1. My mobile phone. Due to my habit of bodging desktops together out of whatever parts I happen to have lying around, the machine I'm currently working on doesn't actually have a microphone connected. Or, for that matter, case screws.
My webcam is disconnected thanks to an abortive attempt to couple it to a mini-projector to hack up a projected keyboard.
There's no specific intent to the question other than curiosity about the topic. It's inspired by the recent NSA news but I didn't intend conversation to be limited to that.
Thanks. That's the reason I asked about it. I have stopped reading or at least have not read or heard about any latest NSA news. So, I have no clue whatsoever.
I think I vaguely knew it was about privacy but was not sure why was the question being posed about the number of microphones. So, now I am curious about the story!
Two.
One logitech G35 attached to a PC running Windows and one laptop internal microphone.
Turning on more devices would get me another laptop internal mic and the mics in a phone and a tablet.
Both laptops, the tablet, and the phone have 5 or 6 cameras in total. The desktop also has a camera, but it is pointed at a ceiling fan when not in use.
5 microphones and 5 cameras. Not very pleasant to think about. I used to keep a piece of electrical tape on my laptop's webcam but it looks like it came off, time to put a new one back on.
Is it possible that some app installed in my iPhone secretly transmits all my real world conversations while i am talking to people around me? Yes quite possible. Now think about it - What if Apple, Google or NSA had installed a secret code in our phones to spy on us? Scary isn't it?
I have an old headphone that is plugging to the microphone socket of my laptop. So, one down, many more to go. Have not figure out a way to deal with microphone in mobile devices. Suggestions?
Uh, wouldn't this be more likely to get a signal? An (analog) headphone is a sort-of, piss-poor microphone in reverse, whereas a naked port doesn't magically pick up sounds from the ether...
I can't find a source but I remember something on HN a while back about this not being the case with new MBPs. The input device is software-controlled now. If you care to search for it, it had to do with laptop security guidelines for employees of some government agency.
I'd say 10 or more in my vicinity. Im in an office with mobiles, cisco ip phones, laptops and desktops everywhere. If you were talking about this floor... then that figure could easily go into the hundreds O_O !
I have one microphone near me, connected to the internet. The technology in the Dark Knight was novel to me. I was already aware of law enforcement remotely arming a mic on a normal cellphone at that time[1]. I am pretty sure fixed lines can be bugged in a similar fashion. As anyone who watched it with an interest in technology, I was fascinated by the pooling of microphones to generate a sonar like map of Gotham.
What struck me recently, as that was a piece of art, there are two possibilities (non-mutually exclusive). That the technology already existed and art was imitating life, or that people were inspired thereafter to create the technology and life was imitating art. Certainly both could be true and
I'm willing to entertain a third possibility that noone bothered, but that seems unlikely to me.
My webcam is disconnected thanks to an abortive attempt to couple it to a mini-projector to hack up a projected keyboard.