You can expect that to become a trend. The NSA has well and truly fucked over the entire American IT security industry. Even ultra-low-end "security" products like home broadband routers have become suspect, thanks to their interference.
Much as I truely *loathe* the NSA crimes of late, I must stand in their defense on this one- at least with how you stated it. The security of *all* (low and high end) security products like home broadband routers was *extremely* suspect even before the Snowden revelations. The mere fact that the industry is allowed to operate like this (mobile phones that never get security updates are as bad or worse), is what clued people like me into the scope of what could be revealed by someone like Snowden. It's been 6 months and it still almost feels unreal, just because of how unreal the prior decade felt. And it felt that way *because the NSA were actively hiding from the public, domestic and foreign, the swiss-cheese fabric of our internet and computing security*. But you can't be a typical slashdot reading techie, certainly now in retrospect, and say "oh, _now_ the security of these devices has become suspect". It was suspect all along. I would have expected to see monthly patches rolling out to my home router, if I imagined the device was being actively security-supported in any way. And the companies were probably just quid-pro-quo happy to not have to invest in real security for the devices. I'm sure the NSA probably leaked to the companies or the public, those security holes it wanted fixed, but kept to itself the ones it didn't want. Open source, many eyes folks. It's the first step toward the only real hope I see.
If somebody is so paranoid about security that he doesn't think he can trust a COTS CPU from someone like Intel, what makes him think that ${government-espionage-agency} doesn't have the resources to plant exploits in the VHDL components he'd download and add?
open source, many eyes. Same equation as democracy of course. I.e. be critical all you want, but do put forth an alternate foundation (for providing real security in the sw/hw case, or real liberty in the democracy case)
> I think the day has come for the moderators to be a little less sympathetic to the authority/FBI side of the debate, and more sympathetic to the dissenters/ACLU side of the debate.
What debate? If you are going to down mod one side in efforts to hide or censor their commentary,
You jumped to the wrong conclusion obviously. My opinion is not the opinion of the person here who modded someone down. If you parse my grammar, you won't find me agreeing with the down-mod. What you'll find is apparently I've trolled you and c.f. into thinking I'm the new guy here, when I was trying to make a snarky 'you sound like the new guy here' even though it should be obvious to most that cold fjord is not the new guy here. I've been here over a decade, I've seen my pre-snowden takes on security downmodded brutally for years, in ways that I don't think would happen post-snowden.
It appears we can only discuss ACLU criticism of the FBI manual, and in a favorable light at that.
Oh get over it. I'm sure this isn't the first time you've seen your comment modded as Troll when you disagree with that assessment. I think the day has come for the moderators to be a little less sympathetic to the authority/FBI side of the debate, and more sympathetic to the dissenters/ACLU side of the debate.
While your 'spin' on the meaning of the content may be plausible at first, the key angle is why the narrow redaction to the ACLU if truly there was no valid interpretation of the sort the ACLU and dissenters might jump to. The wonder of this discovery is in the DIFF between redacted and unredacted versions. That output of diff is what can shed the necissary light on sentences that can be interpreted in multiple ways.
Other key information- " The ACLU has previously criticized the interrogation manual for endorsing the isolation of detainees and including favorable references to the KUBARK manual, a 1963 CIA interrogation guidebook that encouraged torture methods, including electric shocks. The group has also expressed concern that the manual adopts aspects of the Reid Technique, a common law enforcement interview method that has been known to produce false confessions. A redacted sentence in the manual says the document is intended for use by the FBI's "clean" teams—investigators who collect information intended for use in federal prosecutions. That raises the question of whether teams collecting information that's not for use in federal courts would have to follow the manual's (already permissive) guidelines at all.
Another section, blacked out in the version provided to the ACLU, encourages FBI agents to stage a "date-stamped full-body picture" of a detainee, complete with a bottle of water, for use in refuting abuse allegations at trial. "
Why the hell is there an article about the manual being found and not an article containing the portions of the manual that were previously redacted?
" The ACLU has previously criticized the interrogation manual for endorsing the isolation of detainees and including favorable references to the KUBARK manual, a 1963 CIA interrogation guidebook that encouraged torture methods, including electric shocks. The group has also expressed concern that the manual adopts aspects of the Reid Technique, a common law enforcement interview method that has been known to produce false confessions. A redacted sentence in the manual says the document is intended for use by the FBI's "clean" teams—investigators who collect information intended for use in federal prosecutions. That raises the question of whether teams collecting information that's not for use in federal courts would have to follow the manual's (already permissive) guidelines at all.
Another section, blacked out in the version provided to the ACLU, encourages FBI agents to stage a "date-stamped full-body picture" of a detainee, complete with a bottle of water, for use in refuting abuse allegations at trial. "
Your jadedness is all well and good. But I think you are even admitting that the last year with the Snowden revelations did change the computer security landscape in a fundamental way. Gentoo's lack of popularity, TrueCrypt's lack of review are but a pair of good examples of eye rolling insanity. The thing is, before this year, the people who saw how much misplaced trust was put in these various things were written off as paranoid, or pushed Zersetzung-style to insanity. This is a new age. Being able to compile from source isn't the final security solution, *it is the first necessary step*. One which in this new age, people might just be wise enough to start putting forth the effort of taking.
es, there is a lot that you can do and I think the closest real answer to the poster's question is to just get an OpenWRT capable router and compile from scratch, but to not trust anyone is simply not an option.
I agree with you, though would optimistically add to your thoughts- "to not trust anyone is simply not an option... yet". Maybe there will come a day when a truly open source and hardware replicator will become possible. Before dismissing me completely, I imagine there would be some years where it looks like an Apple-II 3d printing another Apple-II, but it's seeming more and more possible. And then it's a bootstrapping issue from there to catch back up to modern specs. But I'd have a lot of fun with an Apple-II that I had a lot more trust in of not being infiltrated by the NSA (regardless of whether the original already was)
actually the obvious answer is that trust is not a binary thing. Evaluate your threat models. If you want to be safe from the NSA, and you are protecting information they want to know, then yes, I would say that eschewing any technology from corporations that are easily coerced by the NSA would be a good idea. Of course, that is practically impossible. But you do what you can. And wanting a device with all source available, in a form that is easy to (perhaps modify and) compile to a verifiable equivalent of the stock firmware and operating system would be the first obvious step.
The OP has already said that there were several mis-steps along the way - and as a non-Anglo, I can attest to the fact that the America that I used to know, the pre-1993 USA (before the Waco, Texas incident) was a country which was trying to achieve that ideal, however impossible the target turned out to be.
Wow. Nice dig from memory. I'll throw out 4 years prior to '89 as you said you were from China, though I'll grant that to me at least, it seems the U.S. complicity in the coverup and whitewashing of what happened in '89 didn't seem to take strong root until the Clinton years, and many a tycoon, of either party persuation, making tons of money with business with China. And every wal-mart customer getting ridiculously inexpensive products made by employees with nothing resembling freedom of speech, religion, or the press.
But to go back to Waco, which I think I may need to explain to some here who haven't seen the academy-award nominated and Roger Ebert endorsed "Waco: Rules Of Engagement", I will pose this question publicly to the FBI- Where are those metal front doors of the compound, that mysteriously "disappeared" during the aftermath. I forget the details, but the documentary suggested those doors would provide evidence as to who fired first. As if we didn't have the thermal video from the FBI/ATF helicopters showing precisely who fired first. As well as all the other obvious evidence of a vast miscairrage of justice that ended with a large compound of - probably misguided but non-terrorist individuals including many children perhaps abused - being burned to the ground by the power of the state much as the peaceful Tiananmen protestors were mowed down by their state. Yup, I suppose it takes someone from China to have the guts to remind us of Waco in these dark days of authoritarianism being revealed here at home.
I've followed the Snowden releases, curious as anyone else as to the ways and means of the NSA. Until now, the only real 'news' for me was the incredible scope of the NSA's reach and their staggering, seemingly unlimited budget.
Oh c'mon. The PRISM slide's demonstration of complete transnational corporate compliance with infiltrated 'cloud' servers was a pretty big line early on. In fact, this isn't all that fundamentally different, just throw RSA up on the slide next to Google/Facebook/Apple/Twitter. That's all this is really. So if you weren't bothered by government infiltration and de-securing of the communications infrastructure used by 99% of the population, I'm flabbergasted that you consider this your 'crossed line' and 'real news'. I'm suspicious your anonymous post is just part of the NSA massaging of this story. The public still needs to be reminded by smart comments that none of the past 6 months revelations were all that bad, but maybe this one, that they'll never remotely understand the math of and which can be handwaved into oblivion with talking points.... you get my gist.
There is probably some secret law hidden deep in a drawer in the far corner of a dark dungeon that legalises this specific contract.
Memo to all members of the government of the United States- This is where we live now. If you don't have the guts to get on task of fixing this problem right now- then get the hell out while the getting is good.
since I misspelled "zersetzung" so badly, I'll take the opportunity to correct that, and spam the current wikipedia quote- " en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi - "
Zersetzung
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2012)
The Stasi perfected the technique of psychological harassment of perceived enemies known as Zersetzung (pronounced [z]) – a term borrowed from chemistry which literally means "decomposition".
By the 1970s, the Stasi had decided that methods of overt persecution which had been employed up to that time, such as arrest and torture, were too crude and obvious. It was realised that psychological harassment was far less likely to be recognised for what it was, so its victims, and their supporters, were less likely to be provoked into active resistance, given that they would often not be aware of the source of their problems, or even its exact nature. Zersetzung was designed to side-track and "switch off" perceived enemies so that they would lose the will to continue any "inappropriate" activities.
Tactics employed under Zersetzung generally involved the disruption of the victim's private or family life. This often included psychological attacks such as breaking into homes and messing with the contents – moving furniture, altering the timing of an alarm, removing pictures from walls or replacing one variety of tea with another. Other practices included property damage, sabotage of cars, purposely incorrect medical treatment, smear campaigns including sending falsified compromising photos or documents to the victim's family, denunciation, provocation, psychological warfare, psychological subversion, wiretapping, bugging, mysterious phone calls or unnecessary deliveries, even including sending a vibrator to a target's wife. Usually victims had no idea the Stasi were responsible. Many thought they were losing their minds, and mental breakdowns and suicide could result.
One great advantage of the harassment perpetrated under Zersetzung was that its subtle nature meant that it was able to be plausibly denied. That was important given that the GDR was trying to improve its international standing during the 1970s and 80s, especially in conjunction with the Ostpolitik of West-German chancellor Willy Brandt massively improving relations between the two German states.
Zersetzung techniques have since been adopted by other security agencies, particularly the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).[28]
So as others have pointed out before why are we wasting so much money and violating everyone's rights for something that is little more than a statistical anomaly.
To be blunt- it is to help the rich and powerful to gain more money and power at the expense of the exploited powerless. With their current systems in place, they better and better entrench themselves in power. Using basically the same vertzezung style methods employed by the east german stasi. Everything else is the usual windowdressing of common authoritarianism. In other words, expounding on threat models that don't stand up to 'doing the math' as you took the effort to do. Thank you for your comment. I've got too much bloodlust against the ratfuckers to be willing to spend time on the numbers and data as you did.
I don't want to bother RTFA, so can someone tell me- in this future, will the user (cough *owner*) of the hardware have the option of disabling this functionality? Perhaps with some long code the user files away if they ever want to disable it, or throws away/shreds if they plan on never disabling it (and preventing all future owners from being able to disable it)?
However, expecting Apple to actually follow through with installing privacy controls like what you've described is probably the height of foolish optimism.
You misunderestimate the heights of foolish optimism I can muster. My real hope is that Apple doesn't, just as you say, but that some competitor comes along and hurts Apple by both designing a more secure product, and convincing the public that it is preferable to the Apple alternative. And even still preferable after Apple copies the ideas, because the current megacorps should all be punished financially into oblivion for their participation, willfully or ignorantly,... Yeah, I'll have committed suicide long before that happens.
actually I've been doing the electrical/duct tape thing for years. But it is disingenous to say that it 'works great too'. A penny's worth of plastic would provide a greatly enhanced user experience in comparison (for the slider). A quarter's worth of physical user facing switches for the mic, speaker, and main power would also provide a great deal of optional security, with a far better user experience than a homebrew mcguyvering will do. The conspiracy here is the NSA encouraging the public, including it's own citizens, to believe that these devices were more fundamentally secure than they were for years. I honestly believe the conspiracy also physically and psychologically harmed many individuals over years to keep the public miseducated and disinformed about the real security risks these devices pose in the long term. (Kompromat, vulnerability of the databases to variously motivated insider threats, of which Snowden was the absolutely best case scenario, though incredibly doubtfully the only successful obsconder of that top secret database).
"No... I will not thank Snowden. As much as I value some of the things that have come to light due to his leaks, I still feel his actions are treasonous. "
He was treasonous to worse traitors than he was. That is the truth of the matter. That makes him a true american hero.
Holy Dear God mod parent up to "+7 Thank You Snowden". And no, I understand _most_ products in the future will still not have the physical slider for the cam, and visually verifiable user facing dip-like switches for mic and main battery power. But the fact that we haven't seen _any_ products on the mainstream (or other?) market like this is what makes the parent post so insightful. The most bloody obvious layer of security is to not give imperfectly secure electronic devices that we keep near us, 24/7 access to input/output devices like mics and cams and speakers, or even their main power supply.
Slashdot Mirror
You can expect that to become a trend. The NSA has well and truly fucked over the entire American IT security industry. Even ultra-low-end "security" products like home broadband routers have become suspect, thanks to their interference.
Much as I truely *loathe* the NSA crimes of late, I must stand in their defense on this one- at least with how you stated it. The security of *all* (low and high end) security products like home broadband routers was *extremely* suspect even before the Snowden revelations. The mere fact that the industry is allowed to operate like this (mobile phones that never get security updates are as bad or worse), is what clued people like me into the scope of what could be revealed by someone like Snowden. It's been 6 months and it still almost feels unreal, just because of how unreal the prior decade felt. And it felt that way *because the NSA were actively hiding from the public, domestic and foreign, the swiss-cheese fabric of our internet and computing security*. But you can't be a typical slashdot reading techie, certainly now in retrospect, and say "oh, _now_ the security of these devices has become suspect". It was suspect all along. I would have expected to see monthly patches rolling out to my home router, if I imagined the device was being actively security-supported in any way. And the companies were probably just quid-pro-quo happy to not have to invest in real security for the devices. I'm sure the NSA probably leaked to the companies or the public, those security holes it wanted fixed, but kept to itself the ones it didn't want. Open source, many eyes folks. It's the first step toward the only real hope I see.
If somebody is so paranoid about security that he doesn't think he can trust a COTS CPU from someone like Intel, what makes him think that ${government-espionage-agency} doesn't have the resources to plant exploits in the VHDL components he'd download and add?
open source, many eyes. Same equation as democracy of course. I.e. be critical all you want, but do put forth an alternate foundation (for providing real security in the sw/hw case, or real liberty in the democracy case)
> I think the day has come for the moderators to be a little less sympathetic to the authority/FBI side of the debate, and more sympathetic to the dissenters/ACLU side of the debate.
What debate? If you are going to down mod one side in efforts to hide or censor their commentary,
You jumped to the wrong conclusion obviously. My opinion is not the opinion of the person here who modded someone down. If you parse my grammar, you won't find me agreeing with the down-mod. What you'll find is apparently I've trolled you and c.f. into thinking I'm the new guy here, when I was trying to make a snarky 'you sound like the new guy here' even though it should be obvious to most that cold fjord is not the new guy here. I've been here over a decade, I've seen my pre-snowden takes on security downmodded brutally for years, in ways that I don't think would happen post-snowden.
It appears we can only discuss ACLU criticism of the FBI manual, and in a favorable light at that.
Oh get over it. I'm sure this isn't the first time you've seen your comment modded as Troll when you disagree with that assessment. I think the day has come for the moderators to be a little less sympathetic to the authority/FBI side of the debate, and more sympathetic to the dissenters/ACLU side of the debate.
While your 'spin' on the meaning of the content may be plausible at first, the key angle is why the narrow redaction to the ACLU if truly there was no valid interpretation of the sort the ACLU and dissenters might jump to. The wonder of this discovery is in the DIFF between redacted and unredacted versions. That output of diff is what can shed the necissary light on sentences that can be interpreted in multiple ways.
Other key information-
"
The ACLU has previously criticized the interrogation manual for endorsing the isolation of detainees and including favorable references to the KUBARK manual, a 1963 CIA interrogation guidebook that encouraged torture methods, including electric shocks. The group has also expressed concern that the manual adopts aspects of the Reid Technique, a common law enforcement interview method that has been known to produce false confessions. A redacted sentence in the manual says the document is intended for use by the FBI's "clean" teams—investigators who collect information intended for use in federal prosecutions. That raises the question of whether teams collecting information that's not for use in federal courts would have to follow the manual's (already permissive) guidelines at all.
Another section, blacked out in the version provided to the ACLU, encourages FBI agents to stage a "date-stamped full-body picture" of a detainee, complete with a bottle of water, for use in refuting abuse allegations at trial.
"
Why the hell is there an article about the manual being found and not an article containing the portions of the manual that were previously redacted?
"
The ACLU has previously criticized the interrogation manual for endorsing the isolation of detainees and including favorable references to the KUBARK manual, a 1963 CIA interrogation guidebook that encouraged torture methods, including electric shocks. The group has also expressed concern that the manual adopts aspects of the Reid Technique, a common law enforcement interview method that has been known to produce false confessions. A redacted sentence in the manual says the document is intended for use by the FBI's "clean" teams—investigators who collect information intended for use in federal prosecutions. That raises the question of whether teams collecting information that's not for use in federal courts would have to follow the manual's (already permissive) guidelines at all.
Another section, blacked out in the version provided to the ACLU, encourages FBI agents to stage a "date-stamped full-body picture" of a detainee, complete with a bottle of water, for use in refuting abuse allegations at trial.
"
Your jadedness is all well and good. But I think you are even admitting that the last year with the Snowden revelations did change the computer security landscape in a fundamental way. Gentoo's lack of popularity, TrueCrypt's lack of review are but a pair of good examples of eye rolling insanity. The thing is, before this year, the people who saw how much misplaced trust was put in these various things were written off as paranoid, or pushed Zersetzung-style to insanity. This is a new age. Being able to compile from source isn't the final security solution, *it is the first necessary step*. One which in this new age, people might just be wise enough to start putting forth the effort of taking.
where is my "+1:alien" moderation button...
es, there is a lot that you can do and I think the closest real answer to the poster's question is to just get an OpenWRT capable router and compile from scratch, but to not trust anyone is simply not an option.
I agree with you, though would optimistically add to your thoughts- "to not trust anyone is simply not an option... yet". Maybe there will come a day when a truly open source and hardware replicator will become possible. Before dismissing me completely, I imagine there would be some years where it looks like an Apple-II 3d printing another Apple-II, but it's seeming more and more possible. And then it's a bootstrapping issue from there to catch back up to modern specs. But I'd have a lot of fun with an Apple-II that I had a lot more trust in of not being infiltrated by the NSA (regardless of whether the original already was)
actually the obvious answer is that trust is not a binary thing. Evaluate your threat models. If you want to be safe from the NSA, and you are protecting information they want to know, then yes, I would say that eschewing any technology from corporations that are easily coerced by the NSA would be a good idea. Of course, that is practically impossible. But you do what you can. And wanting a device with all source available, in a form that is easy to (perhaps modify and) compile to a verifiable equivalent of the stock firmware and operating system would be the first obvious step.
'nuff said.
The OP has already said that there were several mis-steps along the way - and as a non-Anglo, I can attest to the fact that the America that I used to know, the pre-1993 USA (before the Waco, Texas incident) was a country which was trying to achieve that ideal, however impossible the target turned out to be.
Wow. Nice dig from memory. I'll throw out 4 years prior to '89 as you said you were from China, though I'll grant that to me at least, it seems the U.S. complicity in the coverup and whitewashing of what happened in '89 didn't seem to take strong root until the Clinton years, and many a tycoon, of either party persuation, making tons of money with business with China. And every wal-mart customer getting ridiculously inexpensive products made by employees with nothing resembling freedom of speech, religion, or the press.
But to go back to Waco, which I think I may need to explain to some here who haven't seen the academy-award nominated and Roger Ebert endorsed "Waco: Rules Of Engagement", I will pose this question publicly to the FBI- Where are those metal front doors of the compound, that mysteriously "disappeared" during the aftermath. I forget the details, but the documentary suggested those doors would provide evidence as to who fired first. As if we didn't have the thermal video from the FBI/ATF helicopters showing precisely who fired first. As well as all the other obvious evidence of a vast miscairrage of justice that ended with a large compound of - probably misguided but non-terrorist individuals including many children perhaps abused - being burned to the ground by the power of the state much as the peaceful Tiananmen protestors were mowed down by their state. Yup, I suppose it takes someone from China to have the guts to remind us of Waco in these dark days of authoritarianism being revealed here at home.
I've followed the Snowden releases, curious as anyone else as to the ways and means of the NSA. Until now, the only real 'news' for me was the incredible scope of the NSA's reach and their staggering, seemingly unlimited budget.
Oh c'mon. The PRISM slide's demonstration of complete transnational corporate compliance with infiltrated 'cloud' servers was a pretty big line early on. In fact, this isn't all that fundamentally different, just throw RSA up on the slide next to Google/Facebook/Apple/Twitter. That's all this is really. So if you weren't bothered by government infiltration and de-securing of the communications infrastructure used by 99% of the population, I'm flabbergasted that you consider this your 'crossed line' and 'real news'. I'm suspicious your anonymous post is just part of the NSA massaging of this story. The public still needs to be reminded by smart comments that none of the past 6 months revelations were all that bad, but maybe this one, that they'll never remotely understand the math of and which can be handwaved into oblivion with talking points.... you get my gist.
There is probably some secret law hidden deep in a drawer in the far corner of a dark dungeon that legalises this specific contract.
Memo to all members of the government of the United States- This is where we live now. If you don't have the guts to get on task of fixing this problem right now- then get the hell out while the getting is good.
since I misspelled "zersetzung" so badly, I'll take the opportunity to correct that, and spam the current wikipedia quote-
"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi -
"
Zersetzung
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2012)
The Stasi perfected the technique of psychological harassment of perceived enemies known as Zersetzung (pronounced [z]) – a term borrowed from chemistry which literally means "decomposition".
By the 1970s, the Stasi had decided that methods of overt persecution which had been employed up to that time, such as arrest and torture, were too crude and obvious. It was realised that psychological harassment was far less likely to be recognised for what it was, so its victims, and their supporters, were less likely to be provoked into active resistance, given that they would often not be aware of the source of their problems, or even its exact nature. Zersetzung was designed to side-track and "switch off" perceived enemies so that they would lose the will to continue any "inappropriate" activities.
Tactics employed under Zersetzung generally involved the disruption of the victim's private or family life. This often included psychological attacks such as breaking into homes and messing with the contents – moving furniture, altering the timing of an alarm, removing pictures from walls or replacing one variety of tea with another. Other practices included property damage, sabotage of cars, purposely incorrect medical treatment, smear campaigns including sending falsified compromising photos or documents to the victim's family, denunciation, provocation, psychological warfare, psychological subversion, wiretapping, bugging, mysterious phone calls or unnecessary deliveries, even including sending a vibrator to a target's wife. Usually victims had no idea the Stasi were responsible. Many thought they were losing their minds, and mental breakdowns and suicide could result.
One great advantage of the harassment perpetrated under Zersetzung was that its subtle nature meant that it was able to be plausibly denied. That was important given that the GDR was trying to improve its international standing during the 1970s and 80s, especially in conjunction with the Ostpolitik of West-German chancellor Willy Brandt massively improving relations between the two German states.
Zersetzung techniques have since been adopted by other security agencies, particularly the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).[28]
So as others have pointed out before why are we wasting so much money and violating everyone's rights for something that is little more than a statistical anomaly.
To be blunt- it is to help the rich and powerful to gain more money and power at the expense of the exploited powerless. With their current systems in place, they better and better entrench themselves in power. Using basically the same vertzezung style methods employed by the east german stasi. Everything else is the usual windowdressing of common authoritarianism. In other words, expounding on threat models that don't stand up to 'doing the math' as you took the effort to do. Thank you for your comment. I've got too much bloodlust against the ratfuckers to be willing to spend time on the numbers and data as you did.
it's called pro-active entrapment. I'm pretty sure the government use of this is rampant with underage youth in our high schools as well.
GP was clearly worth being moderated 5:funny instead of its current 5:interesting. So I guess you can be forgiven for the lack dark-humor detection.
I don't want to bother RTFA, so can someone tell me- in this future, will the user (cough *owner*) of the hardware have the option of disabling this functionality? Perhaps with some long code the user files away if they ever want to disable it, or throws away/shreds if they plan on never disabling it (and preventing all future owners from being able to disable it)?
However, expecting Apple to actually follow through with installing privacy controls like what you've described is probably the height of foolish optimism.
You misunderestimate the heights of foolish optimism I can muster. My real hope is that Apple doesn't, just as you say, but that some competitor comes along and hurts Apple by both designing a more secure product, and convincing the public that it is preferable to the Apple alternative. And even still preferable after Apple copies the ideas, because the current megacorps should all be punished financially into oblivion for their participation, willfully or ignorantly, ... Yeah, I'll have committed suicide long before that happens.
actually I've been doing the electrical/duct tape thing for years. But it is disingenous to say that it 'works great too'. A penny's worth of plastic would provide a greatly enhanced user experience in comparison (for the slider). A quarter's worth of physical user facing switches for the mic, speaker, and main power would also provide a great deal of optional security, with a far better user experience than a homebrew mcguyvering will do. The conspiracy here is the NSA encouraging the public, including it's own citizens, to believe that these devices were more fundamentally secure than they were for years. I honestly believe the conspiracy also physically and psychologically harmed many individuals over years to keep the public miseducated and disinformed about the real security risks these devices pose in the long term. (Kompromat, vulnerability of the databases to variously motivated insider threats, of which Snowden was the absolutely best case scenario, though incredibly doubtfully the only successful obsconder of that top secret database).
"No... I will not thank Snowden. As much as I value some of the things that have come to light due to his leaks, I still feel his actions are treasonous. " He was treasonous to worse traitors than he was. That is the truth of the matter. That makes him a true american hero.
Holy Dear God mod parent up to "+7 Thank You Snowden". And no, I understand _most_ products in the future will still not have the physical slider for the cam, and visually verifiable user facing dip-like switches for mic and main battery power. But the fact that we haven't seen _any_ products on the mainstream (or other?) market like this is what makes the parent post so insightful. The most bloody obvious layer of security is to not give imperfectly secure electronic devices that we keep near us, 24/7 access to input/output devices like mics and cams and speakers, or even their main power supply.