Mobile phones are baffling to me. I heard a story recently that the Venezuelan government is stopping people on the street and inspecting mobile phones for dissident content. In such an environment, why are people relying on phones for anything? Why trust it at all? This stupid device _could_ get you taken to prison for merely having the wrong ideas, but you've still _just got to_ use it! I'm starting to think that if mobile phones gave parents' children rapid, aggressive brain cancer, all anyone would be talking about is "regulation" and "minimizing usage."
And I know someone's going to say "not using a phone might look _more_ suspicious!" I suppose but the needle does need to turn at some point, right? This risk was pretty easily foreseeable. If you got arrested for what was found on your phone during an arrest would you ever look at the device the same way again? In 5 years, would you be using it for meaningful or private communication whatsoever?
Yeah I do think if your trust in state institutions is gone for whatever reason (such as living in a dictatorship), it'd be absolute madness to carry around an electronic snitch with you. I'm not sure what I would rely on in those circumstances, but it certainly wouldn't be smartphones. Personally I'd want to rely on in-person communication as much as possible.
I'd go even further. Even if you trust it now, can you trust it in 5 years? How much of your data do apps, companies, and mobile providers hold onto? The real answer is that you don't know. So if your phone is a super precise GPS that you can't turn off (eg: Android) -- were you near a crime scene by chance? How about a big protest 2 years before the political winds shifted. Who knows you were there? You can't know for sure.
Phones are just an easy target. Dumb phones still have address books, these are social networks too that can be exploited. In fact, that's how Chechnya prosecutes and kills unwanted people, like gays or regime opponents - by unraveling phone contacts.
The EU is slowly weakening Google's grasp on Android, for example by evening the playing field for app stores. You can get google-free Android devices from both Chinese manufacturers and the Netherlands (Fairphone). They aren't terribly attractive right now, but that could quickly change if the demand exists
At that point Google would probably turn even more hostile to the open source nature of Android, leading to some sort of fork
Google is tightening their grip on Android. They are going to effectively kill of alternative app stores by requiring them to use Google's developer verification (there have been discussions on HN before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45569371 ). Many countries are introducing things such as age verification and ID apps that require Google Android. A lot of bank apps will only work with Google Android. This is why Fairphone offers a Google Android option, an I would guess that is what most people use.
There are lots of other problems. As discussed recently the HSBC app will not work if you have installed any software at all from another app store.
"Google-free" FOSS Android-builds (Graphene, /e/, iodé) are available today and usable for most tasks. Just make sure your government IDs and banking apps don't depend on proprietary Google-only features.
If the EU made a decent certification option so that the Google Store wasn't necessary for a lot of our apps, then Graphene and similar would be good replacements. As it is I couldn't use a single app on my android phone (I basically only have public sector apps + banking) without the Google Store thing. Since these all either require the Google Store themselves or the national digital ID which does
Mobile phones are baffling to me. I heard a story recently that the Venezuelan government is stopping people on the street and inspecting mobile phones for dissident content. In such an environment, why are people relying on phones for anything? Why trust it at all? This stupid device _could_ get you taken to prison for merely having the wrong ideas, but you've still _just got to_ use it! I'm starting to think that if mobile phones gave parents' children rapid, aggressive brain cancer, all anyone would be talking about is "regulation" and "minimizing usage."
And I know someone's going to say "not using a phone might look _more_ suspicious!" I suppose but the needle does need to turn at some point, right? This risk was pretty easily foreseeable. If you got arrested for what was found on your phone during an arrest would you ever look at the device the same way again? In 5 years, would you be using it for meaningful or private communication whatsoever?
Venezuela you say? The US would be checking my entire social media history, not only what is on the phone, if I ever plan to enter the US.
I'm entering the US for work in a few weeks and I plan on taking burner devices.
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Yeah I do think if your trust in state institutions is gone for whatever reason (such as living in a dictatorship), it'd be absolute madness to carry around an electronic snitch with you. I'm not sure what I would rely on in those circumstances, but it certainly wouldn't be smartphones. Personally I'd want to rely on in-person communication as much as possible.
I'd go even further. Even if you trust it now, can you trust it in 5 years? How much of your data do apps, companies, and mobile providers hold onto? The real answer is that you don't know. So if your phone is a super precise GPS that you can't turn off (eg: Android) -- were you near a crime scene by chance? How about a big protest 2 years before the political winds shifted. Who knows you were there? You can't know for sure.
Phones are just an easy target. Dumb phones still have address books, these are social networks too that can be exploited. In fact, that's how Chechnya prosecutes and kills unwanted people, like gays or regime opponents - by unraveling phone contacts.
The EU is slowly weakening Google's grasp on Android, for example by evening the playing field for app stores. You can get google-free Android devices from both Chinese manufacturers and the Netherlands (Fairphone). They aren't terribly attractive right now, but that could quickly change if the demand exists
At that point Google would probably turn even more hostile to the open source nature of Android, leading to some sort of fork
Google is tightening their grip on Android. They are going to effectively kill of alternative app stores by requiring them to use Google's developer verification (there have been discussions on HN before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45569371 ). Many countries are introducing things such as age verification and ID apps that require Google Android. A lot of bank apps will only work with Google Android. This is why Fairphone offers a Google Android option, an I would guess that is what most people use.
There are lots of other problems. As discussed recently the HSBC app will not work if you have installed any software at all from another app store.
"Google-free" FOSS Android-builds (Graphene, /e/, iodé) are available today and usable for most tasks. Just make sure your government IDs and banking apps don't depend on proprietary Google-only features.
Amusingly often banking are apps purpousefully configured to refuse working on the more secure Android builds ("SafetyNet").
If the EU made a decent certification option so that the Google Store wasn't necessary for a lot of our apps, then Graphene and similar would be good replacements. As it is I couldn't use a single app on my android phone (I basically only have public sector apps + banking) without the Google Store thing. Since these all either require the Google Store themselves or the national digital ID which does
> For computers we have linux
US has it. There are some non-US contributors, but, the Linux Foundation is in US, Linus is in US, kernel.org is in US.
My daily driver is a GNU/Linux phone, Librem 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5