On 2015-11-18 12:43 PM, H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
Well, I don't believe such conspiracy :) The Neo900 project is too small to start such activities by any government. Would be too much recognition for a small project. They would have to pay a team of investigators and updating such lists... And, there are more effective means of stoping a project than making Paypal apply their "standard procedure" to limit accounts. For example they could have frozen it completely. Additionally, there are payment methods to continue without Paypal. Basically, there are hundreds of stories of people having similar issues (limited account) floating around and I would have to add my own one... So it is more a fight with Paypal policies which are more restrictive and unpredictable than normal banks and credit card merchant accounts. Because they are *not* a real bank. AFAIK Joerg has asked a lawyer for help. And more generally, western democracy has rules for electronic and radio devices which are defined by EN and FCC standards everyone can study. They don't change over night on a case by case basis. As long as the Neo900 fulfills them it can have everything like separate chips, watchdog, free software apps etc. All those are not directly forbidden in any such certification rules. The only thing that is forbidden is to operate it without fulfilling the approval requirements. That is for example the FCC 5GHz WLAN discussion. They don't really care about software or firmware and open or closed. What they care about is that it must be made sure that all devices in operation have the same characteristics as the one that passed the approval measurements and can't transmit on frequencies that are assigned to different radio systems. As long as this can be guaranteed by open software there is no problem with FCC. Unfortunately it isn't, if the WLAN chip is baseband only and the firmware can be replaced or configured differently. Of course with closed software it is easier to prove that it can't be changed.
Interesting, I didn't know the issue was PayPal's "standard procedure" to limit accounts.
BTW I wasn't talking about FCC regulations. I meant the NSA and GCHQ type people possibly not wanting the Neo900 on the market. From their perspective, they might wonder why anyone would care enough about the modem that they would design a new phone that keeps it separate and monitors it with a watchdog. That is the primary feature that distinguishes the Neo900 from all other "smartphones".
A while ago I saw a TV show call people who care about such things "privacy terrorists" and conditioned the viewer to embrace mass surveillance.
Ryan _______________________________________________ Community mailing list [email protected] http://lists.goldelico.com/mailman/listinfo.cgi/community http://www.openphoenux.org
