[AdmiralAsshat]

Seems like a feature to me.

Worried about the NSA or other nefarious forces tapping your mic or webcam? Worry not! This mainstream, off-the-shelf laptop will terminate its internet connection the moment someone tries to access its webcam! If that hasn't stopped it, the laptop will dutifully reset itself. Purism ain't got nothin' on this.

[kgwxd]

No built-in cameras or mics would be an excellent feature, even for phones. I would have already pre-orded the Librem 5, for the same price, if Purism had offered that.

[magduf]

Cameras and mics are useful for videoconferencing calls. Attaching a mic and cam via USB can be done, but that's extra crap you have to haul around in your luggage; it's much more space-efficient to have it built into your laptop.

The answer is really simple, and I'm disappointed that I seem to be the only one who can think of this: why not just have a mechanical toggle switch that turns off these devices? (No, don't let it be a software switch, it needs to actually disconnect the devices from the computer; it can do this with transistor switches but the devices still need to be off the computer's internal USB bus, and there must be no way for software on the computer to reactivate them secretly.)

[AdmiralAsshat]

How would you make phonecalls on the Librem 5 without a mic?

[Crespyl]

Attach a microphone with USB or Bluetooth, and then turn off or detach it when done. Same for a webcam.

[AWildC182]

On of the few instances where I imagine a bad design would actually improve security because no malware developer would ever want to endure the headache of trying to reliably exploit these things.