[JoshTriplett]

This makes it all the more egregious that so many applications ask for permission to access contacts and similar.

Perhaps Android should rephrase these permissions as, for instance "direct access to contacts without your knowledge", as opposed to "access to user-selected contacts upon request" (which, as demonstrated, does not need permission).

[digi_owl]

Given that Google has gone to lengths to obfuscate the permissions further in Play, i don't think that is likely to ever happen...