The potential a phone like that would have if you explained people how states can and do put their nose into their lives is quite big IMHO. It is just that people have no idea of how much they can take from your info through a phone.
In general, I'm much more concerned with private actors than state actors. I'm aware of multiple ways in which companies use information to try to extract money from me, and they actively make my life worse in the attempt.
I have a much harder time thinking about how giving states access to my information has been harmful for me. I can think of potential harms, if the state started doing religious or ethnic persecution(not trying to diminish the chance of this, but not a problem today) so I'm aware of potential threats. But other than that... What exactly should I be worried about?
The problem is what you say: political and religious prosecution. Not today, but hey, who knows when, given a situation. So it is better they cannot have our data, right? I mean, that is the safe part of the fence.
I am concerned about any actor, as well, but take into account that a state has a huge amount of resources and if they are motivated enough can make your life worse than almost any private actor. It has happened in history, this is not something fictional.
The reach at which a private actor can harm you is much more limited in the general case IMHO.
The problem 90% of cases is the user himself. Advanced attacks such as spyware-for-hire with zero-days and stuff only affect a minority of users. For the fast majority, the vulnerabilities are much simpler: password reuse/carelessness, malware on other devices (laptop, etc) that also has access to their data, willingly sharing too much information, etc.
You don't need a special phone or hardened OS to defend against that, and users vulnerable to this will remain just as vulnerable regardless of how much hardening there is.
Most people couldn’t grasp the important ramifications even if you walked them through it from first principles. I’m not sure I can despite being very interested in information entropy my whole life.
A lot of people really don’t understand much at all about anything that they don’t constantly see and touch their whole lives. A lot of people truly just live in the moment constantly and use their higher order thinking for social navigation and sex.
