You can choose non-US companies. OnePlus, Samsung, etc. I don't think China or S.Korea is less inclined to spy on you, but I suspect they are less competent at it.

Isn't Samsung considered to be kind of an arm of the South Korean government? They also make weapons of war and other military equipment, and they haven't proven to be ethically or morally responsible, if not outright reprehensible.

For many people, their only positive quality seems to be "Not Apple."

But then you end up with Google. It doesn't matter who builds the hardware, if it runs Google's system.

Is Apple good? Probably not. Is it less of a threat to your privacy and freedom than Google? Probably.

This is where I would mention that I'm running Cyanogemod, rooted of course, with Protect My Privacy (PMP) installed.

http://www.android.protectmyprivacy.org/

While I really like non-Google Android + PMP in theory, the reality is that this solution is extremely complicated, limiting, error prone, buggy and probably not worth it.

So I concede that Apple is the better choice, but nevertheless, persist in my futile efforts to make my 1+ somehow work securely.

How dies PMP differ from PrivacyGuard? From the description it sounds the same.

After Ubuntu dropping out (officially, at least), your best bet is probably LineageOS: https://lineageos.org

ah man.. i just needed to clean my monitor of coffee reading this. :)

Samsung, really? :D weeping angel rings a bell?

Yeah, it looks like the choices are between competent+PRISMed and incompetent. The former can likely only be accessed by the Five-Eyes. The latter may be secure, but may also be insecure and accessed by anyone. What would you bet on? For me, a deciding factor is that I don't live in a Five-Eyes country.

Pretty much agreed, though not living in a five eyes country doesn't mean any of those eyes aren't 'looking' at you. :)

Quite the opposite actually, if you're a citizen of it you have some constitutional protection against your own government spying on you, at least in the U.S. AFAIK. If you are outside of it, you're fair game.

In theory i agree if you read up on what is shared about it.

In practice i have very strong doubts this is a fact. Specially since there is '5 eyes', '6 eyes', '9 eyes' and '14 eyes'. And any of the members are monitoring domestic terrorism, so i fail to see how they are not spying on their own citizens.

>but I suspect they are less competent at it.

Maybe they offload it to the US as NSA is so good at it.