Samuel Gibbs, writing for The Guardian:
Privacy campaigners and open source developers are up in arms over the secret installing of Google software which is capable of listening in on conversations held in front of a computer.
First spotted by open source developers, the Chromium browser – the open source basis for Google’s Chrome – began remotely installing audio-snooping code that was capable of listening to users.
It was designed to support Chrome’s new “OK, Google” hotword detection – which makes the computer respond when you talk to it – but was installed, and, some users have claimed, it is activated on computers without their permission.
Some folks are calling this evil. I don’t think there’s any evil intent here, at least not on Google’s part. But the use of this approach to do evil is obvious.
My two cents: I think every computer manufacturer should include a switch to disable the microphone and camera, a switch that is impossible to override remotely.
My two cents: I think every computer manufacturer should include a
switch to disable the microphone and camera, a switch that is impossible
to override remotely.
Hardware power switch on the USB lines connecting the camera/mic block to the motherboard.
Trivial to implement. Though kind of ugly in practice and a nice point of failure for a flaky switch to break both.
(I mean, what’s The Apple Way of doing that solution on a MacBook?
Nothing comes to mind, because “a hardware switch to turn them off because Chrome might turn them on” is not, well, The Apple Way.
Just like Apple laptops don’t have the weird PC hardware thing [now outdated, I think?] of a physical switch to turn off the WiFi card.)
Google presumes.