>The main point is that police are profiling people using Pixel phones. Nothing about making it illegal, or trying to remove encryption.
How can you think that profiling people based on their phones is not harmful to privacy?
In most western countries surveillance requires prior evidence of wrongdoing, if your phone brand or phone OS can be used as evidence that you might be engaging in criminal activity, that is of course a danger to privacy. It should be normal that people use Software and Hardware that respects their privacy and desiring privacy should never, by itself, be allowed to be evidence of criminal intentions.
Profiling isn’t taken as evidence of criminal intentions. It can be as simple as, you do random searches, but you increase the frequency of random searches for people who match multiple behavioral criteria empirically associated with criminals.
How can you think that profiling people based on their phones is not harmful to privacy?
In most western countries surveillance requires prior evidence of wrongdoing, if your phone brand or phone OS can be used as evidence that you might be engaging in criminal activity, that is of course a danger to privacy. It should be normal that people use Software and Hardware that respects their privacy and desiring privacy should never, by itself, be allowed to be evidence of criminal intentions.