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ehnto • today at 5:51 AM • 1 reply • view on HN

Tucked away neatly in Australian law is the concept that a phone that is not iPhone or Android is a criminal device, similar to owning lockpicks. Something like GrapheneOS. I forget the exact term they used but it wasn't "jailbroken". The act of refraining from corporate tracking as illegal is in that way already codified.

That's why I feel it's super important hardware developers get on board with open source OS support for mobile, much like some are for Linux already. It should be the norm to not be tracked by corporate entities and advert networks, it should be the weird option to opt into that.


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throwaway2037 • today at 6:09 AM

    > Tucked away neatly in Australian law is the concept that a phone that is not iPhone or Android is a criminal device, similar to owning lockpicks. Something like GrapheneOS.
This is untrue. It only took me one simple Google search to find the answer.

My query:

    > "is it illegal in australia to have a mobile phone that does not use iphone or android?"
Top result: https://privacydevices.net/encrypted-phones-legal-australia/

    > Owning, buying, and using an encrypted phone is legal in Australia, and so is installing a different operating system on a device you own.
EDIT

Also, dumb phones are certainly not illegal. Plenty of old folks still use them.

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