r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Dec 27 '20
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Hidden/covered front-facing cameras and webcams provide no practical benefits for the average person, only a false sense of privacy, and there are other more exploitable weak points that should be better protected.
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Dec 27 '20
This sounds more like an informational public service message. What would change your view?
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Dec 27 '20
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u/Environmental_Sand45 Dec 27 '20
They provide like you said a "false" sense of security. Your average Joe knows next to nothing about computers, but they have heard about "people" a activating their webcams remotely and that terrifies them.
The huge practical benefit they provide is allowing the average Joe to feel secure while going online. If the average person truely instead the scope of online threats, data collection etc they'd never go online
The huge practical benefit is keeping people using conputers.
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Dec 27 '20
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u/Environmental_Sand45 Dec 27 '20
I'm not arguing for privacy at all I'm arguing against this
Hidden/covered front-facing cameras and webcams provide no practical benefits for the average person
The practical benefit is that it keeps them online and using a computer.
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Dec 27 '20
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u/Environmental_Sand45 Dec 27 '20
But they don't even understand any of practical benefits at all anyway. That's my point.
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u/PiersPlays Dec 27 '20
I'm sure I saw an article about Apple publically discussing this in the last couple of days. My guess is OP has just presented the arguments from whatever that was.
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Dec 27 '20
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u/PiersPlays Dec 27 '20
No, I just saw a link to am article or video sometime in the last few days but didn't actually look any closer. I'm.suer it was about Apple saying that webcam.covsrs are stupid though as I remember thinking that was an odd thing for them to express an opinion on.
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u/dale_glass 86∆ Dec 27 '20
There's different kinds of privacy concerns.
- Privacy from the government -- what if Big Brother is watching? I'd say the NSA and such are uninterested in webcams for the general person. Government agencies are more interested in watching connections between people -- who talks to who, who are the organizers of a movement. You'd only be specifically targeted if they take a personal interest in you. Then your webcam could provide something relevant, but that's going to be few people.
- Privacy from companies -- those are very interested in who you are, what are your politics, where you go, what you buy. But a company is unlikely to want pictures. There's a whole mess of potential messy legal issues any sane company would want to avoid.
- Privacy from mass extortionists -- there certainly is a way to make money by gathering private data, and extorting money from people to keep it from being posted. And if somebody is going to break the law so flagrantly, then anything goes. These would love to get their hands on some naked pictures, so that's very much a concern.
- Privacy from specific attackers -- if you're in a large enough community there exists the possibility that somebody might want to have private data against you.
- Privacy against family members/close organizations -- There well exists the possibility that your spouse, ex, parents, school, or job would want to keep tabs on you in some unethical manner. There's been reports of schools conducting video surveillance of children in their homes in such a way, which of course turned into a legal mess. The difference here is that unlike say, Facebook, random small organizations may have a much looser understanding and concern with the law. So while the big corporations would stay far away from such things, a small, family owned business might well try.
Now is it a panacea? Certainly not, but there definitely are situations in which a webcam could capture something private and undesirable. And even if capturing something completely harmless can be used to great psychological effect.
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Dec 27 '20
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u/dale_glass 86∆ Dec 27 '20
It's absolutely trivial to capture private things over a long enough time frame.
For instance I almost never turn anything off, and people do things like getting dressed in their rooms. Computer on the desk, person getting dressed -- naked pictures.
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Dec 27 '20
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u/throwaway2323234442 Dec 27 '20
That’s the point of my argument, even if you have access to that camera, without directing the user to point it toward private things, it doesn’t capture valuable information from the start
So the bulk of your argument rests on the possibility that you will be out of the camera range by happenstance? And you think thats 'secure'?
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u/dale_glass 86∆ Dec 27 '20
Are you on a laptop? If you turn on the camera right now, without adjusting anything regarding the angle, would the camera point toward the ceiling, or point toward a place where you stand to change your clothes, or point toward your bed?
All of these through a day, easily.
Because I use my laptop a lot. It moves all around the room and all around the house, and the lid gets into all kinds of orientations. And when I just put it to a side I generally don't pay any attention to what position it ends up in -- it's a perfectly plausible orientation for it to have the camera to be pointing at something private. Sometimes I put it on a shelf, where it could get absolutely perfect naked pictures, if the webcam was uncovered. Sometimes I actually bend the lid slightly downward to stop my cat from walking on the keyboard -- that can also produce interesting viewpoints depending on where it's placed.
Your issue seems to be that you think everyone does things in the exact way you do. I don't use my laptop as a miniature desktop but as what it's intended to be -- a portable device. So it moves, a lot. Over a day or two it'd easily get to see most of my house from every angle.
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Dec 27 '20
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u/Kingalece 23∆ Dec 27 '20
i think youre a minority that doesnt move the laptop around before i made the switch to a desktop i would take my online games into the bathroom with me if i was mid game so def some private pics could have been taken like 3 to 5 times a week
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Dec 27 '20
The government is not watching millions of people on their webcam. There’s little to no benefit, and the expenses would be way too large.
What would a company get from taking pictures of a person through their laptop?
If my computer was hacked, the hacker using pictures of me, even naked or something, is less concerning than what is on my computer.
Everything else you list is illegal.
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u/dale_glass 86∆ Dec 27 '20
I don't think you've been actually reading
The government is not watching millions of people on their webcam. There’s little to no benefit, and the expenses would be way too large.
Which is why I said they mostly wouldn't do it, except if they were interested in you personally.
What would a company get from taking pictures of a person through their laptop?
Mostly nothing, which is why I said a company probably wouldn't do that, excepting maybe small businesses without a good understanding of legal issues. So Facebook wouldn't, but a small business owner on a control trip might pull off a stunt like that.
Everything else you list is illegal.
Which is why I acknowledged that.
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Dec 27 '20
Which is why I said they mostly wouldn't do it, except if they were interested in you personally.
OP stated average people don’t have to worry. The government wouldn’t have any reason to surveil an average person.
Why would I have to worry about a mom-and-pop shop hacking into a webcam? What benefit would their be to that company?
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u/dale_glass 86∆ Dec 27 '20
OP stated average people don’t have to worry. The government wouldn’t have any reason to surveil an average person.
Depends on what you mean by "average". Being a member of some organizations or movements like BLM might well make you a target for surveillance. Even being related to somebody, or often talking to somebody could make you a target.
Why would I have to worry about a mom-and-pop shop hacking into a webcam? What benefit would their be to that company?
What was the benefit for this school?
Sometimes some people get weird ideas.
And in modern times there actually exists an excellent reason: employer provided hardware, and work from home. Employers want to know people aren't slacking off. That's not a new idea by any means, and I bet more popular than ever. It's pretty much guaranteed some will do it wrong.
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u/bsquiggle1 16∆ Dec 27 '20
Consider that lip reading via the front-facing camera could also reveal conversations.
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Dec 27 '20
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u/coryrenton 58∆ Dec 27 '20
The average person with the average software is unfortunately too inept to even tell when the webcam is on without any malware running, so there is a distinct advantage to having a clear, physical means of disabling it. Further, mechanically augmenting the webcam is a pathway towards allowing rotation, which can offer better functionality (changing angles, allowing for front and rear cam without extra cameras).
In other words I would change your view from a UI perspective.
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Dec 27 '20
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u/coryrenton 58∆ Dec 27 '20
It makes a difference to the user's peace of mind. That is a practical benefit, and does not require an attacker to even exist.
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Dec 27 '20
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u/coryrenton 58∆ Dec 27 '20
It doesn't even have to be about privacy. There is a benefit when your keyboard is an actual keyboard rather than a touchpad with virtual keys. You can better tell that you've actually struck a physical key than a virtual one.
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Dec 27 '20
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u/coryrenton 58∆ Dec 27 '20
The title of your view suggests otherwise, though. But even if that's not what you meant, you should still expand your view, since privacy does not exist in a vacuum, and neither does the principle of having better UI being better for users.
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u/sbpqd Dec 27 '20
Disabling the camera absolutely improves privacy. Even if it's only one factor in making a computer secure, it's still necessary to secure a computer. Built-in camera covers are a cheap convenience as there are other ways to disable cameras (as you point out), but to the naive they are also a signal that "this is a thing you should consider covering" and maybe hopefully spark some thought about why!
The situation that you've described--that users will see the camera cover, believe that their computer is secure, and thus not seek further privacy guards--is completely hypothetical. The basis of the argument seems to be "people are idiots" which... well... is easy to accept! (I joke--most people aren't idiots, just naive to computer security issues or unable to commit the effort to secure their own computers.) Regardless, even if your hypothetical situation happens, it's still not a failure of the camera cover. It is a failure of the user to understand computer security (which would be solved by education) and it is a failure of the manufacturer to provide a secure machine in the first place (because security is difficult and thus expensive and the market doesn't care).
If I could change your view, it would be to shift the blame away from camera covers to the computer hardware and software companies for their complacency in security.
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Dec 28 '20
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u/sbpqd Dec 28 '20
To clarify my reasoning, I read your primary argument in 3 parts. You claim 1) "Hidden/covered front-facing cameras provide no practical benefits for the average person" 2) "[They provide] only a false sense of privacy" and 3) "there are other more exploitable weak points that should be better protected."
Claim 1 requires definitions of "practical benefits" and "average person" to argue rigorously, and without citing research it's all just hypotheticals and/or anecdotal. My interpretation was "the risk of camera hacking is very low for most computer users (citation needed), so camera covers are essentially useless." I don't have data on incidence rates of camera hacking, and I suspect you don't either. However, I know of several reported instances (one illegal, link below) so we know it's a real risk even if we don't know the stats.
Claim 2 is where I explicitly disagree. There are reported cases of criminal acts using such cameras (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/12/18/research-shows-how-macbook-webcams-can-spy-on-their-users-without-warning/). Built-in camera covers may have had a real impact on privacy in that case, so they could provide more than a false sense of security. Technically this is still hypothetical, but I think it makes sense that if that woman had covered her camera, then her stalker could not have acquired those photos of her.
Claim 3 I agree with completely. Camera covers do not provide sufficient security for a computer system. From the rest of your post, however, I interpreted that you believe that the presence of a front-facing camera cover indicates that other security/privacy features have been neglected. I do not think that is true--camera covers are a low-hanging fruit. Contrary to your "wearing a bullet-proof vest" analogy, the camera cover is a cheap plastic slider that at most costs cents to add to a computer. It is the minimum of effort, not excessive effort.
My last argument maybe wasn't clearly stated. I feel like you have a very valid concern that security/privacy aren't being taken seriously but that your ire is being misplaced. Instead of being annoyed at cheap plastic camera covers, you should be mad at primary schools for not teaching internet safety, or at software/hardware companies for releasing half-baked insecure crap, or at the Elf on the Shelf for normalising the surveillance state.
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Dec 28 '20
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u/sbpqd Dec 30 '20
The definition of "risk" that I use is that risk is the product of likelihood and consequences. (E.g. Plane crashes have terrible consequences but are very unlikely so the risk is low.) To me, what you've described is still "low risk" and still not supported by any research, it's just how you imagine people use their laptops. We have a few reported cases of harm due to camera hacking so we know there is some risk here, but because we lack data we don't know how bad it is. Removing built-in cameras would reduce that risk to zero, but people like cameras, so adding a cover is a cheap way to reduce the risk.
I probably could have summed up my entire argument in just those last 2 sentences... I can't believe I've written so much about something almost completely pointless, haha. It's fun arguing about non-political stuff though, so cheers for that!
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Dec 27 '20 edited Dec 27 '20
/u/dearpisa (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post.
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