>
Networks must not have the ability to intercept device traffic unless the device administrator (not the network administrator) configures it as suchThe device admin of an iPhone is Apple, the device admin of a non-rooted Android phone is Google, the device admin of a Windows 10 PC is Microsoft and the device admin of a smart TV is likely Samsung. Is that the point you want to make?
All of those companies have incentives to collect user data and are known to push user-hostile changes. They also either have known ties with the NSA or can be coerced via National Security Letters, making even the tired point about "defense against state actors" moot. Do you trust any of them?
If, say, Tencent brought a phone to market in the US that turns out wildly popular but happened to exchange vast amounts of data with servers in China, would you be ok with that?
Most devices today have locked-doen bootloaders, so I don't actually have a choice about the device admin for my device. The position of network admin can be abused, too, but at least there is a possibility I can fill this position myself or can delegate it to someone who I trust.
> Ultimately, your choice with uncooperative devices is "block the device or don't", along with "replace it with a cooperative device".
Right now there are huge market incentives to make devices ever more uncooperative. Unless something changes, the choice for consumers will likely be soon "tolerate an uncooperative device and don't block it - or opt out of technological progress altogether".
> That's fundamentally not possible; any mechanism usable by 'good' network admins can be used by 'bad' network admins.
This argument doesn't get any more coherent no matter how often it's repeated. Somehow the tech industry keeps arguing that the key to any kind of mandatory backdoor will leak with mathematical certainty - while employing that exact same kind of backdoor for their own purposes without any worry - in the form of forced updates and forced telemetry. How exactly can the same technology be a security risk when used by a government but a security best practice when used by a private company?
> We absolutely need full control over our own devices, but many of the people most capable of fighting for that control got complacent about it because a subset of people could hack around it with local network interception stunts.
So then what would be your idea how to gain control?