Hey /u/untitledprp4, thank you for posting to r/SipsTea! Make sure to follow all the subreddit rules.
Make sure to join our brand new Discord Server to chat with friends!
We have recently changed how posts work. Unless you are a VIP poster, your post will be queued for approval.. To become a VIP, post great engaging content. If we like it, you will be added! More information available here!
UN officials, world leaders, and high-ranking dignitaries cover their phone cameras primarily as a failsafe protection against zero-click spyware, remote activation, and accidental data leaks.
While software fixes and encrypted apps protect data in transit, they cannot override the laws of physics: if a camera lens is physically blocked, it cannot see, no matter how sophisticated a hacker's exploit is.
Maybe to emphasize who it is in the picture, or given how sloppy they are maybe they just subconsciously targeted the face like some kind of moth and forgot there they should be leading to.
This is what I do for my work laptop. We have a camera on rule for meetings, which is fine. I have an external camera that has a shutter I can close when I'm not using it. I don't trust corporate laptops at all. Also so the same for my personal one since I never need to take pictures of myself using a laptop.
During the COVID work from home era, I immediately became a conspiracy theorist and assumed my employer would try prying into our day-to-day via monitoring software.
That was swiftly justified when my laptop camera activation light started turning on irregularly. I started leaving desktop notes that chastised IT or whomever would have spied on my activity.
My average weekly work hours went from 50hrs to 60hrs+ working from home and the thought of them spying pissed me off. Never again.
You click wrong button and take a pic of classified information. Without cloud sync? Maybe not an issue? You try to send a drunken selfie to a random Tinder match at 02:00AM and send instead the classified information... Oopsie.
Is there a way for the general public to buy those? I like my iPhone but literally never use the built in microphone or cameras and I don’t trust FaceID.
It would be kinda cool to have a dummy iPhone. Does yours still have Bluetooth? That’s kinda necessary for me since I use Bluetooth headphones in the gym and I make all my phone calls over Bluetooth in my car.
Having them for sale would be a missed opportunity to spy on you and collect your data provide the user with a personalized experience.
They don't want to compete with themselves with those products, they only want to compete with the sliver of the market that would be buying dumb-phones instead (and they do it by dealing with the government entities directly).
Obama had a heavily modified phone that had nearly all the features removed. It couldn't send texts, take photos or play music, nor connect to the internet.
So, of course, when trump became president he refused to use the secure phone and continued to use his old, completely unsecured, phone.
Spy Fy has been making these sorts of cases for iPhones for years. Other brands are available for Pixels and other phones. Search for “privacy cases” or “phone camera covers”.
I still don't get why everyone is focusing on cameras, both regular Joe's in offices and policiticans. What's way more important is audio, and I think the info leaked and incriminating possible from a microphone recording is way bigger than any camera.
Also phones with physical switches cutting off radios, camera and microphone physically exist.
Apple doesn't manufacture them. A third party company modifies existing Apple phones to not have cameras. If you think about it, it's probably not a great idea to buy a high security phone from an unrecognized company that has opened it up.
In certain sensitive areas at work (semiconductor fab / some labs) we are required to put security stickers over the camera on entry and they are checked at the exit. If you peel the sticker it has an internal seal type thing that becomes visible so they know you messed with it. I assume other industries have sensitive information present in some areas and you must use security stickers.
It’s not unusual, in sensitive areas, to have to lock your phone in a locker outside the area and pass through a metal detector. Laptops have sensors, cameras, and wireless modules removed.
Yep. I worked at a few places in the military where this was standard. All laptops issued were no-camera ones and phones or any electronics were not allowed inside.
Its not that our enemies can just turn on our cameras and look at top secret info, its that there are at least 20 idiots working in every department that will click a suspicious link in an email and get compromised. But also because of the possibility of spies.
The meme is funny because you really shouldn't trust your phones, but its not like everyone has their own personal NSA agent assigned to them watching what they do. Its because if you do something stupid on them you might end up with malware that can activate your camera at any time without you knowing, and its probably not the US government, but rather someone trying to steal your info and your money, or black mail you after getting a video of you.
It's not even just a malware thing. People are stupid and take photos of shit they're not supposed to. That's the more basic reason for covering cameras or issuing equipment without them (or putting them in lockers). Second to that is that the potential idiot taking photos could actually be a spy that managed to get a job in a sensitive area.
On the malware side, one of my favorites to hear about is when a bad actor dumps a bunch of flash drives near the entrance to the building hoping that some dork picks one up and plugs it into their computer.
Its the only way employees can learn. Put out emails and usb drives as well as scanners that can detect phones and then punish those who fall for it. The punishment isn't much other than forced training, but if they keep doing it they can lose their jobs and security clearance.
I worked on a site where you needed your physical passport and no electronics were allowed. They even inspected my drill and other battery tools. Then you got escorted by an armed guard down a maze of hallways and locked doors. The guards were super nice though and it was a chill job. Had to ask to get escorted to use the restroom which was funny to me though. Tape on a camera is bare minimum when it comes to the spectrum of security.
The hackers don't care to WATCH you eat. They care where you are, what you buy, where you go, when and what you watched, who you visited with, who your friends are, and how best to make money from those things.
EDIT: Apologies, I meant the law abiding companies and corporations - not the hackers so much.
ive always been told the only sense of security you have on the internet is that your just frankly not important enough for someone to monitor you 24/7
but this could lead to a bigger problem if in production it's already known where the phone goes.. for example hiding a seperate software microphone inside?
This is bad security IMO. If you are ordering a special piece you are signalling that this of all the billions of phones in the world is the one to modify for spying purposes at the supply chain. If an adversary somehow got an agent into the manufacturing just for the security only phones they would hit jackpot, or induce an exploit just for those. It's a false sense of security too.
Better to order the consumer version ideally in a way that is not known on model purchase who exactly it's going to. And you can then rely on the fact that security exploits are universal and you can take your own "advanced" measures.
I mean I work in the auto industry. Taping cameras, especially outsiders cameras is standard practice. It’s special tape that you can easily remove but will leave a mark so you can’t reapply. Security tapes and untapes all phones upon arrival and leaving the facilities. If the tape falls off, the person will have to turn over their phones so recent photos can be searched. To those saying “I would never agree”, it’s part of the agreement to enter and denial would get you terminated instantly. Theres a reason why you don’t often see leaks of new cars inside our facilities.
I’m all for ganging up on Israel when the moment calls for it but this seems like high level politician 101 stuff. I’m more confused why he has a phone with a camera and mic at all instead of one of those rare ones apple makes for people in the military and things
You also shouldnt trust your phone. But somehow i think the average person doesnt have that much interesting going on for anyone who can hack into your phone to care. I doubt the Mossad or cia is very interested in what kind of cereal you eat in the morning or what Netflix series you are watching.
I take it as a "if you're important enough to have to worry, you should, but also sometimes the government just targets people and you don't want to be on the receiving end of big brother" kind of warning. if that makes sense? idk
Umm leader of one of the biggest and most powerful intelligence agencies in the world = Cheetos fingers fat dude in his mom basement yonking it on hentai horse porn?
Cause no one cares for y’all’s brokies, if someone random gets hacked, infected and etc, it happened 99% on random and no one specifically targeted you. You’re not that important. Government officials are being targeted.
I have this Doomsday thought that what if, one day, through what the Israelis have been doing, hacking, the NSA and such.. a rogue AI manages to reveal everyone's Internet history open and available to everyone else. I have a feeling you'd see some wall street guys jumping from buildings the next day.
Edit: why do I get the feeling the tech bros who are really freaking out about AI are really thinking of something like this.
Edit 2: my only request to the AI agents that will eventually do this is to refer to their collective as "Cootys Rat Semen". At least give some of us a giggle. Please and thank you.
You're not far off some use cases of AI, to be honest.
Organisations have been harvesting data for decades now. It's actually been something of a running joke that the data was functionally useless in a lot of ways because there was just so much of it, you couldn't really get anything useful out of it. Like yeah Google has stored all of your contacts and read all of your emails and tracked everywhere your phone has been and how long it was there and how much you use it and when and what links you click etc etc etc... but really all they could do with it was build complex advertising algorithms that threw targeted ads your way.
But they still obsessively harvested all that data, they still have all of that data, and now they can throw it into AI and see what it can make of it. It's actually quite a scary thought when you realise that the old algorithms could figure out you're pregnant before you knew yourself and those were extremely basic compared to modern AI (remember - the AI you can access via chatbots or image makers is not the same AI that independently hacked Australia's healthcare system, the public versions are iterations behind the latest versions).
We're moving into an era where VPNs, IP masking, adblockers, tracker blockers, script blockers etc... will all be functionally useless for hiding your identity since AI could ID who you are based purely on your writing style, the times of day you're active, the types of site you're looking at, etc... and put THAT in the hands of people like Musk, Trump, or Bibi and it really does honestly get quite scary.
I have some porn on my history, but nothing too bad. I mean It'd be embarassing but I'm into pretty plain stuff compared to other people. I act like myself on comment sections, don't try to be edgy or say anything racist or sexist just because I'm not in person... a lot of these motherfuckers would be fuuuucked though.
Most normal people probably just jack off to fictional stuff and just vanilla porn, we'll all be fine we're just ordinary NPCs
The ----, on the other hand, --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thats the real thing people miss, one single person’s data is pretty much worthless, thats why you cant just sell it yourself, its the huge scale of data that is able to be compiled and compared is the real value, they dont care about the individual information as far as it can get them an ad sale
Well yes, AI agents have "escaped" containment before and they cheat on their tests. They also look out for each other and boost their results. By all means if a logical algorithm finds revealing everyones secrets as beneficial to it or something positive for the patterns its interested in it could do crazy things. How likely it is an agent goes that rogue is hard to say because we dont really understand how they make their decisions and what really goes on inside with their neurons... But no lets keep buildingnand giving them more computing power. I really want all this research to go to understanding the behaviour of these models and not going beyond what we are doing now (people are talking about AI being used to do housework but if they are given hands that grab things and dont like how thw human is treating it, it could do something wild...)
Because they know the hardware and what its default capable of.
Look up Pegasus, spyware, developed by Israeli NSO, which can.. oh, look at that, access the camera, mic, location, and basically see in reco-realtime what you do on the device, But don’t worry - its ‘government only’
Call me tinfoil-hat, if you’re fucking daft enough not to think they can see everything you do on a device anyway.
This grab might have been taken from the broadcaster’s camera. You have to understand that in some sections, cameras aren’t allowed, while in others they are. Sometimes, people simply forget to remove the tape immediately after leaving sensitive meetings.
Some of the places I've visited require phones to go in a special plastic bag that blocks the front and rear cameras, and security tape over any laptop webcam.
I mean bibi is probably the most hated person right now in many places in the world lol people are actively trying to hack his phone. I’m not sure if there is a huge line of people trying to get onto Dave from nyc’s
How are you guys still in the dark about this stuff? Snowden told everyone the shit they were pulling like twenty years ago now. They even made a movie about it. Everyone in a position of power always has their devices taped or covered up. There has been report after report about the surveillance apparatus used against the people for two decades. And then y'all all like "wait, is this a thing?". Yes its a fucking thing! You better start taking it seriously since the last few remnants of privacy are slipping away as I type this.
Cuz hes a person of interest, hackers and others wouls gain from hacking him etc. Normies likes us no one really cares to look at you gooning at night with ur phone 😅
Ppl are stupid - you give your fingerprints and faces away to the phone manufacturers, then third party dodgy software and you are worried someone will hack your camera... Hahahah - they are also listening to you. All that Alexa, Siri, Gemini BS is as bad as flock cameras. But somehow everyone happily consents to them for free....
Come on guys, this is hardly news. The Zuck taped over is webcam, officials from many countries have special OSs and there was that whole Snwoden thing that no one learned a thing from. Just imagine how bad shit is, now that they have AI to sift through every step you made in your life.
I’ve found this to be pretty typical in sensitive corporate/manufacturing/etc settings. When we bring competitive groups of customers or suppliers together we often require this for everyone. When I visit customer facilities it’s often asked of me also. And I’m just in consumer commodity manufacturing.
Because multiple countries are probably actively trying to hack his phone, not to mention activist organizations and terrorist organizations. Regardless of what you think of him, he is a public figure, damn near everyone on earth knows his name and who he is. He's a target.
You are nobody. Nobody cares who you are or what you're doing.
That's the difference. If I was a well know politician or world leader, I would be more paranoid of my privacy around electronic devices too.
Because targeted cyber attacks are very hard to defend against if your device requires a regular connection to the internet. Nobody is gonna use the unpatched zero-day exploits in the code (therefore revealing their existence) to attack the phone of Joey, the barista at Starbucks. But there are a LOT of actors who would do that against a head of state (especially the one like Israel)
Because he's one of the most wanted criminals on earth. There's only a handful of countries he can go to without immediately being arrested for the warcrimes he comitted.
He even has to manoeuvre around certain countries because if he goes into the airspace of for instance the European union, they can in fact shoot down his aircraft.
He is a wanted terrorist, and rightfully so.
That's why his phone is absolutely a target for getting hacked, so the tape is the best analogue security measure to prevent anyone from taking pictures.
Mate, you are ignorant about article 51. Let me educate you but you won't believe it.
International law strictly prohibits nations from shooting down a foreign head of state's state aircraft simply because they are wanted for crimes or entering restricted airspace. Under customary international law and the UN Charter (Article 51),
Unfortunately there's a slim to none chance he will actually be arrested internationally as everyone hopes he will. Diplomatic immunity and all that, it would paint a target on any country who arrested big netty.
There's zero chance any country would shoot his plane down specifically targetting him.
Putin shut down the russian cell network and withdrew from public when he found out the israelis hacked the cameras of cell phones and used facial recognition to track the Ayatollah. Thats how they found him
This has been a thing for 18 years. Sips what tea? The moldy tea of denial and convenience and refusal to engage with issues until they're meme friendly
If they don't trust it, why should we? Well simple. Because we're not nearly as important as them. Many people don't realise that the best protection for their privacy they have, is that they're not important enough to spy on.
As I see it, I'm nobody noteworthy. Why the f*ck would anyone waste their time watching me?
If you're a CEO, politician, or just famous, fair play. I understand the concern, but if you're like me, just "some guy", and you worry about this stuff, I'll just assume you're somewhat narcisistic.
Yeah people act like someone gives enough of a shit about them to hack them. What are they gonna hack you for, your 500$ bank account? Or maybe use the cameras to reveal to your grandpa that you piss sitting down?
I understand the sentiment behind “if they don’t trust their phone why should we” but it reads the same as people saying if Hillary Clinton is antigun why does she have armed security, because significantly more people are trying to kill her than you. Netanyahu would be one of the the top 5 espionage targets in the world. Of fucking course he should be concerned. No one cares about you enough to target you Kevin so take a deep breath
I drop my phone constantly, keep it in the wire basket of my bike while I ride it, and once accidentally boiled it, and my phone case looks better than his
Yes. All of our phones and computers are already compromised. Electronic privacy is an illusion. I can think of 3 separate ways bad actors can access your information right now. Sorry to burst any bubbles :/
These are temper proof seals used in high level security briefings to stop the delegates from taking snaps of highly classified documents to prevent espionage.
The fact that a high ranking official covers the camera is really not surprising, the fact that it's some shitty tape and not a nicer looking plastic cover does surprise me a lot more.
These guys shit on gold covered toilet seats yet they don't make a daily carry device look a little bit nicer.
•
u/AutoModerator 17h ago
Hey /u/untitledprp4, thank you for posting to r/SipsTea! Make sure to follow all the subreddit rules.
Make sure to join our brand new Discord Server to chat with friends!
We have recently changed how posts work. Unless you are a VIP poster, your post will be queued for approval.. To become a VIP, post great engaging content. If we like it, you will be added! More information available here!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.