06-01-2021, 12:32 PM
(05-30-2021, 09:21 AM)MirceaKitsune Wrote: Another big example closer to home is an alert system that was discussed a few years ago if I'm not mistaken; Something that allowed authorities to track where your phone is located, and if you're in an area where a calamity is happening they'd have the ability to force a message on your device and you couldn't disable the thing. As an optional service I'm definitely not against it, quite the contrary... but forced and hardcoded into my device, no way I don't want any of that stuff.
This is kind of mixing two different things: cell-based location tracking and wireless emergency alerts (WEA).
Cell-based location tracking is pretty much just a fact of life with cell phones. The carrier knows your IMEI and they know your signal strength at all their various towers, so they can triangulate your position any time your modem is online. This has nothing to do with the software on your phone; it's inherent to the structure of the network. It would be possible in theory to architect a network that does not allow this kind of location tracking by the carrier, but there seems to be less than zero interest in this (since the carriers profit from this location data and want to keep getting it).
Wireless emergency alerts are a strange one (at least in the US, unsure about elsewhere). Last I heard, there wasn't much hope of ever getting support for it on the Pinephone, in no small part because the system probably has no anti-spoofing security at all and relies entirely on the obscurity of its technical details to prevent abuse (basically, we're not allowed to learn how it works in order to implement it). It's possible the proprietary modem firmware does or could support it, but I know very little about that.
The weirdest part of WEA in the US is that Presidential Alerts are required by law to be mandatory and impossible for the end user to disable. Aside from being invasive, this law is not really aligned with the reality of how computers (including cell phones, and especially the Pinephone) actually work. It's effectively impossible for Pine64 to comply with this rule, because it doesn't even directly develop an OS for the device at all, let alone a locked-down one that has any provisions for restricting what the end user can do. Pragmatically speaking, this is probably just another reason why supporting WEA on the Pinephone isn't going to happen, because legal authorities will probably interpret the law to mean that a vendor who cannot guarantee that end users will see Presidential Alert messages may not implement WEA at all.
Yeah, cell phones are pretty messed up.