The kill switches seem kind of pointless, what threat are they trying to control?
Apps accessing them even when you told them not to. Same as with some lenovo notebooks having physical switches for WLan.
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What apps? This is Linux built from a standard Linux platform. You just kill access on the apps themselves.
A hardware switch kills the wifi(for example) completely itās not app specific. So in that scenario it would be useless as you cant kill WiFi for an app, you kill the entire phone.
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If your ultra tinfoil hat and got pwned to the point you cant tell etc you can hard disconnect the circuits so it physically cant access that stuff and will be 100% not gathering data.
Also i dont think you really have much access to the cell sim stuff (like part of it is our of the end users control)
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I like physical airplane mode, gives me a sense of controll. To each their own, I guess.
Having the linux level of controll on mobile devices is a plus in my books.
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Itās not app control though itās a system wide disconnect. Which brings me back to the same question what are they trying to mitigate with that?
It doesnāt do anything for apps as it makes your phone inoperable, itās useless for state actors, thereās no one left?
Turn off your phoneā¦
Individual hardware switches for the various wireless devices im just confused at what theyāre trying to do, unless itās just a marketing gimmick.
then you can use any appsā¦ idk
partial gimmick, partial point of failure
Maybe gimmick.
Hardware Kill Switches for camera, microphone, WiFi/Bluetooth, and baseband.
I think of people that tape over laptop cameras and maybe microphone, tho I donāt know what benefit the other buttons would have.
They donāt do this because of apps getting data , this is to prevent acts of corp espionage etc. gaining access to sensitive info within the environment around the device.
The cut off switches are kind of useless as they turn your phone into a brick keeping in mind there are plenty of other controls for per application control. And the switches wonāt work for hiding from government surveillance.
They will work for literally anything if designed properly. Software switches can be circumvented with a vulnerability; even hardware indicators can be circumvented when poorly designed:
http://jhir.library.jhu.edu/handle/1774.2/36569
You probably need a rootkit to get either of the above categories of attack to work. Arguably, if someone already has root on your device, itās pretty much too late, but some of us like the certainty of a properly designed kill switch.
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Iām rooting for the phone but will likely never do pre-order / indiegogo type stuff again.
They wonāt work because you have the phone on you, as soon as you connect to a cell tower you think they wonāt track you? You think they wonāt be following you already?
They are useless for state surveillance because if your a target of surveillance your already being followed. The only option is to do what RMS does and not carry a phone.
They will also have the convergence mode. You plug in the phone to external monitor,keyboard and mouse and you will be able to use it like full desktop PC.
That looks sweet. The fact it has RJ45 makes it cooler lol.
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Be aware these are mostly Hypothetical Answers here and yes were into tinfoil / devils advocate territory but anyway a long reply ahead:
Some of the apps are Snap/Flatpack, most are webapps.
That doesnāt mean anything if the app is compromised. This could be remotely or by malicious code. What about applications installed outside of the Purism store ? (after all it is a Linux distro you can install stuff from anywhere, think arch AUR in natureā¦) You donāt know until you knowā¦Linux is not outside the scope of either thing happening at all. Not least forgetting bugs.
(*Anecdotally i had a bugās on Snap packages where the Gnome software center is set to not be able to access camera, location, home drive and the button is saying this is indeed correctā¦ i entered sudo to confirm. Guess what the button does jack 
access was still granted. Soft buttons donāt always work 
)
Itās mildly tinfoil sureā¦ is that always the worst thing in this day and age ? Is it unreasonable to be quietly confident as a user that when your in a space where you want 100% mobile confinement you know categorically you have it. A lot of people do this for their PC already, why not on their phone ? especially an experimental one.
Your might be looking at your use case and applying it to everyone else. Firstly, you donāt kill the entire phone, because wifi isnāt cellular itās still a phone.Itās still a linux distro and can do anything an offline PC can do ( although it seems to have rj45 lol, im not sure thatās actually shipping on the phone.)
It doesnāt brick the device it creates device isolation and that is upto the owner of the phone not the manufacturer OR the person who made the OS ( google etcā¦ )
And owners of this device may want such isolation also. In fact, remember when governments were giving out blackberries to high ranking staff because they were more secure and locked down. I could see the Librem being used for these departments just the sameā¦ ironically they might be the ones buying a ton of them.
Already answered it does not make the phone a brick.
Yes it will in fringe cases. As said id expect governments themselves to be interested in the device so staff can go into meetings and not have to leave their devices at the door.
Also out of interest why do you always tend to think it is people wanting to hide from big brother ? What about corporate espionage (these devices will be used in business too) scammers, hackers, extortionists, other governments not of our own ? etcā¦ Not everyone wantās privacy because there afraid of the Gubberment.
Yes, yes itās tinfoil we can all agree. Donāt buy the phone or donāt toggle the buttons
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@Eden As i said aboveā¦
Software flip switches only work when they work. Hardware flip switches work everytime. The Librem has hardware switches.
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Every time against what threat? Iām not saying there isnāt reasons to use them, Iām saying Iāve not heard any credible threats they would be useful against.
You say about circumventing software controls hard fine. But the solution is to dismantle all communication options. Thatās a total disabling of all comms hardware otherwise the control is worthless.
Whoās doing this? Why? Whereās the threat that requires such extreme options?
I donāt see any credible reason your average person or anyone here would need this. Thereās so few actual reasons this would be required and the few reasons something like this would be required already has a control in place. You turn your phone off.
For the sake of argument, if the switches are a gimmick, but they get X amount of tin-foil hatters to buy, and that āXā amount gets the project into the green allowing for a V2 of the phone, and this spins off like the pebble watch and becomes something I can buy whenever, for years to come, Iām all for it. We need more diversity in this space and about time something other than Dex comes along.
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The video above is a credible threat to some. Anyway, It looks like you didnāt read my post fully.
These features are for existential threats, your asking for a list of threats that may or may not even exist in order to justify the existence of the feature.
btw
that was answered specifically in my post.
Again, answered.