My colleague Kevin Fitchard reports that the ACLU this week has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission to investigate how carriers play a role in the fragmentation of Google’s mobile operating system. Specifically, the ACLU claims that many Android devices are running versions of Android “with known, exploitable security vulnerabilities that have not been patched.” Google engineers regularly fix those flaws, but too often those patches aren’t distributed by carriers and their manufacturer partners.

While I’ve long complained of Android fragmentation, I’m not sure the ACLU has much of a case here — I don’t know how carriers could be forced to issue updates across a broad range of devices when that would require the active cooperation of their many handset vendors. But I do think the complaint underscores the opportunity that exists for one or more companies to offer high-end Android devices that would be guaranteed to receive regular updates. In fact, I suggested a year ago that Google should do just that by teaming with a manufacturer to create a branded ecosystem within the larger Android world. Failure to do so has left the door open for somebody like Samsung to capitalize — and it leaves Google at risk of becoming the slumlord of its own OS.