Petitioners Pressure Motorola to Change Bootloader Encryption Practices
A group of power users have gotten just about peeved with Motorola and their bootloader encryption for many of their MOTOBLUR phones. (In fact, I think the only Android phone of theirs that remains unencrypted is the original Motorola DROID on Verizon. Please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.) Anywho, they’ve taken to Groubal – an online petition service – to collect virtual signatures and to spread the word.
As of the time of this posting they’ve gathered over 3,800 signatures and more are sure to be added. It’s a noble cause, but I have doubts about Motorola’s response, if any – 3,800 people is small compared to the amount of users who probably don’t care for this kind of low-level access. Still, perhaps outlets like us shining some light on the petition could help a bit.
It’s worthy to note that Motorola has already reached out to the development community and have publicly stated their intent to look at several different solutions that’ll allow both sides to meet halfway. Many of you wrote it off as PR fluff to keep the negative press and word-of-mouth at bay, though. The description on Groubal acknowledges Motorola’s previous statement and essentially serves as fire under Motorola’s figurative butt to get things moving with an official announcement about their plans.
The petition on Groubal is the biggest the site has ever seen and has featured the cause on their front page. I chose not to put too much stock into that fact, though, considering there are only 580+ petitions on the site making up for 12k+ signatures overall.
I’m also not going to hold my breath for Motorola to give in as online petitions – even those with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of signatures – rarely work these days. (Physical petitions have all but gone the way of the dodo, too.) I do want to see Motorola live up to their word, of course, but I’m not sure a petition is going to change anything in their timeline.
We’ll be monitoring the situation closely from here on out and will be sure to let you folks know if any interesting developments unfold. Be sure to let your concerns be known over at Groubal if this is something that’s of great importance to you. [Thanks to all who sent this in!]