The swith that “disables everything that can be disabled” is the power switch…
Maybe you have your conception of wath you want desable but it’s not universal.
This is not a rational approach, unlike the choice made by Purism. So if you want to be able to control all the devices without imposing your own choices you need more than 3 switches.
An illusion of assurance, not a real assurance, read previous answers.
At that point you should just get a Pi.
The phone is just privacy oriented, not secrecy oriented. As far as I understood, it’d protect you against mass surveillance, which is data exploitation for market purposes. If you’re being subject of specific surveillance the phone won’t help you. But I don’t see any problem (nor paranoia) in disabling all sensors and stuff too, and I wouldn’t make any fun of that, since it couldn’t become a taboo. BTW, I liked the idea, but by the other hand I’m also pretty happy with the current solution presented by purism.
I partially disagree with you. Sure, no technology is 100% secure but if it wasn’t security isolated then why does it have baseband isolation? (which I believe isn’t common). That gives you a fighting chance at preventing being compromised by some kid with a fake cell tower.
Here’s the latest from Purism.
Could always remove the baseband modem for a paranoid offline GPS device 
Hopefully this post today clarifies some of the confusion from the previous CPU update post that first hinted at Lockdown Mode but only mentioned the GPS. I wanted to do a full and separate post so I could describe the feature in detail and explain some of the reasons behind the feature.
This might be the wrong place to ask, but do you have any pictures or renders of how the kill-switches are going to look? The renders on the product page are all of the front of the phone.
I’m hoping they are not as ugly (sorry but they are) as, the ones on your laptops. In my head I have always pictured them, to look along the lines of the iPhone silent switch. That is probably as sexy as it gets.
My curiosity would greatly appreciate if you could chip in on this.
Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures or renders of what the Librem 5 kill switches will look like yet. I’m sure when we do have something we can officially announce we will.
Now I wouldn’t go ahead and say the same thing as @MuhLinux here because that’s called copying lol. But I can agree with him when he said that the kill switches aren’t in top form. I saw another topic about this and someone linked a picture that catched my eye.
This is from an iPod, and I hate Apple. But this is a really good looking switch with the beautiful orange <3
@Kyle_Rankin If you could create something similar to this, it would be great. Especially with the orange in the back! PS: Please put orange there, please!
Well you could get a Pi, but it doesn’t have as much RAM or a switch to disable/enable the WiFi/Bluetooth. The extra RAM I am really looking forward too. Also, the Librem 5 will have a nicely integrated touch screen and battery in a fairly compact (not so much of a brick 
) form. Don’t get me wrong, I do like RPi’s though.
That was what I was trying to suggest might be a good idea, but it sounds like you guys had already planned that. I guess I posted this topic too soon. I think “Lockdown Mode” is a good feature name. Thanks for taking the time to explain the full feature! It will be really cool to try it out!
I agree that would be really nice. I’ve been quietly hoping for nice switches something like that. I’m looking forward to see what they come up with.
these 3 switches on the Librem 5 smartphone by Purism are hardware switches that corespond to different functions that all modern smartphones use but they do not affect all the sensors in the phone as described above. (gratitude)
some of the other functions/sensors can be disabled through software. this will not be subjected to hardware failure as the 3 mechanical switches will. in this regard i would suggest that Purism design the external chasis in such a way that these switches can be easily mantained and/or swapped with new ones or maybe 3d printable. i can imagine a scenario when i turn off bt/wifi and after that when i need to i can no longer flip the switch because it’s stuck or some other weird malfunction occurs on the inside mechanism. assuming this function is only accesible through hardware and not software this will become a real issue for a lot of users. this is a simple enough problem on the surface but quite hard to figure out a compromise between usability/maintainability/size.
i can see a large design that is easy to swap out and mantain but non-estetic/pocketable and a smaller design such as the Apple example above that is small/pocketable but not-easily mantainable/swapable.
Indeed. Maybe the original switches could be good looking ones, but it’d be also good if they were mechanically compatible with those ugly ones that we can shop everywhere. So, when it breaks we loose the original beauty of the switch, but still could easily buy new ugly ones and repair the phone.
This is of course not the case. Software can turn it on/off. But only if the hw switch is on.
Easily servicable is of course good and to be expected. You could just bridge the switch with a wire.
But there is a much better way than ensuring you can swap the switch: quality.
If the switch is $0.15 instead of $0.02, it should last long enough for your grand children.
Only due to planned obsolescence do we no longer expect that. But all your switches from the eighties still work.
maybe I’m wrong indeed certainly but it seems to me that you are exaggerating. The Librem5, if I understand correctly, must be an open source phone and with free hardware for the known problems we know and for the fundamental purpose of protecting privacy. this is what free software and free hardware are.
But if there is the problem of disconnecting any device we are talking about cases in which we fear being monitored, problems that I believe concern other cases and no longer privacy and for which I believe that, if someone fears to be supervised, perhaps those who supervises has many other tools to do so.
In my opinion, and I may be wrong, we are moving away from the privacy problem.
yes that was what was uncler to me after reading the blog post. thanks for clearing that up !
so if the hardware switch gets blocked in the “on” position you can basically still turn the said coresponding functions/sensors off in the software. that’s a very good thing to have if you can trust the software to do what it says it’s doing ( something that we can’t say for certain in the case of proprietary software )
there you go ! the solution - put hardware switches from the eighties in phones from 2019 and we get rid of planned obsolescence ! how simple that was …
Yes 
Now how does one source switches from the eighties… 
Get a DeLorean 
Assuming the proliferation of cheaper switches hasn’t evaporated the market for more durable switches,. See the durable issues with buttons in many “gaming” mice, the difficulty of getting electronics manufactured outside of China due to security or other concerns, etc.
that requires a separate thread in itself.
