5 ms·
> may in theory render your device inoperable I still can't get over how it is still legal for a manufacturer to retain any kind of control over a device after
by grishka 5y ago
> may in theory render your device inoperable
I still can't get over how it is still legal for a manufacturer to retain any kind of control over a device after sale. It's even more dystopian that you basically can't buy a phone that isn't backdoored.
- avalys 5y agoWhy does everything you dislike need to be illegal? No one is forcing you to buy these things.
- grishka 5y agoNo one is forcing me to buy a phone? Yeah sure. Try to live without one in the modern society.
- arkano 5y agoBut don't lots of people live without one though?
- raimondious 5y agoNo, at least not in the US: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/
- squeaky-clean 5y agoAbout 48% of the human population owns a smartphone (that doesn't include "feature phones"). 85% of American adults own a smartphone. 97% of Americans own a cellphone.
- bin_bash 5y agoit's pretty tough now that we do things like pay for parking, provide vaccine status, communicate with daycares all via apps
- HWR_14 5y agoYou can do all those things without apps, if you want.
- Frost1x 5y agoLots of people can live without running water, sewer, power, cars, hygiene products, etc. but that doesn't make any of it practical in modern society in the US. There's of course a limit to this as to where the baseline is, but I'd say having a portable phone of some sort and internet access are pretty high up on that list.
- vitno 5y agoIts not so much that it needs to be made "illegal", The problem is that terms of service itself is a legally enforcable idea. Facebook is the one using legal frameworks to overstep into our life.
- wtetzner 5y agoHow about we just rephrase? We should stop making it illegal for people to do what they want to things they own.
- space_ghost 5y agoIsn't that at the core of the "right to repair" debate?
- sethhochberg 5y agoIts related, but not identical. "Right to repair" in the sense that the FTC is talking about now is largely about manufacturers restricting usage of third-party repair services or parts - so think of it more in terms of Facebook/Ray-Ban allowing independent repair shops to swap your cracked camera lens, or an individual who can source the parts being allowed to perform the work themselves without buying a service contract: things which the manufacturer may currently choose to prevent via terms of use, or which they might have required you to buy a service contract to do. You making a modification to your glasses to hide an LED isn't a repair... at least in the terms the FTC is using at present.
- grishka 5y agoNot even this. The problem is that hardware manufacturers have what amounts to technological supremacy over the rest of the society. If you buy an iPhone, it's not illegal to jailbreak it in most countries. The problem is that you lack the technology to do so reliably (i.e. change the fuses in the SoC to flip it into a less restricted mode of operation) so you have to resort to vulnerabilities to untether it from Apple's servers which you never wanted in the first place. Android is marginally better because of the officially unlockable bootloader, but there still are various encryption keys within your device that you aren't allowed to see and/or overwrite.
- tshaddox 5y agoShould it be legal to use hidden cameras to record images of people without their knowledge? Or should it just be legal to deliberately modify small cameras for the sole purpose of doing so, and illegal for manufacturers of small cameras to implement tamper detection?
- nine_k 5y ago30 years ago you still could not get a phone line which can't be tapped. At least now you can buy a second-hand phone with an unlocked bootloader, and flash it with GrapheneOS or PostmarketOS, which likely are not phoning home you location or actions, and switch off the mobile and wifi data connections just in case.
- bserge 5y agoAnd they still can be tapped. Kind of different things tbh. This is more like buying a PC in 2000 and the manufacturer reserving the right to remove a RAM stick if you overclocked it or visited a porn site or something.
- gunapologist99 5y agoDepending on the phone, turning off mobile data might not disable the radio, which will continue to ping nearby towers. You might need a faraday cage, or a battery-removable phone like Pinephone.
- rixed 5y agoAny source for that? Not doubting what you have said, but genuinely curious.
- SturgeonsLaw 5y ago> By September 2004, a new NSA technique enabled the agency to find cellphones even when they were turned off. JSOC troops called this “The Find,” and it gave them thousands of new targets, including members of a burgeoning al-Qaeda-sponsored insurgency in Iraq, according to members of the unit. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-growth-fueled-by-need-to-target-terrorists/2013/07/21/24c93cf4-f0b1-11e2-bed3-b9b6fe264871_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-g... The NSA has had the capability to track switched-off phones since 2004, so it's fair to assume that a number of actors, nation-state and otherwise, can also do it now Edit: changed to a better source
- echelon 5y ago> I still can't get over how it is still legal for a manufacturer to retain any kind of control over a device after sale. Apple is such an amazing company and we're nothing short of blessed to have their miraculous hardware grace our lives. How dare you want control? You'll take what you get and be happy. How dare you want it any other way? Anything that takes away from our precious and benevolent gift giver should be shunned. They deserve all profits now and forever. Amen.
- grishka 5y agoSure, Apple makes great hardware and software. But services? I don't want any. I trust myself more than I trust Apple, and I have a server I pay for anyway. It's about choice. Apple would have to compete with others and actually earn its reputation as an online services company instead of just abusing its existing market power.
- tshaddox 5y agoDo you think it should be illegal for a manufacturer to implement features in their product that attempt to detect and prevent usage of the product that is dangerous or harmful to the user or others? Should products with batteries be allowed to detect when the battery is being damaged and deactivate in order to prevent excessive heat or fire? Or is there something specific about tampering with a camera indicator light that you feel is deserving of legal protection for the end user?
- newbie789 5y agoI can’t speak for the person you’re responding to, but I personally do find a large difference between the risk of fire/explosion and the visibility of an LED. Furthermore I do in fact think that the distinction is big enough to justify legal protection to the end user on the basis that one can burn your house down (and can happen by accident with no user intervention) and the other cannot. Personally I think words like “harm” have concrete meaning outside of language specifically crafted by marketers in order to make awful products more palatable.
- tshaddox 5y agoDo you think it’s controversial whether secretly recording images of someone can sometimes constitute harm? To me, it’s quite clearly the case, so I hadn’t considered the need to present an argument that undisclosed video recording can constitute harm.
- kelnos 5y agoSometimes, yes. But always? No, certainly not. There are perfectly good reasons to want to record someone without their knowledge (e.g. recording law enforcement officers while they are in public). I'm reminded of how phones sold in Japan have a fake shutter sound on their camera apps that you can't disable. Yes, there's a good reason for it (preventing creeps from quietly taking upskirt photos of women on subways), but it also removes the ability to take silent photos for legitimate reasons. But in the general sense, I do find this new Facebook product to be gross and creepy, far worse than Google Glass. And frankly I think a recording light, which will easily become washed out and invisible in sunlight, is a pretty poor attempt at helping maintain the privacy of random people.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y agoAre landlines, like the ones found in commercial buildings, backdoored. Can we purchase development boards that the suppliers do not control after sale. Whats difficult to get over is when non-tech companies, e.g., Bausch & Lomb, go along with the nonsense.^1 All this supposed corporate responsibility and yet they still partner with unethical "tech" companies. 1 Probably should not be surprised considering B&L is owned by Valeant Pharmaceuticals. (Who has sinced changed its name to try to escape its well-earned bad reputation.)
- grishka 5y agoNo they are not, because there's a clear boundary between your own device and someone else's infrastructure. And you could as well build your own landline system — which is exactly what people do in commercial buildings. You could also build some sort of scrambler device that goes between the phone and the line. It's the same as asking "is internet backdoored". It might be wiretapped, but you can use encryption to avoid that risk.
- alfiedotwtf 5y agoWith Australian Telstra phones, if you called someone and they didn't pick up after a number of rings, a carrier tone would happen. If you whistled a handshake, the reciever would PICK UP and yes you literally turned it into a hot mic. Since I no longer have a landline, I can't confirm it works now.
- elzbardico 5y agoWhy are you mentioning Bausch and Lomb? RayBan is a brand from the Italian conglomerate Luxxotica
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y agoYoure right. They sold to Luxxotica. Thanks for the correction.
- elzbardico 5y agobtw, sorry for my tone, english is not my first language.
- exporectomy 5y agoIt seems like we're moving out of the 1900s world where manufactured objects carried inherent value on their own and people paid high prices to retain control of the valuable object. People even passed furniture, dishes, books, and clothes down from generation to generation because they were so valuable but now you can't even give this stuff away most of the time. TVs don't get stolen much anymore because they're worth so little. Physical things are getting cheaper to a ridiculous extent and are being merged with services. That world of industrialized materialism might have been an aberration historically. I still encounter old people, myself included who have an aversion to destroying books, electronics, toys, etc. no matter how cheap and useless they are.
- grishka 5y agoThe problem is, the devices themselves do have inherent value. The manufacturers literally spend extra effort to nerf that value to make sure your continued use of the device is one way or another dependent on them. The iPhone is a very capable general-purpose pocket computer that was turned into an appliance that Apple controls remotely.
- PostThisTooFast 5y agoTurned into a gimped toy, largely. Apple's fear and lack of vision have crippled 10 years of handheld Unix computers. It's pathetic.
- sirsinsalot 5y agoExactly this. Business follows profit over end user benefit. When everyone is doing it, the choice to "own" gets smaller and our perception of ownership degrades. Look at Tesla nuking features in the 2nd hand market.
- aeturnum 5y agoI totally agree for standalone devices (knives, mentioned down the thread, seem like a perfect example). It also seems like the only way to implement devices whose operation requires ongoing performance of services by the company. If I'm needed to ensure a device can fulfill its stated goal in an ongoing way, then of course I need to retain some kind of control - if to tell devices to update or send me photos or whatever. This doesn't mean that you need to cut off modified devices, but it also doesn't mean you need to put up with them either.