4 ms·

I was thinking there could be use cases like plausible deniability when doing illegal stuff or maybe these phones are useful for the same reason in espionage? M

I was thinking there could be use cases like plausible deniability when doing illegal stuff or maybe these phones are useful for the same reason in espionage? Maybe these phones are required in the defense industry for secret or top secret clearance? Stuff like that was what I was guessing maybe these phones are useful for.

tristor 5y ago
I'm sure those use cases do exist. I know that there are already special secured handsets made by defense contractors like that for use by top officials, generally in partnership with other companies. I believe Halliburton supplied specially modified Blackberries for years to the White House and Department of State, and the last I heard was that a different org was modifying Samsung handsets for similar purposes. Given that shift to Android, it would not surprise me if there was a market here for government officials working on confidential work to need secured handsets running Android where their government could lock the device to only a whitelisted set of apps. The US government for instance already has published STIGs for Android handsets. The reality is that for me, at least, government use cases don't interest me for a number of reasons, and I don't necessarily think they align with your clarification to the questions either. I think drawing the parallel to firearms is fuzzy, but if we go with that, there are obvious use cases a government has for firearms that don't support an argument in favor of civilian ownership, but there /are/ arguments that support civilian ownership. Perhaps nothing else makes me more anxious than that thought of a world where privacy and crypto are considered to be something only allowed for elites and government officials, where all of us normies have to be surveilled 24/7. This is already a reality in some parts of the world and fast becoming a reality in the West. Hence, I am not really concerned with how useful this may be to government, I am /only/ concerned with how useful this is to normal every-day people who just don't want to be spied on. Most of the modern surveillance isn't even done for a reason, it's just dragnet surveillance on everyone "because they can", which is the worst type.

tristor 5y ago

I'm sure those use cases do exist. I know that there are already special secured handsets made by defense contractors like that for use by top officials, generally in partnership with other companies. I believe Halliburton supplied specially modified Blackberries for years to the White House and Department of State, and the last I heard was that a different org was modifying Samsung handsets for similar purposes. Given that shift to Android, it would not surprise me if there was a market here for government officials working on confidential work to need secured handsets running Android where their government could lock the device to only a whitelisted set of apps. The US government for instance already has published STIGs for Android handsets. The reality is that for me, at least, government use cases don't interest me for a number of reasons, and I don't necessarily think they align with your clarification to the questions either. I think drawing the parallel to firearms is fuzzy, but if we go with that, there are obvious use cases a government has for firearms that don't support an argument in favor of civilian ownership, but there /are/ arguments that support civilian ownership. Perhaps nothing else makes me more anxious than that thought of a world where privacy and crypto are considered to be something only allowed for elites and government officials, where all of us normies have to be surveilled 24/7. This is already a reality in some parts of the world and fast becoming a reality in the West. Hence, I am not really concerned with how useful this may be to government, I am /only/ concerned with how useful this is to normal every-day people who just don't want to be spied on. Most of the modern surveillance isn't even done for a reason, it's just dragnet surveillance on everyone "because they can", which is the worst type.