Do you think a hardware cutoff switch for the camera, like the Librem 5 and PinePhone, is enough to ensure privacy, or would you really want an actual built-in camera cover like is on some laptops (that presumably also kills the power since the system knows whether the camera is covered). The caveat for only having a switch being that you can’t very easily audit the circuitry to check if it’s actually turning off the camera, but the benefit being that it’s easier to implement, has fewer points of failure, and will leave more room for a bigger camera.
Also, would you want separate switches for front and rear facing cameras or are you okay with turning both of them on and off with one switch?
Another thing to consider is that a hardware kill switch can turn off the microphone too. A cover doesn’t usually do much for that.
Do you usually turn off the mic and cameras at the same time? I think I’d prefer if they were two separate killswitches.
I don’t have any kill switches at all on any of my devices, but I think the Librem laptops and phone do both. On a laptop I’d definitely prefer two-in-one. On a phone I’m less sure, seeing as the microphone is kind of essential for the phone-part of the phone, and having to manually turn off the kill switch when you get a call seems like a hassle. It would be cool if the kill switch could signal the phone to accept the call or something, but realistically I don’t think that’s ever going to happen of course.
That’s actually completely doable even if we’re working with the stipulation that power cut off, not just a signal to not use the camera, because you can just wire transistors up to the switch output. A transistor detects the switch output and turns the power on or off accordingly, while the switch output goes on to inform the processor what the state is. No processing needed that could introduce errors into the power cutoff system.
It would also require some software support. Definitely doable, I just don’t think there’s enough interest to actually o it. But I might very well be wrong. And thinking about it further there might already be software support for this kind of thing from the old flip phone lid switches.
But if the phone could disable the microphone killswitch, isn’t the whole propose of it ruined?
I’m suggesting the opposite, to have the kill switch signal that the call should be accepted.