I know the question sounds ambiguous so let me tell you why I am asking.
Today I opened discord on my laptop, and then my privacy notifier plugin (im on niri / noctalia shell) told me the camera was active- it seems discord, signal and pipewire trigger the camera, now I could just get some tape for my laptop camera (which I will do) but I would like it if there was some sort of plugin to just click a button and then blam camera is disabled and nothing can enable it besides me. There was a plugin like this for linux mint cinnamon but just for the microphone.
any ideas?
Isn’t there a key on your keyboard that does that?
I have that on my laptop.
Duct tape is where I first start after I get a computer because even the hackers are well capable of turning on webcams. The tape never comes off–ever.
Aside from that, I’d look into adding kernel (boot) parameters to blacklist the camera. And if you REALLY need a camera, buy a USB one. I think it will still work when plugged in, despite the blacklisting of the built-in one.
If that isn’t to your liking, just remove the kernel parameter that you added and try something else.
Blacklisting is not as “rapid” as a hotkey, but it might be more effective and quicker to implement immediately by editing the /etc/default/grub
Oli 4
Check if there is a hardware button on your keyboard. You can probably as well turn it off completely in your BIOS.
These are better than duct tape and unhackable: link
Just finally have some time to reply:
thank you everyone for the ideas, I ended up just disabling camera access to discord in flatseal, and I will be probably buying something akin to what @HardCode4All mentioned. Again, thank you!
disabling it in bios sounds interesting but I do want to be able to enable it easily if I am going to video chat with friends… however a good idea for those who want to go that way for sure.
Cina 7
If you’re this concerned about privacy (and you should be), consider the attack surface discord presents and whether it’s essential that you use it at all.
oh yeah I hear you- if it wasnt for a discord community me and my wife made together id delete all my accounts and just use signal. Discord has a lot of history for me and her.
cscs 9
I have a lappy without an integrated cover/slider..
So I keep the module entirely unloaded. Without it there is a less-than-slim chance anyone is getting anything out of the cam.
( And at the point anything malicious can remove the blacklist and reload the module .. the entire system is probably pwned in all of the ways. )
/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
[...]
# webcam (probably disabled in bios too)
blacklist uvcvideo
install uvcvideo /bin/true
[...]
Course whether one is willing to deal with which ever method or the other may be subjective.