I would be interested to know what the FSF thinks of these differences. FSF approval could boost this project and I think it would be a good idea to work together with them. Saying that your concept for user privacy is better than the FSF's won't do you any favours in getting FSF approval. Remember that user privacy is one of their main goals too.

With regards to modifiable modem firmware, I agree with you that the user should have control and be able to upgrade it. Given the nature of closed firmware, it would be difficult to tell if there is anything in there already that would allow an OTA update by an external source. Perhaps we could have a daemon or cron job that periodically reads firmware ROM to check to see if it has been modified.