Or, in 2022, one could reach into their pocket just use a phone, making the interviewer's cautionary move generally useless.

> just use a phone

I assumed that keeping looking in the direction of the camera was relevant (in their idea).

It's fairly easy to augment a video stream to paste on eyes that always look in the direction of the camera. It's the digital equivalent of glasses with eyes on them[1].

1. https://www.amazon.com/glasses-eyes-them/s?k=glasses+with+ey...

...Which one supposedly would not consult during an interview.

No matter how you arranged them. And I would never use a USB camera between them, either.

I suppose if you’re clever enough to set up a VM in order to evade detection, that’s a pretty positive aptitude signal in its own right (though pretty negative on the behavioral/ethics side).

> if you’re clever enough to set up a VM in order to evade detection

It's what you would do anyway, unless you suppose that the interviewee would ever install dubious software on his core machine.