Flagship Mobile Phone with Hardware Kill Switches for Privacy

That's how we'll be robbed of our computing freedom. Technically we'll be able to install whatever software we want but they'll be able to detect our "tampering" and discriminate against us based on it. "Tampered" with your computer? Can't access bank accounts, can't access communications applications, can't even play video games or watch films. One day even networking protocols will require corporate or government attestation. Won't even be able to connect to the internet without a corporate owned computer. Can't even read an article on some website.

We're going to be marginalized. We're going to be second class citizens of society. The only way to gain access to services is to give up control of our computers to the corporations and governments.

Or this 90's hardware oddity that combined Mac and PC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6b4lYOI0GQ (skip to 8:00 to see it in action).

I wonder if dual-booting is possible, with the boot-loader loading the bootloader that's been "blessed" by Google's certification priests to boot the "certified virginal" phone.

Maybe it should. I'm not convinced that we're automatically done for if the NSA, CIA or whatever starts coming after us. That sort of demoralization is probably part of their psychological warfare.

The US government is constantly lamenting the fact cryptography has become widespread and regularly attempts to straight up outlaw it. Cryptography is subversive: it has the power to defeat police, judges, spies, governments, militaries. The simple act of encrypting web traffic shifted the landscape to the point governments are stockpiling vulnerabilites to get around the cryptography. The next step is to systematically eliminate these vulnerabilities so that the cryptography cannot be worked around.