[spaqin]

Funny how they just handwave it like it's a totally normal thing, like the insane situation with banking apps. Most people don't care as they run with whatever's available without modification, but we still should fight for the right to run the code we want on devices we own.

[theodric]

Consider the car analogy: if you want to drive on public roads, you need to drive an attested, unmodified vehicle that complies with the relevant regulations. If you want to play around and modify the car, that's fine, but then you don't get to use it around other people. You're also not allowed to buy some random, unknown Chinese or Indian car and drive it on the road. People already accept this when framed as a safety issue. I suspect they care more about their cars than their phones, and won't care about the requirements on the phone anyway because they're not planning to modify it, and as long as WhatsApp and Instagram keep letting them exchange shopping list additions and pictures of vacation cocktails, then what's the problem?

To be clear, I'm not in favor of a participation-in-society ban for jailbreaking your phone, but there's already precedent for it.

[schroeding]

The analogy is a bit shaky IMO, as you can certify individual, heavily modified, foreign or even self-built cars in EU member states.

For cars, the local certification authority themselves decides what is road-worthy or not, not VW et al. You can add third party parts without the manufacturers consent. This is not the case for Android or iOS attestation, you're pretty much at the mercy of the foreign manufacturer and their local laws.

[theodric]

May I infer from your response that your quarrel is not with a central authority having the final word in what code you're allowed to execute on your own device, but rather that it should be the government and not a corporation signing the binaries that are permitted to run?

If you're expecting a perfect analogy, you're not going to find one. Law in its application also doesn't deal in exactness, but in generalities and vibes: that's why lawyers argue, and judges decide.

I'm familiar with the process for individually certifying unique and modified vehicles in several European countries. Invariably, the process is costly and onerous, which serves as a deterrent.

[andrepd]

Cars can and do kill 1,500,000 people every single year, equivalent to a jumbo jet full of people every couple hours, plus an equal number of crippled and injured, plus untold number of pollution deaths. That's a ridiculous comparison (if anything cars are not regulated enough). Who am I endangering when running microg on my phone??

[theodric]

I will continue advocating for the devil, then! These are the top bogeymen we need to thwart in order to protect...

-children and women, harmed through unregulated and unobserved communications enabling human trafficking and the spread of CSAM.

-social healthcare systems, harmed by enabling the proliferation of illegal drugs, which leads to the over-taxing of an already straining public good, reducing access to people who would need help outside of drug-caused issues.

-society at large, harmed by enabling drug-funded terrorists to trade in weapons and coordinate their destructive actions out of sight of law enforcement.

For your and others' safety, please leave your signing keys at the door.