Originally Posted by
Rally Android That's the biggest "feature" to have again. Google where idiots to disable editing on SD cards.
It was a stop-gap... Security on the external card was a nightmare. It was basically an open book. Because of the way the external sd stuff was implemented anyone and everyone had full access to everything on that card. Rather than leave it wide open, they extended the security model of the /data area into the external card while they developed a method (which is a bit of a pain in the **** since the external cards don't use the native file system)... This, of course, compartmentalized things and reduced its usefulness.
It was either lock it down temporarily (sacrificing functionality to keep your data secure) or leave it wide open. Google choose the former.