[guardian-dev] De-Spying the Galaxy Nexus

[Nathan of Guardian]

I did a teardown of my Galaxy Nexus tonight in order to fix a faulty USB
port. I learned that the GN is a really cleanly designed device, easy to
tinker with (and repair!)

http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Samsung+Galaxy+Nexus+Teardown/7182/2

One of the neat things I realized you could do is remove both the front
and rear facing camera hardware in about two seconds. You could also
remove the speaker, and fairly easily disable the built-in mic.

This would leave you with a device that could not spy on you via camera
or mic, but that you could still use with a headphone (or bluetooth
headset) when you chose to do so.

Going further, if you were adventurous and good at soldering, it might
be possible to add a hardware on/off switch to the baseband chip, but
that would be beyond me.

+n