The Electronic Frontier Foundation posted a holiday wish list of things they would like to see done by some of the major tech companies to protect digital civil liberties. Included in their list was for “Apple, Amazon, HTC, and other makers of mobile computing devices should give customers an officially documented way to get root access on every device they sell.”
Other notable ideas from the EFF included having the major social networking sites, including Facebook and Twitter, and email and other services providers Microsoft and Yahoo, as well as phone companies disclosing regularly the number of requests they get from government agencies. They see Google as a leader in this area.
They also have several requests for wider use of HTTPS including for software downloads, Google, Akamai, and as a default for the popular sites of Craigslist, eBay, Amazon, Yahoo, and Bing.
Cloud services are also targeted with a request to pre-encrypt data before uploading it. They suggest that the backup service providers should provide information, instructions, tools, and/or integration to make this simpler for users. They quote the service provider Tarsnap as saying “(b)ackups are supposed to be a tool for mitigating damage — not a potential vulnerability to worry about!”
While many of these suggestions have merit for digital liberties, not a lot of explanation was given for some of them—time will tell how many of them come to pass.
2 Comments
Nice idea, beig told “offically” how to root a device, but what about people then claiming warranty repair status for something they (the user) did which is what actually screwed the machine/device up so badly ?
Yes, I’d like root access to my DVD player, my car’s GPS, and while I’m at it, I’d like root access to my car’s computer.
Sounds reasonable.
Dumba$$es.
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