Hacker News Reader

Comment by Rygian | Hacker News Reader

"Google app auto-downloads to Google phones, can't be uninstalled" has been the norm since day 1 and before.

What is newsworthy here? The fact that yet one more third-party (the White House) does it too?

Long-time de-Googled Pixel user here: while it's not for most of the people I know, for whom the barrier to install LineageOS / GrapheneOS / etc on their Android pocket computer is as yet too high, advertisement-company Google's nonsense can be uninstalled. It helps that I use my less-smart phone much less than back when these things were a novelty. Nice to be able to call and text, snap photos, take notes, visit some websites with JavaScript turned off, set alarms, and learn stuff with Anki, all with one high-tech slab that fits in my pocket. I also appreciate F-Droid and the contributions of so many people making useful software. Still, I'd trade computers and all the pollution from the underlying infrastructure for lower population density and the ability to regularly eat fish from local waterways without getting poisoned.

This is about work phones. You're not going to [be able or permitted to] install LineageOS, GrapheneOS, or anything like that on it. And you shouldn't.

What you should do is turn the thing off and put it in a shielding bag when you're not working. Or leave it in your desk, locker, or whatever. Or even refuse getting one to begin with.

4th amendment probably

The 4th amendment doesn't apply to property of your employer. They can do pretty much whatever they want in terms of configuration, tracking, and auto-loading software on it.

It does when your employer is the US Government. Decades of overt corporate authoritarianism seems to have made some people forget about the very idea of individual rights.

No, it doesn't. The government has the right to manage software on devices they own just like any other business.

You can just say you think trump is an authoritarian sack of assholes, you don't need to invent bullshit legal fairy tales. That's not how this works.

Isn't there a court case with a different legal standard here? Like pagers or something

> government has the right to manage software on devices they own just like any other business

The government is not a business.

> you don't need to invent bullshit legal fairy tales

Constitutional rights that are meant to explicitly restrain the government are not "bullshit legal fairy tales".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com