Software freedom is about freedom of choice, not philosophically mandated security holes. You are free to take the GrapheneOS code and introduce a huge vulnerability in the form of a privilege escalation path from sandboxed apps if you wish, it is open source and you can easily compile and flash your own build.
Mobile phones store incredibly intimate data and are incredibly vulnerable to seizure. It stores my message history, pictures I've taken, so many other records that together would provide an incredibly detailed view into my private life. And it is on my person at all times, even through checkpoints where I have minimal protections against search and seizure like borders! This is not a device that I want a broad surface for modification of system software on.
Why is providing a mechanism to view your own data a security risk? You cannot view application data (even in a read only fashion) without root on android. Why should the app be able to read its own data, but the human not able to?
GrapheneOS already ships Seedvault, which extracts application data with no root at all, so what you describe is possible in at least some form, but I assume not with the ergonomics you want.
Providing a good interface for that access is a specific missing capability. But we shouldn't presuppose that the only way to supply it is a global su. The former is a bounded fix; the latter changes the isolation model of the entire system. A portal is mediated, scoped to what you asked for, and revocable. Root is none of those things.
Seedvault is itself an example. The need for backups can be met either with a narrow backup service or by handing out root and letting you do it however you like. Those two have very different security properties, and you can want the new capability without wanting a generic privilege escalation path to deliver it.
> not philosophically mandated security holes.
So you're arguing the same technofascist arguments that Apple and Google both claim. I own my phone, not technofascist sky daddy, or whatever developer also envisions that role.
My hardware. My rules. More people like you need to learn what ownership actually bloody means.
The source code is right here, make your hardware follow whatever rules you wish with your derivative of it: https://grapheneos.org/source
you have the choice to run a custom build of grapheneOS with root. If you think its valuable there probably are other people that think so too and you could coordinate and figure out your own builds / releases / QOL, etc.
The graphene team provides so much value already. I don't expect them to cater to every need 100%. They are a positive force in the ecosystem when every other Android provider is locking down their builds they still provide everything as open source with security updates as best as they can.