Ok but if you do truly sensitive work, you probably cant trust any phone you didn’t fully audit. A hidden camera inside isn’t needed when you have one outside and a persistent internet connection- what would a secret camera do that the obvious camera, mic, Bluetooth, wifi, gps, nfc, etc etc etc not already do?

I’m just saying a secret camera isn’t necessary if what they wanted to do was spy- you’re literally carrying an ultimate 007 dream spy device with you all the time unless you’re rocking an analog burner- and even then, it’s not 100%.

I agree with what @carl_dungeon wrote. If you're really that paranoid about your privacy then you shouldn't even use a cellphone in the first place - never mind a smartphone. Look at Richard M Stallman for example - he avoids cellphones completely for this reason.

And that's because there's no fully-open cellphone out there, and even if there is, it doesn't prevent your carrier or government from snooping on you, as long as you're using GSM communications (which is btw very vulnerable). The moment you've decided to carry a cellphone around with you, you've signed away any expectations of privacy.

So you either live the Stallman way and avoid cellphones and other modern conveniences, or just say fuck it and use them like everyone else. Otherwise, you're just a hippocrite, fooling yourself into a false sense of security, because prying open a modern smartphone and checking it's internals is a completely pointless exercise.

He's talking about physical switches that cut power to the hardware.

I think what you're referring to with Apple is that the camera (on MacBooks) is wired in a way so that it's impossible for the camera to be on without the indicator light also being on. Software can't do anything because it's not controlled by software.

Apple was talking adding kill switches? I feel like the cost compared to how many people would actually use it would be a big factor but there's also a multitude of other things that would go along with that like how it would effect water resistance.

The only thing weird about that, is that Apple is involved in every step, couldn’t they hide info being sent?

Do you mean with encryption or if they wanted to send information away maliciously?

Ifixit is a source and a pretty good one. Other than that, typing "(phone model) teardown" into Google is all I do.

Yeah, but you should be able to access those via root and/or there are ways to see what kind of information is being sent where. You really don't need to open it to get at these things. Hell, you can completely change your phone OS if you want.