[anyfoo]

How long did it take you, a self-proclaimed layperson, to come up with the idea of quickly pulsing the camera? Now, how likely do you think it is that someone who's actively trying to prevent camera shenanigans would think of this idea as well, and mitigate by e.g. introduce delays or latch the light on for a couple of seconds?

[rxhernandez]

How likely? Who knows? It could be an intern that implemented it for all we know. I've seen more critical things implemented by interns at a medical device company I was previously at. Do you sincerely think Apple is more concerned with secure operation of a camera (that people are going to put tape over anyways if they are that concerned with security) than a full fledged (successful) medical device company is with medical devices?

Moreover, even if it wasn't an intern, how experienced do you think the engineer is at understanding human behavior in response to hacks? Many engineers I have met have difficulty conversing with other people and have even more difficulty in actually understanding their behavior. I can almost guarentee you that even switching it on and off at slow rates will convince most people that there are electrical issues.

Also do you honestly think the average electrical engineer is that well-versed with hacking paradigms? I would conjecture that software engineering is one of the leading fields to be a gateway to understanding hacking and during my electrical engineering degree, most of them acted like writing software was a nuisance they had to do to get through the degree. Hell, even most of the lab instructors we had from JPL looked down on software engineering and talked the same way to bad EE students that a cliche high school instructor would talk to bad high school students; instead of telling them, you better like asking, "do you want fries with that" they would say (in the same tone), "you better be good at writing software."

How do you even know what the budget for the department the engineer is in? How do you know they have the budget to spend weeks on securing a camera most security minded people are going to put tape over anyways? How do you know it wasnt some off the cuff, in a meeting comment, saying I can implement this feature in an hour and everyone was like that's nice, you should do that and the thought of security never went further than that?

Unless you were there, you dont have the slightest clue as to how well thought out the whole thing is.