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this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
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DeGoogle Yourself
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Why would this only be present in Pixels then? Google isn't interested in specific people. Intelligence agencies are. This would mean, that every phone in the world needs to be compromised using this sophisticated, stealthy technology, which is even more unlikely.
If it is present there, it doesn't imply it's only present there.
And we really have no idea how close of a relationship Google, or any other corp for that matter, has with various intelligence agencies. Same thing with infiltrations by intelligence agencies.
And no, it doesn't mean that every phone in the world is compromised with this, which wouldn't be that sophisticated, just stealthy. The sophisticated part would be part of the normal design process, it's called DFT or design for test if you want to read about it, used legitimately to determine what parts of the chip have manufacturing flaws for chip binning.
Most phones don't have an unlocked bootloader, and this post is about the data Google is pulling on factory pixels.
Why would they do all the work on the software side and then themselves offer a device that allows you to remove their software entirely? And if it's worth it just from the "make more money from people who only want unlocked phones", why isn't it more common?
Mind you, my next phone might still be a pixel. Even if this stuff is actually there, I wouldn't expect to be targeted. I can't help but wonder about it, though, like just how deep does the surveillance or surveillance potential go?
Ok let's assume this is true, and US intelligence agencies have actually backdoored all US phone manufacturers. What about foreign phones? If this was true, someone the NSA is interested in could just defend themselves by e.g. buying a Chinese phone. All this effort, just to be defeated by foreign phone manufacturers? It wouldn't be worth it, which is why it's so highly unlikely.
Well to this point (I don't 100% believe this flavor of state surveillance theory but) you cannot buy phones made my foreign manufacturers and have them work in the US. For example, Oppo, Huawei, Xiaomi, all do not work on USA cell networks, and you can't buy them unless you go through an import process. Just to name a few of the many. But granted, those are all Chinese manufacturers.