To me, Comey is a man who has lost the goal in pursuit of his particular mission.<p>Defense, intelligence, policing, all these things exist in order to uphold the constitution, protect the "American ideals", etc. Many of his statements pretty directly show that he doesn't care about the collateral damage to innocent people's privacy or any founding principles, he just wants his mission to be unhindered. It's the same mentality behind police forces wanting to make their job less dangerous and more straightforward, by escalating use of force and trampling rights.<p>With this hypocrisy, as has come many times before (congress shocked and demanding privacy when the CIA spies on them, for instance)... I can only shake my head. Come on.<p>Encryption is our webcam tape.
I care about audio so much more than video, and text/keys/etc captured from the machine even more. As long as my screen and keyboard are out of the frame of the camera, I don't <i>really</i> care about it getting RATed. At worst, you'll see me naked, or making angry/etc. faces at someone on irc or email. While embarrassing it would be less bad than most of what you could accomplish by stealing actual information.<p>OTOH, carrying around a microphone connected to the Internet which can be remotely enabled at any time without leaving any real trace (battery use/network use is the only real sign, although even that could be covered up to a great degree -- there is probably a way to do either low-fidelity or infrequent audio pickup, maybe keyed on location and charger state, and on-device pre-processing) -- people do this all the time Mostly because there's no real alternative to carrying smartphone yet.<p>Plus, of course, there's the fact that no modern desktop OS is particularly secure -- either you give up auto-updates and likely fall to bugs, or use auto-updates and are at risk to your OS vendor or anyone who can compel him. So sensors attached to it, as well as stuff processed on it, is also at risk. You can somewhat mitigate this through a large combination of other protections, but it's almost impossible for a single user single machine to solve that problem.<p>I'd love a custom run of Dell Chromebook 13 or Lenovo Thinkpad 13 Chrome Edition with no built-in mic/camera, and an EPROM vs. EEPROM, and some special case features. Would be willing to commit to buy 10k units at ~$800/unit retail in 8-16GB x 32GB config.
>"I saw something in the news, so I copied it. I put a piece of tape — I have obviously a laptop, personal laptop — I put a piece of tape over the camera. Because I saw somebody smarter than I am had a piece of tape over their camera."<p>Such a telling statement. It's my belief that this man does not adequately comprehend the magnitude of the issues at hand. General Hayden, on the other hand, is a man whom I believe to actually understand the technology that he was charged with professional addressing.
This can't be unfamiliar to the director of the FBI. I have tape on my laptop cameras placed there by intelligence agencies as a prerequisite for bringing my laptop inside their security perimeter, albeit in a quarantined space.<p>The reason I was given for the tape when asked was interesting, since they obviously didn't care about the microphone. Supposedly it was possible for the camera to capture people in the facility in the background and through glass that could be matched with facial recognition. The very fact that certain people were seen inside their facility could be sufficient to expose secrets they wanted to protect. Audio, on the other hand, just captures ambient noise in quarantined spaces which isn't that interesting since the discussion is not classified. In that sense, the camera has much greater range than the microphone. Which makes some sense.<p>But surely the Director of the FBI would know this.
> "absolute privacy" hampers law enforcement.<p>"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.<p>"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, ..."<p>Sorry man, you were instituted to serve me, at my consent and pleasure, not the other way around. You have the make the case to me to do what you want, not the other way around.
EFF sells a sticker set specifically for this purpose: <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/shop/laptop-camera-cover-set" rel="nofollow">https://supporters.eff.org/shop/laptop-camera-cover-set</a>
I'd be interested in finding out how many people do this with the front facing camera on their phone. It seems to be a much lower percentage than those who do it with their laptop webcam (from what I've observed at least).
How stupid do you have to be to doubt the security of your laptop enough to put tape over your webcam, but not enough to stop using it all together. If you are concerned that your laptop might be compromised, then you should stop using it. If hackers have access to your webcam, they most certainly also have access to your keyboard, mic, and every file on your system as well. So, what you are basically saying to the world is you don't care enough about your personal communication, files, and speech to properly secure your laptop, but by god, no one shall see you in front of your laptop. It's like sitting in a car that's on fire and saying to your self: "I know, I'll turn on the air con!"
I used to have a piece of tape on my webcam. But I figured that it couldn't possibly be so interesting to see my face, so I took a different strategy, and moved the tape piece 1cm to the right, so it covers the led indicating if the camera is in use.
I don't trust that LED anyway, and if someone should peek at me, I do not want to be made aware of it (and thereby distracted)
I've been telling friends and family to do this long before the Snowden revelations (as well as disabling their computers internal microphone). Many of them mocked me about the shine on my tinfoil hat. They don't do so much mocking anymore.
Honest question. Not to ignore any flame wars<p>I have been following this surveillance and privacy debate. I understand that encryption cannot go both ways. We cannot create back doors that are only available to the good guys. Add to this that the 'good' guys are known to abuse power.<p>But I also cannot deny that at certain times there are legitimate reasons for law enforcement. What solution, maybe political if not technical, can we adopt to meet the legitimate demands of law enforcement?
Is it just me or is there at least one other person laughing their ass-off. Honestly, I am not sure to know if I am laughing at or feeling sorry for the FBI director. I felt that the director of FBI would not be scared of anyone monitoring him.
I think it's a big stretch to compare this to uncrackable encryption. While the piece of tape makes one avenue of surveillance impossible, it doesn't block them all. If law enforcement needed to surveil him in the same way that a webcam could, they could get a court order and place a camera in his home.<p>Uncrackable encryption, on the other hand, blocks all possible avenues of surveiling the desired communications. That isn't a bad thing, but it is different than placing tape over a webcam. I am definitely a proponent of government-proof encryption technologies, but grasping at straws trying to call this guy a hypocrite seems like a wasted effort to me.
Every corporate laptop I've worked with has the camera and microphone physically removed.<p>If needed for a function, a USB camera and/or microphone is applied for through various chains of approval, and plug-in pull-put tracked.
There are actually smartphones and laptops where you can close the camera with an integrated sliding window. I don't know of such a thing for integrated microphones, but Thinkpad's bios allows disabling mic and camera, though if you don't trust bios's software switch, I'd recommend pulling the internal cables. Then you can connect a USB headset and/or camera on demand, knowing there's no always-on mic.<p>But, since even Windows desktop edition has Cortana these days, I'm afraid mic will be harder to disable in newer machines.
NPR suggests people in the director's position have a more legitimate need to cover their webcams "... It's certainly not unreasonable to worry about webcams, <i>especially for someone as high-profile as Comey</i>"<p>And teenagers?<p>There is no mention in the article of the "Lower Merion School District" case where school officials were spying on teenagers through their webcams in their rooms.<p>Call me old fashioned, but I think that's an important case for the general public to know about when discussing webcam privacy...
All these little wires [0] emit electromagnetic radiation that be intercepted and turned back into whatever you see (and more).<p>Despite what you read on Hacker News no amount of encryption or software trickery is going to stop this.<p>[0]: <a href="http://imgur.com/IHXKlNw" rel="nofollow">http://imgur.com/IHXKlNw</a>
If I were director of the FBI I'd have an internet device secured by the sharp minds I hire. Probably more than one to route through and log packets, especially outgoing ones. I'd think as director of the FBI you could even get something like that setup on your personal laptop. I've been using OpenBSD, Snort, and also FreeBSD/PFSense to monitor my networks for at least 16 years even my own personal ones. The fact such a high profile target (and his team) can't figure out technology in this way seriously let's us know how inept and incompetent they must be.<p>If he worries someone is watching him through his webcam I wonder how he feels about the microphone? Does he talk about top secret things in front of laptops?
Genuinely funny song on the issue :
The Government Knows
- Knower : <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zH9Zca1vRM&app=desktop" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zH9Zca1vRM&app=desktop</a>
While it's not reasonable to ask this of everyone, it would seem to me that if anyone should strive to have "nothing to hide" it would be politicians and people in positions where they are definitely under foreign surveillance.<p>Like okay, they have to do deal with classified material and sensitive things - but there is a time and place for that and I trust the FBI director doesn't use his personal laptop for work.<p>He should be basically streaming his video camera on the internet for everyone to see - b/c the people that want to see it probably will
For a while there, when built-in webcams weren't quite as common, my employer would either remove the camera completely or, if that wasn't possible, they would smash the lens and sensor with a metal punch.<p>They eventually quit (now we can use Lync to do video calls, even) but a lot of people now put little sliding windows over their cameras (you can get them at conferences these days, branded with the Splunk logo or whoever's giving them out)
I wonder what he uses as a (Smart)phone, if he uses any at all. Since there are very few with physical lens cover for the back camera, and probably none covering both (the front camera and the back).<p>Recently, I have got back to feature phone after decade long struggle with several smartphones, keeping all on my desk for app development purpose only. I hope Comey would follow me. If not doing it now. ;)
In Russian FSB top officials use only typewriters, and physically destroy the ribbons when done. Compare to our security officials, current and former. The political appointees who helm our security state bureaucracies bring to mind one's kindly uncle who still emails from AOL and forwards pop econ items from yahoo news.
Best surveillance film ever <a href="http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0071360/" rel="nofollow">http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0071360/</a>
The FBI knows how bad hardware and software security is, as well as how they're being exploited, and doesn't want the same things he wants from you.