I honestly think it's an emotional reaction due to the similarity to Orwell's telescreen. There's something about your TV watching you back that gives our collective unconscious the willies.

> Laptops usually have indicator lights for cameras

But doesn't that just mean you have to trust the light? I mean this does indeed seem rather ridiculous. If you're really that paranoid, a piece of masking tape will solve your problem.

> But doesn't that just mean you have to trust the light?

This problem is solved by having the power to the camera hardwired to the light. If the camera is on the light will be on, well until the led burns out but that takes a while.

Last I checked and my model of macbook has this but I do not know how common it is over all.

I do not think this is common practice for microphones and it seems like it should be.

But that means you have to trust power was hardwired to the light.

Or you open it up and check at least with the model I have. I do not know about the new models with retina displays I hear they are harder to take apart.

In theory, the hardware should be designed so that it's impossible to use the camera without turning on the light, so it would require the device manufacturer to be malicious in advance, which is even less likely. Of course, there could be bugs, but it shouldn't be hard to design such a feature correctly. (Note that since there are cases of people being spied on by their laptop webcams, as mentioned elsewhere on the thread, but always with the light on, it would be quite a serious issue if someone discovered a way to disable the light.)

But then you have to trust the masking tape. What if the NSA put a backdoor in masking tape for this very purpose?

Actually, people do worry about phones and remote microphone activation (see for example http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/12/remotely_eaves...).

There are many places where you have to leave your cell phone by the door before entering.