4 ms·

So people might make bad decisions, therefore they should not be allowed to make decisions at all? Sure, do everything you can to educate the user on what they

So people might make bad decisions, therefore they should not be allowed to make decisions at all? Sure, do everything you can to educate the user on what they're doing and make things as hard as possible for scammers, but ultimately it must be their choice who controls their device, not yours.

acdha 5y ago
We don't have absolute freedom in many areas because the law recognizes that the general public either is not capable of making informed decisions when that requires high-levels of skill or when there is a high likelihood of bad outcomes due to malicious actors. For example, if you buy a car there are safety features you cannot turn off without major modifications. Dangerous tools often have safety guards built-in to the design — for example, my blender doesn't say it's my choice whether to keep the spinning blade covered. My bank doesn't say it's my choice whether or not to identify myself when making a withdrawal. For most people, iOS limiting the damage when they get compromised is a huge plus. Removing that entirely in the absolute position is bringing people back a couple of decades ago only now the malware will have access to their most private moments and data 24x7 rather than just their Geocities browsing history. Now, consider what that means for something like unlocking the bootloader. Allowing that means undetectable malware, potentially irrecoverable. There's not really a good way around that and even if you try to inform people at the time they enable it that doesn't help if it's done when the device is out of their control (abusive partner, boss, police, etc.), and every on-screen indicator can be faked by the malware vendor. That leaves options like a physical switch in a prominent location which most people aren't going to want to pay for or see, and are more likely to be used by accident than intentionally.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  > For example, if you buy a car there are safety features you cannot turn off without major modifications. To use a direct analogy with Apple's restrictions on users, you're free to modify and flash your car's ECU firmware. In fact, it's quite common.
  - dev_tty01 5y ago
    >In fact, it's quite common. Really? How have you defined common? Where is that data from? I can't imagine anything more than a tiny fraction of car owners are doing this. Most people are not hacking their cars, building Raspberry Pi controllers for their toilets, or have any desire whatsoever to side load an app on their iPhone. The HN community is not representative of the overall population.
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      It's common enough that there's a legitimate industry around that and a lot of auto-tuning shops will do it on request. In most cases though it's just editing the built-in data tables rather than completely replacing the firmware, and it's often done for engine performance reasons rather than bypassing safety features.
      - eecc 5y ago
        And possibly blowing the cars’ mileage and emissions limits which were defined by regulation and would make the car illegal to drive if measured…
    - heavyset_go 5y ago
      Mechanics do it often, as do people who work on their cars. It isn't the Hacker News segment that is doing it, but the people who work on cars for a living or for fun.
  - mason55 5y ago
    And you’re free to jailbreak your phone. It’s not illegal. No ones going to arrest you. But no one says the car manufacturers are required to make a car where you can flash the ECU. There’s just no reason for them to block it. If someone came up with a way to steal your car by tricking your into running an app that flashed your ECU then you can bet Ford would disable it pretty quickly.
    - tatersolid 5y ago
- feikname 5y ago
  > Dangerous tools often have safety guards built-in to the design A phone is not, usually, a dangerous tool. Unless you can make it explode :) > For most people, iOS limiting the damage when they get compromised is a huge plus. Then just dont unlock. The unlock would need to be done from inside the OS, by the user, not by external actor. > Now, consider what that means for something like unlocking the bootloader. Allowing that means undetectable malware, potentially irrecoverable. There's not really a good way around that and even if you try to inform people at the time they enable it that doesn't help if it's done when the device is out of their control (abusive partner, boss, police, etc.) If you have an abusive partner, boss, etc. you're already at risk because they will keep looking at your phone anyway and you're in no position to refuse. A way better solution is to have a burner phone they don't know about. Agreed with the police point, but I think after getting your phone from police you could just clean install iOS again to make sure nothing unwanted is there. P.S. On 2nd hand market, you could just as easily reinstall stock iOS once you buy a new phone to prevent buying 2nd hand unlocked iPhone with malware.
  - acdha 5y ago
    > Then just dont unlock. What if _you_ didn’t? I outlined scenarios which are real risks for millions of people and a fair fraction of those either involve no or limited user consent. Maybe it’d be possible to have a secure factory reset – this is harder than it might seem with firmware in so many places – but that only helps if you even know that you need to. Anything which allows undetectable rootkits means that a large number of people will never even realize that because phones are general purpose devices and most people are not security experts. Worse, how many of them are actively being betrayed by trusted experts - abusive partners, unethical technicians, etc. - who will say it’s fine?

acdha 5y ago

We don't have absolute freedom in many areas because the law recognizes that the general public either is not capable of making informed decisions when that requires high-levels of skill or when there is a high likelihood of bad outcomes due to malicious actors. For example, if you buy a car there are safety features you cannot turn off without major modifications. Dangerous tools often have safety guards built-in to the design — for example, my blender doesn't say it's my choice whether to keep the spinning blade covered. My bank doesn't say it's my choice whether or not to identify myself when making a withdrawal. For most people, iOS limiting the damage when they get compromised is a huge plus. Removing that entirely in the absolute position is bringing people back a couple of decades ago only now the malware will have access to their most private moments and data 24x7 rather than just their Geocities browsing history. Now, consider what that means for something like unlocking the bootloader. Allowing that means undetectable malware, potentially irrecoverable. There's not really a good way around that and even if you try to inform people at the time they enable it that doesn't help if it's done when the device is out of their control (abusive partner, boss, police, etc.), and every on-screen indicator can be faked by the malware vendor. That leaves options like a physical switch in a prominent location which most people aren't going to want to pay for or see, and are more likely to be used by accident than intentionally.

heavyset_go 5y ago
> For example, if you buy a car there are safety features you cannot turn off without major modifications. To use a direct analogy with Apple's restrictions on users, you're free to modify and flash your car's ECU firmware. In fact, it's quite common.
- dev_tty01 5y ago
  >In fact, it's quite common. Really? How have you defined common? Where is that data from? I can't imagine anything more than a tiny fraction of car owners are doing this. Most people are not hacking their cars, building Raspberry Pi controllers for their toilets, or have any desire whatsoever to side load an app on their iPhone. The HN community is not representative of the overall population.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    It's common enough that there's a legitimate industry around that and a lot of auto-tuning shops will do it on request. In most cases though it's just editing the built-in data tables rather than completely replacing the firmware, and it's often done for engine performance reasons rather than bypassing safety features.
    - eecc 5y ago
      And possibly blowing the cars’ mileage and emissions limits which were defined by regulation and would make the car illegal to drive if measured…
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    Mechanics do it often, as do people who work on their cars. It isn't the Hacker News segment that is doing it, but the people who work on cars for a living or for fun.
- mason55 5y ago
  And you’re free to jailbreak your phone. It’s not illegal. No ones going to arrest you. But no one says the car manufacturers are required to make a car where you can flash the ECU. There’s just no reason for them to block it. If someone came up with a way to steal your car by tricking your into running an app that flashed your ECU then you can bet Ford would disable it pretty quickly.
  - tatersolid 5y ago
feikname 5y ago
> Dangerous tools often have safety guards built-in to the design A phone is not, usually, a dangerous tool. Unless you can make it explode :) > For most people, iOS limiting the damage when they get compromised is a huge plus. Then just dont unlock. The unlock would need to be done from inside the OS, by the user, not by external actor. > Now, consider what that means for something like unlocking the bootloader. Allowing that means undetectable malware, potentially irrecoverable. There's not really a good way around that and even if you try to inform people at the time they enable it that doesn't help if it's done when the device is out of their control (abusive partner, boss, police, etc.) If you have an abusive partner, boss, etc. you're already at risk because they will keep looking at your phone anyway and you're in no position to refuse. A way better solution is to have a burner phone they don't know about. Agreed with the police point, but I think after getting your phone from police you could just clean install iOS again to make sure nothing unwanted is there. P.S. On 2nd hand market, you could just as easily reinstall stock iOS once you buy a new phone to prevent buying 2nd hand unlocked iPhone with malware.
- acdha 5y ago
  > Then just dont unlock. What if _you_ didn’t? I outlined scenarios which are real risks for millions of people and a fair fraction of those either involve no or limited user consent. Maybe it’d be possible to have a secure factory reset – this is harder than it might seem with firmware in so many places – but that only helps if you even know that you need to. Anything which allows undetectable rootkits means that a large number of people will never even realize that because phones are general purpose devices and most people are not security experts. Worse, how many of them are actively being betrayed by trusted experts - abusive partners, unethical technicians, etc. - who will say it’s fine?