3 ms·

This is just learned helplessness. If loss of control is a concern for you, there are FOSS privacy-focused operating systems you can install to your phone. You

by rossy 3y ago

This is just learned helplessness. If loss of control is a concern for you, there are FOSS privacy-focused operating systems you can install to your phone. You do control your phone.

lrvick 3y ago
There are zero operating systems you can install on modern smartphone hardware that give you full control of your phone. Even the most open of Android Roms still require giving a bunch of proprietary drivers, firmware, and applications root access for the most basic of hardware functionality. A major reason I gave up on phones and got a tiny laptop to run qubes on.
- rossy 3y ago
  There's a difference between avoiding the very-real tracking for targeted advertising that companies like Google do, and the paranoia that your camera blobs are tracking you just because they're proprietary. > proprietary [...] firmware Your tiny laptop has this too. > proprietary [...] applications There are plenty of AOSP-derived ROMs without this.
  - lrvick 3y ago
    Show me even one AOSP based ROM that does not ship with proprietary software that runs on modern hardware. The vendor partition is a black hole of poorly understood and mostly proprietary garbage that can do whatever it wants. Also if you do not ship your ROMs without OMA-DM and similar malware, you are not even permitted to connect to some cell networks. There are a comical number of apps and blobs copied from the vendor partition of stock roms to make most of those "open source" roms function on recent devices. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GrapheneOS/vendor_state/14/sunfish.json https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GrapheneOS/vendor_state/14... At least on a laptop I can run QubesOS to hypervisor isolate the rare hardware that requires blobs, like wifi.
    - rossy 3y ago
      Not Android but I think PinePhone and Librem 5 meet your standards. AFAIK they have proprietary WiFi/BT firmware, but they use virtualization (IOMMU) to protect themselves from it. I don't see how that's fundamentally different to your Qubes laptop. Also I think you're ignoring my first point. I don't think any of this paranoia is reasonable. Unless you're being targeted by state actors, none of it is necessary to fill a reasonable definition of "controlling your device." This is all in response to an article about a child who doesn't like phones because he doesn't like social media. The adtech machine that powers social media is pervasive and it has its fingers in proprietary smartphone OSes, but it doesn't have its fingers in AOSP ROMs like GrapheneOS, so installing one of those is an easy and achievable way of avoiding it. Whether it's possible to remove every last drop of proprietary software is a side-issue here.
      - jjgreen 3y ago
        "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear"
        rossy 3y ago
        That's... not really it. Do you really think there are backdoors hiding in firmware blobs from reputable vendors?
        lrvick 3y ago
        100%. I have plenty of insider knowledge here I sadly cannot share, but search for supply chain attacks and the sheer number of public headlines of known attacks can keep you busy for days. State actors are constantly trying to get footholds in software supply chains, and often succeed. Consider Intel ME firmware is a literal well documented backdoor we do not allow on US government systems... only civilians. Most of the time our adversaries do not need to be covert enough to mess with firmware. Consider OMA-DM apps that run on most phones with insane permissions taking orders from cell towers. https://gist.github.com/thestinger/171b5ffdc54a50ee44497028aa137ed8 https://gist.github.com/thestinger/171b5ffdc54a50ee44497028a... We cannot even keep public open source repos like NPM free of supply chain attacks. Proprietary blobs make it that much easier to hide things. Also all you need to backdoor every encrypted messenger is a kernel module that ensures /dev/urandom is a bit less random on the devices of targeted dissidents and journalists. Now look at how many proprietary blobs from piles of random vendors we load into modern phone operating systems, even "open" android roms, and think about SolarWinds for a second.
autoexec 3y ago
As another commenter pointed you, you don't have the ability to fully control your phone hardware, but also even allowing yourself to be tracked by the cellular network is a trade off. Your OS will probably not save you from stingrays and dirtboxes

by rossy 3y ago

This is just learned helplessness. If loss of control is a concern for you, there are FOSS privacy-focused operating systems you can install to your phone. You do control your phone.

lrvick 3y ago

There are zero operating systems you can install on modern smartphone hardware that give you full control of your phone. Even the most open of Android Roms still require giving a bunch of proprietary drivers, firmware, and applications root access for the most basic of hardware functionality. A major reason I gave up on phones and got a tiny laptop to run qubes on.

rossy 3y ago
There's a difference between avoiding the very-real tracking for targeted advertising that companies like Google do, and the paranoia that your camera blobs are tracking you just because they're proprietary. > proprietary [...] firmware Your tiny laptop has this too. > proprietary [...] applications There are plenty of AOSP-derived ROMs without this.
- lrvick 3y ago
  Show me even one AOSP based ROM that does not ship with proprietary software that runs on modern hardware. The vendor partition is a black hole of poorly understood and mostly proprietary garbage that can do whatever it wants. Also if you do not ship your ROMs without OMA-DM and similar malware, you are not even permitted to connect to some cell networks. There are a comical number of apps and blobs copied from the vendor partition of stock roms to make most of those "open source" roms function on recent devices. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GrapheneOS/vendor_state/14/sunfish.json https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GrapheneOS/vendor_state/14... At least on a laptop I can run QubesOS to hypervisor isolate the rare hardware that requires blobs, like wifi.
  - rossy 3y ago
    Not Android but I think PinePhone and Librem 5 meet your standards. AFAIK they have proprietary WiFi/BT firmware, but they use virtualization (IOMMU) to protect themselves from it. I don't see how that's fundamentally different to your Qubes laptop. Also I think you're ignoring my first point. I don't think any of this paranoia is reasonable. Unless you're being targeted by state actors, none of it is necessary to fill a reasonable definition of "controlling your device." This is all in response to an article about a child who doesn't like phones because he doesn't like social media. The adtech machine that powers social media is pervasive and it has its fingers in proprietary smartphone OSes, but it doesn't have its fingers in AOSP ROMs like GrapheneOS, so installing one of those is an easy and achievable way of avoiding it. Whether it's possible to remove every last drop of proprietary software is a side-issue here.
    - jjgreen 3y ago
      "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear"
      - rossy 3y ago
        That's... not really it. Do you really think there are backdoors hiding in firmware blobs from reputable vendors?
        lrvick 3y ago
        100%. I have plenty of insider knowledge here I sadly cannot share, but search for supply chain attacks and the sheer number of public headlines of known attacks can keep you busy for days. State actors are constantly trying to get footholds in software supply chains, and often succeed. Consider Intel ME firmware is a literal well documented backdoor we do not allow on US government systems... only civilians. Most of the time our adversaries do not need to be covert enough to mess with firmware. Consider OMA-DM apps that run on most phones with insane permissions taking orders from cell towers. https://gist.github.com/thestinger/171b5ffdc54a50ee44497028aa137ed8 https://gist.github.com/thestinger/171b5ffdc54a50ee44497028a... We cannot even keep public open source repos like NPM free of supply chain attacks. Proprietary blobs make it that much easier to hide things. Also all you need to backdoor every encrypted messenger is a kernel module that ensures /dev/urandom is a bit less random on the devices of targeted dissidents and journalists. Now look at how many proprietary blobs from piles of random vendors we load into modern phone operating systems, even "open" android roms, and think about SolarWinds for a second.

autoexec 3y ago

As another commenter pointed you, you don't have the ability to fully control your phone hardware, but also even allowing yourself to be tracked by the cellular network is a trade off. Your OS will probably not save you from stingrays and dirtboxes