I chatted with the CIO of Vizio a couple years ago at a conference and asked why Vizio didn't offer any "dumb" TVs. He told me frankly that they were too costly to make anymore as they would be losing the revenue that comes from the "smart" TV data sales.

To which the ad industry insists: "I WAS IN THE POOL!"

Then, if your really serious... introduce them to GrapheneOS

If you allow it to be the primary messaging app, it handles SMS too.

Switch to Signal for messaging and be done with it. We had this issue in my family until I introduced all the iPhone users to a REAL interoperable and secure messaging app, and we have never looked back.

To get this to work, however, they'd also have to make it so that the phone in question can apply this as a required update. What stops them from repeatedly using such a tool where they might have main-in-the-middle systems already widespread and quietly in use (stingray)?

One could also argue that Apple has done their *due diligence* by accommodating all requests up to the request to re-engineer their product in a way that intentionally cripples the security features that offer any inkling of data protection, and cannot be built on a single-phone-specific scale. Don't get me wrong, I choose not to use Apple products personally because they like to dictate how they will and will not be used, but I respect them for standing up and questioning the validity of this request. The government also already has the communication logs from the carrier network, so it knows with whom the terrorist was in communication. Why not chase down those leads instead, with a little old fashioned investigation. Surely, if those associated by the call and SMS logs are also terrorists, there will be other indicators.

This argument is a sham and a shameless power grab by the powers that be. We are talking about someone who had the forethought to destroy his personal phone and computer hard drive to avoid the collection of incriminating evidence, yet he did nothing to obscure the $0.99 iPhone 5c that was issued to him from the local government. Does anyone really think he left any evidence at all on that device? Highly unlikely. He knew this device had no expectation of privacy (issued/controlled by government) and he made no attempt to destroy it (not like he fear the consequences of destruction of gov't property), so why would he have used it for any purpose related to illegal/questionable activities?

I agree with a combination of local/cloud. The computer I have that holds all the family photos and other important bits has a RAID5 array (hint: buy a dell PERC with a BBU cheap on ebay...Same LSI/Adaptec hardware at a fraction of the retail cost). That system is backed up to a small RAID1 NAS enclosure in my workshop (detached from the house but not strictly "Off-Site"). The NAS is in a Cannon gun safe just because it can be (fire rated, Cannon has pass-through ports built-in for exactly this type of thing, and the safe was on clearance at Sam's Club). As for off-site, I also back up the main workstation to BackBlaze for $5/month.

I have used Good in the past and was disappointed with the UE. I am at a new company now and we decided to go with MobileIron because we support both iOS and Android and we needed an enterprise app store. It didn't hurt that MI supports almost any moblie OS (but for Android encryption it depends on touchdown). I think our costs are about half what my previous employer was paying for Good.

Why do the examples show the wrong "Information" color for Google? The description for the information collection category says that Google " might collect and use more information than is strictly necessary" (no doubt in my mind there). So why is the icon in the example green, meaning Google "collects and uses enough data to provide any necessary services"? If the examples are not even reliable, what hope does this system of icons have?

Whenever you hear of someone pushing to get rid of hard currency, they mention the decrease in crime... Yet the numbers here don't show me anything compelling. They show an 85.5% decrease in reported crimes relating to hard currency, and then gloss over a 505% increase in digital monetary crime. That's such a poor point to argue, why even mention it?

Another vote for PF. I run it on a virtual that has a few vSwitches, so I can have PF talk to the cable modem, and everything else talks to PF (Trusted and Untrusted interfaces). Since it's in virtual, I can maximize the use of the one machine at the house running all the time to also run a print server, VoIP server, etc. WoL allows other machines to be turned on remotely as needed.

sure, we are running a 1.2 meter satellite dish, controller, hughes modem and firewall predominately. The controller is 12V and the other parts I could probably find some 12V adapters for i'd bet, so that is what I would try for... The quoted system was mitsubishi 110w 12 volt panels with a custom battery, 300w true sine inverter, and i can't recall the charger controller manufacturer...magnum maybe?