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> is hostile to my security requirements Nonetheless, it is essential to your liberty and freedom. I have the ability to recklessly spend the entire contents

by Reelin 8y ago

> is hostile to my security requirements Nonetheless, it is essential to your liberty and freedom. I have the ability to recklessly spend the entire contents of my bank account on Amazon purchases if I so choose. I'm certainly not faulting the bank for "allowing" that though! Truly, I will never understand why some are so eager to have their behavior dictated by others.

userbinator 8y ago
Truly, I will never understand why some are so eager to have their behavior dictated by others. I have no doubt it's related to the recent rise in authoritarianism too.
floatingatoll 8y ago
"How dare we adopt code licenses like the GPL, allowing a shadowy authoritarian figure known only as ESR to dictate our every move. If we don't start writing our own code licenses this very day, we risk the authoritarian take over of all software by the select few who are able to write them competently. Every time someone uses an off-the-shelf license from a third party they neither know nor trust, our freedom suffers." So, your argument doesn't pan out, I think. At some point experts are expert and you are not. I am not an expert at app stores. I defer my app store choices to the people who make my phone, because they have a track record of choices I usually approve of, and their missteps are never in service of "exploit me" (like Facebook's). There are many competing hardware platforms to choose from with many fewer restrictions. I choose the more-restricted and my free time available to focus on actual benefits to the world increases. I don't believe I would benefit the world by using a third-party app store, and I don't have time for the drama it involves. YMMV.
- hesarenu 8y ago
  That is your choice. Others like to have freedom as well instead of just privacy walled garden.
- Reelin 8y ago
  This argument doesn't make any sense to me. I'm not implying that you should blindly distrust the app store your device ships with. I'm not claiming that experts aren't experts, or that you specifically are an expert. I don't know where you got these impressions from. I'm particularly puzzled by your choice of software licenses as an analogy, given that they were designed by experts in the field specifically to maximize freedom (whereas app stores were not) and have held up in this regard to sustained scrutiny over many years (the default app stores have failed miserably here). What I am claiming is that you don't have freedom if you can't make these choices for yourself. Sane defaults are fine. Shipping with a prepackaged app store is fine. Even having to reboot the device into a separate mode and enter a password in order to change sensitive system settings is fine. But if I want to add F-Droid, I need to be able to do that and it needs to be a first class citizen. I need to be able to remove Google Play if that's what I want to do. On iOS, there is not and can never be a third party app store under current policy. That is most definitely a restriction on your freedom as a user; I do not believe that any cohesive argument can be made against that statement. Just because you have the option to opt-out of vendor restrictions doesn't mean that you have to do so. For example, my mobile device won't allow me to disable secure boot or to install my own keys, and it is incredibly difficult to locate one for sale that will. In contrast, my laptop will allow me to do both of those things if I so choose. Doing so requires rebooting into the UEFI shell, which I have the option of password protecting. None of this can be done by a malicious program from user space barring a truly massive security hole. As such, I do not believe that this freedom negatively impacts my security in any way.
  - floatingatoll 8y ago
    We disagree on what basic rights _must_ be offered with any hardware-software combination that is sold to us. I demand the right to take apart my hardware and software as I see fit. I do not demand the right to receive active support for doing so from the manufacturer. If they can lock me out with their technology, that is their right as author of the technology. If I can circumvent their lockout with my technology, that is my right as purchased of the technology. Apple does this so well that most of us aren’t capable of hacking their technology. Good job. A certain large American tractor company tries to take away your right to attempt to hack their device, rather than simply making it difficult. I disapprove of this with every fiber of my being. As purchaser of the tractor, I may do whatever I wish with what I chose to purchase. When I buy an iPhone, I knowingly choose to purchase a device that keeps me out so effectively that there are no known ways to hack into it if it’s up to date. Apple has the right to make it so, and it’s very useful to me that they do. I then continue to update it to maintain that line of defense. Folks who root their phone choose otherwise on both counts. That’s their right, too. If you wish to remove Apple’s freedom to build devices that defend against non-Apple software intrusion, you’re welcome to campaign for that, but I support their freedom to build security countermeasures to the same degree that I support my freedom to purchase a device with those countermeasures enabled. My freedom need not come at the cost of theirs, as the plethora of Android options clearly evidences.
dwaite 8y ago
There's a long history of the government preventing abuse when one party in a relationship is not capable of evaluating the other party. We see certifications for various roles from tax preparers to hairdressers, we see limits on what can be sold as food and medicine (unfortunately not enough limits in the US). Would you consider such (common) systems to be authoritarian? It is unfortunate that technology evolves so much faster than the average person's understanding of it. It both places a huge need on such intermediaries being present, but puts the running of such an intermediary outside of an entity supposedly operating in the public good (like the government) and into the hands of a corporation that may in one way or another be motivated to abuse such a role - and even if they try not to, being a for-profit gate-keeper guarantees they will be perceived as abusing such a role.
- Reelin 8y ago
  > Would you consider such (common) systems to be authoritarian? That question can only be meaningfully answered on a case by case basis. Many of them do cross the line as currently implemented in my opinion; to what extent varies. Oftentimes there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for their design rooted in history (ex being created prior to the internet or some other technology). On the whole most of them seem to work well enough. I would note that the presence of one flawed system does not serve as justification for others to exist as well. The world is certainly imperfect, but that is not a valid argument against improving it. > places a huge need on such intermediaries being present I don't dispute this - what I take issue with is the inability to opt out. > being a for-profit gate-keeper guarantees they will be perceived as abusing such a role Regarding app stores, the manufacturers could have trivially set them up such that it wasn't possible to abuse them. Functioning examples of such systems already exist. They specifically chose not to do this, so I do not think it is unreasonable to assume the worst about their intentions.

by Reelin 8y ago

userbinator 8y ago

Truly, I will never understand why some are so eager to have their behavior dictated by others. I have no doubt it's related to the recent rise in authoritarianism too.

floatingatoll 8y ago

"How dare we adopt code licenses like the GPL, allowing a shadowy authoritarian figure known only as ESR to dictate our every move. If we don't start writing our own code licenses this very day, we risk the authoritarian take over of all software by the select few who are able to write them competently. Every time someone uses an off-the-shelf license from a third party they neither know nor trust, our freedom suffers." So, your argument doesn't pan out, I think. At some point experts are expert and you are not. I am not an expert at app stores. I defer my app store choices to the people who make my phone, because they have a track record of choices I usually approve of, and their missteps are never in service of "exploit me" (like Facebook's). There are many competing hardware platforms to choose from with many fewer restrictions. I choose the more-restricted and my free time available to focus on actual benefits to the world increases. I don't believe I would benefit the world by using a third-party app store, and I don't have time for the drama it involves. YMMV.

hesarenu 8y ago
That is your choice. Others like to have freedom as well instead of just privacy walled garden.
Reelin 8y ago
This argument doesn't make any sense to me. I'm not implying that you should blindly distrust the app store your device ships with. I'm not claiming that experts aren't experts, or that you specifically are an expert. I don't know where you got these impressions from. I'm particularly puzzled by your choice of software licenses as an analogy, given that they were designed by experts in the field specifically to maximize freedom (whereas app stores were not) and have held up in this regard to sustained scrutiny over many years (the default app stores have failed miserably here). What I am claiming is that you don't have freedom if you can't make these choices for yourself. Sane defaults are fine. Shipping with a prepackaged app store is fine. Even having to reboot the device into a separate mode and enter a password in order to change sensitive system settings is fine. But if I want to add F-Droid, I need to be able to do that and it needs to be a first class citizen. I need to be able to remove Google Play if that's what I want to do. On iOS, there is not and can never be a third party app store under current policy. That is most definitely a restriction on your freedom as a user; I do not believe that any cohesive argument can be made against that statement. Just because you have the option to opt-out of vendor restrictions doesn't mean that you have to do so. For example, my mobile device won't allow me to disable secure boot or to install my own keys, and it is incredibly difficult to locate one for sale that will. In contrast, my laptop will allow me to do both of those things if I so choose. Doing so requires rebooting into the UEFI shell, which I have the option of password protecting. None of this can be done by a malicious program from user space barring a truly massive security hole. As such, I do not believe that this freedom negatively impacts my security in any way.
- floatingatoll 8y ago
  We disagree on what basic rights _must_ be offered with any hardware-software combination that is sold to us. I demand the right to take apart my hardware and software as I see fit. I do not demand the right to receive active support for doing so from the manufacturer. If they can lock me out with their technology, that is their right as author of the technology. If I can circumvent their lockout with my technology, that is my right as purchased of the technology. Apple does this so well that most of us aren’t capable of hacking their technology. Good job. A certain large American tractor company tries to take away your right to attempt to hack their device, rather than simply making it difficult. I disapprove of this with every fiber of my being. As purchaser of the tractor, I may do whatever I wish with what I chose to purchase. When I buy an iPhone, I knowingly choose to purchase a device that keeps me out so effectively that there are no known ways to hack into it if it’s up to date. Apple has the right to make it so, and it’s very useful to me that they do. I then continue to update it to maintain that line of defense. Folks who root their phone choose otherwise on both counts. That’s their right, too. If you wish to remove Apple’s freedom to build devices that defend against non-Apple software intrusion, you’re welcome to campaign for that, but I support their freedom to build security countermeasures to the same degree that I support my freedom to purchase a device with those countermeasures enabled. My freedom need not come at the cost of theirs, as the plethora of Android options clearly evidences.

dwaite 8y ago

There's a long history of the government preventing abuse when one party in a relationship is not capable of evaluating the other party. We see certifications for various roles from tax preparers to hairdressers, we see limits on what can be sold as food and medicine (unfortunately not enough limits in the US). Would you consider such (common) systems to be authoritarian? It is unfortunate that technology evolves so much faster than the average person's understanding of it. It both places a huge need on such intermediaries being present, but puts the running of such an intermediary outside of an entity supposedly operating in the public good (like the government) and into the hands of a corporation that may in one way or another be motivated to abuse such a role - and even if they try not to, being a for-profit gate-keeper guarantees they will be perceived as abusing such a role.

Reelin 8y ago
> Would you consider such (common) systems to be authoritarian? That question can only be meaningfully answered on a case by case basis. Many of them do cross the line as currently implemented in my opinion; to what extent varies. Oftentimes there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for their design rooted in history (ex being created prior to the internet or some other technology). On the whole most of them seem to work well enough. I would note that the presence of one flawed system does not serve as justification for others to exist as well. The world is certainly imperfect, but that is not a valid argument against improving it. > places a huge need on such intermediaries being present I don't dispute this - what I take issue with is the inability to opt out. > being a for-profit gate-keeper guarantees they will be perceived as abusing such a role Regarding app stores, the manufacturers could have trivially set them up such that it wasn't possible to abuse them. Functioning examples of such systems already exist. They specifically chose not to do this, so I do not think it is unreasonable to assume the worst about their intentions.