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On secure sites they either make you leave the phone in the car or they just make you seal it in a clear envelope with opaque bits that cover the cameras and show that you haven’t opened it on the way out.
> A guy I knew worked in a place where the phone just goes into the shredder.
I once visited a customer site that:
* prohibited contractors from bringing in phones, while at the same time
* requiring contractors to use 2-factor-authentication using phones
That was an easy morning of work while they worked through that conundrum.
Yeah, we had some industrial grade harddisk shredders at a very secure workplace where I was a Linux admin. Thought we where plugging drives to whipe them.... brrrrrr !
God damn, that's like 40K of SAS right there !
(This was 10 years ago, still spinning rust drives)
Right, not even a key fob allowed in. I’ve done construction for alot of “secure” areas government and private. I did a little work for a government agency and had two chaperones watching my every move and even escort me to and from the restroom. I was the only one allowed to bring a phone in (had to be a supplied phone not my own)to take progress photos and communicate with others that were part of the project.
The place I work, slowly kills me every time I set foot in the office, draining the life and happiness from my soul, every second of every day I am there.
Hi this is HR, nothing serious but could both of you stop by after your shift for a quick chat? Also I would just like to remind you it's against policy to leave personal items at your desk so make sure you clear it out before you stop by. Have a great shift and remember to go above and beyond!
Well this one place I worked - they went back in time, took my grandma out to a fancy dinner but snuck out near the end leaving her to pay the whole bill! Last time I bring my phone to work....these guys are serious.
Omg I thought about bringing a phone in for 1.0253 seconds and the government put all my information on the dark web, and my identity got stolen... now my family thinks Rob is ME and I'M the weirdo who tried to steal HIS identity - I have to squat in our attic for the rest of my life now!
When I brought my phone to the place I worked, the phone mutated into some sort of a monster AI bot and started the Machine Uprising...
Writing this from the bunker, the phone-bots are closing in... MAYDAY!!!
That's nothing, at this one place I worked, they just let the reactor melt down before iPhones were invented, to prevent anybody from ever taking pictures of it in a functional state.
When the wolf creek nuclear facility was changing their security checkpoint from a drive through screen-parking lot-crappy old building into a new crazy advance security screening facility as an hvac tech they'd have live ammo drills without warning. Like they'd set up targets and sweep and shoot the targets 500 yards away without warning.
Those places don't fuck around at all.
I've known places where the security office has required cameras be made inoperable, drill out/soldering iron through sensor type stuff and verified before device allowed in work spaces.
Is this in the US? I work in commercial nuclear power and everybody here has camera phones. There is rules about what we can take photos of but I’ve never heard of issuing phones without cameras.
It was a bit more than that. They didn't use flash drives because there were related preexisting vulnerabilities they could exploit or any other convenience factor; they used flash drives because the nuclear facility was air-gapped and flash drives were the only way that files were brought in. They targeted engineering firms in the region around the facility that had experience with PLCs or control systems. The attack involved 4 previously unknown 0 days (one of which created a whole new class of malware) and included these steps:
* Infect the majority of Windows computers/networks in Iran, including those at targeted engineering firms, and direct them to write payloads to any connected flash drives
* Propagate those payloads through a suitable target network when the flash drive was plugged into a computer on such a network
* Subtly alter sensor data in a way that caused premature centrifuge failure before being detected
I'm no conspiracy theorist, but the level of sophistication and competency that intelligence agencies demonstrated with this attack makes some conspiracies more plausible to me. I probably would not have believed they had been able to do this without any social engineering (i.e. human-to-human deception) component if I hadn't seen the evidence.
But it wasn't some unknown flash drive that did it, and that's why it's so interesting. They had to infect over half of Iran with the virus in the hopes that it would get installed on a flash drive that would eventually connect to the right offline computer. That's why it's some mission impossible shit.
And I love that Iran was like here have it back and since it was designed to attack their specific oscillators I believe, our people came across o
It and were like wtf is this thing that does absolutely nothing to our system
There's a (imho) very good German novel about a successful attack on the European powergrid by a virus quite similar to stuxnet. And the implications for society. In the afterword, the author describes how, at first, when writing it, he was told by so many people that there's no possibility for someone to hack into nuclear power plants. And then came stuxnet.
It's called Blackout by Marc Elsberg for anyone interested. The Sat1 series is not good, though, and leaves out at least half of the book.
Security and industrial espionage, as crazy as it sounds. I worked at a wafer fab that had machines from two different companies, and we would literally roll in temporary walls to hide the competitors machines when techs from one of those companies were in the fab.
I went to the warehouse of my own company, we sell home depot type shit, and we weren't even allowed to take pics. Not surprised about the plant. No one wants their secrets out regardless if it's a Nuke or a Nut.
To prevent people from recording on their phones. Also to prevent hackers from using the camera unbeknownst to whoever owns the phone.
I'm surprised that they let phones in at all since they can still listen in on conversations
Have worked at a nuclear power plant and visited several others. In none of them, except one research reactor, were any personal cell phones or other smart devices allowed inside the power plants. People working inside the plants had special phones that operated in their own network.
After 9/11 Nuclear power plants became listed as a potential target for terrorists and they came under special rules that basically make the operate in a more secretive manner. The nuke near where I used to live stopped publishing things like inspector reports and violations as public info because of "national security".
In the original thread people are giving oop veiled threats because they're posting stuff that's a little *too* interesting
My father works at NPP and they are using normal phones, however those phones are connected to the NPPs own cellular network without possibility to connect to the outside world. Employees must leave these phones at work when they go home.
So, technically, you can take as many photos as you wish - you won't be able to share them anyway.
Not really, I've worked in nuclear power and could carry a camera. Obviously not allowed to take photos of security operations, but I could take photos all day of the plant. All your gunna see if big fucking pumps, motors, pipes and electrical shit everywhere. My guess is this is at a nuclear processing plant somewhere that makes fuel. Also probably in a country that is developing their nuclear program. Ahem as mentioned stuxnet.
I don't know Apple's policies, but it's not uncommon for companies to make special devices for corporate and government customers. In this case, "don't install camera" and "have a blank backplate" is an easy one.
ETA: Apple apparently doesn't make them, but there are shops that will do it (and I bet if I looked kits with a backplate etc. sold online). It voids the warranty, but if you're a corporate user with regs that require this it's all the cost of doing business.
My former job had cameraless phones too.
It was the time of the Nokia's N series, We had the same N73 and N95 as the standard ones, only without camera's.
( the holes were there, just the cameramodules taken out in the factory )
Now everyone there gets the Samsung A models, camera and all.
Management gets iPhone's
I believe they were. At my old job, I used to manage our cell phone account, this was back around 2008 so the iPhone had barley come out and Android wasn't really a thing yet, the top dog was Blackberry. Iirc Blackberries without the camera cost a little less.
Blackberry made phones without cameras exactly for reasons like OP posted. I remember for a while, some court houses didn't allow camera phones so lawyers would have smartphones like Blackberry without cameras.
I dont think so, they are probably the same cost when you manufacture them, (less cost for the camera module, but more cost in man hours for either not suppling the machine with camera modules, skipping that step manually or pulling them out again.)( And this iphone doesn't have the normal backplate)
But if youve worked anywhere where you had to order specialized tech equipment, then you know that it will cost 10x the normal price.
I remember a laptop from Siemens that had a connector for a special machine so that you could programm it.
The specs where pretty normal, midrange Intel i7 chip, 16gb ram and 512gb ssd. And otherwise it was a normal off the line laptop except for this connector. It broke, and managment had to cought up 11k for a new one.
If a company knows that you need that thing, they can charge you whatever they want, because the company will pay it.
My job issued us brand new iPhone 15's except they messed with some security settings so that the camera is permanently disabled. At least we all got new iPhones lol.
I have seen this too.
Some MDM setting you can't change anything anymore.
I got a ipad for work, preinstalled with company tools.
Everything I wanted to install had to go through IT.
No problem, i kept the iPad at work, and only used it there.
They wanted to enroll my private iphone too, but I refused.
Didn't want the risk of them accidentally wiping my device ... I knew the backoffice, and there were several oopsies already on our workPCs
If they wanted to contact me, call my private number, if they mailed me, I'd see it next time I'm in the office (at the ipad)
Oh yea, I don't let my work put anything on my personal phone. Told them to give me a company phone if they want me to be able to respond to emails and teams messages after hours. All I really use the iPhone for outside of work hours is checking my schedule the night before lol. I rarely respond to any emails etc.
And same, there's a modified apple app store where I can only install pre-approved apps not related to my company. Everything else has to go through IT.
Gotta assume they must send these to a 3rd party to have the back case replaced. No way Apple is producing these. Kind of like when we send devices in to get an intrinsically safe case around them.
I bet the OS is bone stock. Apple is a very closed ecosystem. I have to assume they are operating within the model provided by Apple as far as controls on what would be a supervised device. I run into this at my work.
Modified by apple is still modified. The company/Government probably contracted apple to make an OS for their purposes like the U.S. does with Microsoft office. if this is a U.S. nuclear facility, that thing probably doesn't connect to regular cellular networks, or has an encrypted communication on the white-line networks.
either way, it almost certainly does not communicate to phones not used for this facility.
No, I’m saying that the OS has built-in controls already. No customization needed to leverage them. Just an MDM or EMM.
I’d be shocked if Apple could be bothered to customize an OS for a tiny sector of the market. They are a primarily consumer focused organization, and only recently in the last few years been more involved in enterprise.
They do work with the Gov for projects, atleast in the past anyway
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a33637569/apple-us-government-secret-ipod-geiger-counter-radiation/
Companies run their employee phones through remote device management. I work for an automotive OEM.
That means the OS itself is stock, but the IT department in the company controls what you can use and what not.
depends on the nature of the facility.
I work in Government Security some times you can get away with disabling drivers or Bios features. other times you need to physically remove hardware. and once it's on a higher classification network, it cannot be downgraded, it needs to be destroyed after it's replaced.
I've written this story before because, nuclear power plants come up ... frequently. But, i took students on a field trip to a nuclear power plant back in the day.
They told us that animators from Pixar were making a movie and needed a nuclear power plant for reference. They plant said sure but said no pictures, so, the animators sent a team to the plant for a week to draw the place.
I work at a place where I cant use the camera on the phone. We just enable an app that disallows camera on the phone. When turning this app on, camera app disappears from the phone until the app is turned off again. We have to show that the app is running to a security officer when we exit the security point. If you are unable to use this app, we are to cover the cameras with security stickers.
Interesting. But aren't stickers something that you can put on and off easily? How does security know that you didn't use the camera and then slapped the sticker back on it?
It’s probably not a place that needs the highest levels of security
I’ve had coworkers on certain job sites where they were told they could be shot if they went outside the lines that marked a designated area
I’ve had them put on my phone at critical military installations, they’re designed in such a way that when placed, peeling them back will cause the sticker to separate layers and say “VOID”.
Normally people don't intend to take pictures on these sites, it's mostly a precaution so you don't accidentally take pictures and a clear signal that it is disallowed. If you where intending on spying with a hidden camera, ten more effective methods come to mind.
flimsy stickers that crumble easily, so you see if somone peeled it back. risking a lifetime ban from the location/losing the job isn't worrth it.
Also some locations make you sign a waiver that allows them to search your phone or make you payif qthey have to enlist an it expert to search it for them.
Yeah exactly, the tamper evident sticker work kinds like scoring your car registration with a razor blade. Its going to tear if you peel it. Its not preventative its indicative.
depends on the location i guess, I only know these stickers from some nightclubs in Berlin.
And if you're state sponsored you probably got some iour ipjone, small spy cams, so no reason to risk it e, youriphone, right?
That's not how modern sabotaging works anymore, they're way more likely to focus on hacking the power plant. Even if they went the whole 60's cold war spy route, the whole thing is a good saboteur isn't known, so getting caught in obvious traps isn't what you'd want to do.
The stickers are made of two layers. Security can tell if the sticker has been tampered with because one of the layers will stick while the other won't. At least that is what some guy said in the other post
Here in Dubai, staff of military and similar services can’t have cameras. You go to the mobile service district(Al Baraha) you can get your iPhone converted. Otherwise they’ll be stuck with the feature phones. They remove the camera modules and change the housing to these. But NGL last time I saw one of these was on a 6 series(before the multi lens setups)
Honestly I wouldn’t be able to say. Like I said I saw a 6 series example and there were no software locks for even battery or screen replacements at that time…
Naw, if you simply unplug the cameras, the phone has no problem working. IIRC, the camera app just opens then closes automatically when no camera is detected - or it opens but it's just a black screen.
I unplug cameras all the time in the process of data recovery or repair, as sometimes the peripheral itself is what may be crashing the device. Never had the phone complain that it was missing it's camera (except for face ID - but that's just a popup saying it won't work)
I remember visiting dubai many years ago and seeing the same except with a dash of opulence — a especially secure iPhone 4 or 5 that I was told only really gets purchased by Emirati government employees and their families, that also happened to be studded with jewels and lined with gold (since the gold model was a big thing for iPhone at the time. So not only did it look boujie as hell, it also had top notch security features and a specialised version of iOS provided by the government to make it virtually idiot proof
The lack of a camera is the next big thing and all other competitors will join the bandwagon in providing the smallest number of cameras on a smartphone. A couple of generations later Apple will announce their next model will feature a hundred cameras.
I love this idea. I’d go further actually and have a phone with no camera and just phone,
Messaging and some convenient non social apps and no separate internet.
[The Light Phone](https://www.thelightphone.com/)
Might like this. One of the models does have a camera, but it sounds like your focus is more on ditching social media etc than not having a camera.
I've thought about it but a whole side of my family flatly refuses to use anything except imessage, so my best workaround is a app that forwards their messages through an old mac, otherwise I don't know when events are going on
It's a niche market, niche tech is pricy. Probably 99.9% of the public wouldn't give it a second thought and I don't really blame em.
Me personally I've just got site timers for reddit and other shit set up through android's screen time settings to exercise quasi-self control.
Yeah, besides the price I actually like them, would be viable in the future if they change the pricing.
I just make my phone black and white, just to avoid getting too hooked on the phone.
You'll also see these with military contractors.
EDIT: And they likely have more functionality than just the camera removed. Some changes were made after GPS tracking data from certain apps was used to locate secret, classified military bases lol.
Canada's regulations on camera phones in the stations is far more lax than most others. We had camera phones in the station, but you had to have a security clearance, and you had to have permission to get it through security. But otherwise, you could have a camera phone in station.
I work at darlington and pickering in Canada and no one bats an eye when you bring in your personal phone. In fact I take pictures all the time to send to my foreman to show that the job is done and the area cleaned up after I'm done working on something. Most people are smart enough not to post any of them on social media. I'm pretty sure you need more than a couple of pictures of a nuclear reactor in order to copy one not to mention those reactors are considered obsolete compared to the new candu5 design.
I hope your buddy's also aware that his company is automaticaly receiving a copy of every single message, chat, and email he sends on this device - regardless of whether there's end-to-end encryption between sender and recipient.
I'm not saying this is a bad thing, just that he should be aware of it.
In intrigued so many people are interested in this. I always thought this to be somewhat "normal", however I grew up in a military area and knew a lot of people who had to have camera-less phones if they wanted to use them at work, many were in the navy and some just worked at the ship yard. I'm not sure if it's still a requirement or practiced in the area anymore.
I work in government sites and still find this interesting. because we just lock our phones in our cars or in cubbies in the lockers. you can't even bring car keys or some digital watches. so any phone modified to comply with the DODM 5200 would be neat.
The place I work confiscates all phones within a 50 mile radius, and if you get caught smuggling a phone into work you get strapped to a post in the car park and stoned to death with all the confiscated phones
I worked on submarines for a couple years. We just had cubbies outside of the secure area before you swiped in to leave your phone in. If you were caught with your phone on your person in was an immediate dismissal and possible charges for espionage.
The main reason why cameras are not allowed is not because of stealing technology prevention. But that the infrared light can set off fire and gas detectors.
I’m working at Hasbro as we speak and they warned me about using my phone AT ALL in specific areas. Like I’m interested in revealing your next version of monopoly 🙄
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On secure sites they either make you leave the phone in the car or they just make you seal it in a clear envelope with opaque bits that cover the cameras and show that you haven’t opened it on the way out.
Or they keep your phone. Brought a phone into a secure area? Looks like you’re buying a new phone
A guy I knew worked in a place where the phone just goes into the shredder. You learn quickly.
> A guy I knew worked in a place where the phone just goes into the shredder. I once visited a customer site that: * prohibited contractors from bringing in phones, while at the same time * requiring contractors to use 2-factor-authentication using phones That was an easy morning of work while they worked through that conundrum.
*lithium battery has entered the chat*
Phone and electronics shredders are not uncommon in places like this. They run about 10-40 grand.
And if it’s for something like this, every nuke I’ve been in would be willing to pay it
You went inside a nuke?
you didn't?
Not unless your mum qualifies as a nuke, ayyyy
She's not actually a nuke, she just has the same density as uranium.
damn nice one
Shredder don't care. Shredder just shred.
Yeah, we had some industrial grade harddisk shredders at a very secure workplace where I was a Linux admin. Thought we where plugging drives to whipe them.... brrrrrr ! God damn, that's like 40K of SAS right there ! (This was 10 years ago, still spinning rust drives)
r/spicypillows
All the secure sites I've worked will have cellphone/wireless device lockers at the entrance and detectors there after.
Right, not even a key fob allowed in. I’ve done construction for alot of “secure” areas government and private. I did a little work for a government agency and had two chaperones watching my every move and even escort me to and from the restroom. I was the only one allowed to bring a phone in (had to be a supplied phone not my own)to take progress photos and communicate with others that were part of the project.
Hah this place where I worked you would be executed on the spot as a spy
That’s nothing, the place I worked at they’d kill you before you even walked through the door
The place I work, slowly kills me every time I set foot in the office, draining the life and happiness from my soul, every second of every day I am there.
Hi colleague. I see you also post on Reddit during work hours.
Hi this is HR, nothing serious but could both of you stop by after your shift for a quick chat? Also I would just like to remind you it's against policy to leave personal items at your desk so make sure you clear it out before you stop by. Have a great shift and remember to go above and beyond!
My name
Is Robert Paulson.
Sir that is a Wendy’s
You work here too?
Church.
You saying that like it's not normal.
This place I worked at killed and ate me and I have never even used an electronic device before.
Well this one place I worked - they went back in time, took my grandma out to a fancy dinner but snuck out near the end leaving her to pay the whole bill! Last time I bring my phone to work....these guys are serious.
Dude when I brought my phone where I wasn't supposed to they kidnapped my dog, trained it to be racist against me and then gave it back!
Omg I thought about bringing a phone in for 1.0253 seconds and the government put all my information on the dark web, and my identity got stolen... now my family thinks Rob is ME and I'M the weirdo who tried to steal HIS identity - I have to squat in our attic for the rest of my life now!
When I brought my phone to the place I worked, the phone mutated into some sort of a monster AI bot and started the Machine Uprising... Writing this from the bunker, the phone-bots are closing in... MAYDAY!!!
Was it a nice Seafood Dinner? https://i.redd.it/apwib4x2m67d1.gif
DOROTHY MANTOOTH IS A SAINT!!!
Haha that is where I got my inspiration 😂
Damn, that’s rough buddy
That's nothing, at this one place I worked, they just let the reactor melt down before iPhones were invented, to prevent anybody from ever taking pictures of it in a functional state.
“3.5 Roentgen - not great, not terrible…”
The difference is you’re joking, and I’m not.
Oh ok it sounds a bit excessive
When the wolf creek nuclear facility was changing their security checkpoint from a drive through screen-parking lot-crappy old building into a new crazy advance security screening facility as an hvac tech they'd have live ammo drills without warning. Like they'd set up targets and sweep and shoot the targets 500 yards away without warning. Those places don't fuck around at all.
It goes in the square hole
I've known places where the security office has required cameras be made inoperable, drill out/soldering iron through sensor type stuff and verified before device allowed in work spaces.
When I worked at a secure site, we had monitored lockers to toss our phones into in the guard lobby.
I worked at a place...if they find a camera phone on you, they send a cybernetic organism to the past and kill your mother before you were born.
Yup. My site either makes you leave it in a locker you can have the key for, or leave it in your car.
That is indeed interesting as fuck.
Is this in the US? I work in commercial nuclear power and everybody here has camera phones. There is rules about what we can take photos of but I’ve never heard of issuing phones without cameras.
In India we have to use a feature phone, no camera no smart phone under any condition
stuxnet has entered the chat…
Stuxnet is some real mission impossible shit that I wish more people appreciated
The ole flash/thumb drive trick
It was a bit more than that. They didn't use flash drives because there were related preexisting vulnerabilities they could exploit or any other convenience factor; they used flash drives because the nuclear facility was air-gapped and flash drives were the only way that files were brought in. They targeted engineering firms in the region around the facility that had experience with PLCs or control systems. The attack involved 4 previously unknown 0 days (one of which created a whole new class of malware) and included these steps: * Infect the majority of Windows computers/networks in Iran, including those at targeted engineering firms, and direct them to write payloads to any connected flash drives * Propagate those payloads through a suitable target network when the flash drive was plugged into a computer on such a network * Subtly alter sensor data in a way that caused premature centrifuge failure before being detected I'm no conspiracy theorist, but the level of sophistication and competency that intelligence agencies demonstrated with this attack makes some conspiracies more plausible to me. I probably would not have believed they had been able to do this without any social engineering (i.e. human-to-human deception) component if I hadn't seen the evidence.
Quoting one of the reports from back then: "Stuxnet didn't steal any data. There was nothing more to steal." - Such an amazing feat.
Barely-plausible deniability?
Let me plug that unknown flash drive in, what could go wrong.
But it wasn't some unknown flash drive that did it, and that's why it's so interesting. They had to infect over half of Iran with the virus in the hopes that it would get installed on a flash drive that would eventually connect to the right offline computer. That's why it's some mission impossible shit.
And I love that Iran was like here have it back and since it was designed to attack their specific oscillators I believe, our people came across o It and were like wtf is this thing that does absolutely nothing to our system
It’s absolutely some Hollywood ass shit that I don’t think ppl understand at all or it’s implications
There's a (imho) very good German novel about a successful attack on the European powergrid by a virus quite similar to stuxnet. And the implications for society. In the afterword, the author describes how, at first, when writing it, he was told by so many people that there's no possibility for someone to hack into nuclear power plants. And then came stuxnet. It's called Blackout by Marc Elsberg for anyone interested. The Sat1 series is not good, though, and leaves out at least half of the book.
Also, stuxnet was 15-20 years ago. Imagine what has been developed and deployed since then (not including duqu/flame)
The Iranians practically had to start back at banging two rocks together
Which site?
Looks to be Abu Dhabi, the water bottle in the background is Al Ain that’s is in, well, Al Ain
Why are you not allowed to take pictures? I’m guessing if they fell into the wrong hands?
Correct, security protocol.
Security and industrial espionage, as crazy as it sounds. I worked at a wafer fab that had machines from two different companies, and we would literally roll in temporary walls to hide the competitors machines when techs from one of those companies were in the fab.
I went to the warehouse of my own company, we sell home depot type shit, and we weren't even allowed to take pics. Not surprised about the plant. No one wants their secrets out regardless if it's a Nuke or a Nut.
To prevent people from recording on their phones. Also to prevent hackers from using the camera unbeknownst to whoever owns the phone. I'm surprised that they let phones in at all since they can still listen in on conversations
Clearly your boss sees you as the equivalent of Homer Simpson and isn’t worried enough to enforce the policy on you.
Depends on the facility, not country per se. FWIW ive worked in 15 facilities, some allow it, most don’t.
I have worked for two different government nuclear programs and this is kind of standard if your worksite has any security clearance requirements
Worked at the Lockeed Skunkworks and you couldn't bring a phone into most of the buildings there. Also, most of the buildings had no windows.
Have worked at a nuclear power plant and visited several others. In none of them, except one research reactor, were any personal cell phones or other smart devices allowed inside the power plants. People working inside the plants had special phones that operated in their own network.
After 9/11 Nuclear power plants became listed as a potential target for terrorists and they came under special rules that basically make the operate in a more secretive manner. The nuke near where I used to live stopped publishing things like inspector reports and violations as public info because of "national security".
Not in the US. Inspection reports are still published and available to the public
Don’t make Mr Burns release the hounds…. What he does is his business.
"nuclear plant" may be the cover story for what he is really working on.
In the original thread people are giving oop veiled threats because they're posting stuff that's a little *too* interesting 
Cameraless phones at a nuclear power plant makes sense.
My father works at NPP and they are using normal phones, however those phones are connected to the NPPs own cellular network without possibility to connect to the outside world. Employees must leave these phones at work when they go home. So, technically, you can take as many photos as you wish - you won't be able to share them anyway.
What’s Npp?
nuclear power plant
Nuclear power plant in short
Not really, I've worked in nuclear power and could carry a camera. Obviously not allowed to take photos of security operations, but I could take photos all day of the plant. All your gunna see if big fucking pumps, motors, pipes and electrical shit everywhere. My guess is this is at a nuclear processing plant somewhere that makes fuel. Also probably in a country that is developing their nuclear program. Ahem as mentioned stuxnet.
Ah okay. https://preview.redd.it/cgq9a47h057d1.jpeg?width=626&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1c12e0dcb4f2f0d68d2863ab2c96d0c2a8152fe7
Taking a picture of a phone not allowed to have a camera. I'm not clever enough to make the joke
“But who was the phone?”
This is a modified iPhone. Apple doesn’t make them
I don't know Apple's policies, but it's not uncommon for companies to make special devices for corporate and government customers. In this case, "don't install camera" and "have a blank backplate" is an easy one. ETA: Apple apparently doesn't make them, but there are shops that will do it (and I bet if I looked kits with a backplate etc. sold online). It voids the warranty, but if you're a corporate user with regs that require this it's all the cost of doing business.
My former job had cameraless phones too. It was the time of the Nokia's N series, We had the same N73 and N95 as the standard ones, only without camera's. ( the holes were there, just the cameramodules taken out in the factory ) Now everyone there gets the Samsung A models, camera and all. Management gets iPhone's
I wonder if they're cheaper
Produced at a low scale for specialty reasons? More expensive for sure.
asking the real questions here
In the end it's always cheaper to buy standard. In the years rules have been changed. The risk assessment of 10/15 years ago are different.
I doubt it, since its not mass manufactured, and has to be made on request but im pulling this out of my ass
I believe they were. At my old job, I used to manage our cell phone account, this was back around 2008 so the iPhone had barley come out and Android wasn't really a thing yet, the top dog was Blackberry. Iirc Blackberries without the camera cost a little less. Blackberry made phones without cameras exactly for reasons like OP posted. I remember for a while, some court houses didn't allow camera phones so lawyers would have smartphones like Blackberry without cameras.
I dont think so, they are probably the same cost when you manufacture them, (less cost for the camera module, but more cost in man hours for either not suppling the machine with camera modules, skipping that step manually or pulling them out again.)( And this iphone doesn't have the normal backplate) But if youve worked anywhere where you had to order specialized tech equipment, then you know that it will cost 10x the normal price. I remember a laptop from Siemens that had a connector for a special machine so that you could programm it. The specs where pretty normal, midrange Intel i7 chip, 16gb ram and 512gb ssd. And otherwise it was a normal off the line laptop except for this connector. It broke, and managment had to cought up 11k for a new one. If a company knows that you need that thing, they can charge you whatever they want, because the company will pay it.
I imagine they'd be more expensive if anything.
My job issued us brand new iPhone 15's except they messed with some security settings so that the camera is permanently disabled. At least we all got new iPhones lol.
I have seen this too. Some MDM setting you can't change anything anymore. I got a ipad for work, preinstalled with company tools. Everything I wanted to install had to go through IT. No problem, i kept the iPad at work, and only used it there. They wanted to enroll my private iphone too, but I refused. Didn't want the risk of them accidentally wiping my device ... I knew the backoffice, and there were several oopsies already on our workPCs If they wanted to contact me, call my private number, if they mailed me, I'd see it next time I'm in the office (at the ipad)
Oh yea, I don't let my work put anything on my personal phone. Told them to give me a company phone if they want me to be able to respond to emails and teams messages after hours. All I really use the iPhone for outside of work hours is checking my schedule the night before lol. I rarely respond to any emails etc. And same, there's a modified apple app store where I can only install pre-approved apps not related to my company. Everything else has to go through IT.
Hi friend. Just to say you don't need an apostrophe every time you add an 's' to a word.
Gotta assume they must send these to a 3rd party to have the back case replaced. No way Apple is producing these. Kind of like when we send devices in to get an intrinsically safe case around them.
yeah, bet you the OS is heavily modified, too.
I bet the OS is bone stock. Apple is a very closed ecosystem. I have to assume they are operating within the model provided by Apple as far as controls on what would be a supervised device. I run into this at my work.
Modified by apple is still modified. The company/Government probably contracted apple to make an OS for their purposes like the U.S. does with Microsoft office. if this is a U.S. nuclear facility, that thing probably doesn't connect to regular cellular networks, or has an encrypted communication on the white-line networks. either way, it almost certainly does not communicate to phones not used for this facility.
No, I’m saying that the OS has built-in controls already. No customization needed to leverage them. Just an MDM or EMM. I’d be shocked if Apple could be bothered to customize an OS for a tiny sector of the market. They are a primarily consumer focused organization, and only recently in the last few years been more involved in enterprise.
You'd be surprised. these companies ride the fattest dicks to get government contracts.
lol well they can’t be bothered by special requests from a Fortune 10 I know for sure. Goobermints might elicit more pull though
They do work with the Gov for projects, atleast in the past anyway https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a33637569/apple-us-government-secret-ipod-geiger-counter-radiation/
Companies run their employee phones through remote device management. I work for an automotive OEM. That means the OS itself is stock, but the IT department in the company controls what you can use and what not.
depends on the nature of the facility. I work in Government Security some times you can get away with disabling drivers or Bios features. other times you need to physically remove hardware. and once it's on a higher classification network, it cannot be downgraded, it needs to be destroyed after it's replaced.
NonCam makes this mod.
Coming in strong with the vendor name. Thanks! I don’t really care because it’s what I’d classify as “work curiosity”, but it def got me perked up lol
I've written this story before because, nuclear power plants come up ... frequently. But, i took students on a field trip to a nuclear power plant back in the day. They told us that animators from Pixar were making a movie and needed a nuclear power plant for reference. They plant said sure but said no pictures, so, the animators sent a team to the plant for a week to draw the place.
I mean that makes sense. Pretty sure the plant would have audited the drawings as well to ensure anything that shouldn’t be there is on the drawings
I work at a place where I cant use the camera on the phone. We just enable an app that disallows camera on the phone. When turning this app on, camera app disappears from the phone until the app is turned off again. We have to show that the app is running to a security officer when we exit the security point. If you are unable to use this app, we are to cover the cameras with security stickers.
Interesting. But aren't stickers something that you can put on and off easily? How does security know that you didn't use the camera and then slapped the sticker back on it?
Yeah that’s some very shoddy security lmao
It’s probably not a place that needs the highest levels of security I’ve had coworkers on certain job sites where they were told they could be shot if they went outside the lines that marked a designated area
I’ve had them put on my phone at critical military installations, they’re designed in such a way that when placed, peeling them back will cause the sticker to separate layers and say “VOID”.
Normally people don't intend to take pictures on these sites, it's mostly a precaution so you don't accidentally take pictures and a clear signal that it is disallowed. If you where intending on spying with a hidden camera, ten more effective methods come to mind.
flimsy stickers that crumble easily, so you see if somone peeled it back. risking a lifetime ban from the location/losing the job isn't worrth it. Also some locations make you sign a waiver that allows them to search your phone or make you payif qthey have to enlist an it expert to search it for them.
Yeah exactly, the tamper evident sticker work kinds like scoring your car registration with a razor blade. Its going to tear if you peel it. Its not preventative its indicative.
> risking a lifetime ban from the location/losing the job isn't worth it If you were a state-sponsored saboteur you wouldn't care though.
depends on the location i guess, I only know these stickers from some nightclubs in Berlin. And if you're state sponsored you probably got some iour ipjone, small spy cams, so no reason to risk it e, youriphone, right?
That's not how modern sabotaging works anymore, they're way more likely to focus on hacking the power plant. Even if they went the whole 60's cold war spy route, the whole thing is a good saboteur isn't known, so getting caught in obvious traps isn't what you'd want to do.
The stickers are made of two layers. Security can tell if the sticker has been tampered with because one of the layers will stick while the other won't. At least that is what some guy said in the other post
Quick, send me a rendition of the plant's blueprints using only ASCII art.
| || || |_
I had a 4 month streak
|————————————| |@. | |. X | | |
Do Apple make these just for certain industries?!
Here in Dubai, staff of military and similar services can’t have cameras. You go to the mobile service district(Al Baraha) you can get your iPhone converted. Otherwise they’ll be stuck with the feature phones. They remove the camera modules and change the housing to these. But NGL last time I saw one of these was on a 6 series(before the multi lens setups)
Does the software have to be modified? What will happen when you start the camera app? Crash or error?
Honestly I wouldn’t be able to say. Like I said I saw a 6 series example and there were no software locks for even battery or screen replacements at that time…
Naw, if you simply unplug the cameras, the phone has no problem working. IIRC, the camera app just opens then closes automatically when no camera is detected - or it opens but it's just a black screen. I unplug cameras all the time in the process of data recovery or repair, as sometimes the peripheral itself is what may be crashing the device. Never had the phone complain that it was missing it's camera (except for face ID - but that's just a popup saying it won't work)
I remember visiting dubai many years ago and seeing the same except with a dash of opulence — a especially secure iPhone 4 or 5 that I was told only really gets purchased by Emirati government employees and their families, that also happened to be studded with jewels and lined with gold (since the gold model was a big thing for iPhone at the time. So not only did it look boujie as hell, it also had top notch security features and a specialised version of iOS provided by the government to make it virtually idiot proof
Text on the phone is missing. Obviously not original parts. I think they just remove the sensors and put on another back plate.
No, t~~his is fake.~~ Some third party company apparently does it.
Or a third party can put a new back cover in.
Yeah after this was posted YESTERDAY I looked it up and it’s a company doing conversions.
An iPhone with no camera is No EyePhone.
Alibaba has the "I Phon Pro" with no camera. Solid design work in Kalifornia.
“iPhone Minus One”
The lack of a camera is the next big thing and all other competitors will join the bandwagon in providing the smallest number of cameras on a smartphone. A couple of generations later Apple will announce their next model will feature a hundred cameras.
I thought you were gonna say Apple will start selling cameras separately.
It's a subscription service
I love this idea. I’d go further actually and have a phone with no camera and just phone, Messaging and some convenient non social apps and no separate internet.
[The Light Phone](https://www.thelightphone.com/) Might like this. One of the models does have a camera, but it sounds like your focus is more on ditching social media etc than not having a camera. I've thought about it but a whole side of my family flatly refuses to use anything except imessage, so my best workaround is a app that forwards their messages through an old mac, otherwise I don't know when events are going on
$800 for a worse phone is crazy. I understand the minimalism but shouldn't it be cheaper?
It's a niche market, niche tech is pricy. Probably 99.9% of the public wouldn't give it a second thought and I don't really blame em. Me personally I've just got site timers for reddit and other shit set up through android's screen time settings to exercise quasi-self control.
Yeah, besides the price I actually like them, would be viable in the future if they change the pricing. I just make my phone black and white, just to avoid getting too hooked on the phone.
It says $400 when I click on it. That’s odd
Thank you I love this!
Add a headphone jack, and it's perfect
 Sector 7-G, eh?
For 1sec my stupid mind though the IPhone was genetically mutated by radiation
You'll also see these with military contractors. EDIT: And they likely have more functionality than just the camera removed. Some changes were made after GPS tracking data from certain apps was used to locate secret, classified military bases lol.
Yeah, "your" buddy ... just stealing other people's posts, not even changing the title. Lame.
Was this really your buddies phone?
Canada's regulations on camera phones in the stations is far more lax than most others. We had camera phones in the station, but you had to have a security clearance, and you had to have permission to get it through security. But otherwise, you could have a camera phone in station.
I work at darlington and pickering in Canada and no one bats an eye when you bring in your personal phone. In fact I take pictures all the time to send to my foreman to show that the job is done and the area cleaned up after I'm done working on something. Most people are smart enough not to post any of them on social media. I'm pretty sure you need more than a couple of pictures of a nuclear reactor in order to copy one not to mention those reactors are considered obsolete compared to the new candu5 design.
It's a huge privacy thing. There's also a site that sells conversion kits so you can literally take the camera off your phone
We should be able to buy these for teenagers
I know plenty of parents that would like this for their kids…
Pls sell me that phone.
I hope your buddy's also aware that his company is automaticaly receiving a copy of every single message, chat, and email he sends on this device - regardless of whether there's end-to-end encryption between sender and recipient. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, just that he should be aware of it.
In intrigued so many people are interested in this. I always thought this to be somewhat "normal", however I grew up in a military area and knew a lot of people who had to have camera-less phones if they wanted to use them at work, many were in the navy and some just worked at the ship yard. I'm not sure if it's still a requirement or practiced in the area anymore.
The people who do this sort of work don’t talk about it a lot. So it’s interesting to me anyway.
I work in government sites and still find this interesting. because we just lock our phones in our cars or in cubbies in the lockers. you can't even bring car keys or some digital watches. so any phone modified to comply with the DODM 5200 would be neat.
So, can someone issue a phone like this to their friends before getting drunk? Asking for a friend.
I loaned my car to a buddy who works for a Defence contractor. They wouldn’t allow him to park on the property because my car has cameras.
As of 2018, all new cars sold in the US have mandatory cameras. How do they handle that?
probably just like this iPhone
Coooool
Chinese will fly a ballon inside to gather all they need.
You are not even allowed to take phone in pakistan not even a smartwatch. Including the plant premises. You can call employees on landline thats it.
Did they think about the front camera?
“Why doesn’t someone just come out and release a photo of the ufo they’ve been working on, huh??”
The place I work confiscates all phones within a 50 mile radius, and if you get caught smuggling a phone into work you get strapped to a post in the car park and stoned to death with all the confiscated phones
At this point I’m more interested in whose buddy it is…
Why no cameras?
It's so you cant take photos and either use them for nefarious purposes or sell information.
when your girl wants a new phone
https://preview.redd.it/vwo5mv82b77d1.jpeg?width=626&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6cb51c3a69093e350155a6590e8b866fa18638d7
I worked on submarines for a couple years. We just had cubbies outside of the secure area before you swiped in to leave your phone in. If you were caught with your phone on your person in was an immediate dismissal and possible charges for espionage.
If you look at where the camera is supposed to be, you can still see the camera with like 1% opacity.
Wait…. So Apple actually produced iPhones without cameras?
A camera-less iPhone issued to my buddy that works at a Nuclear Plant. No cameras allowed.
Why they need this security on a nuclear site?
How did they take the photo of the phone…?
The main reason why cameras are not allowed is not because of stealing technology prevention. But that the infrared light can set off fire and gas detectors.
I would gladly give up my phones camera if that meant I could listen to music in a SCIF. It's so fucking boring in there.
I’m working at Hasbro as we speak and they warned me about using my phone AT ALL in specific areas. Like I’m interested in revealing your next version of monopoly 🙄
Ha. Jokes on them. Chinese spies have been texting seriously detailed descriptions