volatile

  We've had a number of US-based law enforcement bodies over
  the year try to get hold of our data without going via the
  appropriate Australian bodies, and it doesn't work out for
  them. In the end, they have always ended up submitting a 
  request for cooperation via the Australian Federal Police,
  as they are required to do, and we respond to that request
  in line with Australian law.

  In any case, the phone network firmware in an Android
  device is not equivalent to a circuit, because the 
  hardware allows installation of new versions and this
  is actually done. Since it is proprietary firmware, in 
  practice only the manufacturer can make new versions 
  – users can't.

  Putting these points together, we can tolerate non-free
  phone network firmware provided new versions of it won't
  be loaded, it can't take control of the main computer, 
  and it can only communicate when and as the free operating
  system chooses to let it communicate. In other words, it 
  has to be equivalent to circuitry, and that circuitry must
  not be malicious.

  The marketing plan is that the because router
  vendors are unwilling to say ‘has less memory!’ as a
  marketing tactic, maybe they’d be willing to say
  ‘drops more packets!’ instead. That seems implausible.

  The best way to solve that is for a router to notice
  when the queue has too much data in it for too long,
  and respond by summarily dropping all data in the
  queue. /snip/ Of course, I’ve never seen that proposed 
  anywhere…