The 4th amendment has been interpreted by the courts to not be a broad right to privacy, and the overturning of Roe specifically stated this. Even if you think it should be interpreted as a broad right to privacy, it is clearly capable of being interpreted otherwise and is in no way adequate in today’s world.
You can only have SOME privacy on a phone with Graphene if you don’t really use the phone the way people use theirs most of the time. You’ve still got a SIM card talking to cell towers owned by a company who sells your information. You’re still presumably using apps and websites that require authentication. The government can still find where you were and what you were searching for unless you take extraordinary measures. That’s not privacy.
You're conflating 'complete anonymity from everybody' with 'privacy.' GrapheneOS doesn't claim to be anonymous.
They're not the same thing. GrapheneOS reduces what apps, the OS, and Google can collect about you. That's where the vast majority of privacy issues occur.
Cell tower metadata is a separate, narrower issue at the baseband layer, and it's addressable if you care to. 'It's not privacy unless it defeats every adversary at once' is a standard nothing meets. If you took that standard to dismiss real improvements you'd never use any privacy tool.
Is it that crazy that a cell network can know where you are? Of course it knows where you are—you couldn't connect to it without being in range.
Also, we don't have to hold phones to a higher standard than computers. It is your choice to use them with a Sim card, just like it is your choice to use a hotspot for your computer.
Authentication is not dependant on the phone and is the exact same no matter what device you are using. Saying that "using apps and websites that require authentication" makes your phone not have privacy is ridiculous. You can remove privacy from any device by streaming it's screen to youtube. GrapheneOS is private by default, and let's you make it less private.
ps you should blog again, even if it was very cynical from what I can find ;) (https://archive.is/Xx7uR)
We were specifically discussing privacy from government as that’s what the original post is about. The FCC making cell providers check IDs like a bank will have no privacy ramifications in any other regard. My provider knows who I am, gives my government any info they want (probably all of it without even having to be asked, possibly without their knowledge), and sells it “anonymized” to all sorts of people. Graphene won’t help with any of that. I’m sure it is wonderful in other ways, but they’re just not ones that rank on my list of concerns.
You can only have SOME privacy on a phone with Graphene if you don’t really use the phone the way people use theirs most of the time. You’ve still got a SIM card talking to cell towers owned by a company who sells your information. You’re still presumably using apps and websites that require authentication. The government can still find where you were and what you were searching for unless you take extraordinary measures. That’s not privacy.