Google Chairman Schmidt Condemns Carrier IQ in Androids

Google needs to step up like MS did with Security Essentials and release their own malware, virus detector, etc etc

They need to be more restrictive. My brother's samsung transform was so poorly designed and ran so abysmally that he cursed android forever and it will take a miracle for him to ever try another android phone.

Please please please get a better editor for your articles. Daily there are blatant typos in what you guys publish, for example in this one, the senator's name. I know most reading this will think I'm being picky but after weeks of seeing obvious typos, I'm finally commenting. If you want to be taken seriously then please do a better job editing your posts.

P.S. I still read you daily, it is just annoying.

It's not malware though. It's installed by the phone devs and feeds them the information they want. It doesn't actually bog down your phone or make you post porn to facebook, it's just a violation of privacy.

Then again, I'm sure that in some EULA they could have slipped it in that they're allowed to do that, which would be immoral, but legal nonetheless.

Fortunately you cannot in any way be legally committed to any party who's efforts attempt take away legal right guaranteed by federal law. Just because you sign a contract saying you will work for $0.01 per hour doesn't make it legal, federal law mandates that you will be paid $7.25 unless you qualify for the smw or ymw.

TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 119 > § 2511

Except as otherwise specifically provided in this chapter any person who intentionally intercepts, endeavors to intercept, or procures any other person to intercept or endeavor to intercept, any wire, oral, or electronic communication; ect.....
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

The court may use any means within its authority to enforce an injunction issued under paragraph (ii)(A), and shall impose a civil fine of not less than $500 for each violation of such an injunction.

Basically if found guilty of wiretapping for each device, they will be subject to a mandatory 70.5 billion dollar fine and up to a 700 million year sentence. I want to see the look on their faces when a judge gives out that sentence!

its only legal if a judge things so. just because you sign a contract doesn't mean it can hold up in court. many dubious things in eulas i'm betting wouldn't hold up in court.

That doesn't apply because it's logging key presses not intercepting anything in transit/transmit.

I guess the main concern legally would be if this third party 'espionage' program actually recorded information traceable to an individual phone user.

Cant decide why a series of very large companies would need the information received
... software bug fixes or usage data for nefarious marketing purposes. .

So it's basically a keylogger, aren't they illegal?

This is where rooting comes in to save the day. Your vanilla ROM compiled from sources doesn't have Carrier IQ in it, so neither will your phone.

Contrast this with similar tracking that Microsoft and Apple have already been caught doing, for which their is no recourse because you can't roll your own OS from source code.

If anything, Google should step up and do more to ensure that one can install their own OS on every Android phone, and be assured that every part of it will work.

"Senator Al Rankin"
Really? You couldn't just looks up his name instead of trying to guess what it is? It's Al Franken; should probably fix that mistake.

I hope that this ends up in court with a sensible judge... I see both sides of the issue. However, I want the CHOICE without having to root my device. I think a sensible judgement would be to let it continue, however it has to be clearly, and easily removable from every device within 90 days. This would mean they have to make it uninstall-able through an update or some form of uninstall tool. Penalty of having these tools falsified or people thinking they uninstalled it when they didn't (faking the procedure) would then lead toward the huge $ penalty.

This, ofcorse, is just my thoughts on the subject. I understand why they have it. As a programmer myself I can see how that data can be useful for troubleshooting. Problem is we don't know where the cut-off is and how much other irrelivent data they are gathering is. And even if we did, if 'I' do not want to participate in their 'quality feedback' program, I shouldn't have to... THAT is the bottom line... I've considered rooting my device many times but still have not... I'd RATHER not...

But honestly, a judge should make all of this bloatware/etc. NOT lockable. Every software package should be removable accept the kernel itself. That's my opinion, but then that's to an extreme also I guess.

1. It is installed as a keylogger (as seen with all the keypress events)
2. I did not see any proof of "keylogger" behavior (sending the key presses over the net)
3. I does intercept and send URLs over the net (which I do consider "electronic communication", and which CarrierIQ did confirm)

Like I said on another topic, what was proven the app does is not very dangerous now, since not much of the events are sent over the net. However, who sais an updated app (or rules) cannot be forced on the phone and do all it CAN do.

Of course Google condemns it; it competes with its own data collection, after all...

Google needs to advertise how you don't get this bullcrap with the Nexus phones, people hate bloatware and manufacturer UIs. That's the Nexus's best selling point, they should make a bigger deal of it.

Its very Appreciable that in Android there is a user friendly platform which allows the user to do their own Apps