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Comment by Figs | Hacker News Reader

Wouldn't you also need "free hardware" to avoid the risk of your device being used against you? If you're not willing to trust the software on your phone, why would you trust that there isn't a tracking device built directly into the chips on the phone?

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Given the way GSM works you'd also need 'Free cell towers', 'Free GSNs' and a 'Free network'. Not that I even know how that would be possible. You'd also still need 'Free airwaves' because you can triangulate from your own broadcast signal in some cases.

The article does mention that Stallman uses a "rather slow" Lemote Yeeloong laptop because it's the only laptop with a free BIOS.

Which is untrue. I just purchased a Genesi Smartbook, which uses u-Boot and wasn't designed in a fascist country with a penchant for electronic espionage.

is u-Boot a System BIOS? it appears to be a Bootloader: http://sourceforge.net/projects/u-boot/

Bootloaders are executed after the BIOS.

I thought it was the CPU microcode, not the BIOS? Because there are open source BIOSes that you can flash to a variety of more powerful machines.

you are probably correct. the article just mentioned the BIOS. i looked around and could not find specific mention of the microcode in the laptop's specs :http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:Hardware/Freest#Lemote_Yee... or on Stallman's page : http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html or in this FSF paper page on free hardware: http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/how_hardware_vendors_can_hel...

With a software system, unwanted code can be injected into the system at any time without your knowledge. This isn't true of hardware.

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