In anticipation of receiving my Librem 5 Evergreen, I have a few questions about anonymity when using the Librem 5.
Does each phone have its own IMEI number? I don’t plan to do anything illegal with it. But I would hope that when the government or Google or anyone else scans my Librem 5, they get nothing that can be matched later to my activity nor to my identity. I want it to be like the days before there was an Intel Management Engine, and everyone was anonymous, except for the traceability of who was assigned a given IP address at any given time (too cumbersome for them to research on everyone except for if you are a bonafied suspect).
So let’s assume that I do not take part in anything that requires me to be identified (no signing-up for anything online and accepting no cookies). That includes not installing any software that uses cookies, no banking apps, and no other kinds of authentication outside of my own personal networks that I build myself. This may not be practical. But let’s go with it as a basis, before starting to make any compromises in exchange for features that may require compromising our privacy. Can the government identify me and start building a new profile on me from my L5, just because I have a phone that is capable of making and receiving calls, and because the phone has an internet connection? What power will Google have over my privacy, considering that I won’t be a part of their eco-system nor will I have agreed to anything from them? Is it accurate to say that six months later, they will have linked my profile built on me from my Librem 5, to all of my other Android and PC devices, accounts, advertising profiles, and personal identity, regardless of what I actually use my L5 for, simply because I am me and because they are good at spying?
As another issue, both Google and Apple may be so accustomed to stomping on everyone’s privacy that they may not be capable from a technical perspective, of respecting our privacy rights. The internet is built on technology that has required us to sign-away our rights, just to get access, for quite some time now. I could see the likelihood that there are several spying algorithms operating under the assumption that you wouldn’t be where they could spy on you, without agreeing to Google and Apple’s terms (which are probably shared between them) first. So until a class-action lawsuit forces otherwise, both Google and Apple (and probably Microsoft too), may not be capable of respecting anyone’s rights, considering that outside of Purism products, people don’t have privacy rights to begin with. We’ve all given up those rights up long ago. Getting those rights back now may not be easy, even if you have a phone that is compatible with having privacy rights. Just getting a behemoth to notice your adamant protests against what they’re doing can be impossible when they are huge and they’re not set up to deal with issues like the one you have with them, no matter how much the law is on your side. How does an insect communicate to the elephant effectively, that he doesn’t like being stepped on when the elephant really doesn’t care to begin with? He is just going to do what he is going to do unless or until someone can stop him.
