"These new Dell privacy buttons are basically hardware kill switches for the microphone and web camera video stream. The Dell privacy driver sent out on Tuesday for the Linux kernel is about manipulating the relevant LEDs and tracking the status of the hardware-based controls where as the actual toggling of the audio/video support is handled by the hardware."<p>Why not just wire the LEDs up to the same power line that goes to the camera?
I see a lot of concerns here that the LEDs are software controlled. Judging from the source code of the privacy driver [0], it doesn't look like it.<p>I'm not too familiar with the kernel interface for LEDs, but as far as I can understand stubs are added to read back the LED status, but not so much setting it.<p>Phoronix's description of 'manipulating the relevant LEDs' seems to be misleading.<p>[0] <a href="https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20201103125542.8572-1-Perry_Yuan@Dell.com/" rel="nofollow">https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20201103125542.8572-1-Perry_Yua...</a>
The #1 feature of Dell laptops is the repair manual which allows you to, among other things, physically remove the camera and microphone without damaging the hardware.<p>Would be nice if they would release signed, flashable firmware images for remediating compromise.
Not necessarily directly related to this article, but with Linux adoption among OEMs exploding recently, doesn't this just continue to grow the size of the kernel? What keeps it from becoming an even bigger monolithic behemoth than it is now? Trimming out old/unmaintained drivers?<p>This is just something that's never crossed my mind until glancing at this article and thinking back to Microsoft adding all of their Hyper-V/DX12 stuff.
The privacy screen that can limit the viewable angle on demand is pretty cool. I hadn't heard about those before, but it is now definitely something I'll be looking for in my next laptop.
This is nice, but I'd rather just have a physical switch. One that physically breaks the connection. For a camera, a built-in cover seems like a fine idea.
This seems a lot similar to hardware switches for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices, which are handled by rfkill. Of course, this adds support for microphone and webcam now, but wouldn't it make sense to extend rfkill? To me the purpose of these hardware switches seems close enough to be handled by a generic framework.
I've been happily using Dells with Linux for... 15 years or so? It's a great option as it comes out of the box working pretty well. Happy to see this.
Sure hope it is actual hardwired, and not hardware with an updatable firmware chip controlling the LED like apple used to do.<p><a href="https://grahamcluley.com/webcam-spying-without-turning-led-researchers-prove-possible/" rel="nofollow">https://grahamcluley.com/webcam-spying-without-turning-led-r...</a>
> The Dell privacy driver sent out on Tuesday for the Linux kernel is about manipulating the relevant LEDs and tracking the status of the hardware-based controls where as the actual toggling of the audio/video support is handled by the hardware.<p>This is incorrectly designed: the LEDs <i>must</i> be hardware-driven, not software driven. Otherwise malicious software could turn off the LED when the camera and microphone are running.