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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.

6 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 Z00L00K · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But you also need a switch on your microphone to turn it off. It's a bigger risk than the camera since eavesdropping on a conversation can reveal a lot more than the camera can when it comes to company secrets.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    2. Re:Some sensible things by poofmeisterp · · Score: 5, Funny

      But you also need a switch on your microphone to turn it off. It's a bigger risk than the camera since eavesdropping on a conversation can reveal a lot more than the camera can when it comes to company secrets.

      Ah, but not if you're Comey. He encourages people to listen to his microphone to ensure transparency and fairness. Of course that microphone is in an enclosed break room in the "building next door".

      Har.

    3. Re:Some sensible things by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      No it doesn't. At a cursory glance yes it can because it'll probably switch the default input, but in software you can still access each input source independently. So a trojan could continue listening on the microphone array in your screen even when you have your headset plugged in.

  2. Something to hide? by nick.degraeve · · Score: 5, Funny

    It must mean he has something to hide, right? Because privacy is only needed for people who have something to hide.

  3. 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