Mobile Operating System Comparison
The whole point of that chapter is to compare most stock roms, what most people are using, what is actually happening (Most iPhone / Android devices [8] as named in the comparison table) with other things. Many stock roms have some interesting security features, also issues. It’s hard for me to justify this any better as I guess that comparison table is already the best way to put it. It was reviewed, modified by multiple contributors. If you still think comparing most stock android in that table makes no sense, then I guess it will be hard to agree with anything whatsoever.
Random analogy: Comparison table. Gold, silver, etc. Weight, volume, whatnot. Then saying “I don’t think it makes sense to compare gold” - I wouldn’t know what to answer.
In comparison table indirectly mentioned as:
“Libre Android” [9]
Not mentioned specifically since that’s not the main point which is supposed to be made. Not a nit pick this libre android vs that libre android with lots of changing technical differences. Already mentioned in the footnote.
That however I understand better.
Fully Open Source firmware would be awesome. Fully empirically verifiable by the community would be awesome too. It’s worthwhile to support any project going into that direction.
However, even with fully Open Source firmware we would not be much safer. Still would need to trust. Still not fully empirically verifiable. That is because the blueprints of hardware remain secret. Even Open Source Hardware wouldn’t make it fully empirically verifiable. We’d still lack the production capabilities and vulnerabilities / backdoors could still be injected at the production level. And even if in theory owning a production factory, would all the trusted equipment would need to be OSH and empirically verified.
I guess the people interested in empirical verification need to make their case better. This is highly complex technical stuff.
Capabilities are in my experience not widely known.
Hence, the following pages are a contribution into that direction (not hardware related):
This needs concise write-ups, with solid sources, published by great sources, other media formats, different styles, from diverse people to reach as many people as possible.
I am mostly interested in the biggest impact, highest productivity. Source code and documentation.
All words are imperfect.
All statements are either false or incomplete. [archive]
Unless there’s something better…
In theory it security could be verifiable while there are still user freedom restrictions in place such as most stock roms pre-installing applications which cannot be as easily removed as any other applications. Hence, the invention of the term Freedom Security. Verifiable Security isn’t wrong either. Perhaps Verifiable Security is a subset of Freedom Security. Perhaps Verifiable Security is a prerequisite of Freedom Security.