Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by zetaposter | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

zetaposter

- Sir, you have to install this application, it's available on both iOS and the Google Play Store.

- Do you have a Debian package?

- I beg your pardon?

- My Pinephone runs a modified version of Debian, the Universal Operating System.

- ... What is that?

- Oh fine. I'll settle for a Flatpack then.

- I'm not sure I follow.

-Does Qatar's Law require me to have an Android phone xor an iPhone?

- No ... ?

- Well your Law specification is incomplete and buggy.

you get arrested for obstruction of justice

View on HN

The great news is that just like you're not forced to buy an Android or iOS device, you're not forced to travel to Qatar.

"Vote with your feet" applies to jurisdictions just like it applies to technologies. Of course, like with technologies, making such a choice has the potential to limit you in other ways.

Do not worry, the WEF and UN will be diligently taking notes of this field test and by the time it's rolled out in your country this will be resolved.

I cannot wait to have a social credit score! It is a wonderful idea and I am only disappointed that our wise un-elected WEF and UN leaders are being so shy in rolling it out.

Can we go back to FEMA death camps? This is just tiresome at this point.

Tiresome? You don't think the WEF goal of "I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better"[0] needs more awareness?

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/s...

No kidding. If we miraculously pull out of this nose dive before climate change erases us all we’re immediately going to be tossed into a world where AI makes us basically zoo animals for the ultra wealthy.

> a world where AI makes us basically zoo animals for the ultra wealthy.

... for about 3 years, before one of the ultra wealthy elites presses the wrong button and the AI ends up putting them in the zoo (or paperclip raw materials hopper) too.

It is certainly unsettling how laws will blindly introduce a dependency on Google or Apple

This is the aspect of Qatari law that stands out to you as unsettling?

I didn't realize subthreads weren't allowed to isolate subcontexts and discuss them. Are the other 50+ comments not enough to satisfy you?

Qatar is our friend. Qatar is a democracy.

They certainly have a lot of money. Aren’t dollars basically people these days? Not to mention, oil.

N…not quite. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Qatar

But they said they're friendly :)

Last summer I had to travel to South Korea for business, I was required to install a government app due to covid. Obviously this app was only for android and iOS. I had an iphone so i didnt have issues. But if i had a pinephone, i probably would had to board the next plane out of the country.

Crazy how our lives are becoming so dependent on private company techs.

Same thing for Japan. For Android it's also only available on the Play Store which requires you to have a Google account.

If they really really want to track people:

- Sir, you have to install this application, it's available on both iOS and the Google Play Store.

- Do you have a Debian package?

- Give me a moment to check our database of alternative OSes.. Why yes, yes, we do have this as a Debian package.

- ... Well... is the app truly compulsory?

- Yes Sir, indeed it is I'm afraid. Security, safety and all that.

- ...

Even if the government went to the trouble of creating the Debian package, they wouldn't allow it to run on an OS that doesn't support a particularly restrictive "Secure Boot" setup, which would provide the mobile network with a remote attestation that you are running only "certified" packages and system services (including a minimal set of mandatory ones).

Naturally, this certification process would ban apps which could spoof the UI of any official apps, but the ban would have to go further and include any apps which users have built from source themselves. End-to-end encrypted messaging apps (without backdoors) would similarly be banned.

At that point, the fact that you have the source code for all of the software running on your surveillance device isn't much comfort. What good is a phone when you are unable to speak?

Are you implying that Debian does not support Secure Boot? Because it does.

I did worry that my comment might incorrectly imply that, so I deliberately reworded it to say a particularly restrictive "Secure Boot" setup, but I guess that's still ambiguous.

You're right, Debian "supports" such a set of restrictions, in the sense that a manufacturer could build devices that would comply with these hypothetical laws while only using vanilla Debian packages, but my point was that such a device wouldn't really feel like Debian, since the moment you installed an unapproved application (or removed a mandatory application) half the functionality would stop working.

No. Debian supports Secure Boot, and that means anybody can add their own signing key and sign and boot their own kernel, packages and everything else.

As long as users can update the signing keys it's all good.

If not, it's tivoization, and it breaches GPL.

> anybody can add their own signing key

That's assuming the hardware supports it. I'm imagining a (very likely) world where devices will either no longer support self-generated keys, or where using such keys makes your device unable to access the mobile network or the internet. (The latter sort of device might in theory be buildable, and run Debian just fine, but I don't think it would have enough buyers for a manufacturer to waste money on producing it).

> If not, it's tivoization, and it breaches GPL.

Contracts (and software licences) cannot override the law. If a government wants to ban self-generated keys (and/or make anti-Tivoization clauses unenforceable), then it can easily do so, and make all "Debian phones" either not feel like Debian, or not feel like phones.

> Contracts (and software licences) cannot override the law

I never said they could.

> If a government wants to ban self-generated keys (and/or make anti-Tivoization clauses unenforceable), then it can easily do so

Wrong. That would require abandoning copyright enforcement.

Tivoization breaches the GPL. When a license is in breach, integrators, developers and users have no right to use such software.

> That would require abandoning copyright enforcement.

Who do you think writes copyright laws?

Obviously I'm not suggesting a government would just abandon the entire concept of copyright, but it could amend its copyright law to say that a copyright holder cannot claim (in court) that their proprietary rights were breached solely due to a defendant applying "security measures" to prevent software tampering.

That would be grossly unfair to people whose code is then used in ways that go against their wishes, but government policies don't have to be fair. (For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not accusing you of saying that they have to be fair, I'm just providing some obvious context to help make my position clearer to anyone reading this).

In this context: Does Mobian on PinePhone support Secure Boot?

That’s cute, except that of course in the real world you get some nice quality time with border control/the police/secret services well before that if you try playing these games.

Or: try arguing about the fourth amendment, human rights and the constitution when a uniformed thug wants to seize your phone when you fly into the US. It does not sound that clever in the real world.

As the article points out, you do have the option of traveling without a smartphone...

No plan to travel to Qatar, but I don't own a mobile phone anyway.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com