The Fairphone (Gen. 6)

I'd be happiest if they'd provide a physical switch for the microphone and cameras. That way, you could have a private conversation and be sure you're not being recorded.

Turning off connectivity doesn't help as much to guarantee your privacy as the phone could theoretically be recording and then upload the recording later, when you turn it back on (if it was thoroughly compromised, which admittedly seems unlikely, but nevertheless it would be nice to have some guarantee that it's impossible).

The easiest solution to such strict privacy needs is to not carry the phones. But then again you also need to worry about other means of espionage.

I don't think it's easy to not carry a phone, nowadays. Let's say I'm meeting up with someone: I'll need to use navigation, potentially message them if I'm running late, and so on.

Then once I'm there, what do I do with the phone? Ask to put it in a separate room and hope that the microphone isn't powerful enough to pick up our conversation?

I could turn it off entirely, but what if someone needs to call me for an emergency?

For me, as a user, the easiest solution would be to have a killswitch. I understand that building it would be more work, of course :)

Such a device, sufficiently deshittified, might win some contracts in the sasec (safety and security) biz. But let's be honest, the Fairphone, strictly from a security standpoint, is more aimed at the performativity crowd. Heck, most people already seem to lack the imagination for when and why killswitches and the like might be a really good idea. Kind of like with mSD card slots, audio jacks, etc.

Wireless-only, data-harvesting slabs are good enough for ME, so they oughta be good enough FOR EVERYONE!

yes, of course, this as well

> Ask to put it in a separate room...

Yes, that's what I had to do for meetings that the organizer thought were important enough. Also, in very sensitive areas special rooms with anti-eavesdropping gear are common [1].

> I could turn it off entirely, but what if someone needs to call me for an emergency?

But you would also not be reachable if the killswitch is active ;)

Don't get me wrong, I think a killswitch can make a lot of sense for highly sensitive areas (R&D, politics, military, ...), but I don't think Fairphone 6 are the devices that target this demographic and thus should not include one. Furthermore, current "offline" measure seem to mitigate the problem okay enough to not need such a killswitch - else we would already have phones with such features. And lastly, killswitches can only mitigate parts of the features modern spyware [2] implements and does not protect from simple human-based errors like the United States government group chat leaks [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_compartmented_inform... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_government_group...

> But you would also not be reachable if the killswitch is active ;)

I would be, because I asked for a killswitch for the microphone and cameras, not a killswitch for connectivity like the original comment.

If I get a call while the killswitch is active, I can stop the sensitive conversation, turn on the microphone, and answer the call.