I mean, people say use end to end encryption, VPN, Tor, Open Source Operating System, but I think one thing missed is the hardware is not really open source, and theres no practical open source alternative for hardware. There’s Intel ME, AMD PSP, so there’s probably one in phones. How can people be so confident these encryption is gonna stop intelligence agencies?
Sure, that basic physics knowledge was kind of implied in my comment. But yeah, my phrasing is misleading. They can’t make “every” pager explode. But they can make you end up with one with explosives inside. Most of these things are supply chain attacks. Could be targeted at someone and happen after manufacuring. Or you’d make the regular manufacturer include a backdoor. Or you’d do it like with the pagers and set up a whole fake manufacturer and sell them with a bomb inside. I suppose in that case it would be possible to detect it. But I’m not an expert on explosives.