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Re:There are no secure smartphones by chc4 on Thursday January 14, 2016 @07:41PM (#10906150)
Not only is OsmocomBB incomplete, but it's illegal to use. I've heard it mentioned multiple times that the baseband and the full stack that communicates with the modem has to be verified by the FCC, in order to comply with regulation on RF bandwidth and power. Even if you got it working in your new cell phone, using it would be illegal. I'm not how true that actually is when you can flash router firmware to use illegal wifi channels, though.

http://bb.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/LegalAspects#Usingmodifiedph...

Re:There are no secure smartphones by revelation on Thursday January 14, 2016 @08:06PM (#10906297)
Well any RF equipment that you either modified or built yourself is per default illegal to use. You can buy a bluetooth-stack-on-a-chip and talk to it with your Arduino but once you sell that as a product you'll still require FCC certification.

But the FCC isn't overly concerned if you're doing WiFi or Bluetooth, their area are the broad analog strokes, correct bandwidth and correct power. As such, if you use something that has the correct filters in hardware, you'll be just fine though technically breaking the law.

Re:There are no secure smartphones by mahouse on Friday January 15, 2016 @06:38AM (#10908617)
Well, that's actually a problem: if you are forced to use something like OsmocomBB, law enforcement will be more than glad to see they have a new reason to have you in jail.
Re:There are no secure smartphones by shawn-furyan on Friday January 15, 2016 @12:09PM (#10910566)
I'm not convinced that you're average beat cop is looking for OsmocomBB on your phone in order to trump up a reason to nab you. The tried and true method of following you for a couple blocks and interpreting traffic laws strictly is sufficient and requires much less knowledge and work.