I think, practically, everyone will need at least a cheap-ish android or iphone, perhaps $300 (and a new one every few years ...), to be their locked-down "agent" for using financial or government services. It's not for you, it's for the government/banks, it is their agent for talking to you.

Kinda weird, if you think about it. But that seems to be the way it's heading.

And a full on fight against ownership of stuff you paid, right to repair something you own with your own money, and general computing access.

The idea that the government should have the right or ability to do this in the first place is actually insane. Ideally the government doesn't want to do this in the first place, but even if it does it shouldn't have the technical ability to.

> The biggest "evil"

No need for the scare quotes. Forcefully removing people's agency over themselves is pretty much the definition of evil. We do not hurt criminals as punishment anymore, in the civilized age, but we still lock them up.

Now, of course we should not equate physical prisons and digital prisons in any other way, but we should absolutely call both forms of imprisonment evil, plain and simple.

I would guess it's because people blamed the device/OS manufacturer for when their device got infected with malware (which is almost always due to user error).

Through the 00s, Apple practically built their reputation on being "virus-free" which really just meant they locked out the user from being able to do anything too extreme.

It is also interesting that yet another government is prepared to increase its reliance on American big tech.

I do not know whether Vietnam has any pretence of digital sovereignty, but many countries that do are doing this like this to actively move away from it.

Screaming into the void about how your device is so great it could be used for attestation, combined with a small but vocal security industry full of grifting chicken littles, virtually guaranteed this would happen.

The real irony here is the use of free software to tear down everything the free software movement stood for.

This has nothing to do with security and everything with control. In whose interest is it that users have no control over what “their” hardware does or doesn’t do? Those OSs are not a product of Vietnam, they belong to, and are controlled by, Apple and Google. Now all Trump has to do is tell them to make all mobile phones in country X stop working, and they will do it. Now the U.S. government can brick a whole country with the flip of a switch.

Cory Doctorow lays it all out in his speech about the Post-American Internet: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition

I think in the future I will keep two phones, a secure phone for my data, communication and everything and an insecure old phone for banking and government apps.

Root access is irrelevant; modification detection is relevant. If your OS was sealed-attested, root wouldn’t matter (Macs have this in shipping production by default and it works fine for everyday users). For modding, go for it; your modded OS will be signed by your own crypto key (or none at all). Unfortunately, the media and the businesses and quite a lot of expert users confuse root-access-enabled as a convenient modification-detection method (presumably Google’s core is more competent than that, has anyone studied it?). Sigh.

A bigger evil than banking apps themselves? Commerce ruined computing.

Exactly. Also the smaller stupidity - inability to add your own root certificates to the system store.

In fact this is what led me to unlocking the bootloader, swapping the OS and rooting my phone. The infuriating situation where if you setup so called "corporate owner" (or mdm) during the first login you can add your own certificates, but if you don't... Basically the "corporate owner" of your phone is Google.

Yes, literally, you do not own it.

Also it is worth noting certain countries where "rooting/bootloader unlocking is illegal" - namely China and the horrible stupidity of people claiming EU Gdpr prevents manufacturers from offering simple bootloader unlocks for their phones.

We absolutely need to vote with our walkers. I bought a Samsung before and a Xiaomi recently only because both allow relatively simple unlock (ok the Xiaomi requires you to wait to press "request unlock" exactly at midnight Beijing time", and it only works for non-Chinese phones, but still unlocks fine.

we should save the idea of general computing. fuck cell phones.

It astounds me that purists still push this narrative despite all evidence to the country over decades of computing.

It is better for the vast majority of people that they don't have root access to their PC or phone or tablet because they are unequipped to securely manage that AND it has basically zero upside for them. They can't manage updates. They install random programs from the Internet to get smiley faces in Outlook.

This may offend your sensibilities. Sorry. But you're living in a fantasy land if you still hold onto this narrative, particularly without explaining to ordinary people how this will practically benefit them beyond theoretical platitudes about "freedom".

It’s not an evil at all. For 99% of people who aren’t “computer people”, when we gave them that, we got the Bonzai Buddy and 47 other malware toolbars installed. Did we forget 2003 already?

App sandboxing and system file integrity is one of the most beneficial security features of modern computing, and the vast majority of people have no desire to turn it off. You can buy rootable phones. People overwhelmingly choose iPhones instead.

Even if Apple sold the SRD at scale, nobody would buy the weird insecure hacker iPhone except us and maybe kids who realllly want Fortnite.

Well it has always been the case with the mobile telephony IC. Way too dangerous to leave it open to hackers.