I’m not even saying flashing shouldn’t be “allowed”. I’m saying it should be impossible. Whatever code the devices run should be in hardware, requiring physical contact to reload. If it’s a permission thing, there might be some way for them to end run it.
I am 100% behind you, but it's not going to happen. The buggy software that we squeeze out now days needs to be patched too often. IMHO we are on the precipice of a software crisis where our systems are too big and too convoluted for anyone to understand. They are poorly designed and hurriedly slapped together with little or no QA. They are riddled with security flaws. If we could not continuously push out bug fixes, nothing would work. And now, this is all catching up with us. God help us.