Here’s a question that popped into my head when thinking about cell phones. What’s theoretically better, a pinephone, or an open spec dumbphone paired with an open spec PDA?
Here’s a question that popped into my head when thinking about cell phones. What’s theoretically better, a pinephone, or an open spec dumbphone paired with an open spec PDA?
In the context of libre culture, we accept that cell phones are a crazy mess. Cell networks are designed to be easy to exploit and monitor, and the operating systems installed on these cryptic devices are very proprietary and in the case of Android, have been shown to call home and allow Google to really watch you closely. This is the sort of thing we hope to avoid.
With the new Librem 5, a libre phone running all Free (as in freedom) software, published complete hardware specs and hardware kill switches, the device is immune to most of these issues. The device isn’t cryptic, we know exactly how it works, unlike other phones. The software is totally liberated and the firmware that must be closed is read-only and isolated, so there’s no fear. The devices also don’t spy on you and give your info to an advertising company, huge bonus.
The issue is, however, that it’s still a cell phone in the end, and cell telephony (or telephony in general) is incredibly easy to exploit. My thoughts are that we should move away from the old system and onto something new, like internet-only communication. A peer-to-peer encrypted audio call though the internet is far more ideal compared to a traditional phone call in terms of security. Thus, we should discourage the use of telephony completely. Obviously, we can’t just change everyones mind in one day, so this is where my idea comes in.
If we isolate our phones from the rest of our lives, i.e., we only use our phones to make phone calls and text messages, and nothing more, then Google can only collect so much data and a malicious actor can only exploit a phone as much as they could a landline phone. With a smartphone that we use as a PDA, due to the integrated modem, an exploit on the modem can give full control of the phone, but the Librem 5 avoids this with its design.
Thus, I think as we try to transition collectively away from phones, we should adopt a PDA for all the extra tasks our smartphones do and simply use our smartphones or dumbphones as only phones. We in libre culture believe in sacrificing convenience in the name of creating a better world. This is also great for those of us who are activists. We can leave our phones at home, and take our PDA’s, which reduces the chance of a company or government entity finding out our identities at, say, a protest.
Now we just need to figure out where to find a libre PDA…