TIL that a high school in Pennsylvania issued an Apple MacBook to each of its 2,306 students, then remotely activated the webcams to spy on the students at home.
TIL that a high school in Pennsylvania issued an Apple MacBook to each of its 2,306 students, then remotely activated the webcams to spy on the students at home.
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Ahh i remember the days of the school shitbook pros. That kids is why when 2020 rolled around and all my classes went to online and they wanted me to use there laptops provided. I made a disk image of the ssd and ran it all in a VM with usb passthrough. Cant acess my webcam if there is none!
You know, a piece of black tape would've been a lot easier.
Or if computer manufacturers just put in a hardware disconnect for the camera and mic. Like Lenovo used to do with the wifi switch.
That wont help with recording the audio from the mic
Hardware manufactures could (and should) put separate mic and cam LEDs wired directly in line with (wire in parallel to)the power circuits for the mic and camera. They won't, but they should. Best they ever do is a digitally controlled LED that is sketchy as fuck, for the camera only.
Framework does. Switches for the mic and camera both electrically disconnect the devices: https://community.frame.work/t/the-1080p-webcam/157
It's a bit more expensive, because a pure electrical switch wouldn't age well and you'd get bad connections sometimes. They implemented an optical switch that does the same job. That's probably whole pennies per unit more expensive, and ain't HP got time for that.
That's actually really cool. Framework will likely be my next laptop.