Rejecting 'Snoop-Phones' and Turning "Old" Phones (or Tablets) Into Freedom-Respecting Appliances

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 20, 2025,
updated Oct 20, 2025

Today I was reminded of Richard Stallman's explanation of his stance on "snoop-phones" as he calls them because Paul Fernhout (pdfernhout.net) wrote back to Akira Urushibatathis this past weekend^* regarding International E-Waste Day. This is what Stallman's site says:

Cellular Phones

• I see that cellular phones are very convenient. I would have got one, if not for certain reprehensible things about them.
• Cell phones are tracking and surveillance devices. They all enable the phone system to record where the user goes, and many (perhaps all) can be remotely converted into listening devices.
• In addition, most of them are computers with nonfree software installed. Even if they don't allow the user to replace the software, someone else can replace it remotely. Since the software can be changed, we cannot regard it as equivalent to a circuit. A machine that allows installation of software is a computer, and computers should run free software.
• Nearly every cell phone has a universal back door that allows remote conversion into a listening device. (See Murder in Samarkand, by Craig Murray, for an example.) This is as nasty as a device can get.
• From the book Alone Together, by Sherry Turkle, I learned that portable phones make many people's lives oppressive, because they feel compelled to spend all day receiving and responding to text messages which interrupt everything else. Perhaps my decision to reject this convenience for its deep injustice has turned out best in terms of convenience as well.
• When I need to call someone, I ask someone nearby to let me make a call. If I use someone else's cell phone, that doesn't give Big Brother any information about me.

Well, he may have needed one today, as a talk was organised at short notice nearby [1, 2]. He probably finished this talk about an hour ago.

I take issue/challenge with Stallman saying (last point): "If I use someone else's cell phone, that doesn't give Big Brother any information about me."

The state listens in on calls and has various ways to figure out that it is him that it wiretaps. So verbal, face-to-face communication or even encrypted E-mail may be better. █

_____

^* Reproduced below as the mailing lists' archives are sometimes down.

It would also be wonderful to see this idea of supporting old hardware progress from supporting old laptops and old desktops (where free software generally works well) to supporting old phones without current vendor support (which are problematical to continue to use with an unsupported vendor-supplied OS given security issues, but it is hard to get a newer OS on most of them).

==== More details

In hindsight, a major tactical mistake for Mozilla's now-defunct phone initiative with "Firefox OS" was thinking in terms of supporting *new* hardware with a new free OS. But it is the users of old no-longer-supported phones who have the most motivation to switch to a new OS to avoid buying a new phone and creating more e-waste disposing of their old phone. There must be billions of old vendor-unsupported smartphones out there by now -- and each in theory could become a "free" phone.

So, maybe reducing e-waste could become an emphasis of the new FSF Librephone project -- by focusing at first on supporting popular phones from the last five-to-ten years which the original vendor no longer suports with OS updates, and which otherwise might get disposed of after replacement?

https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-turns-forty-with-a-new-president-and-a-new-campaign
https://www.fsf.org/news/librephone-project
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_mobile_phones

Beyond Librephone supporting old phones as cell-radio-using *phones*, that support could also perhaps include repurposing old phones (or old tablets) in various creative ways. For example, old phones could become dedicated convenient displays (like displaying upcoming weather by the door, or displaying an outdoor networked camera's or old smartphone's video feed as a virtual window, or displaying a new joke of the day in the kitchen, or displaying news headlines from Wikipedia's home page, or displaying a todo list, or playing music). Or old phones could be used as networked sensors (like using the phone camera to monitor a temperature gauge, or using the phone usb port to connect to a hydrometer for a houseplant's soil, or using the phone to monitor a pet's activities). Or old phones could be used as networked controllers (like to raise or lower thermal curtains connected to the phone via motors, to do other "smart" home things in a free way, or as part of personal robotics projects). You could also network a dozen repurposed phones for gaming to make a "simpit" for an aircraft simulator or spaceship/shuttlecraft simulator with various controls and displays. These are things people might otherwise use an Arduino or Raspberry Pi to do -- but since you already have the old phone (maybe with a problematical battery and needing to be plugged in all the time), you could use your old phone instead of buy new Arduinos and displays and cameras and so save money on hardware. Also, such projects could be made to work even if the cell-phone-service part of the phone was not working yet in a free way but the WiFi hardware or USB hardware and display hardware was now freed. Search on "uses for old smartphones" for more ideas.