I would really prefer all I/O devices, including touchscreens and antennas, have physical on/off switches. 1 for in and 1 for out where possible. Even if I have to open the device to flip them. I'd like to be able to turn a phone into receive-only device without worrying about what it's broadcasting. That's probably a lot more complicated than I'm imagining, but I'd like it if lines between what's a sender and what's a receiver were more clear, instead of everything being both.
A "recieve only" phone radio would only be capable of GPS and FM radio - both the data and voice technologies require bidirectional comms to set up the channel in the first place. (This is basically "airplane mode")
"airplane mode" if you can trust the software is respecting your soft toggle button :) But yeah, that's 2 other great uses for old phones, GPS and radio are pretty useful.
You should be able to block which apps have access to the network.
I know you can do it with Windows. On iOS, you can only block cellular network access with the exception of third party keyboards where by default network access is blocked. I wish I could block apps from having any network access. Can you block network access in a per process basis with Linux or the Mac?
Software won't help you. The premise is a phone where the spy agency has root and your only defense is "physical on/off switches" to control the I/O interfaces.
I'm with you in principle but at some point it becomes ridiculous. On a smartphone, you have at least half a dozen different input and output options, probably more. Where would you even fit physical switches for them all? And, for that matter, how do you trust even the physical switch?
