France Passes New Bill Allowing Police to Remotely Activate Cameras on Citizens' Phones
The bill will reportedly apply to suspects in crimes that are punishable by a minimum of five years in jail.
A bit of hoax story to be honest. Two questions come to mind. How is the police able to access camera and microphone? As far as my knowlegde the security of the OS on the phone is quite tight. Maybe apple or Google have built in a backdoor but 5 years ago they were quite resistive towards governments. Also the legislation of EU is quite tight on privacy where cameras are not allowed to be used for tracking individuals. So police is not able to use the information in court.
I think it assumes spyware that is capable of defeating / deceiving the operating system. This requires either manufacturer support or undisclosed vulnerabilities, which spyware makers always try to buy and keep secret.
Given the complexity of mobile operating systems these days, I'm pretty sure they cannot be secure - but answering the question of "which one is easiest to break" is beyond my competence.
Invididually - my laptop's camera is taped over from the beginning. My activist phone doesn't have a camera, and the battery comes out easily. My ordinary phone is obsolete in every way, but the replacement will have switches for enabling / disabling the camera, microphone, cellular modem, bluetooth and wifi.
the replacement will have switches for enabling / disabling the camera, microphone
DIY or have my dreams come true and there really is something like this on the market???
How is the police able to access camera and microphone? As far as my knowlegde the security of the OS on the phone is quite tight. Maybe apple or Google have built in a backdoor but 5 years ago they were quite resistive towards governments.
We have seen that tech giants are very pliable to the police, I'm not sure why you think otherwise. There are companies whose only purpose is automating requests from police to tech giants and collating it for ease of use.
Also the legislation of EU is quite tight on privacy where cameras are not allowed to be used for tracking individuals. So police is not able to use the information in court.
Even if this is the case it ignores the problem of the police using parallel construction techniques to create a case that is admissible to a court. It also ignores that this is people's privacy being violated and thats wrong even if it never shows up in court.
