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Someone shared on Trisquel's forums a direct email communication with Purism revealing the way the company avoids being fully transparent about the fact that their device does not offer better privacy when used *as a phone* — it has privacy advantages only when the phone functionality is completely turned off, in which case the questioner claims it is nothing more than a pocket (or even stationary) PC.
Source:
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/librem5-and-why-i-am-no-longer-interested
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Librem5 - Purism Avoids Admitting it Does Not have Better Privacy When Used as a Phone
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TOO BAD YOU CAN'T BUY a voodoo globe so that you could make the earth spin
real fast and freak everybody out.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by urza9814 on Wednesday March 06 2019, @08:29PM (4 children)
He does actually have two decent points if you read through the post...although I certainly wouldn't consider either one a reason to not buy the device (which I *am* planning on doing...would have pre-ordered already if they didn't keep pushing back the launch date, but at this point I'll wait until they have a solid release date).
1) there are apps which already exist for Android which attempt to detect ISMI catches (ie, "stingray" fake cell towers) -- they *could* included that kind of feature standard, but they don't. Personally I've always wondered why there's no easy way to just get notified of new towers -- I pretty much stay in the same areas most days, so if a new cell tower suddenly appeared near my office, I might like to know about that. If the OS is done right, the OS doesn't need to include that itself, it could be an external app...but this thing is a custom linux distro, the existing android apps won't necessarily be compatible, so it'd be nice if they would implement such features themselves since they're marketing it as a privacy device.
2) There's apps for encrypted calling, but those apparently only work on wifi; seems like they can't be used over cellular data. That could actually be an advantage though -- if you want your call secured, you probably don't want your network provider tracking you at the same time. But if that was actually the intention they could probably add additional processes to totally shut down the cell modem while encrypted calls were in progress. Maybe they will, but they haven't mentioned it....
(Score: 2) by Absolutely.Geek on Wednesday March 06 2019, @08:39PM (2 children)
on point 2; I use signal on cell data for calls and messages; not sure if you mean the Librem only does encrypted calls on WiFi (no I didn't read TFA).
Also I live in NZ not sure if there are restrictions on what you can do where you live.
Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2019, @11:52AM
Unless you are using 160 character or less TEXT messages, all your non-phone calls are going over IPv4/v6 anyways. The MMS provider service, at least for ATT/T-Mobile/etc is already using IP on private address ranges on the backend for passing your messages around. And with LTE, as I understand it, so are phone calls. With that said, there is no reason to be using phone numbers for private calls anymore. They weren't REALLY private in the analog days except due to the lack of pervasive recording, and today we know that recording is normal and handled by the NSA, FBI and/or CIA depending on who they are hiding it under to avoid the citizenry finding out.
If you're trying to keep your communications/encryption keys private, not your location, the real question is if the cellular modem is properly isolated from the main system SoC. If it is, and there is no way for the cellular modem to either access system ram, or exploit the OS to gain system level privileges, then the Purism 5 is a good investment. If you are concerned with location tracking, then yes Wifi is a better bet, where coverage is available.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday March 07 2019, @12:19PM
Right, according to the response from Purism, you can't use the encrypted call features over cellular data. They say it can only be used on wifi or ethernet. Seems to be a limitation of the phone, not the network, although I can't understand what the reason would be unless it's an attempt at a security feature.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 06 2019, @10:14PM
Pretty sure Librem is just hoping to be able to reliably make/receive phone calls and texts upon launch.
These I want a pony requests for the initial release of an open product by a small team, but where anyone can add the features they want later are just silly, and it is a good thing that Librem is ignoring them. Once there is a product released, additional features can be discussed, and I'm sure they will accept patches / Librem is not preventing you from porting your favorite app yourself.