> binary blobs
Was a concern with Pinephone but doesn't seem to be the case anymore from what I saw. (referring to modem)
Was a concern with Pinephone but doesn't seem to be the case anymore from what I saw. (referring to modem)
There are no viable fully open source phones in existence today, particularly the baseband.
The more practical question is around whether those binary blobs can take over your OS, not just do things behind its back. This is what sets apart devices like the Pinephone and Apple M1 Macs (which make an effort to isolate blobs from the main OS running on the AP) from typical Android phones and Intel PCs (which have blobs in hyper-privileged positions that have full access to the entire system).
Yes, I'm putting Apple M1 machines on a similar level as the Pinephone in this respect. How well designed a device is from a security/privacy perspective is tangential to whether the manufacturer markets themselves as an open source friendly company. It turns out Apple have done a great job making sure even their own blobs aren't allowed to take over the system. Once you run you own OS on an M1 machine, you're in a similar security position as on a PinePhone (though not exactly the same; M1s run more blobs, e.g. the display controller, so in principle a colluding set of malicious blobs could do more damage that way, but they still wouldn't be able to directly compromise your OS's execution).
This seems like exactly what we dealt with in requiring phone companies to allow dialup modems to connect to whoever the customer wants, and so on. Seems shady as hell.
It sucks that any time you start to inspect almost any tech, there are assholes trying to exploit every last bit of data and microamp of processing power to screw you in some way.
Base stations are often built out of more generic SDR tech, and those do chew power like crazy.
If the hardware itself is capable of operating outside of its license (frequencies, modulations, etc), then various certifications from the FCC would likely be invalidated by replacing the firmware and it would become illegal to operate.
Of course, nothing says the baseband couldn't be open source, and even if codesigning is involved, the manufacturer could sign verifiable builds that can be reproducibly built. That should solve all regulatory concerns while still allowing users to inspect the baseband firmware for flaws or backdoors.
But, of course, no actual baseband manufacturer cares about that.
But what we can say is that we know that Intel has hyper-privileged backdoor modes and coprocessors, while every single thing I've seen so far about the M1 indicates it was carefully designed to isolate all coprocessors from the main CPU. Everything is either behind an IOMMU or can't do DMA at all or has some other form of address filter. And knowing what I know about Apple's security posture, it's entirely logical that they designed it this way.
https://www.pine64.org/2020/01/24/setting-the-record-straigh...
> In short, unless you explicitly send data to the modem, it is never in contact with the blobs running inside it. The modem cannot send any data to the phone unless phone is willing to receive it
I guess there are some legal concerns with open source modems
However, they can only interact with the baseband in any case: While that still allows extensive tracking and potential mischief (like making expensive calls on your behalf), this is nothing your phone provider can't already do, i.e. knowing where you are and bill you arbitrary amounts for services you might not have initiated (when on postpaid).