Would you care to put any weight behind your accusation?

The main issue I’m trying to expose is that any custom distribution by an OEM can implement any app/service the way they want. The android source code is available, any access and permission can be obtained depending on how you implement it in the source code. You can even weaken the security if you want. Any distribution by these OEMs is a secret sauce, you have no way of knowing what shenanigans they are pulling on your phone.

So yes, they can get root access if that’s what they want.

This is not to say they do. I’m just saying we have no way of knowing how things are implemented and hence why open source is so fundamental to security.

Edit: I concede that the strict definition of what considers a system app does not provide with these accesses. I’m saying any custom distribution with built in apps may have been customized to allow for these things to happen. Perhaps this is where we may have misunderstood each other.