[mike_hearn]

The existing permissions are already so fine grained it's insane. Almost every API has its own permission, regardless of whether that would be understandable to normal users or not.

The Android security model does a great job of security. It was not designed to be a general purpose privacy guard that lets you engage in some complicated multi-way negotiation with every app you install over every aspect of your personal data. Such a system might be a feature of future operating systems, but currently I'm unaware of any such OS.

[Nursie]

They clearly aren't so fine-grained as all that, not in this area, because they still have a single permission that covers not only knowing when a call is in progress, but also phone identifiers like IMEI, the incoming phone number and a load of other stuff.

[blub]

The future is here, it's called iOS. Blackberry does a decent job too. In fact, companies that don't do ads & tracking seem to have this in common. Not sure what the sit with MS is, they used to have something like the Android model.