Are smartphones any good? (was Re: Oneplus One support)

[Allan Mwenda]

Could you get a simple game on there like tower of hanoi? That would rock.
And Dual SIM too,for travelling abroad you just pop in a local SIM to the
new country and avoid ludicrous roaming charges. I agree though that
freedom and privacy are two very different things. I know Google are
looking at what I search,but i still want o find stuff on the internet
quickly. Unless you are doing something illegal what does it matter if the
telecom company read your texts to your girlfriend? I think this dumbphone
will be awesome.

On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 9:26 PM, Spacefalcon the Outlaw <
falcon at ivan.harhan.org> wrote:

> Dimonik wrote:
>
> > Free dumb phone is not enough for freedom/privacy.
>
> Please don't mix freedom and privacy together; they are two different
> concepts.  To me personally, the most important freedom is the freedom
> to fix bugs.  If my dumbphone is misbehaving because of a firmware
> bug, I want the freedom to fix it myself, instead of being beholden to
> vendors' firmware "upgrades" that introduce 3 new bugs for every old
> one fixed.
>
> > Lets assume freecalypso-sw reached the goal and produce this phone in the
> > pocket:
> >
> > 1. You still will be tracked by telecom network (exposed location);
>
> So what?  The laws of physics are the same for everyone; it should be
> obvious to a hedgehog (Russian expression) that if I wish to talk to
> my significant other while driving on a highway, I'm going to have to
> use a device that acts a radio transmitter, and by the laws of physics
> the location of a radio transmitter can be trivially determined by
> anyone who takes the effort to trilaterate.  Again, so what?
>
> Having one's location known to anyone who cares to know is the price
> one has to pay for the convenience of making it possible for the
> important people in your life to be able to reach you instantly at any
> time.  Again, it all stems from universal laws of physics, no need to
> invoke conspiracy arguments here.
>
> > 2. Your voice will not be encrypted using trusted algorithm (End-to-End)
> > because this is dumbphone as thus will obey badly broken standard GSM
> A5/1
> > - A5/3 algos with SIM card's loosy 64bit keys;
>
> Again, a reality I am perfectly willing to accept.
>
> I may be able to implement end-to-end encrypted voice calls over CSD
> (mobile-to-mobile transparent CSD calls work just fine in my part of
> the world), even on a dumbphone - but that is a much lower priority
> for me; I won't start working on it until *after* I have solved the
> far more pressing (for me) moral problem of proprietary firmware w/o
> source code.
>
> > 3. Your calls/sms'es will travel across telecom network and will easily
> be
> > accessible for prepared adversary (SS7 hacking);
>
> Again, something I am perfectly willing to live with.
>
> > So your data still completely insecure, and you better not to use this
> > phone.
>
> *You* don't get to tell me what *I* should or should not use.  If you
> are willing to give up the ability to call your significant other on
> the phone or have her/him call you, that's your choice.  Mine is
> different.
>
> For me it is of utmost importance for the special people in my life to
> be able to call me at any time, wherever I am.  Yes, it would be
> wonderful to have these conversations encrypted end-to-end, but I am
> still many years away from even starting to work on that part,
> therefore, in the meantime we simply accept the fact that all of our
> conversations are being listened to by some dude in a suit at FBI/NSA/
> whatever.  It's mostly just lovers' talk, no military or business or
> other real secrets.
>
> > Better goal is probably dumb-smartphone at least capable to send traffic
> > over data-connection and able to run free OS/crypto software for
> end-to-end
> > encrypted communication.
>
> One does not need a smartphone to do what you are describing; I plan
> on doing end-to-end voice encryption over CSD on a dumbphone platform.
> But as I said, it is an extremely low priority for me personally, thus
> I won't even start seriously looking into it until I have solved
> everything else that is far more important to me personally.
>
> SF
>
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