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Re: Haven: Keep Watch - Snowden’s New App (GPLv3)

Posted: Mon Oct 15, 2018 12:07 pm
by CrocoDuck
asbak wrote:There's nothing more that needs to be read or understood apart from the simple, basic, universal truth that Android is a spy platform designed and built from the ground up by Google (who has very close connections to the Pentagon & CIA) to spy on and collect intel on you. 24/7/365.

That is just the Base OS, we're not even talking about all the "apps" people will download and install and assign permissions to fish data out of every orifice, whether they do this voluntarily or involuntarily. 99.9% of users will be ratting themselves out just by how they use and interact with the phone. Even the .1% who think they are smart and have all the bases covered to beat the system are probably just deluding themselves.

No "app" or any "hey wow look this is a Privacy App!!" will change that. Android is, was and will forever be a ubiquitous spy platform. Case closed. Slam dunk.

Using Android, and any "apps" and deluding themselves that they are maintaining their privacy is a sport for gullible people. People who have secrets to protect better find other ways to do it.
OK. I just don't understand why you make all these points about an app that is not about privacy, but about making a sort of "alarm" out of sensors. They do mention "privacy" just because they force connections through Tor. I honestly don't know how effective that is in relation to the rest of the environment.

By the way, can you point to the relevant parts of the Android source tree that contain the spyware code? Not trying to disprove you or anything, I am just inherently interested in this... although my capability of understanding the code will be quite limited. Or it is the spyware supposed to be in proprietary firmware?

I ask because it would be interesting to know how "safe" android derivatives, like replicant, can be, as I was pondering trying them out. I guess one could run Haven on replicant, by the way.

Re: Haven: Keep Watch - Snowden’s New App (GPLv3)

Posted: Mon Oct 15, 2018 6:29 pm
by asbak
OK. I just don't understand why you make all these points about an app that is not about privacy, but about making a sort of "alarm" out of sensors. They do mention "privacy" just because they force connections through Tor.
What is there to understand that isn't already obvious?

The impression is created that the end user is somehow "protected" with "privacy" tools and features, like Tor on their Mobile device. And guess who $ponsor$ Tor? US Military groups for starters, and obviously the US Military wants to help me and you protect and secure our privacy, right? /sarc

(I was obviously being ironic, the US Military are definitely not interested in ensuring that we can keep secrets they cannot access, so whoever thinks that TOR offers any kind of data compromise protection from anybody except script kiddies or (perhaps) technologically backward dictatorships is a fool.)

The entire premise that Android somehow goes hand in hand with "privacy" and "security" is so laughable that it hardly needs explaining.
By the way, can you point to the relevant parts of the Android source tree that contain the spyware code? Not trying to disprove you or anything, I am just inherently interested in this... although my capability of understanding the code will be quite limited. Or it is the spyware supposed to be in proprietary firmware?
I'm not a programmer.

Android OS (like iOS or Windows) has so many placebo privacy switches already that it doesn't require special inside knowledge to put 1 + 1 together about what is going on behind the scenes. Whether one enables or disables a supposed privacy feature (on iOS, Android, Windows Phone), it can be overridden again by OTA updates, firmware updates, OTA instructions running in the background, Application installations etc. It's impossible for any normal user to keep track of it all even assuming the privacy switches and features actually worked, which I doubt they really do, on any of those platforms.

Re: Haven: Keep Watch - Snowden’s New App (GPLv3)

Posted: Mon Oct 15, 2018 7:46 pm
by CrocoDuck
asbak wrote: The impression is created that the end user is somehow "protected" with "privacy" tools and features, like Tor on their Mobile device. And guess who $ponsor$ Tor? US Military groups for starters, and obviously the US Military wants to help me and you protect and secure our privacy, right? /sarc
Of course, but they need it to work in terms of anonymous communication for real, otherwise US agents can be identified and tracked by antagonist nations with the same ease, thus making Tor the whole lot pointless for US intelligence and army as well.

Still, let's assume that Tor is totally useless, and CIA tracks you with that, and that Android is for real filled with purposely built-in vulnerabilities. I don't see why declaring any program that runs on Android useless. By the same logic one could claim useless any FLOSS every conceived just because the Linux kernel has binary firmware blobs that might - in theory - hide malware or backdoors or the like, or just bugs. Yes, we have linux-libre to avoid "faith in the blob". At the same time we have replicant and similar open source Android distributions to avoid faith in the Google, though. Again, there is no need for faith.

So, my impression is that Haven can be useful, even though I perhaps will never make use of it. Again, as it is wrong to have blind faith in apps or Tor (a system is secure as the knowledgeable user makes it to be) I think it is unfair to cover the entire Android ecosystem with "faith" in it being constantly spying on you, especially considering that the hypothesis can be put to test by studying the source code (a pat for those elements that are not open).

Re: Haven: Keep Watch - Snowden’s New App (GPLv3)

Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2018 6:17 pm
by Jack Winter
And many libre software users will be running it on this or similar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Act ... Technology

I think secrets are best kept away from any digital devices at all :)

But IMO, even if it can never be 100%, haven is still probably a useful piece of software.