@khw @vollaficationist @celeduc @GrapheneOS @guilg @EUCommission This is not just a theoretical concern.

Some European countries border on autocracy. Imagine that this initiative is successful. An autocrat could pressure Volla et al. to only attest phones that have a chat backdoor under the thread of banning them from the market.

It is anti-privacy, anti-security, and anti-freedom.

@khw @vollaficationist @celeduc @GrapheneOS @guilg @EUCommission Centralized remote attestation is diametrically opposed to privacy, since it makes projects vulnerable to pressure to weaken security & privacy, delay updates, etc.

AFAIK the support for remote attestation that is already provided in AOSP does not suffer from this issue, because there is not a single entity that enforces it (banks can whitelist signing key fingerprints).

So the only reason I can think of is control.

@vollaficationist @celeduc @GrapheneOS @guilg @EUCommission And the Volla Phone Quintus is the Daria Bond 5G from an Emirates company (marked up by 560 Euro). Given that Eurowashing, maybe attacking GrapheneOS for using Pixel hardware is a bit rich? At least Pixel has proper device security.

Back to to the original topic. I only have a stake in this as an EU citizen, but having a small set of companies decide who can run what is bad, it's another attack on the freedom of EU citizens.

@splitmind @GaryAsh @jonkit @marcoarment Yeah, it's surreal.

It makes me wonder, do the people who wrote this actually believe what they wrote? Or are they just *that* cynical?

Maybe they had Gemini, erm, Apple Intelligence do it for them.

@GaryAsh @jonkit @marcoarment I think it is this?

https://www.apple.com/50-years-of-thinking-different/

"If you’ve taught us anything, it’s that the people crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do."

Seems to be true, but different kind of crazy this time.

@fristi @bert_hubert Het is sowieso beter geen router van je provider te gebruiken.

Verder zou elk apparaat per-connectie MAC randomisatie moeten hebben. Helaas is geven de meeste devicemakers niet om privacy.

@ftm @GrapheneOS Another thing I don't really like about Volla is that they seem to do Eurowashing.

Maybe (some part of) the Volla Phone Quintus is assembled in Europe, but the phone seems to be a rebranding of the Daria Bond 5G (stated by multiple sources, including the PostmarketOS wiki) with a markup of ~550 Euro (~160 -> 719 Euro): https://www.amazon.ae/Android-Smartphone-Storage-Octa-Core-Monetization/dp/B0DDYDZC4V?th=1

The Daria Bond 5G is sold by an UAE company that also maintains the Volla Phone Quintus source trees (well, 'maintain' is a big word).