Now Russians have a better reason to use PinePhone

[KNERD]

Apple, Google remove opposition app as Russian voting begins


https://apnews.com/article/europe-russia...74d3999568

[zetabeta]

Apple, Google remove opposition app as Russian voting begins


https://apnews.com/article/europe-russia...74d3999568

i'm not moderator here, but let's keep discussion with the software and hardware.

i have some views about russia, what i'm not going to tell here. still, it reminds me i'm not necessarily fan of government. i have this phrase "where is power, there is abuse.".

it's difficult to bypass apple store, actually it's impossible. however if app uses website and generic html5 technologies. it works almost any device. google play can be bypassed and it's not that difficult, but how many allows outside app installations.

if russian buy a pinephone, how russian get that phone to russia because russian customs think it's some kind of high capable device and therefore russia bans it. reason is related to encryption, pinephone is capable for strong encryption but beyong that this restrictions is laughable. btw, usa had similar restriction in the past (banning strong encryptions).

[KNERD]

This is about software. If they were using a PinePhone, and app was available for PinePhone, then this would not of been a story.

As far as banned in Russia, very doubtful as newer iPhones are a bit harder to break.

[lot378]

Russia has laws against import of devices featuring any encryption (or cryptography) technology.

This means Pine64 cannot sell PinePhone to customers in Russia.

Russian authorities have blocked all access points to opposition SmartVote app. So, even if a PinePhone was smuggled in to Russia and opposition had somehow made the app available for Linux on PinePhone (they would not have bothered) the app has stopped working.

[KNERD]

Russia has laws against import of devices featuring any encryption (or cryptography) technology.

This means Pine64 cannot sell PinePhone to customers in Russia.

Russian authorities have  blocked all access points to opposition SmartVote app. So, even if a PinePhone was smuggled in to Russia and opposition had somehow made the app available for Linux on PinePhone (they would not have bothered) the app has stopped working.

Are you saying the iPhones and Android phones sold in Russian have had their security neutered?

[lot378]

Facts have been provided this topic is dead, further responses just end up in politics.

[dachalife]

Each country has their own encryption standards to support their alphabet.

I can say that the phone, data & SMS work fine here in Eastern Europe after almost a month of testing.

[ryo]

It's pretty hard to give a non-political reply to a kind of politically driven thread though.
But like with the Australian version of this thread (which got nuked for being politicized), if censorship and spying is a concern, we might see another 190 threads of "Now (COUNTRY NAME HERE) have a better reason to use PinePhone" as more people start waking up.
It's all 1 big family, the difference is that in some countries the people are used to not being allowed to say anything and being watched at all times so they can just do all of this directly, while some others need to proxy everything via "private companies" or the people would rise up, but they all go into the same direction in the end.
So "Apple, Google remove opposition app as Russian voting begins" might as well be read as "the western world removes opposition app as Russian voting begins", because Apple and Google both serve as proxies for western governments.
"It's not us who's destroying encryption, go complain to those private companies! They are doing it!" yup...totally...

[biketool]

General 'paranoia' is good, no need to localize it.
Lets talk about interesting threat models and how we can bypass or overcome them.
Paranoia is fine when we stick to our specific tech, we should be writing wiki pages on to get down to dumping the firmware of chips or checksuming them to determine if our device has been compromised; it is what many of us signed up for when we decided on pinephone.
Tech minutia not politics!