Privacy features in Touch (cyanogenmod)?

[J Fernyhough]

On 18 June 2013 14:34, Alexandre Strube <surak at surak.eti.br> wrote:
> A first approach could be a one-click TOR connection on networkmanager
> applet. Should be an interesting project.
>

This is something different to the original point Matt was making.
While the ability to route through Tor is a nice-to-have, if apps are
allowed to read and send my personal data (contacts, phone records,
specific location) then whether or not this goes through Tor is
irrelevant.

Yes, applications installed on a computer have access to your data.
The thing is, that data isn't centralised into a known location (or
provided by a known service) so that it can be accessed as necessary
by all applications. Added to this is the code review undertaken in
traditional projects; for example I'm reasonably happy that
Thunderbird won't send my email off to someone (that I might use Gmail
is entirely different, as I have chosen to use them as a provider,
though I don't expect them to send my email off to Microsoft).

The new application format has to allow for fine-grained privacy
controls. It's fine if a dialogue is shown saying like "This
application is requesting the following permissions. You can deselect
any you choose, but be aware the application may not function
correctly or as intended", as long as I can make the choice whether
the latest version of "Irritable Felines" has full access to my
contacts, SMS, browser history and geodata. Heck, make it an advanced
option - I assume there will be developer options for U-Touch as for
Android.

A mobile OS built from the ground-up as privacy-aware is a huge
selling point - and for the moment unique.

J