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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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In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without
the supervision of a licensed engineer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2019, @06:40AM (3 children)
I don't think so. You simply seem to be missing the whole point of his questions which is: Purism is not fully open and honest about what they are selling. They keep waving a flag with a "we give you privacy" title, while they actually don't (on the phone side). Of course they cannot possibly give real privacy protection without fully addressing the valid concerns he raises. Their overly lengthy articles cunningly trick the user into getting an overall impression that one is buying a "phone" which "is for anybody and everybody interested in protecting his/her data, communicating privately to your loved ones, or supporting a future of protecting your digital rights" (https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/). If you read carefully though you will see that Purism don't exactly say "your phone calls are protected" (so they cannot be accused later). They just mesmerize you with tons of other words about privacy and security on the software side of things, so that you focus your attention on that and "Preorder now".
The questioner is quite correct when he says that the device looks fine (from freedom and privacy viewpoint) but only when used as a pocket PC through the Ethernet port. And Purism are the idiots who don't reply when they are asked directly to clarify how exactly their device is more privacy respecting when used *as a phone*. They never even replied to that because he pressed the painful spot.
So no, he is not an idiot. He actually exposed their tricks quite well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2019, @10:23AM
Anything you say will be misinterpreted by someone somewhere, they are quite upfront about that this device does for anyone who reads more than a tagline about it.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Thursday March 07 2019, @12:17PM (1 child)
The important feature of this phone is that it has hardware switches for everything you want to disable. So you can have the device off and be certain it's off - there have been rumors, I'm not sure of the validity, that for Android and iPhone devices some models allow remote access to location, cameras and microphones even when the device is off.
Even if those rumors are not true, or are not true yet, you can have the Purism device on and be completely certain the camera and microphone are off. That's still a huge step forward from every other Android and iPhone device.
If you want genuine privacy, including location and network usage metadata privacy, you can't use a cellular network device at all. No individual company can fix that, ever, unless some kind of global peer to peer mesh wireless network takes off. I don't think anyone was expecting Purism to fix that problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @03:26PM
there was a court case in NY in the early 2000's where a mob boss got convicted based on evidence gathered that way
it wasn't a phone software thing, it was functionality of the hardware (think Intel and there above the OS mode)