We were told "don't be paranoid" before Snowden and look at how that turned out.

[Ignoring gov't paranoia discussion]

> Its actually the EU and US rulings against their monopoly thats driving it.

Can you elaborate on this? Locking phones down like this would seem to make Google an even bigger target for future anti-trust suits, no?

Depends on how they implement it and how they seed political support. Id they sell it as "save the kids" and give token authority to the same kind of DCMA region lockin, itll become a government backed utility.

Monopoly enforcement only occurs when theres no natural monopoly.

It sounds like the classic selective enforcement quid-pro-quo mafia state bullshit. The government doesn't really care about antitrust compared to control and snooping, it just makes a convenient excuse to arbitrarily punish for compliance. Just look at the "payment for services rendered" given with unenforced broadband expansion funding that wound up in pockets and every ISP having a room 641A.

> Again, the paranoia is just drivel.

Well, in this case (government surveillance), probably not.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden

> goveenment paranoia

This is just what you'd expect any government that is either competent or greedy to be doing, given the technologies at play.

Calling it "thought crime" is, of course, a bit glib. But things like "we want to monitor the communications of every pro Palestinian university student so we can take proactive disruptive actions" are very real and not so hidden desires and sentiments of modern Western governments.