That delicate line between security and convenience

A key problem, maybe the key problem in software security is how to properly balance user convenience with security. Adding additional security to a system often includes extra work, more time, or other compromises from the end-user. And reasonable people can disagree about where the line is for the appropriate trade-off.

That iPhone camera permissions "flaw"

There was a brief flurry of articles in the news recently, talking about a "flaw" in iOS permissions which would allow applications to take your picture without you being aware. Typically, these were presented with click-bait headlines like:

Google developer shows how iPhone apps could secretly record you

or 

Developer Shows How iPhone Apps Can Theoretically Spy on You ...

The blog post of the actual security researcher who raised this issue (Felix Krause) is substantially less-sensational:

Access both iPhone cameras any time your app is running

It's good that this issue is getting some attention, but it's important to understand where we're coming from, what the actual issue is, and possible ways to mitigate it. As a quick aside, I find it annoying that the articles say "Google engineer". Yes, Krause works for Google, but this work is not coming out of his "day job", but rather his own work in security research. Also, Android has exactly this same problem, but it doesn't merit a blog post or worldwide news coverage, because apparently nobody expects even minimal privacy from Android devices.

How camera permissions work on iOS today

The current version of iOS asks the user for permission to use the camera the first time that an application tries to access it. After that, fi the application is running in the foreground, it can access the camera whenever it wants to, without any additional interaction. And typically, this is actually what the user wants.

It's convenient and fun to be able to use the built-in camera support in Facebook without having to answer "yes I do want to use the camera" each time that you choose to share a photo on social media. And replacements for the built-in camera app, like Instagram, Snapchat, and Halide, would be pretty much unusable if you had to answer a prompt Every. Single. Time. you wanted to take a photo.

How it used to work

Previous versions of iOS actually required applications to use the built-in camera interface to take pictures. You still only had to give permission once, but it was really obvious when the app was taking you picture, because the camera preview was right there in your face, taking over your screen. This design was widely criticized by app developers, because it made for a really jarring break in their carefully-crafted use experience to have the built-in camera appear, and they couldn't provide a preview that actually showed what was going to be captured (with the rise of photo filters, this is especially problematic).

At some point, Apple added the capability to capture photos and video, while presenting the app's  own interface. This makes for a more-cohesive experience for the end-user, and makes it possible for apps to preview what they're actually going to produce, filters, silly hats, and all. This is clearly a win for the app developers, and I'd argue it is also a win for the end-user, as they get a better experience with the whole picture taking process.

What's the actual privacy issue here?

I use Facebook to post photos and videos, sometimes. But I don't really want Facebook taking pictures of my face when I'm not using the camera features, and analyzing that data to better serve me content, including advertisements.

If I'm scrolling through my news feed, and Facebook is silently analyzing the images coming through the back camera, so that they can discover my location and serve me ads for whatever business I'm standing in front of, that's intrusive and creepy. If they're reading my facial expression to try to determine how I feel about the items in my news feed, that's even worse.

How Apple can better-inform users

I don't think anybody wants to go back to using the UIImagePicker interface, and I don't think anybody (except possibly security researchers) wants to have to affirmatively give permission every time an application wants to take a picture or video. One alternative that I like (and Krause mentions this in his initial blog) is some kind of persistent system UI element that indicates that the camera is on. Apple already does something similar with a persistent banner on the top of the screen when applications in the background are capturing audio (for VoIP communications). A little dot on the status area would go a long way, here.

It'd also be really nice to have a toggle in Preferences (or better, in Control Center) to disable the camera system-wide, so if you know you're heading somewhere that you shouldn't be taking pictures, you can temporarily disable the camera.

What users can do to better protect themselves

Obviously, just don't grant camera permission to applications that don't actually need them.  think most social network software falls into this category. Twitter and Facebook don't actually need to access my camera, so I have it disabled for both of them. If you actually DO use Facebook and Twitter to take pictures, then I guess you'll just need to be more aware of the tradeoffs.

If you "have to" enable camera access to certain apps, but you don't fully-trust them, there are honest-to-goodnes lens caps you can buy which will cover your iPhone camera when you're not using it. Or a piece of tape works. There's even specially-made tape tabs for just this purpose.