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> set ‘owner only read’ permissions on files it writes to external storage The usual storage location for apps is in their internal app sandbox. External means outside of the app sandbox and requesting access to external storage is a legacy approach to sharing data between apps.

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The whole point of external storage is that it's shared storage between apps. The ability to request global access to it was a poor design that started to be phased out in Android 4.4 which introduced granting case-by-case file access instead. 5.0 extended that to directories.

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Scoped storage (developer.android.com/preview/privac) will finally remove the legacy approach to shared storage, by getting rid of storage permissions to request global external storage read / write access. It emulates the legacy approach with a scoped directory but it's not the intended use.

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developer.android.com/guide/topics/p is how apps were supposed to access storage since Android 4.4. It opens a system file picker and the user chooses the files / directories. This way, there are no permissions, and they can select files / directories from external drives or app providers.

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Unfortunately, there was massive pushback against Scoped Storage from anti-privacy app developers. They successfully misrepresented the feature and used journalists and power user communities as tools to fight against it. Apps can now opt-out of it until the Android R API level.

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Is there any mitigation in a foreseable future? Can

deal with this situation and support the Scoped-Storage-like features?

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Scoped Storage will be available within a month or two. The approach is fully compatible with legacy applications as I explained above. There is no need for something like Scoped Storage rather than using the actual feature so I don't really understand the question you're asking.

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GrapheneOS has planned to have a feature like Scoped Storage for many years. This issue was filed in 2016, but it was planned long before that: github.com/AndroidHardeni. The project hasn't had the resources to implement it, but now it can simply fully enable the standard feature.

add support for isolated shared storage · Issue #526 · AndroidHardeningArchive/legacy_bugtracker

In almost all cases, apps should be avoiding shared storage and using content providers and other sane mechanisms with fine-grained control for sharing data with other apps. However, the reality is...

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It would have been better for GrapheneOS if the campaign against this privacy / security enhancement hadn't been successful. Apps using the Storage Access Framework (i.e. having users choose files / directories via the system UI) provides better UX than scoping legacy access.

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Any idea who led the lobby against the enhanced privacy approach?

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There were a few people dedicating hours every day to spreading misinformation and dishonest claims about it. They lobbied communities like /r/Android and /r/androiddev on Reddit (but also across many other sites) and turned communities against it by misrepresenting the feature.

2:45 PM · Jul 20, 2019Twitter Web Client

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Journalists jumped at the opportunity to push the narrative that Google was removing functionality and the ability to have things like third party file managers. They didn't make any real attempt to provide accurate or honest coverage and just jumped on the outrage bandwagon.

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It's a systemic issue with journalism and isn't at all specific to this. There's little interest in actually informing people with accurate and honest stories. They would much rather push populist narratives appealing to people's desire to be outraged and ignoring the real facts.

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