Re: Now, that.. (@ DainB)
"So you're fine with private corporation being able to update firmware on your phone whenever..."
No, I'm not. That's why I don't trust my phone and use it in 'paranoid mode' whenever possible and only put data on it I don´t mind being made public. A pain in the ass, and I haven't "much to hide", but I do it out of principle. For my PCs, I accept the updates manually, usually after a one day delay and some searching in technical forums, to see whether it comes with some nasty surprise. Not a perfect solution, I know, but It has saved me some trouble in the past.
Anyway, there are several BIG differences between Google or Apple and American TLAs.
The worst that these private companies can do to you is to cause your inbox to get filled with commercial spam, which is a big nuisance, but just a nuisance. On the other hand TLAs have been harvesting all the data they can about private citizens for many years, either breaking, corrupting or ignoring American laws, not to speak about other countries laws. The reason they're doing this? So they can look for possible culprits or scapegoats AFTER a crime has been commited. So, even if you are not guilty of as crime, the fact that e.g. you where two times in the same area where two similar crimes where commited may well cause your home to be raided by armed FBI agents, you and your family arrested/interrogated/imprisoned until they find the culprit or a better scapegoat (if ever). This way, they can feed to the media an image of continous success that's handy for getting promotions, medals and all that shit.
Also, citizens can control Apple and Google by "voting with their wallets" or "voting with their browser". American TLAs have proved to exhaustion they can't be controlled neither by their own country's laws nor by the citizens.
Allowing TLAs to break phones in a whim without any oversight is a really bad idea, and things are fucked up enough the way they're now, without giving them more tools.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
