ttmp12 What is the benefit of this?
So that people who have an emergency and are in remote areas without cell service can get help.
ttmp12 Is this a privacy issue with GrapheneOS?
No. They would have to go out of their way to support this.
ttmp12 I would assume not since GrapheneOS does not track users, but what about firmware?
There is no reason to assume the firmware will make the modem contact satellites without the user's knowledge. It doesn't make sense for multiple reasons. Here are a few that come to mind:
- In order for the phone to connect to a satellite, it has to be positioned in a certain way and you have to have a clear view of the sky. So attempts at communicating with satellites would fail a majority of the time.
- It would be a huge waste of battery.
- Pixels are scrutinized by experts. Google would be caught if they had phones send tracking info to satellites regularly. Doing something shady like that would damage their reputation for making secure devices.
- Most people are within range of cell towers. They can get your location easily, so using satellites to track people isn't necessary.
Keep in mind that the majority of people use their phones' stock OSes, OSes that have Google apps installed with privileged access. Google doesn't need to add tracking functionality to devices' firmware to get info about people.
And, last thought, this has been discussed before and the project's official account has weighed in as well. You can use the forum's search function to find those posts.