and that it is done skillfully enough that they haven't been noticed.

  2. Cover microphones doesn't work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As a side note, sticking tape over the microphone holes does not work, no matter how thick the layers of tape. You can confirm this yourself by sticking tape over mics on your phone and then using a recording app. It will still record audio that is clear enough to understand.

    A modern tablet or phone has enough microphones in a mic arrange, and enough sensitivity that sound coming through the case can be recorded easily. The best you can achieve is to make it muffled.

    Snowden used a fridge to stop stuff recording (it is airtight and bulky enough to stop sound so phones inside cannot record). It's not useful as a faraday cage, because a lot of the spyware records stuff and sends it only when opportune (e.g. on Wifi, or when you're sending lots of other data to conceal the transmission). So a faraday cage would not help, it could still record audio and video and send it later.

    FBI head tapes over his cameras, Mark Zuckerberg does, Anonymous Cowards does, so *you* definitely should.

    Perhaps you recall the case of the Pennsylvania schools that installed spyware on their laptops and recorded kids at home using the computer? Well if you take a typical Android phone, it has lots of apps pre-installed that have camera access. So I noticed that Microsoft Word came pre-installed, and when I hooked the camera API, Word was being started periodically by Microsoft Skydrive, and accessing the camera api.

    http://www.computerworld.com/article/2521075/windows-pcs/pennsylvania-schools-spying-on-students-using-laptop-webcams--claims-lawsuit.html

  3. Re:Some things shouldn't be software controlled. by Angeret · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A simple solution for this on laptops - a pair of small sliders, one a physical switch which cuts the mic line, the other a flag covering the camera lens (rear cameras on handheld devices are for someone else to figure out). Both would be near to the front bezel of the device so a small window could show a red mic symbol when the mic switch is moved to on, a green mic with a line shows when switched to off. For the camera, the green panel - off - would be solid and the red - on - would have a hole in it for the lens. You could still make the camera switch a camera power killer if so desired (might also be that rear camera solution for other devices?).

    The only problems I see are companies wanting to incorporate this and how small and idiot proof you could make the additions. This is simply an engineering solution with easy user access - no software required, no menu hunting, so no issues with "does it really cut out?"