Phones and permissions

Applications that run on my computer are essentially extensions of me. If Firefox does something, it is doing it on my behalf. If an application does something I do not authorize or against my interests, it is buggy.

It is quite strange to me that we are starting to think of mobile phone applications not as extensions of the user running that app, but as an extension of the person who wrote the app. Perhaps it's because we've become used to website apps, or because mobile phones (at least in the US) are often controlled by 3rd parties (the phone network operators) so we don't expect users to be in control. But I think this is a dangerous way of thinking, one that runs contrary to FOSS ideals. The user should absolutely be empowered to disable or fake whatever information the application can see, especially if the app is user-hostile.