This is a nice implementation. The state can be clearly seen from the front (unlike just having a switch easy to leave in the on position) and the shutter is internal so it's nicely protected and not going to get dirt inside and scratch the lens / cover.
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A microphone switch is harder to get right since there are other inputs usable as microphones. Accelerometers (including inside hard drives), gyroscopes and other motion sensors can be usable as decent microphones. Speakers can also function as microphones depending on the setup.
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iOS and Android limit sensor polling to 100-200Hz in software, which is far lower than the actual hardware capabilities. Despite that, it's feasible to decode speech from the input: crypto.stanford.edu/gyrophone/file. The hardware can be polled at 5kHz+ so a switch *must* cover it to work.
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This is a major part of why GrapheneOS disables motion sensors access by websites in the browser (Vanadium) by default along with adding a Sensors permission toggle for apps. Similarly, the sensors can be used to record keyboard input and motion (especially with a compass too).
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Trying to make a switch to disable location tracking in hardware is tempting, but has to disable a bunch of the inputs and also output like audio. Either playing or recording audio is usable for location / activity tracking and not just theoretically, as this is broadly deployed.
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From 2017, and I'd expect it's far more broadly deployed now: christian.wressnegger.info/content/projec. The ability to play audio needs to be taken into account as a viable way to exfiltrate data and track location. It sounds obscure but there are very real SDKs and deployed beacons for this.
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I'd like to know more about this. Could you point me to a good technical resource on using non-microphones as microphones?
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An accelerometer is essentially a microphone: it can be polled quickly to measure vibration from sound. The same thing applies to speakers. Microphones can be used as poor speakers and speakers can be used as poor microphones. Only has to be good enough to decode speech from it.