Re: [Bug 22214] How long do permissions persist?

On May 27, 2014, at 4:32 PM, Martin Thomson wrote:

> On 27 May 2014 12:33, Harald Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no> wrote:
>> The discussion I heard at the Media Capture TF meeting was approximately
>> between two alternatives:
>> 
>> 1) Permission persists until the device is released by all tracks sourced
>> from it.
>> 
>> 2) Permission persists until the page is closed. (This may allow permissions
>> to survive a page reload.)
> 
> The way we communicate with users is with indicators.  From that
> perspective, either approach works.
> 
> I tend to prefer the former.  In the case where an application is
> granted access to camera 1, we don't want to also enable access to
> camera 2.  I think that the latter implies a greater scope to consent
> than a single one-off interaction.

I abhor the notion that access to one camera would automatically give access to all cameras, but given the many discussions we've heard about real estate limitations for indicators, I suspect that in practice we will only have two:  one to indicate that some device is being accessed, and one to indicate that any device could be accessed.  Whether we end up with separate sets for audio and video I don't know, but I don't think I've heard strong support for a separate pair of indicators for each device.  Given that, in practice users may learn that "indicator on" means that any device could be turned on.

By the way, single-use permissions surviving a page reload bugs me even more.  One of the characteristics (call it a "feature") that I like the best about most WebRTC video calling apps is that reloading the page starts over.


> 
> I'd also like to keep this open to a degree of interpretation.  Not
> all browsers will reach the same conclusions.  Already, Chrome and
> Firefox are demonstrably different and I think that the current
> variation is within reasonable bounds.
>

Received on Thursday, 29 May 2014 19:28:32 UTC