Thinking about an Android phone? Google can delete your apps at will,

[denem]

and install as well.

Freedom. Android's most appealing feature: No Apple iPhone approval process, just choose whatever you want.

But choose malware, or even a rootkit? Google's process is more Big Brother than Apple's : Remote control of your phone!

Google can kill or install apps on citizen Androids

The Register Google has the power to not only remove applications from users' Android phones, but remotely install them as well.

Last week, Google told the world it had exercised its Android "Remote Application Removal Feature," reaching out over the airwaves and lifting two applications from citizen handsets, and as pointed out by the man who built this pair of vanished applications – security researcher Jon Oberheide – the company can use the same persistent handset connection to install applications as well...

Though Google says that Oberheide voluntarily removed the apps from the Android Market, Oberheide tells The Reg that the company essentially told him that if he didn't remove them, they would be removed for him. He also tells us that Google alerted him before it started removing the apps from phones, "Remote Application Removal Feature", but that he didn't receive the notification until after they'd been removed...

We still say the kill switch is more unsettling – little different from Amazon's Orwellian ability to remotely remove books from the Kindle. Amazon may it won't use the thing, but it can be legally compelled to do so. Or it use it for fear of legal action.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/28/google_remote_a... /

Amazon chose to erase 1984 of all things from the Kindle. An unbook. One can only speculate what might be lost if Google kills an 'unapp', not necessarily for malicious intent, but say unauthorized APIs that are judged to compromise kernel stability.

Orwellian indeed. Android freedom: Freedom from unapps, undata and perhaps unphones, all in an instant or five. "Do no evil"? I wouldn't trust any information collection for profit outfit, period.

[Hosnon]

1. Orwellian? Google is not the government. nt.

[msongs]

corporations are the real government now nt

[FiveGoodMen]

2. Yet.

Corporations are well on their way to being more powerful than governments.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. They are already there

actually...

I fear Gibson did not write fiction, but prophecy.

[appal_jack]

25. I just finished Spook Country

I just finished Spook Country, and had read everything of Gibson's I could get my hands on in the past.

While Spook Country was not his best work imho, it really gave me the sense that reality had caught up to and surpassed many of Gibson's stories and nightmares.

-app

[RKP5637]

6. The US gov. will eventually just be a subsidiary of a US / Global Corp. IMO it's

already well on its way. Anyone not seeing this has their head up their butt.

[Hosnon]

3. To both posters above:

We're not talking about "corporations", we're talking about one corporation: Google. And unlike the government, I can choose to not purchase a phone using Android.

Voila: problem solved.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. You should do a tad of a research

on how far and wide Android been deployed...

You are in for a surprise.

[Hosnon]

8. Good lord, this is ridiculous.

A corporation has no where near the power over you that the government does.

And are you seriously suggesting that it is impossible or even impractical to have a functional life without Google?

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. No, but what I am suggesting is that it is NOT just in phones

you may already own a device that uses aspects of the code... and you may not even know it... for example... the NOOK from Barnes and Noble is an android slate, not that this is heavily published, and there are many other devices, such as semi smart devices in your kitchen or your car, that are Android driven.

And by the way you should also do a tad of research on the real power some corporations already have.

Cyberpunk I fear, is not just a sci fi genre anymore. And that is the product of the last forty years.

[Hosnon]

13. So, its reach is much larger than you assume I realize, but still only insignificant?

And thank you, Mr. Condescension; feel better about yourself today yet?

Unless and until a corporation's power reaches that of a government's, it cannot be called Orwellian (unless you first put your tin-foil hat on - then you're good). And it's laughable to assert that Google has any such power.

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. Well I will point at Santayana

Those who refuse to learn from history and all that. Yes there are scary systemic similarities to the 1880s, but don't let that stop you. (And no, they did not have phones by the way, before you point to the obvious)

You think they don't have the power to do as they may? Perhaps you should read about the REAL problems with too big to fail. But you are right, corporations have no power... citizens united comes to mind, no tin foil hat needed, reality is far scarier.

And no I am not being condescending, unless pointing out that the deployment if android is well beyond phones is condescension, if that is the case, guilty as charged... and PROUD OF IT.

I could say a few things, but why bother?

[Hosnon]

21. "Corporations have no power."

With gross misrepresentations like that, clearly you are not up for an adult conversation.

So, we're in agreement that we're done here.

[nadinbrzezinski]

32. No, you are the one who thinks they have far less

power than they have.

But you are incapable of looking at the evidence. Why I pointed to TOO BIG TO FAIL...

And Citizens United

[Hosnon]

34. I have quite a bit of experience dealing with the difference between

demands made by mega-corporations and the IRS.

Corporations have a lot of power, I don't deny that. But not nearly the amount that the government has.

[nadinbrzezinski]

38. So you have been audited and so have I

that said, you are in real denial here. Their power is ECONOMIC. They have the ability to wreck economies. And a few of them are now hiring mercs...

We have been crossing several lines and will keep crossing them until WE THE PEOPLE manage to get the bought and paid by corporations government, another aspect of their very direct power, manage to pull it off from them.

But for the moment the GDP of a few corporations surpasses in a quarter that of a few nation states, and that is their annual GDP. You tell they don't have power? There is more to power than just police or armies.

[Hosnon]

42. No, I haven't been audited. Such dealings are just a part of my career.

I don't deny that money is the source of real power or that corporations wield quite a bit of it. Or that corporations can amass enough wealth to effectively be governments. But even one of the largest and most powerful corporations in the world is at risk of destruction (BP).

Governments are immune to most of what brings corporations down. Couple that with the authority given them and they have much more power than corporations. (As an example, Chavez doesn't seem to be losing the government vs. corporation fight.)

[FiveGoodMen]

29. "Unless ... a corporation's power reaches that of a government's, it cannot be called Orwellian"

The language police have spoken.

[Hosnon]

31. Wittgenstein just rolled over in his grave. nt.

[AnArmyVeteran]

17. Multinational corporations have more power than most governments

Multinational corporations have no borders and they have no allegiance to any country. And large corporations like Microsoft or BP can purchase politicians in any government to have them pass laws that benefit only them and hurt the people. Look at our country. It's supposedly the most powerful country on earth, yet corporations virtually own all our representatives. Even the Supreme Court is owned by corporations because the corrupt conservatives on the court voted for Citizens United allowing corrupt corporations to buy every election they want with unlimited amounts of money, even foreign money.

Corporations are like armies without countries attacking any country they want and seizing anything they want with their huge war chests full of money. Look at the natural resources around the world. Countries that are sitting on huge amounts of wealthy minerals or oil are owned or controlled by a handful of people. Resources of any country should belong to the citizens, but corporations are powerful enough to have laws written to seize it, while throwing a token amount of money toward us peasants.

[Hosnon]

20. Do you know the difference between an IRS lien and a private lien?

Guess which one is virtually indestructible.

[AnArmyVeteran]

56. Yes, I know the difference, but I was talking about corporate power.

I know the government has a lot of powers and the IRS can be ruthless. I was looking at the bigger picture instead of detailed examples. I believe we have more to fear from corporate tyranny than government tyranny. That said, I wish you well if you're battling the IRS because I know that can be so nerve wracking.

[denem]

4. BlackWhite. If you don't understand doublespeak,

you might address the "Remote Application Removal Feature," that can make you apps and associated data vanish, like a person photoshopped out of a photograph.

[Hosnon]

10. Why? It's a corporation, not the government.

"Orwellian" is a term used to describe governments. I can get behind its application to a corporation if said corporation is quasi-governmental.

Geez, talk about hyperbole.

[denem]

14. 1984 is devoted to the Mechanism of Controls, not Government Itself

Surveillance is most ubiquitous but Insoc's ulimate project was NewSpeak: The wholesale reconstruction of the English Language to disable dissent.

Corporate speak: Right Sizing, Human Resources, is quintessential NewSpeak.

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. And on the government side

AH the Blue Skies Initiative... that one IS a classic.

Aparently our friend NEEDS to read 1984 and not just the cliff's notes. He also needs to find Orwell's diaries...

[Hosnon]

22. Read what I've posted upthread about that. I agree that the term can apply to a corporation

if said corporation is quasi-governmental. The main factor is degree of control. And it's the height of absurdity to place a company like Google and this Android feature in that category.

[jp11]

9. I wasn't in the market for a fancy pants phone but if I was it would have been an android, so much

for fancy phones.

[Posteritatis]

12. Do *any* smartphone manufacturers not have that ability by now?

I can't say I like it - and don't have a smartphone of any type anyway - but honestly at this point the discussion should probably be more about the abuse potential in the platforms as a whole rather than missing a lot of issues by pointing fingers at Google, Apple, or any one company.

[FionaMcG]

15. so why is it such a big deal that they supposedly have the ability to

delete an app?

[nadinbrzezinski]

19. Becuase they have the abilty to LOOK INTO YOUR SYSTEM

who owns it? Or are you just renting?

Jesus age, are people this deficient on the Fourth Amendment?

[ProdigalJunkMail]

23. the fourth amendment protects you from the gov't

and if you are making your query in reference to gov't snooping i will agree with you...but there is very little effective protection from corp spying and the 4th amendment is no protection...

sP

[Hosnon]

24. Okay I can't let this one go despite realizing this is a lost cause.

The restrictions created by the Fourth Amendment apply to the government.

[appal_jack]

27. who charters Google?

Who charters Google? A state, that's who. And that state is bound by the 4th Amendment, via the incorporation principle of the 14th Amendment.

Yet here you are smugly saying that Google can reserve for itself a power not even granted to the state that charters it, and you are double-plus smugly saying that this is NOT ORWELLIAN. Oh no good Hosnon, not Orwellian at all. There's no way that this line of 'reasoning' could possibly end badly, right?

We are free.

But of course.



-app

[Hosnon]

30. The 4th Amendment applies to all corporate entities by virtue of the 14th Amendment?

That's breaking news to me. Got the case law to back it up?

Look, Google's actions here might be immoral and/or illegal. But that doesn't make them Orwellian or in violation of the 4th Amendment.

[appal_jack]

39. I'm giving you my own opinion, nothing more.

The fact is that right now, very little of the Constitution is applied to the corporations chartered by states.

I think that state-chartered corporations must be forced to abide by Constitutional guidelines if liberty is to survive in this nation.

Governments are old news, corporations have the power. Yet corporations still only exist via charters. The real power still lies with the people, if we can be so bold as to exercise it.

Hopefully some case law can be made on this front, and soon.

-app

[FiveGoodMen]

52. "right now, very little of the Constitution is applied to the corporations"

That's why the right has been so anxious to privatize everything.

Because then all the power will be in their hands and no one will have any leverage to stop them.

Why Americans have been so blind to this is beyond me.

[nadinbrzezinski]

35. Who charters a corporation BASED in the US?

THE GOVERNMENT, and those charters are driven and controlled by applicable state and federal law. Guess what? That includes the bill of rights. (And the rest of the amendments)

[Hosnon]

36. Back it up with case law then. nt.

[Posteritatis]

28. The Fourth Amendment objection's silly; the rent-vs-own one, however, is not

That is what makes me uncomfortable about smartphones (and many other computing things) these days - I'm wondering what it will take to get to the point where people can say "I bought this, it is mine; I bought something I put on this, it is also mine."

[Hosnon]

33. That is a good point. This very well may be illegal. nt.

[Posteritatis]

41. Far from being illegal it's pretty much the default state these days

Any software you own, most hardware you purchase, any media you have, chances are you don't have first sale rights on any of it. It's depressing.

[appal_jack]

69. how is it 'silly'?

I happen to think it rather silly that a state could possibly delegate a power to a corporate entity that the state itself does not itself have. What good are fundamental liberties that are enumerated and enshrined in our Constitution if they can be simply abrogated by chartering a private corporation to do the 'dirty work.'

-app

[Xithras]

37. Actually, they don't have that ability.

There is no provision within the Android OS that permits Google (or anyone else) to simply search your phone. What Google does (as does Apple, Amazon, and every other retailer online) is record what apps you're downloading from the Marketplace.

Google pulled up the Phone ID's of every phone that had downloaded the malware from the Marketplace, and sent DELETE commands to those handsets to remove those apps. If the app didn't exist, the command would be ignored. If it did, the app would be removed.

Because smartphones are becoming unbiquitous, it's important to understand that neither Apple or Google has the ability to remotely "search" your phone for anything. Yet, anyway.

[FionaMcG]

44. Well, so what? Would anyone actually keep sensitive information

on such a device? That wouldn't be terribly prudent. Heck, if google can look at it, then any decent hacker can too.

Keep it clean, keep it simple, nothing to worry about, just use common sense.

[femrap]

48. You provide a great

service here...too bad there are so many 'willfully ignorants' around.

Today, gov't and corps work hand-in-hand with the corps pretty much telling the political minions what to do since they pay for their campaigns and reelections. It's fascism. And now the SCOTUS is a corporate tool as well.

I believe you. People just don't want to believe how truly f*cked the once great US of A is. Maybe it's more denial than willful ignorance.

[hobbit709]

26. Simple solution

Phone that only makes and receives calls. Also much cheaper. My 60 year old eyes don't need to look at teeny screen in the first place. When I leave the house I don't care about internet, email, etc.

[Jennicut]

40. My 34 year old eyes don't need to look at a tiny screen. I am so cheap I own a tracphone.

I have no idea how to even text...well I know you push buttons for letters but I have never done it.

[hobbit709]

43. Same here. I've used Tracfone for 10 years.

As far as all that other stuff like texting etc. it makes me think of that sign in front of some church
"Honk if you love Jesus! Text and drive if you want to meet Him"

[Jennicut]

47. LOL.

I desperately want to throw my husband's phone out the window. His buddies in his band text him constantly. Texting all day long is so rude. There are living breathing people around you, you know. It is kind of getting to be a bad habit.

[Control-Z]

45. Amazon chose to erase 1984 of all things from the Kindle?

I can say for a fact that that is not true - at least not as of today. I have it on my Kindle. I downloaded it just last week for my daughter.

It may have been removed in the past and since reinstalled. I don't know. Makes me more curious about the whole story.

[Posteritatis]

50. It was a specific edition because of some licensing/permission issues. (nt)

[Control-Z]

55. Oh. OK.

That makes a little more sense. The OP made it sound like a censuring issue.

[superduperfarleft]

46. Much ado about nothing.

I'm on my droid now, so I'm too lazy to link the article, but gizmodo's report seemed to indicate that they only did this for apps deemed malicious. I for one am glad that google is doing this.

[LLStarks]

49. I trust Google 100x more than I trust Apple. nt

[dbonds]

51. Sounds a little different when you include other parts of the story

When Google announced that it had actually used its "kill switch" to remove Oberheide's applications, it didn't mention Oberheide – or his applications – by name. It merely said that it had removed "two free applications built by a security researcher for research purposes" and that "these applications intentionally misrepresented their purpose in order to encourage user downloads, but they were not designed to be used maliciously, and did not have permission to access private data — or system resources beyond permission.INTERNET."

The announcement came by way of a blog post from Android security lead Rich Cannings. "After the researcher voluntarily removed these applications from Android Market, we decided, per the Android Market Terms of Service, to exercise our remote application removal feature on the remaining installed copies to complete the cleanup," Cannings said.

With a blog post of his own, Oberheide – who works for the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based security startup Scio Security – later revealed that Google has removed a pair of applications he used to demonstrate how easy it would be to bootstrap a rootkit onto Android phones via the Android Market, Google's version of the App Store. Oberheide built an application dubbed RootStrap that periodically phoned home to retrieve native code that executed outside of Dalvik, the Android Java virtual machine. Then he distributed the tool through the Market in the guise of another application – Twilight Eclipse Preview – which purported to be a sneak peek of the upcoming Twilight teen vampire flick.

[denem]

57. Not at all - it's a simple proof of concept. 1 Android OS features "Remote Application Removal"

2. The OS facilitates a remote scan of installed apps, and reports back to google. 3. Google can send a "kill command" deleting the offending apps from memory. 5 Associated data would be virtually inaccessible le. 4. The process takes place without user consent.

According the Oberheide, the same feature cam install appls and/or services, again without user intervention or knowledge.

It's not so far from we don't like what's on your phone. Delete. In this case the Oberheide's apps were deliberately, obvious, ostentatiously malicious.

If you trust Google to 'Do no evil' in wider circumstances so be it. An NSA backed court order? No so much.

In the mean time users have to trust their apps do not earn Google ire for say "Unauthorized APIs", like a privacy app that disables Google remote controls and reporting.

[dbonds]

62. There is not one word about a remote scan - you made that up.

The apps in question were wrongly labelled as something harmless that was nothing to do with what they were. They were rootkit like apps (put up on the app store by the author to show that apps could be dangerous). Google took appropriate action by removing them.

I bet if Google had not removed them you would be bitching about how insecure the Android platform was. There was no scanning of installed apps or data by google, just a generic delete this very bad app from all phones.

On edit: I've dealt with lots of bad and evil companies in my career, but so far Google has proven to be one of the good guys. I don't see any thing in this report that changes that opinion.

[denem]

63. How can you implement a "Remote Removal Service" kill without confirmation

whether an app is present, and the further response that the app has been deleted from memory.

[denem]

65. ... Crickets ...

[dbonds]

67. You didn't pay attention to my post or others posts.

They can send a global delete out to everyone for emergency cases like this. It tells your phone if you have this app you need to delete it. No scanning of the phone data.

And yes you and I heard Crickets last night because I went to sleep.

[TheKentuckian]

53. Seems to me they need to trick you into doing somethings like deleting ahem "adult" streams

and unauthorized emulators and what not.

Almost everybody roots these things anyway but it is computers so Google will lock down over time and a new platform will fill the niche and the cycle repeats.

I will say there is reason for concern that Google is quasi-governmental at this point seeing that they are part of the closed door meeting to work out a "deal" on net neutrality.

They're among the big boys now.

[Rosco T.]

54. So can APPLE, so can MICROSOFT... I'm keeping my Nexus...

find something important to be panic stricken about.

[denem]

60. Link? Hint - Nada.

[IndianaGreen]

58. Steve Jobs, is that you?

When are you going to ditch the evil AT&T and sell an open source iPhone?

[MiniMe]

59. Do you pay for the apps they remove?

Forgive me, I haven't gone smartphone yet.

[Gordan Shumway]

61. I'm new to the smartphone

Just got a Droid 5 weeks ago and I'll never pay for an app. There's thousands of free apps. If Google wants to remove some for whatever reason I don't care. It's most likely dangerous for your phone. I don't get the hubbub.

[KansasVoter]

64. Apple is a bunch of controlling freaks. And arrogant as can be. I'll choose Google!

[denem]

66. Google makes its money collecting information about you and selling targeted ads.

Apple's primary income is from selling hardware, software, music, video and more recently books.

Who ya gonna trust?

[dbonds]

68. I trust Google over Apple...

Although there are far worse companies than Apple out there.