Picture Thisby Michaleen Garda (Michaleen.Garda@gmail.com)
Every time I use a computer, I cover the camera. Every device I own which has a camera also has duct tape over that camera. Paranoid? Ridiculous? Maybe so, but I prefer to err on the side of caution and to be a one man protest for privacy in all my affairs. Both Snowden and Manning are known to have done the same thing and, if anyone would know about the risks of video surveillance; they would.
Picture this: In the very near future, advertisers will no longer need to rely on the choices you make to determine how best to market to you. They will know what you like by watching your eyes through your computer and phone cameras. This sort of data is far more accurate and reveals truths about your interests that you may not even be fully aware of. When you are looking at a computer screen full of various images and words, your eyes are naturally drawn to the images and words that you like the most, and by measuring pupil dilation and time spent in response to particular images, a program will be able to know exactly what you are most interested in.
Is this far-fetched? Empirically not. Eye movement research goes back a long way, as documented by Gompel, Fischer, Murry, and Hill in their publication Eye Movements: A Window on Mind and Brain (www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780080449807/eye-movements). Recently, smartphone cameras have become powerful enough to accurately perform this function, as illustrated by one current Google AI research project titled "Accelerating eye movement research via accurate and affordable smartphone eye tracking" (research.google/pubs/pub49585).
Unfortunately, this does not end with marketing. Rather, it paves the road for the creation of true "thought police," because what the eye shows is not necessarily the truth. For example, a sober alcoholic may have their eyes drawn to pictures of booze, which dilate the pupil, but this does not mean that they will drink alcohol. Or a pacifist person who has never owned a weapon may secretly enjoy pictures of weapons and, in a thought control state, this is recorded as a dangerous quality. Reading minds is a dangerous line to cross, but it is being crossed.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a very useful therapy for people with PTSD that is focused exclusively on observing the patient's eye movements in response to memories of trauma and, by retraining eye movements, one can reduce the impact of trauma. How difficult would it be to reverse the process and increase trauma in individuals?
If these are not enough reasons to be concerned about video surveillance, perhaps you have heard about the study Zoom on the Keystrokes: Exploiting Video Calls for Keystroke Inference Attacks (arxiv.org/abs/2010.12078), which proved the ability to accurately deduce what password a person is typing based on their shoulder movements. How much longer until we prove the same thing for finger movements on smartphones? Surely it is coming soon and Checkmarx has already discovered a vulnerability that allows an attacker to access your smartphone camera with full privileges (checkmarx.com/blog/how-attackers-could-hijack-your-android-camera).
Google insists that all its research is ethical and voluntary, but we all know that once a technology exists, anyone can use it. I asked a question on Quora about how much power CIA has over Google, seeing as Google is Alphabet, Alphabet is In-Q-Tel, and In-Q-Tel is CIA. CIA was polite enough to answer that they "had no control over Google, their investment only guaranteed that they had access to Google's technology." This is a rather helpful admission because CIA and its vast web of private contractors have no need to ensure their research is ethical and can use Google's technology any way they like. An important part of intelligence work historically is compromising people, and surely the ability to compromise someone or learn exactly how to compromise someone without any real physical effort would be a great advantage to that profession. A great advantage to many professions.
I am not concerned about CIA misusing this, but I repeat that what has been shown time and time again in the history of technology is that once a tool is out there it will be used by anyone. Everyone from Mitnick to The Shadow Brokers illustrates this fact. Who else likes to compromise people? Nation states, mafias, lawyers, detectives, protesters, ex-wives and ex-husbands, and occasionally hackers. It is a safe bet that China is testing this on their citizens. The list goes on and on.
Not everyone will be as extreme as me, as people enjoy their cameras. However, there is a very simple solution to this problem that I am baffled no tech company has advanced, almost as if they did this intentionally. The question I will leave you all with is: "In light of all the various and ongoing security breaches involving computer cameras, why not start building them with a lens cap that you only open when you are using the camera?"