[Security Discussion] optimumpro:
I read your monologue and frankly don't understand the points you are making, unless they are only for the sake of an argument. According to you, everything, whatever or whomever say it is wrong, but you aren't offering anything of substance. "Sitting ducks": nobody cares about sitting ducks, i.e., people who don't care about privacy and security. This entire site is for those who want to help themselves and if they don't, they can go to hell. OEM vs. stock vs. aosp vs CM: the same, you, as a user, must sort this thing and how it relates to your device. No one is going to chew it for you. Cloud (and you are there anyway): not everyone, I and I know a whole bunch of people live entirely without a cloud; they don't have any internal "social" apps, they don't connect to playstore, they don't have GAPPS and they don't have GSF; if they need to use facebook (which most don't), they do it through a normal web browser; they use textsecure sms (forks of it) without any internet access and the content of their communication is open to those they communicate with; servers: if you want to trust any, that's your choice, the default is no trust to any server, that is why you use an app that is separated from the server unlike the telegram; hardware/software: you are right that software is the last line of defence, but your point is entirely useless: we can't touch hardware, so according to you it means, we, therefore, shouldn't bother with software? Doesn't make any sense. GSF/Firefox does not spy: LOL. Have you seen the source for GSF; on firefox, visit f-droid and check their version of firefox called fennecdroid: you can see their building notes with lots of reporting modules removed; Root vs. non-root: of course user (the one who wants to help himself) should have root, otherwise, he is defenceless against system apps which have root anyway. You can setup SU so that even system apps prompt for permissions; and once the phone is locked, you can run in a separate non administrative account; AFwall: here is a snapshot of IP addresses shown blocked by my firewall: 112.104.25.150; 213.21.32.134; 111.251.38.150; 194.146.191.204; 114.412.152.14; 75.80.23.243; 224..0.0.22; 62.48.203.163; 153.232.11.152; 41.232.137.6; 179.232.95.113; 86.146.109.139; 79.229.88.166; 74.122.95.83; 101.56.9.6; 154.45.216.159. Keep in mind, I have no GAPPS, no GSF, no one time initialization; no cell broadcasting; no sound recorder; no cm account, no setup wizard, and many other stock/oem/cm/aosp apps. These are system apps trying to connect to the internet, and they are shown as kernel activities. They are all prevented by the latest beta afwall by using builtin iptables, which are 3 times larger than stock ones (by the way, with stock ones, almost all pings would go out despite the firewall. Yes, Google Android is built upon spying: one can say that the entire operating system is one big piece of malware, but the good news is Android is based on Linux, so, if you get rid of the Google part of it, it is usable and still much better than anything else...

No one is claiming protection works 100%, but according to Snowden, who you mention, properly implemented encryption works. In addition, don't give too much credit to 3 letter agencies: there are lots of idiots sit there: they can't break anything, that's why they look to compromise and those are two big differences (compromise vs. break)...

I am not sure it would make sense to argue about this any longer....

Nothing personal; I have no intention to offend you.