I brought this up in my video but I didn’t make that video for this audience so I should repeat it here: It is very unclear to me what actual privacy benefits the system would provide even if implemented in its full capacity.
Increased separation between T-Mobile and Phreeli is what is missing in the current implementation, and if more zero-knowledge proofs are used in that context, that has no bearing on the fact that T-Mobile is directly getting your IMEI when you connect to their towers.
Basically, I dislike the Double-Blind Armadillo marketing simply because it is not true and IMO further misleads consumers, but even if it were true it does not address the privacy concerns I have unfortunately.
To be perfectly frank, what has Calyx done to advance privacy? Their ISP has certainly advanced internet connectivity in the US, and CalyxOS has certainly advanced free and open-source software in the Android ecosystem. And those are both certainly noble/laudable goals, but neither of these projects have a huge privacy impact.
CalyxOS happens to be more private by virtue of being FOSS, most FOSS projects just inherently are because private software is user-friendly software. But when it comes to being privacy-first, they have consistently ignored obvious privacy improvements in favor of other priorities. I have nothing wrong with Calyx in a vacuum, and I personally like the things they value, but I just don’t see them as privacy leaders. They are working on cool things that interest them, and taking advantage of privacy marketing in the process due to Merrill’s case noteriety.
I think Phreeli is not much different. It’s my guess that Merrill just wants to be an MVNO operator because he seems to be most passionate about computer/cellular networking, and privacy was simply the clear marketing play for him given his history.
I wasn’t bothered by this when he did basically a similar thing with Calyx and their hotspots, but Phreeli IMO has gone too far with the privacy claims and is actually misrepresenting their product, which is dangerous for consumers.