I am still wondering why I was down voted into oblivion for suggesting carrier IQ is not supposed to be the main party to be angry with http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3298924
Can someone please explain why the rage is not directed at phone manufacturers who asked for, and put this software in the phones they sold to customers?
> Can someone please explain why the rage is not directed at phone manufacturers [...]
Because every single statement from phone manufacturers have indicated that it was the carriers that demanded this be put on the handsets (or did it themselves in cases of operator modifications).
The only carrier I've heard say very clearly that they are not using Carrier IQ is Verizon.
Because every single statement from phone manufacturers have indicated that it was the carriers that demanded this be put on the handsets
Aww. Poor vulnerable and naive billion dollar phone manufacturers! </sarcasm>
How does that exonerate the phone manufacturers? At the very least they should have disclosed this to the people they sold phones to.
Even at that why is the rage not directed at the carriers? In addition, I doubt the carriers can make such modifications without the active participation of the phone manufacturers.
I imagine their behaviour of trying to chill security researchers into silence with a C&D[1] drew the ire of the HN crowd, but I certainly don't disagree with you about where the responsibility ultimately lies.
People rarely want to admit they were wrong. They were wrong to choose the manufacturer or carrier when they bought the phone with this. But they didn't choose the spyware/analytics software vendor, therefore they're not wrong and you're not attacking their intelligence and choice making by putting the blame on Carrier IQ.
People gave up their privacy on the web (hey, you don't get mad at Google for sites having Google Analytics tracking code all over the web do you), now it'll slowly transfer to other platforms.
Can someone please explain why the rage is not directed at phone manufacturers who asked for, and put this software in the phones they sold to customers?