[ale] Cory Doctorow, right again

[Tom Freeman]

On Sat, 17 Mar 2012, Charles Shapiro wrote:

> Heh!  I started this discussion.  What Mr. Doctorow said was that the
> user should have control over the processes running on her computing
> device.  My original point was that closed systems such as Apple IOS
> and the vendor or service provider builds of Android will impede that
> control.
>
> Curated software repositories such as Apple's App Store or the Android
> Market are fine, as long as users can opt out of them if (when) they
> no longer trust the curators.  On an open build of Android, this is
> simple -- you can remove any application you want, up to and including
> anything in "the Google Apps" (the applications Google distributes to
> talk to their servers). If you want to install an application not in
> the Market, you just check a config box saying that you understand
> what you're doing.
>
> On -- for example -- the Verizon build of Android which came on my
> phone, it's not so clear-cut.  Verizon's Android build won't let me
> un-install the several applications (e.g. "NFL Mobile", "Verizon
> Video", "Verizon Messages", et cetera)  which Verizon thinks I should
> have.  That's a gaping security hole, plus being bad, wrong and
> outrageous.  I have no interest in trusting the NFL with any software
> on my phone, nor do I need Verizon to read all of my email as it
> passes through their aggregators.  Show me where I can remove
> arbitrary applications from an IOS device ?  Perhaps it's possible, I
> don't know.   I DO know that without that capacity, IOS devices are
> only as secure as Apple is.  From the URL I provided, that might not
> be quite secure enough.
>
> Please to note this issue is only tangentially related to the "I can
> read the code" security argument over open source software.  This is
> more basic.  Regardless of your feeliings about open versus closed
> software and the security or other trade-offs involved in that, you
> must Must MUST have control over what's installed on your device.  (
> And yes, the Radio and other binary blobs in Cyanogen-Mod bother me. )
>
> -- CHS
<<snipage>>
+1, and wish I could have said that.