This is what the UK spyware proposal means.
There must be government spyware on every mobile device. It shall watch everything that happens, including always watching the screen, looking for things the government disapproves of.
When anything is flagged by the software as something the government doesn't like, the software must block it from being sent or displayed (in realtime).
The user of the device must not be able to shut this watching and blocking off. The only way to shut it off would be to ask the government or its proxies to do so for you, at their discretion.
Therefore the whole device must be locked down. Administrator rights and the decision of what software or operating system to run or not to run must be taken from the owner/user and handed to the government and its proxies.
Apple and Google are themselves working hard to lock down the devices they are involved in to shut out competition and establish a duopoly.
The UK government says it is "working closely" with Apple and Google and currently they synchronise and coordinate their communication on this subject.
The UK government is now proposing to mandate what would otherwise be illegal anti-competitive practices.
@GrapheneOS on the Apple and Google duopoly:
https://t.co/rbRmcUDTRu
Statement from @signalapp
https://t.co/vJILcSrs4s
@ReclaimTheNetHQ on the state spyware:
https://t.co/3FCi06bP77
The government announcement:
https://t.co/ynYjR3DIRo
@Bernanacatl@archerships@DouglasTuman@1984Hosting What's slow about ipfs? Do you just mean if there aren't enough people pinning the content? With enough people pinning it should be faster, right?
The government will let corporations pump high fructose corn syrup into everything on the shelf, despite heart disease being the #1 killer in America. But you need $35,000 in permits to sell homemade salsa to your neighbor, because you never paid off Congress with lobbyists.
Your phone is about to stop being yours.
Android was sold to us as an open platform.
Now Google wants every developer to register and submit ID just to let you install their apps.
Every app and every device, worldwide, with no opt-out.
Google is building a registry that ties every piece of Android software to a government ID, and your phone will soon refuse to run anything that is not on it.
Starting September 2026, an app will not install on a certified Android phone unless its maker has handed Google a government photo ID, paid a fee, registered a payment profile, and signed over the keys to their own code. And not just apps from the Play Store. Every app. The one a friend builds you. The one a stranger across the world wrote and gave away. The one you wrote yourself, for your own phone, in your own home.
Your hardware will check it against Google's list, and if the name is not on file, the door stays shut.
Android was the open one. For fifteen years that was the entire pitch, the one phone where you owned the device and chose the software and no one stood at the gate. That is what is ending.
The phone goes from a thing that runs what you tell it to a thing that runs what Google has approved, and approval now means a legal name in a database.
A malware author will buy a stolen identity for $40 and ship his poison the same as ever. He always has. The registry does not touch him. What it touches is the developer who cannot put his real name on his work. The one building a secure messenger for people a government wants dead. The one shipping a tool that embarrasses the powerful. The one who writes under a handle because the alternative is a knock at the door.
The purpose, in Google's own words, is to "remove the cover of anonymity."
The mask is the oldest tool the free press ever held. The pamphlet with no printer's name. The essay signed with a fake one. Every government that ever feared what its people might read started by demanding to know who set the type. Google has volunteered to be the one who keeps the list.
If you want to install software from a maker who refused the registry, you can, after you enable developer mode, swear to your phone that no one is forcing you to do this, restart the device, wait a full twenty-four hours, and authenticate again. A day-long cooling-off period and a coercion check, to put a program you chose on a phone you own.
It is the permission slip with enough friction that most people stop trying, which was always the point.
F-Droid, the free software catalogue that has handed out unsigned, unregistered, no-name software for over fifteen years, called it existential and refused to comply.
67 organizations told Google to kill the plan. Google moved the date for no one.
So learn the way out now, while the door is still open. The stores that answer to no registry. The phones that were never on Google's list. The skill of putting what you choose onto the machine you own, before that skill becomes a thing you have to wait a day and swear an oath to use.
A phone that asks permission before it runs your software was never your phone. It was theirs, parked in your pocket, billed to your name.
Take it back while taking it back is still allowed.
@GrantWalderbach@ironHODL@LeadingReport It teaches that it is acceptable to use power to impose your will on others through violence.
Its not instruction that they internalize through critical thinking. It's imposed behavior control via fear of pain.
@ironHODL@LeadingReport It teaches:
"If you do something I dislike like, I can violate your consent, and use violence against you."
Spanking produces short-term compliance at the expense of the relationship.
MoneroShameList got its 1st conversion!
Just ask businesses/ organizations that see the value in privacy to accept Monero.
Even just over email or messenger is enough. It’s free for them.