Obvious but unanswered points re: camera and mic kill switch blog post

USB camera and microphones do not need to be plugged in during boot. Why do the ones on Librem?

Why not implement the mic killswitch physically by grounding the input?

Why not the camera as a plastic shade?

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Personally I like the ability to cut power, as is implemented in the current switches. (It’s clean, clear and definitive.) But I do think those could be good secondary features.

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I’m not sure where you got this idea, but you don’t need to have the camera/mic hardware kill switch enabled during boot for it to work, it can be disabled, and once you enable it, it will be detected and works without requiring a reboot.

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I agree that a physical cover/shade for the camera would be an appropriate addition – it provides absolute assurance for novice users without having to trust anything else Librem says about the kill switch. :slight_smile:

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Unfortunately it would not be so feasible to “stopper” the mic. And electrical disconnection is pretty obvious and trustworthy if one opens and inspects what the switch does.

It’s not just about trust, you can test it yourself to confirm, just open any camera capturing app (Cheese is a good one to test with) and flip the switch on/off.
I understand what you mean though, especially with the v1 models, but with the new librem 13 v2 and librem 15 v3, the switches are labeled so you can quickly check and confirm if the camera is disabled or not. It of course doesn’t stand out as much as a cover though, so it might be harder to see at first glance that it was enabled by mistake.

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