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by jobu 3573 days ago
It was definitely possible a couple years back - https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/handle/1774.2/36569

We describe how to disable the LED on a class of Apple internal iSight webcams used in some versions of MacBook laptops and iMac desktops. This enables video to be captured without any visual indication to the user and can be accomplished entirely in user space by an unprivileged (non- root) application.

1 comments

> It was definitely possible a couple years back

Yeah, a few years back studying MacBooks from 2008.

Have they been updated since then?
Assuming this is a serious question, yes, the camera and MacBooks both have changed a lot since 2008. This is probably why they did the study on 2008 MacBooks as opposed to later models. They wouldn't get the results they wanted otherwise.