I couldn't agree more. I am seriously considering my position in the Maemo and MeeGo community because I do not want to contribute to software and devices which will be used to abuse privacy and steal personal information. I have suspended the work I was doing to port MUD and GPE to MeeGo (and submitting bugs and patches to the MeeGo tools) while I think about this further.

I realise that Nokia employees cannot afford to make public statements which may contradict company policy. I will say that Quim seems to have done what he can to escalate the issue internally, including arranging a call for me with one of the Nokia lawyers to discuss the accusations I have made that this violates the UK Computer Misuse Act (which carries serious criminal penalties). Of course the lawyer could not admit any wrongdoing but I was given the opportunity to make my point, forcefully. The lawyer did confirm that they are relying on the text on the box to claim that the user has "authorised" the registration.

I am still hoping that Nokia will see their mistake, apologise, fix the PR1.2 problem and make a public commitment to the community that no Nokia Maemo or MeeGo device will ever again collect personal information without allowing the user to opt-out (with no impact on features). But it is just a hope -- I have not seen any evidence that this will happen unless there is either a major PR impact or a major legal impact first.