>>>Libya?
 
Two things.
 
1. It was coalition airstrikes, not citizens with guns that brought the regime down. No outside force will airstrike nuclear-armed US, no matter how bad things get internally.
 
2. Where are they now? Anarchy. Not exactly happy ending.

Armed confrontation with the state will not work. Syria is most recent historical example, but there are plenty more. If you want to fight police state, then active participation in the democratic process is the way to achieve that. More guns? Well, that will just result in more gun death AND easy justification for further police militarization (crazies with untraceable semi-automatics).

Small steps, lets get them to accept evaluation on our planet first.

You know, I tried using Android phone this way - disabling location, refusing to link accounts... you couldn't do much other than place calls and maybe use browser. Android smartphone isn't a very useful device unless you surrender to Google.

I understand what you are saying, but you also have to admit that Google is doing a superb job trapping the careless user into handing over credentials. I strongly believe that this is Bad Design for $$$ reasons.

Existing cell technology does not support proper authentication. Your mobile device is authenticated, but cell towers are assumed to be trusted and you have no control over what you connect to. This allows all kinds of Man in the Middle attacks, where one could pretend to be a cell tower and capture traffic.

Hypothetical example - you are standing next to a cartoon robber with a big black box called "FAKE CELL TOWER". The only way you could prevent your smartphone from getting connected to this device is to turn data off. Once you connect, attackers can push fake app updates, inject exploits into your browsing, inspect your unencrypted traffic, try to get you accept compromised certificates, redirect your traffic and so on.

And this is why I am not excited about LTE direct.

Pedantic correction - Donald Trump might actually offer good advice on how to be born rich, as he has first-hand experiences.

"Oh wait.." as in, the present situation is comparable to the worst of Microsoft excesses where they were justifiably criticized? If that was your point, then yes, I agree.

Issue with rooting, is that almost anything in mobile space defaults to auto-run. This is not a big deal if permissions are severely restricted in non-rooted phone and the worst stuff won't survive the reboot. Modifying this default promiscuous behavior is not a simple configuration change and is beyond abilities of majority of technically-inclined /. crowd.

>>>They can be removed if you have unlocked the bootloader and flashed an OS image that contains su. Then you can become root, remount the OS partition read-write, and remove the apps completely.

This is why mobile space computing devices will always be toys in my eyes. They system designed to dictate how you suppose to use it. Sure, with enough effort you could bypass and regain control that should have been there from the beginning.

As for quoted response - imagine buying a PC during 90s era where you didn't have enough permission to uninstall AOL. Plus you'd get prompted for AOL credentials to use unrelated productivity software. Even MS in its prime wasn't that evil. Google, on other hand...