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A comment on Dell Adding Hardware Privacy Driver for Linux. Parent comment

Re:Dell Adding Hardware Privacy Driver for Linux by crote on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @08:37AM (#24988883)
Why would you care about fooling surveillance? The goal is to prevent a potential adversary from getting any video/audio footage, them being aware of you actively blocking any attempts is not really relevant.

Besides, the vast majority of users will not be under active attack. Having an on-screen popup when you try to use the webcam telling you that it has been hardware-disabled is quite a must-have. If you don't have something like this, you'll get a lot of support calls which boil down to "you accidentally pressed the kill switch, press it again to re-enable".

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Re:Dell Adding Hardware Privacy Driver for Linux by jakobdabo on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @10:07AM (#24989660)
> Why would you care about fooling surveillance?

For example, when you are "required" [1] to run surveillance software on your computer.

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7wxvd/students-are-rebellin...

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Re:Dell Adding Hardware Privacy Driver for Linux by fouric on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @01:01PM (#24991379)
...then you just cover the camera and/or mic with a physical cover, such a piece of tape.
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Re:Dell Adding Hardware Privacy Driver for Linux by boogies on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @04:14PM (#24993131)
> and/or mic

How well would tape work on that?

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Re:Dell Adding Hardware Privacy Driver for Linux by Vrondi on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @04:50PM (#24993395)
These exam proctoring softwares are only required to be run during the time you are actively taking an exam. The rest of the time, there would be zero issue for a student with hardware disabled camera and microphone.
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Re:Dell Adding Hardware Privacy Driver for Linux by matheusmoreira on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @05:24PM (#24993673)
The invasive proprietary software used to prevent cheating cannot be trusted to work only when the students want it work. Its purpose can and will be twisted to fit the agendas of whoever owns the software. It probably introduces several security vulnerabilities into the system just by being installed.
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Re:Dell Adding Hardware Privacy Driver for Linux by jackvalentine on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @05:36PM (#24993772)
It's a Chrome extension.
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Re:Dell Adding Hardware Privacy Driver for Linux by duskwuff on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @02:53PM (#24992445)
> If you don't have something like this, you'll get a lot of support calls which boil down to "you accidentally pressed the kill switch, press it again to re-enable".

Yep. This was an extremely common issue in the mid-2000s, when laptops started integrating wireless hardware with hard power switches, often on the side of the laptop where they could easily be toggled by accident.

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Re:Dell Adding Hardware Privacy Driver for Linux by varispeed on Thursday November 05, 2020 @04:18AM (#24996754)
But was it a "fault" of the switch itself or lack of meaningful feedback that the switch was engaged? It seems like they have not implemented it properly and then say it wasn't a good idea, without really giving it a chance.
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