In the recent process of planning out how to maximize my privacy using my new Librem 5 (whenever it arrives), I have just realized a good way to maximize privacy (a lot), using the Librem 5 and a smart watch. Ideally, all the smart watch would be capable of doing is to tell time, make and receive phone calls and data, to connect via Bluetooth to your Librem 5, act as a Hotspot, and nothing more. Maybe the Pine watch could do all of this. If not, something else on the market should work. If the smart watch comes with any other features or apps, they can be disabled or Uninstalled. Ideally, I would look for a smart watch that does not have GPS capability.
The idea is to cut Google and all of the other snoopers off at the knees. All the watch should do is to provide wifi access to your Librem 5. You wouldn’t even need to use a Bluetooth connection to your Librem 5 if the watch has all of the phone calling features that you need. If you do use Bluetooth, you could keep that Bluetooth hardware kill switch on your L5 all turned off except when you want to transfer your calls to it.
In this configuration, your Librem 5 could be connected to the outside world, only in ways and at times that you deem safe from moment to moment. Most of the time, you could even keep your L5 turned off (power saving), except when you’re actually actively using it. When you are using your L5, only the needed hardware kill switches need to be kept in the ON position. With a completely de-Googled phone such as the Librem 5, and an always-available wifi connection (the watch), you are in absolute full control of your privacy without sacrificing your ability to access the world (nor for others to contact you) in even the least bit. Even the SIM card in the watch has no affiliation to how you use your data nor to any web browser (except for law enforcement via your carrier). So your Librem 5 is then just a small tablet with 5G data access (via the watch and your L5 wifi connection to the watch), and with the ability to make phone calls itself also, if you ever decide to turn on that phone feature of the L5 via its hardware kill switch. Any calls made that way (directly from the L5) show you as a completely unaffiliated person from the owner of the watch. So you have a burner identity or a two-factor authentication identity available on your L5, that has no known relationship to how the rest of the world knows you, and that lives behind the hardware kill switch which stays off except when you choose to turn it on. At the same time, your watch handles phone calls which can be routed to your L5 via Bluetooth if you want to handle your calls on a case by case basis, that way. Either way, your browsing, banking, and other apps on your L5 should be completely immune from surveilance capitalism, except through your watch which has no apps of its own, no GPS and no browsing nor purchase history. At best, Google might tri-angulate you via wifi scanning as an unknown person through the watch. The only time your L5 becomes visible at all is when you turn on the wifi to actively use it and then you disappear when you’re done. If you use a Google address book on the watch, they might figure out who you are and still know nothing about you except what you post about yourself, to the web. But it’ll be very easy to hide most details about yourself by hiding everything about yourself that you want to keep private, on your Librem 5 and as only a wifi data sharing connection client of the watch, which knows little about its Librem 5 client.
Maybe Purism’s next project should be a very dumb smart watch that has only phone and data and internet sharing capabilities, and that has a randomly changing Google Advertising ID number.
