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by dheera 1072 days ago
For the camera your best bet is to just put a physical cover. There are a lot of sliding adhesive ones you can buy online that are convenient. I stick them on laptops as well, especially work-issued laptops.

For the microphone ... ideally build and install LineageOS yourself on an Android device. Don't trust iOS or Google's official Android builds, they have closed source software that may have France-specific backdoors.

2 comments

From what I've read, the current theory is that access is initially possible using the cellular modem. Building and running a custom Android wouldn't necessarily help in that case, because the modem/baseband firmware is completely isolated and runs independently of the OS.

It seems like general camera/audio recording would need a secondary exploit.

https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/219230/where-is-...

Hm. I wonder how much work it would take to desolder the microphone and add a physical switch for it. Or maybe a magnetic reed switch in series with the microphone so I don't need to drill extra holes in the phone enclosure -- just hold a magnet up to the phone when I want to use the microphone.
Or CalyxOS.

calyxos.org

Firmware and stuff even lower level still is unchanged right?
Yes. It offers only OS code and the Linux kernel updates.