Cops say criminals use a Google Pixel with GrapheneOS – I say that's freedom
androidauthority.com
androidauthority.com
"European authoritarians and their enablers in the media are misrepresenting GrapheneOS and even Pixel phones as if they're something for criminals. GrapheneOS is opposed to the mass surveillance police state these people want to impose on everyone"
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114784469162979608
State employees in their official capacity making inaccurate claims to media about GrapheneOS to smear it as being for criminals and as the users as largely being criminals is a state sponsored attack on the GrapheneOS project.
> GrapheneOS is not immune to exploitation, but the fearmongering done in these ongoing attacks on it is very clearly fabricated. They feel threatened enough by GrapheneOS to engage in coordinated attempts at convincing people that it's unable to protect their privacy and security.
So... they (cops and friends) are saying that GrapheneOS is for criminals, AND that it does not work at protecting anyone's privacy and is not for security. Amazing.
See: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114784553445461948 and the rest.
They really are absurd.
Here in the land of more-guns-than-humans it feels so much more bleak.
You cannot buy a kitchen knife because people MAY use it cause harm.
It is like forbidding the use of roads because it MAY be used to <insert illegal activity here>. Uses (usage?) of roads are even more broad than uses of knives.
I think it is easier to argue in favor of knives (or against the prohibition of ... of knives) than guns, for this reason alone.
Yes I can. I have knives I bought recently in my kitchen.
How could you possibly believe that people in the UK can't buy knives? Do you realise how foolish that sounds?
The irony.
Just as foolish as these ways are to prevent violence.
These criminals might switch to forks, better get your Government get one step ahead of them.
And no, you cannot buy kitchen knives if you are under a certain age, it is ought to prevent a lot of crimes, I am sure.
Care to explain?
No spray, no airgun, no folding mace, absolutely nothing can be used in self defense.
Except for the alarm.
But that's the point - if the courts have found that defense is lawful, then it becomes a question of why it's possession (not even use and proportionality) would not be. Then you end up in a weird state where people can make up reasons to have a hammer or something else on them rather than have something potentially more reasonable/effective like pepper spray. Allowing some limited non-lethal tool seems reasonable if defense is actually something to support.
In the wake of the Kyle Rittenhouse stuff I remember Americans saying that going armed to a protest (not just that guy but others) was reasonable and routine because you might need to defend yourself if things go bad. In much of the rest of the west the general idea is that if you’re going somewhere you think you might need a weapon - you probably shouldn’t go.
Is there some research on this? Not just talking about guns, but even things like pepper spray.
"if you’re going somewhere you think you might need a weapon - you probably shouldn’t go."
I generally agree with this. I do wonder how this fits in the overall system. This assumes there are places that you could need a weapon, or where weapons could be used against you. It also assumes you always have a choice to avoid the area. If these high risk areas exist, how does the entire population avoid them? If that were even possible, the threats would also redistribute. Examples like Rittenhouse might be textbook for easily avoidable situations that turned bad (hence the news coverage), but I'm not sure it's representative of the full range of situations (the stuff that doesn't make the news).
Additionally, it is OK for you, because it might not be of interest to you, but given that the UK is doing all sorts of absurd stuff, what would happen if they did something absurd with regarding to the thing you like?
It likely reduces knife crime. Much as denying sales of lighters and flamable fluids to minors makes fires started by children less likely. (This deeply offended me as an adolescent who enjoyed burning things.)
Is there a benefit to society of allowing minors to buy knives?
We don't have laws to make bad things like murder completely impossible. We do it to make them less likely.
Fires though, I can definitely believe it does prevent some arson.
> Is there a benefit to society of allowing minors to buy knives?
The default is "no ban". You need an argument the other way around. I think it is a silly question by itself. Is there a benefit to society of allowing people to skydive?
You also can't carry one in public without reasonable cause - which in the end is decided by a judge.
A gun can be used for recreational shooting.
A gun can just be an historical collectors' piece.
A gun can be used in researching bullet proof vests and other equipment for a startup looking to sell to law enforcement/military.
There are many reasons for gun ownership. Ultimately, the reason should be that the individual is free to do as he/she chooses so long as he/she doesn't initiate a violent interaction.
The most often cited reason for banning firearms is the prevention of school shootings. For some reason, everyone is focused on the gun and not the fact that students wish to do violence at schools. What is it about the modern educational system that students wish to perpetrate violence in the schools to other students and teachers? Why isn't the mental health of the American youth at the center of this conversation?
[1]https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/polands-top-cop-accidenta...
Guns are more likely to cause accidental death or suicide than to save your life. Big cats and bears can be dealt with using sprays and other measures.
A bit of sport shooting isn't worth having to train kindergartners in active shooter drills.
If a kid really wanted to hurt another, could have done it through other means. Could it be that more kids in the US have violent tendencies for whatever reasons? It would be nice to figure out those reasons.
It’s almost like gun enthusiasts are, conveniently, completely incapable of processing the concept of “force multiplication”.
Why is "wide range of use" being used as the metric rather than "societal good"?
While there are downsides, there's more to it.
Doubt. More like 70K. Far fewer than incidents where guns were used to cause harm.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/debunking-the-guns-...
Now if the government thinks there isn't really a good reason to have a phone they can't hack ( because they are the good guys right.... and in theory need court orders etc - so there is legal oversight ) then they will see such phones in the same light and consider banning.
This is at the core of the argument - and why governments ask for a special backdoor - as they accept a generally secure phone ( to stop your neighbour snooping ) is a good thing, but they are used to being able to tap phones and open letters if a judge gives them permission.
Obviously the ironic thing is most phones probably already do have special backdoors - but only for the country where the makers reside - and that countries government doesn't want other governments to know or have acccess.
And in the case of fridges - there is no argument there that they aren't legit reasons to own.
In the case of knives - zombie knives don't really have legit use, whereas kitchen knives do.
The ultimate point of gun ownership isn’t sporting or even self defense, though they are useful for both. The real reason America is armed is so that if our government ever gets too tyrannical, we can do something about it.
Some people may not like that today but if you go back and read what people wrote circa 1775 and forward, this is the clear rationale.
It’s been doing that for at least two decades, yet I’m still waiting for you people to get on with it.
But my opinion doesn’t change the rationale for the 2nd Amendment.
That way lies fascism and anarchotyrrany.
The something is killing police and soldiers. That's the quiet part.
Unless the tyrannical government has presented itself at the compound in a force of plumbers and actuaries.
historically, when a government became too tyranical, either the government went on and on, or people did the quiet part
And why does it mention the right within the context of a "well regulated militia"?
Could it be they feared having a permanent national army, so did the 2A instead? Only later to realize having a standing army were necessary after all?
No that couldn't be it. Because then there would be no rational reason for keeping 2A and flooding the country with deadly weapons.
Sure, they chose to put a civilian in charge of the military, but I was always under the impression this was to keep the military from interfering with the normal process of government.
It doesn't, anymore than the freedom of speech is only in the context of one of the other rights mentioned in the 1st amendment.
"the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Who decides? Someone who doesn't like how the last election turned out?
Some person who decides the police are being too tyrannical by asking them to turn down their stereo for neighbourhood peace?
Honestly, when does this go from "we're prepared" to "time to act"?
This has mess written all over it.
Also, it should be noted that the army and police are made up of humans too.
As has been pointed out in various war tribunals doing something under orders doesn't entirely absolve you from moral duty.
In fact the loyalists did.
>This has mess written all over it
History doesn't come with nice tidy procedures and unanimous agreements on action.
I disagree with some of the implied answers, especially paragraph three, but:
> Where is the line on tyranny?
> Who decides?
> when does this go from "we're prepared" to "time to act"?
Like I said, these are excellent questions. An individual with a strong moral compass should have answers that differ from “not me” and “somebody else”.
The military and police are human, but they're also the main path towards control. If you treat them good, they'll treat you good, likely until they slip too far and are unable to back down without facing consequences.
It's mostly a good way to avoid situations like Cambodia's killing fields since that was also done by humans.
It'll result in a mess, but a mess is better than torture-to-death camps and famine.
But the words "critical mass" don't seem much more helpful than the definition of tyranny. The questionable boundaries apply, it's like a "you'll know it if you see it" thing.
The problem here is perception. Some people may "see" an outrage that causes them to act. While others don't. Jan 6 and George Floyd riots are two examples of people "seeing something" that caused them to act.
But if you are going up against the most well funded military in the world by some margin - well, whatever is seen had better motivate a LOT of people.
This is very much absurd.
The police quite often destroy antiques handed in by people who know about the bans but not the exceptions.
I have a multitool I bought long before the ban, that is now illegal to carry routinely. I bought one with a significantly longer blade for my daughter which is perfectly legal to carry.
If I understand the proponents correctly: Ostensibly it is to defend one's property and people from a tyrannical government.
Just for an exercise, let's say you believe that. And let's say that day is here. The tyrannical government has arrived and has necessitated your use of assault rifles.
The people you're shooting, what are they wearing? They're almost certainly wearing uniforms; police and/or military.
From the proponents' standpoint, the reason to have assault rifles is to kill police and soldiers.
One of the ironic aspects of the situation in the US is that the fear that is used to justify the need for guns is by and large there because everyone has guns......
Very few people in the UK are troubled by the thought that they might need a gun to defend their home or person, as there is no expectation that you will be attacked by somebody with a gun.
There is also no expectation to be threaten or shot by police with guns either.
If the government is allowed to have them, the people should be allowed to have them. Anything else would be inviting tyranny, as has been demonstrated ad nauseam by pretty much every government ever.
Feels unsafe man. We should look towards free and egalitarian countries like Congo, Sudan or Zimbabwe where citizens have access to the same hardware as the military and they use it regularly to deal justice, competing with the local military. Much better.
Though it's sad to see the gangs are starting to collect local taxes - before you know it they will start behaving like the awful government that they have replaced!
https://www.history.com/articles/black-panthers-gun-control-...
Your second amendment defenders are actually on the side of tyranny, ready to torch the Capitol a second time when their caudillo orders so.
And while it may seem unfair that your favourite peccadillo is deemed illegal - on balance it's a much better system than every man, woman and child for themselves.
On the other hand IIRC it has a lower rate of at least some types of violent assault.
One possible explanation is the healthcare system - fast treatment makes a big difference to the chances of surviving an attack (and are one reason murder rates have fallen over the years, and why developed countries have much lower murder rates). Does anything in the US system delay treatment significantly?
Cars (especially trucks) can help you achieve similar aims, and are much harder to restrict.
I wonder if they are going to do anything about at least a thousand number of other items that may be used to cause bodily harm to a person. What about something related, such as forks?! Bags?
Here is the relevant section from our current laws: https://danskelove.dk/straffeloven/134b
Not literally, but there was some criminally bad warfare going on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Balaclava
it’s is both slang for sports uniform (usually shirt) and also is a type of fabric material super common in clothing [0]
[0] https://fabricwholesaledirect.com/collections/jersey-knit-fa...
Canon to the right of them, canon to the left of them canon in front of them volleyed and thundered. Stormed at with shot and shell boldly they rode and well, into the jaws of death into the mouth of hell rode the six hundred.
https://politi.dk/lov-og-information/tildaekningsforbud
(Trigger warning: danish)
And Southend in England tried to do the same (but failed...)
/s, if not obvious. Strange times.
Besides, we can use the extra license taxes from people with multiple fridges to raise funds for the schools.
You don't hate the children, do you?
The base purpose of a gun is shooting things, generally living breathing ones.
I could kill a guy with a stick, a rock, a frying pan, a blanket, etc…pretty much most things; however, none of those things exist expressly for that purpose.
Simple concept, huh?
Sounds like your hunting rifle still qualifies.
What I think you are saying is:
The police are arguing both sides (in typical fashion). On one side, the police say that GrapheneOS is for criminals because of its privacy, etc. However the police are also trying to convince people that GrapheneOS is not private or secure, in an attempt to sway people from using it.
[1] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114784488424006190 and so forth.
My guess is the ambiguous use of "they", interpreting "they" as GrapheneOS instead of the police.
That makes it seem like you are criticizing GrapheneOS rather than the police.
Occam’s razor applies even when we want to believe a cool story.
Yes, I know, age of hyperbole, but a state sponsored attack on the project is mass arrests, blocking of funds etc.
Graphene does their PR, the police does their PR. Both have different views on the world.
If I say “stop attacking me” during a heated argument no one thinks you’re physically assaulting me. That would be ridiculous.
"There’s a bitter irony here, too, as GrapheneOS recently pointed out in a tweet. The Spanish region of Catalonia was at the center of the massive Pegasus spyware scandal in 2019.
"Pegasus, a sophisticated surveillance tool sold exclusively to governments, was reportedly used to hack phones belonging to Members of the European Parliament and eavesdrop on their communications. Yet, police in this very region are now scrutinizing savvy Pixel and GrapheneOS users for hardening their devices against unlawful surveillance and other attack vectors."
Something tells me domestic surveillance is only applied to peasants not the wealthy and powerful.
Couldn’t you have googled that?
And if they're going to be allowed to cheat then why hasn't the cheating done any good?
I understand the US' companies and the War in Ukraine made a lot of pressure on EU's lawmakers, but the lawmakers basically nullified the scope of GDPR (military side, in a world where being able to control domestic SIGINT is king), and made EU' domestic companies unable to compete against foreign ones with one single decision (economic side).
It was just irresponsible.
2022-2023 for example a lot of companies removed their Analytics and Pixels js, because some EU members agencies (Spain and Italy to be precise) started making pilot cases against domestic companies.
It did work though, EU companies could either take an enourmous cost to properly implement these (ie. by local proxy sending only minimized data) or remove them in favor of EU tracking companies. A lot of similar suits followed with cases against Meta.
By 2023 it was clear the EU would make a political deal with the US so companies restored the defaults, without making the necessary anonymization changes.
Well not only surveillance, but also things like 'law', 'constitution', etc. applies only to the peasants.
Even if Trump was one of them, he had no power at that time, so couldn't have done anything to stop (or bury) the surveillance, but Clinton could.
> Something tells me domestic surveillance is only applied to peasants not the wealthy and powerful.
I suspect it's applied to them even more than the rest (ordinary people are not that interesting to surveil), the question actually is what is done with the surveillance afterward.
The mass surveillance state didn't really get going until George W.
Epstein had better surveillance on his activities than the government.
> Even if Trump was one of them, he had no power at that time, so couldn't have done anything to stop (or bury) the surveillance, but Clinton could.
Who was president at the time Epstein told a reporter he had blackmail material on rich & powerful, later was arrested (and his blackmail material collected from his properties), and finally placed in a facility that had trouble following standard prison procedures while awaiting trial?
I'm betting those weren't the only copies of the blackmail material. What are the odds Mossad and other intelligence agencies also have them?
I think all are surveilled no matter the status. Acting upon it is a different matter of course.
> Acting upon it
Same same.
It probably is but it's focus on security and privacy makes that so not that it's designed with nefarious purposes in mind. To us this is obvious but to lay people the nuance is lost.
Cops think I did something wrong? Show up at my house with a warrant.
There are all kinds of ways that its easy to tell if someone is acting like a criminal, like trying to get and serve a warrant for their arrest.
Can't get a warrant without a warrantless wiretap? Fuck off then.
Privacy was a luxury we had, while we could bribe the better angels of our nature with the surplus of the past and while technology was something, that did not scale.
Now a terrorist could take a army of tanks while besieging a city. All the other justifications for a Panopticon are flimsy, but the fact that technology - our savior from savagery, has turned around and bit the hand it was supposed to feed, justifies the thing.
https://es.ara.cat/sociedad/sucesos/guerra-tecnologica-movil... ("Guerra tecnológica: el móvil de los narcos contra los troyanos de la policía")
or https://www.ara.cat/societat/successos/guerra-tecnologica-mo... ("Guerra tecnològica: el mòbil dels narcos contra els troians de la policia")
> "Cada vegada que veiem un Google Pixel pensem que pot ser un narcotraficant"
(You'd have to navigate through four layers of links to find this: two layers of androidauthority linking to itself, then through xatakandroid, then finally you get to the primary source, the Catalan-language daily Ara. Though, for reasons, it's linking to a Spanish-language machine translation of the Catalan original—the "es." subdomain, which says Traducción no verificada at the top. So, we're five levels removed from the primary source, which is one sentence, which has gone through two rounds of machine translation (ca -> es -> en)).
> if some lobbies are pulling the strings
Sure looks like it. Many people don't understand the consequences of the ChatControl proposition (backdoors for governments into all messaging apps) [1].
Politicians insists it is only about protecting kids from predators online, but see for example Sweden:
* Police and secret police will have this access for swedish citizens.
* Secret police have an agreement with NSA about data sharing (see Snowden).
* NSA will end up storing all my DM:s.
* Another country also have an agreement with NSA about data sharing.
* This other country will find out about my sexual orientation or political beliefs the moment I board a plane to their country.
All of this will be outside of control from my country or the laws of my country (Sweden), that is supposed to protect my free speech [2] and anti discrimination laws [3].
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_to_Prevent_and_Comb...
2: https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/sven...
3: https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/sven...
F*k Ylva Johansson:
> Research by several newspapers led to allegations of questionable connections between Johansson and her staff and companies that would benefit financially from her proposal, including Thorn and WeProtect.
> Johansson rejected the accusations as being untrue, true but not illegal and as not even being accusations.
> Her claim to have given data protection organizations the same access as to the backers of her proposal was rejected as untrue by several organizations and members of the EU parliament. Johansson reacted to growing rejection of her proposal by ordering commercial advertisement on Twitter paid for with EU funds. The advertisement was criticized as being misleading and illegal according to the EU's rules for targeted advertisement. [4]
4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ylva_Johansson#Surveillance_of...
At least in my country, there has been serious laws protecting the users from police opening letters (1962:700; Postlagens tystnadsplikt). This was changed in January 2023 because people exploited it to send drugs thru post office [1].
Of course without any protests in Sweden because again people don't realize their rights to privacy are taken away from them.
1: https://www.svenskhandel.se/nyheter/nyhet/lagandring-ger-moj...
1: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_harm_asse...
Yet I can go to certain neighborhoods in Stockholm and get pretty much every thing under the sun and that's open 24/7.
This is the source of some massive disconnects between people and their governments, I think. They had some permission, which we basically agreed on as a society, when their tampering was obvious and/or limited in scale (just due to practical constraints). We gave our consent to be governed with those constraints in mind.
Nowadays they are continuing without those implicit constraints and they don’t want to have the conversation about implementing new explicit constraints. This isn’t the deal we agreed to, really, it is just what they can get away with without permission. You can rule over a populace without their permission, of course—it’s just very different from the sort of pleasant (albeit never perfect) relationship that willing populations and their elected officials have had recently.
You mention Sweden, I can easily also name Switzerland, the land of generally very decent, moral and polite people. Yet sometimes curtains falls off a bit and one can see how various police departments will do everything possible to track and follow people. Police are generally very nice but I've also seen some unprovoked brutality and generally less-than-stellar behavior by various authorities that should know and do better.
Protect what you can, while you can. No state is your friend, its not normally an outright enemy but rather a party focused on its own interests, your rights or needs be damned.
Switzerland is not in EU, not in 12-eyes, not in any of that shit.
I'm sure they are up to no good, too but at least the distance between them and NSA is farther, I hope.
The so-called israelization[0] of the police. Certainly you see that in the US. If you compare the local police, say, 50 years ago with their counterparts today, you definitely notice a strong militarization. That may be appropriate for special units handling dangerous cases, but it should not characterize the rank and file that handle petty crime or public disorder.
> No state is your friend, its not normally an outright enemy but rather a party focused on its own interests
The state is the only recourse of the common man against powerful private interests. In this case (surveillance, etc), private interest has been used as a way to get around the legal limitations of government. Companies like Google and Facebook can track people with greater ease than the government can.
[0] https://www.amnestyusa.org/blog/with-whom-are-many-u-s-polic...
The question I have is, why?? I assume some Israelis or people with ties to Israel who wanted Israel to have influence over the US police. (But why?)
I doubt it was a big thing like “gee, you know what Israel can export? Police brutality!” “Hey that’s a great idea!”
But that’s kind of how it comes across.
The same reasons Nazis studied American segregation: they admired what they were able to accomplish and want to do something similar themselves.
Those with that fixation on authority want to maintain the authority. With various post 9/11 movements, the patriot act, tons of military spending, etc, there was both a desire for "security" as well as a lot of ex military gear going to police stations.
Israel just happens to be pros at violently suppressing groups of people, and just happen to be an ally and generally sorted into the "good guy" category. Additionally, Israel exports many "security" type goods and services, from cyber weapons, to traditional weapons. It only makes sense that Israeli physical security companies, where all of their employees have served under the IDF and received the training, would want to start a business offering said training.
So we have a police force who like their authority, are receiving ex-military gear to "protect" either themselves or the population at large, and are fed a constant stream of fearmongering about them being in constant danger. So they begin to act violently first as a means of defense. This creates a feedback loop where the police are seen as violent and corrupt, so criminals are more likely to try their hand at defending themselves or escaping, which makes the Police's job more dangerous.
So now their job is getting more dangerous because people can't trust that their lives wont be ruined by the luck of the draw, if they happen to get a shitty cop that's protected by the establishment. So the police want training to better protect themselves against this agitated populace. There just happens to be an ally known to export weapons and security products who offers training for subjugating a populace, and the police sign up.
That is literally going to put people's lives at risk. Crazy.
Secret police definition [1]
> Secret police (or political police) are police, intelligence, or security agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, ideological, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.
Security police definition [2]
> In some countries, security police is the name given to the secret security and intelligence services charged with protecting the state at the highest level, including responsibilities such as personal protection of the head of state, counter-espionage, and anti-terrorism.
Specific example for Swedish 'Security Police'.[3] if you look up any EU agency with similar roles it will be found that they are all security, not secret.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_police
FWIW, the distinction is not as clear cut to me. In the 1970s, the ruling government body (social democrats) passed on information in order to make registers of political opponents in the far left and far right to SÄPO.
More of that part here: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A4kerhetspolisen#%C3%96ve...
The Nixon watergate scandal was also similar to your first definition there.
Palantir, founded by Peter Thiel (currently funding JD Vance), is building a vast person database [1].
I believe their biggest customer is the US government, and is being used by ICE [2].
1: https://beyondthefirewall.substack.com/p/palantirs-new-maste...
2: https://www.404media.co/leaked-palantirs-plan-to-help-ice-de...
But the more nefarious issue is that countries that use to uphold human rights and the rights to privacy for their citizens up until 10 to 15 years ago have made a complete U-turn.
And before someone says that this is due to the far-right getting into power, this has really nothing to do with it.
It simply is blatant attempt at muzzling the population. The worst part is that you still have European governments who feel the need to give lessons of democracy to China et al.
I could see how Hungary would want to get this passed because they are well on their way to authoritarianism but this proposal coming from the EU who is supposedly politically in the center, that makes zero sense.
They need to highlight that we are nothing like as bad a China. We look good in comparison.
> this proposal coming from the EU who is supposedly politically in the center
Is it? Its the only country in the world with a constitutional commitment to privatisation (its in the treaties, which are the constitution, and came close to being called a constitution).
The EU is not a country. It may very well be in 50 years from now but not presently.
> > this proposal coming from the EU who is supposedly politically in the center
I said `supposedly`.
> They need to highlight that we are nothing like as bad a China. We look good in comparison.
Not if they go through with this proposal. You can't claim to be a bastion of democracy and want/need to spy on your citizens 24/7. These 2 notions are just not compatible.
Semantics. its near enough to being one to compare to countries in terms of law, policy and constitution.
> I said `supposedly`.
Depends what you mean by supposedly, I suppose! Its intent is clearly not centrist.
> Not if they go through with this proposal.
Still far better than China. No prison for holding the wrong views, or following the wrong religion, or having the wrong culture. No genocide. Having elections.
I am not happy with where the west is going, but comparing with China its still far better (against a low base).
Not much good coverage on it out there apart from the great work by The Rage journalists.
All these people created tools that could be used by anyone. Encryption, the Internet, cars. All have legitimate uses cases just like Tornado Cash does.
To me, not wanting to have all of your public blockchain transactions linked to you is actually quite similar to wanting a phone detached from the hivemind - all you want is a bit of privacy.
Let’s just say it is in a different category than Alexandra Elbakyan.
Why is the creator of this tool being held responsible for how others use it? That's like dragging Henry Ford to court the moment a car driver runs someone over.
Tool != Service
Making and selling lockpicks is very different from running an "I will pick a lock for you" service. The latter is a dramatically higher level of involvement and culpability.
> Why is the creator of [Tornado Cash] being held responsible for how others use it?
Nonsense, they didn't give away (or even sell) a tool, they were actively operating the tool themselves, taking requests to control and aim it in different ways.
> That's like dragging Henry Ford to court the moment a car driver runs someone over.
No, it's like dragging Henry Ford to court because he was the driver of a vehicle that struck people, and his taxi service was advertised as The Light Is Green If The Passenger Says So™.
Driver Ford might not be the only person in the vehicle responsible for manslaughter, but a court case is absolutely justified.
> Nonsense, they didn't give away (or even sell) a tool, they were actively operating the tool themselves, taking requests to control and aim it in different ways.
They did give away a tool - they published (open-source, GPL3) a set of smart contracts. They then deployed those immutable (!) smart contracts as a one-time thing. From that point forward, anyone could interact with those smart contracts permissionlessly, that's just how Ethereum works. They didn't afterwards control or aim it in different ways - how could they? The smart contracts are immutable.
All they actually did afterwards is host a user interface (also open-source btw) that made it easy for users to interact with those smart contracts. After some outside pressure they added geo-blocking to the user interface they hosted, which —unsurprisingly— didn't actually stop bad actors from using Tornado Cash. After all, even if they were unable to get around the geo-blocking, bad actors could self-host the user interface or interact with the smart contracts directly.
Think of their user interface as an email client. Would somehow blocking an email client actually stop people from sending emails? No, they could still just use SMTP and directly interact with a server. In the same way, taking down their user interface or implementing any sort of check would not have prevented bad actors from interacting with the smart contracts directly.
One could argue that they may very well think that this sort of thing could never happen, that the center will always prevail etc... but then again I remember seeing this video compilation of a lot of very confident people in the US saying that Trump would never be president a few months before the 2016 election, let alone be elected for a second term.
So that makes me think, how can they so confident that "the good guys" will always be in charge?
Because from where I am standing there is a massive chance that Reform will win in the UK and that the National Rally will win in France in 2027.
Nobody can say that they did not know.
They implement such systems precisely to always be in charge.
The bet is that no matter who is in power, the ruling classes won't find themselves under the boot, which is a pretty good bet to make. Beats a revolution, in their eyes.
(I'm surprised anyone still calls it the Arab Spring now that we know how disastrously it turned out.)
Just as an example. You are gay. You live in a gay friendly place. Until one day, a new government takes office that will incarcerate gay people. They now have access to every one's phones who previously had nothing to hide.
Everyone has something to hide... unless there's something utterly wrong with them.
The GP argument is the correct one. You might not mind now, but that's not the problem.
For the same reason you close the door when you are pooping on the toilet. You know what you are doing there, I know what you are doing there, so leave the door open.
That's what I always lead with, if we come into that territory :)
Look, I literally have a Pixel phone running Mullvad. I care about privacy. But everyone here is reading the headline and arguing against a strawman.
This should be a discussion on how valid it is for police to profile people. Or maybe if it's actually true that drug dealers are using GrapheneOS. Europe _is_ attacking encryption and privacy. But this is not it.
All of the extrapolation about people using GrapheneOS globally feels like journalists trying to squeeze as much hype as they can get out of this one sound bite from one police rep in one area.
If you start caring more about how it supports your side rather than the truth, you're playing politics. And in that battlefield you'll lose to eurocrats.
I had to click through several links to get to this part.
It’s an off-hand comment from a single police person who was trying to make some point.
The android news sites are getting a lot of mileage out of that single comment from a single person.
Exactly - though in this case I'm not sure what that means - if they 'feel more alert and suspicious' - that's just going on in their head ( pretty difficult to control that ). If on the other hand it means you are constantly getting stopped and searched that's another issue - but then you could argue that's then argument about the stop and search rules in whatever country.
ie what counts as reasonable grounds for the police to take concrete action.
How can you think that profiling people based on their phones is not harmful to privacy?
In most western countries surveillance requires prior evidence of wrongdoing, if your phone brand or phone OS can be used as evidence that you might be engaging in criminal activity, that is of course a danger to privacy. It should be normal that people use Software and Hardware that respects their privacy and desiring privacy should never, by itself, be allowed to be evidence of criminal intentions.
Less and less so. Take a look at the way the laws are going in the UK and the EU.
Why can't it be a discussion about how valid it is for police to use the desire for privacy as a basis for profiling? Is that not allowed?
Are you saying that we're required to either talk about:
1) whether the police should profile anyone at all for any reason (why not this particular reason again?), or
2) whether Spanish criminals desire privacy, and therefore more often choose GrapheneOS than other groups of people (is this controversial? Is it worth discussing? Can't we just take the Spanish police's word for such an unsurprising data point?)
Those are our only two choices? If so, than the conclusion is foregone. Police will be allowed to profile criminals and suspicious people, and criminals will attempt to refuse monitoring and searches.
I'd rather talk about whether refusing to be monitored or searched can be allowed to become official grounds for state suspicion, though. Even without your support.
The situation would be different in, say, Silicon Valley. But they're dealing with the world they're in.
it seems like a great os but i am not giving google money to get away from google.
It's not only the design of the hardware, but also patches for vulnerabilities and delivering updates for several years.
You're suggesting it's ideological (which is completely untrue), while the fact is: pixels are at the very moment the only Android hardware secure enough to even care about hardening: https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
(there's little sense in securing the OS if the hardware doesn't allow disconnecting the USB or there is no secure element throttling PIN attempts, right?)
Couple of pieces on hardware:
- Fairphone does not include a secure element making brute-forcing PIN trivial
- Fairphone 4 used TEST KEYS for verified boot: https://forum.fairphone.com/t/bootloader-avb-keys-used-in-ro... The above alone shows insecurity by design.
I cannot find any of Fairphone technical documentation that would provide details on their implementation of the TEE/HSM. As of now I believe it's only Pixel's Titan and Samsung's KNOX that provide a discrete secure element on Android devices.
Android project recommends secure element to process sensitive data: https://source.android.com/docs/security/best-practices/hard... What it's supposed to provide: https://developer.android.com/privacy-and-security/keystore
On vendor: Drivers, firmware patches, OS upgrades are a necessity, not an option: most security and privacy updates are not backported. Vendor can't just wait for AOSP to deliver all the patches. Vendor must show a track record providing updates to their hardware
- After a lengthy two-year delay, the phone got a taste of Android 12 in February 2023, with Android 13 arriving relatively quickly in October 2023. For Android 14, Fairphone promised to roll out the update in H2, 2024, almost a year after Google released it. Now, with less than two months left in the year, the company is postponing the update's release to 2025. -- https://www.androidpolice.com/fairphone-4-long-delayed-andro...
- their Security Bulletin patches are consistently 1-2 months behind
- Fairphone 5 is still on Android 14 (since Jul 2024). Android 15 has been released in September 2024. Year and a half later AOSP is on Android 16.
- Fairphone 6 is still on Android 15
- Fairphone 5 and 6 latest security patches are from June 2025: https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/244637136412...
For comparison GrapheneOS had eight releases in July alone (GrapheneOS had a full A16 release on 30th of June for all supported devices). Security patches are usually released within one-three days (or earlier, from the tree, without waiting for being published in the bundle)
GOS Release for Pixel 9 was ready three days after the device launch.
Exploitability matrix as per Cellebrite: https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/updated-cellebrite-iphon... That supports the claim the hardware + OS holds.
It is also worth mentioning that Android Security Bulletins generally only contain backports of patches for High and Critical vulnerabilities. Most non-Pixel/GrapheneOS phones only get all the other fixes when moving to the next major release [1]. So getting the next major Android release is important (getting to a recent patch-level alone is not enough).
I can completely understand that Graphene does not want to support Fairphone and others, their security/privacy goals are the complete opposite of what those phones provide.
[1] https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/23462-grapheneos-version-20...
> - Fairphone 5 is still on Android 14 (since Jul 2024).
The Android 15 update was actually released this week! https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/186828004651...
> - Fairphone 6 is still on Android 15
Android 16 was released less than half a month before the release of the FP6, which itself is less than a month ago. Seems reasonable that it wouldn't ship the latest version under those circumstances.
i am trying to under this but i do not get it. it is an encrypted phone with no external to the attacker access. how can you brute it??
Fairphones don't switch USB ports automatically into "charging only" like GrapheneOS does.
if so they ought to be replaced anyways for a secure phone. please tell me graphene is not rawdogging Alphabet's compiled stuff.
if you are talking about firmware blobs then ok but still weird as the blobs are the same per soc
E: if you are talking about tpm and other stuff, eh. they are closed source anyways and i, as a user, cannot actually validate them
Yes. See my response to the sibling comment (I don't want to pollute the discussion with sending twice the same)
> please tell me graphene is not rawdogging Alphabet's compiled stuff
What do you mean? Patching and compiling AOSP tree like every OEM does is "rawdogging Alphabet's compiled stuff" now? Or allowing users to run unprivileged/sandboxed Google services in the isolated user profile they choose?
> if so they ought to be replaced anyways for a secure phone. please tell me graphene is not rawdogging Alphabet's compiled stuff.
Say you don't know what GOS does without saying that out loud.
> if you are talking about tpm and other stuff, eh. they are closed source anyways and i, as a user, cannot actually validate them
Yeah, closed source BUT they exist so for example there's actual, physical throttling of the PIN, Weaver token is stored in the safe place, and we can have downgrading protection support, etc
I hope it's something good. But in reality it's probably Samsung which is the only other vendor bothered enough to add a basic secure element. Maybe they will upgrade it?
Also looks like they improved security even further, hopefully exceeding Pixels: https://semiconductor.samsung.com/news-events/news/best-in-c...
In general I'm quite sure dev any hardware that meets these requirements would be considered: https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
Re: OEM:
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114722432094158776
> We have talks with a large Android OEM ongoing and they're doing initial work towards supporting GrapheneOS. We hope there will be another device we can support in 2026 or 2027 based on this. Qualcomm releasing MTE support this year is key and appears to be happening.
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114729018035689722
> The initial devices built for us by an OEM are going to be their regular devices improved to meet our security and support time requirements. We aren't going to have much influence over the initial hardware. If GrapheneOS on these devices is highly successful, then we can make the business case that it makes sense to have custom hardware and firmware beyond meeting our minimum requirements. Our minimum requirements cannot require more than what we have on current devices. A.K.A: the minimum requirements are current requirements (currenly only met by Pixels)
Also older one: https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/1490518600339308544?cx...
I, for one, am excited. I like my Pixels because they can run GOS (and my Pixel 9 Pro XL has a great camera), but I'd love to have a choice.
I just have a hard time believing that Samsung is working to improve GrapheneOS compatability with their devices when they don't even allow you to unlock the bootloader in certain regions, and they're chasing a very Apple-like ecosystem approach where many device features require you to go all in on Samsung products (ex. their earbuds and watches are both hamstrung if you don't use them with a Samsung phone).
(I've seen both watch an buds used with Motorola phones just fine, not sure what are the issues? Genuinely curious, one of the users is eyeing phone upgrade, I might steer them the galaxy way if that improves their experience)
(oh, and I know their trackers work really good only with Samsung phones, but that's the consequences of Samsung making good choices and Google making bad choices)
Everything I'm seeing says that Verizon Pixels can't install Graphene, since Verizon doesn't let you unlock the bootloader. [1]
Galaxy Buds come with 3 Bluetooth codecs: SBC, AAC, and Samsung's proprietary codec. SBC and AAC are low-quality, low bandwidth codecs. Samsung's proprietary codec supports high bit rates, but only Samsung phones support their codec.
Competing non-Samsung & non-Apple earbuds will typically also support other codecs, like aptx-HD, aptx-Adaptive, and LDAC. These are all high-quality codecs, that are supported on every new Android phone except for Samsungs.
The Galaxy Watch situation has improved. I think all that's currently missing is a couple of health features like the ECG when not using a Samsung phone. Last time I checked, there was a modded apk out there that you could install to get the full functionality.
tl;dr galaxy buds will have subpar audio quality when connected to a non-Samsung phone, galaxy watch requires sideloaded apk for certain health features.
[1] https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/18422-google-pixel-9-is-car...
And with your first paragraph, 100% correct. Verizon Pixels cannot be oem unlocked which means they cannot have the bootloader unlocked, which means GOS cannot be installed.
I think there's a typo in my response which you rightly corrected.
The claim I was responding to:
> You can't OEM unlock Snapdragons/North American models
The response was supposed to mean that you can unlock North American Pixels, except for these from Verizon.
I think it is unlikely that Samsung is interested in the relatively small market that GrapheneOS still is. I mean, if they cared, they would allow you to unlock the bootloader without blowing the Knox eFuse.
As far as I understand the next-generation Qualcomm CPU will have the required security CPU security features. There separate secure elements on the market, everyone outside Google/Apple/Samsung is either penny pinching or doesn't care about security. But it's perfectly possible to develop a phone with a secure element if you want to. So there is probably a smaller phone manufacturer that is willing to make a design with a secure element.
To a normie non-tech person, buying a several hundred dollar Google phone, only to delete Google from it sounds stupid, like you've set your money on fire.
Yes, I recently bought a Pixel and immediately installed GrapheneOS.
Most phones without a separate secure element do not protect against brute-force PIN attacks, etc.
As is often said, the most secure phones are:
Pixel with GrapheneOS > iPhone >> Pixel with PixelOS >>>>>> anything else
Matchboxes -- OK. But cash is certainly a target. It is also relatively easy to push, as using a card is so much easier! Look at Sweden and presumably other countries where cash is basically gone. And no (loud) protests from privacy advocates that it is even hard to get cash today. I will just use an app to lend you 10 EUR for the beer.
Also throughout the world, using cash is only possible legally up to a given amount (a few thousand EURs ATM, but still) -- because large sums of cash are suspicious. Of course large amounts of money are suspicious because only criminals would even want to pay large amounts of money, right? Like, pay for a car or a vacation, or pay rent or taxes.
Speaking of which, in many countries, it is basically impossible to pay taxes in cash, although technically, it should be allowed. Like in Germany. Or pay for a bus ticket in cash. But some poor souls don't have a bank account. Hmm...
Some countries deanonymize cash by embedding RFID chips (e.g., Australia).
Of course it is not done for surveillance, but only for good goals.
Me: f*ck off, enough, time to buy pixel and grapheneos
Govt: meta pays _me_ $32bln for breaking _your_ privacy. What? You want to defend yourself? You are a criminal, then! That way, Meta wouldn't pay me again!
Monopolies are the only source of crime throughout history.
Monopolies are the brightest sign of collective irresponsibility.
Monopolies are useless for society in their attempts "to compete", since they are only trying to leverage their size and thus eventually bring harm.
With these days $ numbers, they can be so big, that they create a cantillion effect on market just because of their existance on market even without manipulation. Should be resected, dissasembled and limited in their further growth, including govt bodies, incentivized to decentralize.
I like my privacy and I'm also incredibly boring if anyone cares to track my interests and activities. I choose privacy to save the authorities wasting any more of their precious time and resources on little ol' me. And to minimise the value any vampiric tech company may be able to squeeze out of me.
In my limited, but specific, experience, the police will latch on to anything that makes an individual stand out from the vanilla drones as "evidence enough". So be warned. If you're feeling rebellious though, GrapheneOS will scratch a certain itch.
I wish people realized that privacy and civil liberties exist regardless of guilt. Rights like freedom of speech, due process, and privacy aren't just for people doing something wrong. They're foundational protections that exist to prevent abuse (by cops, too).
Outside of that very narrow context, they may kindly deal with my communications being secured by default, because if there is a path they can use to decrypt my data, the criminals can also find, exploit, and use that same path. Rather easily, as it turns out. (See: various data breaches, password leaks, company after company getting caught with unsecured S3 buckets containing encryption keys, etc etc.) It's not the law I'm hiding from, but those individuals who would steal every one of my digital assets given the opportunity.
In the specific context of Android, the thing I'm trying to dodge isn't even legal snooping or criminal activity, but specifically marketing. Google is terribly interested in my browsing habits, and so having my smartphone not run their services at all is an excellent way to reduce that flow of information from my device to a third party that I don't particularly trust.
Modern surveillance states operate on the premise that every individual, out of billions worldwide, could become a potential threat. To manage this, governments have developed and deployed mass surveillance technologies that far exceed the scope of traditional law enforcement. This environment results in routine circumvention—both legal and extra-legal—of civil liberties and privacy protections, such as the 4th amendment, in the name of national security.
We saw this play out dramatically with the Snowden revelations, which exposed systemic, warrantless collection of communications by agencies such as the NSA. Surveillance is not conducted only for clear national emergencies. It is often routine, preemptive, and opportunistic—and the scale is massive, not targeted only at 'bad actors'.
This reality creates a profound power imbalance. Those who control surveillance infrastructure possess the ability—and in some cases, the legal clearance—to act against individuals or groups for reasons ranging from strategic interests to petty personal motives. There have been numerous documented cases of abuse of surveillance powers by insiders seeking to settle personal scores and, internationally, governments using this capability to quash dissent (for example, China’s censorship and criminalization of government criticism)
Once the technology and precedent for ubiquitous surveillance are in place, the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate use blurs dangerously. The potential for abuse is inherent, especially when oversight is weak or accountability is lacking, which is everywhere.
While companies like Google pose significant privacy concerns and “opting out” of their ecosystems is prudent for reducing commercial data exploitation, the larger threat comes from the normalization of universal, warrantless surveillance by state actors.
Because these states are so extractive of their populace and engage in so much evil that any given person constitutes a potential threat. They're worried that anyone could just wake up one day and decide to be the next uncle Ted or whatever.
No, privacy is for protecting good things from evil people. And frankly, it's more than that. Privacy is necessary even when no evil intent exists in either the observer or the observed. It is necessary for various relationships to flourish and for human beings to flourish. It isn't good for your neighbors to watch you making love with your wife, or for you to watch them doing so. Social boundaries are important. Failing to respect them is to claim an authority you do not have.
It's similar to the principle of subsidiarity: you want the right people involved in the right things at the right times. Removing privacy smushes everything together, and I claim that this flattening effect is one of the reasons for the mental illness that's catalyzed by social media.
It might be appealing to fantasise about catching all the criminals and stopping all their dastardly deeds, but where would we be now if our governments had this capability 30 years ago? ...90? ...270? Would we be happier today if the last 1000 years had passed completely free of theft, murder, pederasty, and also free of blasphemy, heresy and challenges to the divine right of kings? Today, we are grateful for the actions of many a disgusting criminal that would have been condemned by any respectable and well-adjusted member of society (including you, had you lived then) at the time. Who knows which ones of today's criminals we will be thanking 30 years into the future?
GrapheneOS is the most secure, arguably most private, hell the most feature-complete, user-friendly custom ROM (but they also hate the word "custom ROM") out there. I've imported a Pixel, because it wasn't available in my country, just to use GOS. So it is deeply frustrating that they are doing things the way they do. Hubris is their longest-standing, "wontfix"-labelled vulnerability.
When they say other projects are insecure, this is for example because of the claims /e/OS based on the utterly insecure hardware and two major versions of AOSP, unpatched, is touting itself as a leading project in the privacy landscape.
I don't think they talk down any security - related project and I've never seen the generalised "they talk down on (...) open-source projects in general" - this is what I would myself call slander, because tbh it's dogs bollocks.
"Slander" or "attack" is said when there are baseless accusations (like above about attacking, quote, "any and every security-- and privacy-related project") because they don't have outlets or big money behind them which would simply state the facts and call out the accusations.
If you have examples of theese words "thrown" without basis (ie without sustained prior attacks on GOS), I'm sure every interested person would like to see it. If you wanted to show the examples of the innumerable privacy- or security-related projects that are _attacked_ by GOS, please share examples.
There are multiple so-called privacy and security related projects which are known for the sustained and baseless bad messages, and these don't get a pass, because it's clear it's intentional and in the bad faith.
Valuable projects and services are promoted and recommended based on merit and not favours (eg: they can argue based on facts why installing apps from accrescent or Google play store is generally safer than from the F-droid).
They don't hate the "custom ROM", they explain why it's a misnomer - and you using it here after saying they hate it (and either not knowing or not caring why it's wrong) is clearly an act in the bad faith :)
I struggle to see an attempt in the factual reporting in your post. The only thing I could connect over is their attitude in certain situations, but..... the rest of your post is just.... incorrect?
Of course, I don't want this to be used as an argument to mass spy on the people.
You're free to run GrapheneOS or Windows or whatever, so long as you also have a device that is attested to be untampered by Google Play or Apple's equivalent
Graphene replied in that thread (just ctrl+f for them), saying "Unfortunately, the EU is adopting the Play Integrity API enforcing having a Google Mobile Services device instead. We've repeatedly raised this issue with the EU Commission and many apps including ones tied to this specific project. We've never been given reasoning why they can't use the hardware attestation API instead."
I'm personally not so keen on that lesser DRM requirement either, since it's just another level of gatekeeping: ok now it's not only Google/Apple but also a few OSes that meet ?some? requirements, but e.g. GrapheneOS also doesn't unilaterally let me access data on my device, maintaining that full access is dangerous and cannot be allowed -- yeah, I'll agree data is safer when I can't even access it myself, seeing how much malware goes around for NT/Linux distributions where you can have root, but I'd still much rather live in a world where I'm the root on my systems. But anyway, that's maybe another discussion, the broader point is that even GrapheneOS can't talk sense into the EU with their lesser-but-still-DRM option
They just don't support it because it's an immense risk (in my opinion as well).
The other thing, reliable backup is slowly in the making. As I understand there's not enough devs to work on it right now.
This won't be signed with the right attestation key because I'm not them.
My understanding is that attestation is tied to the distribution's private key, so this government software wouldn't trust my version of the OS, assuming the govt could be made to understand Android's attestation framework is a vendor-neutral way to achieve the same goal (whatever goal that may be). With a rooted GOS, I'd still need another device, tied to my government identity, of which I can't verify what it's doing, much less control it
Of course it won't pass the attestation.
Surely that directly entrenches their moat, and raises the difficulty of any new market entrants competing (leaving us with the effective duopoly we have today)
I fear this is increasingly becoming the case for most digital businesses through blanket requirements that don't taper into effect with the maturity/scale of the business - it's a legislative pulling up of the ladder behind them by creating high barriers to entry.
But honestly, of course criminals are gonna use these devices with grapheneOS, for the same reasons any one interested in their privacy would. And if the police notice a trend towards it why wouldn't they state so and look to use that as an indicator. Why is there a probkem with this?
* Touch of Evil, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052311/quotes/?item=qt0321627
Banning a technology in an attempt to limit its bad uses still dispropotrinally affects it good uses: legitimate, law-abiding users are less prone to breaking the rules than criminals, who break the rules by definition.
We have seen this happening again and again, from hi-tech things like encryption and DRM to basic stuff like knives. But fear and moral panic very often overcome the voice of reason, of which we are seeing another case.
This will reduce functionality of the device. You will not get Graphene's fine-grained permission control, and you will also not have Google Play Services (so many apps will not run).
Why would those be region locked there are hundreds of 3rd part accessories that sell world wide regardless of phone model especially for a device as popular as pixels.
>device less feature-packed than you regular Samsung phones.
What feature? GOS offers the most secure and private phone feature [1] while Samsung can only offer buggy pre installed ad and spyware...
They don't need to be. In Brazil we don't have Pixel phones whatsoever in the market, so cases and screen protectors are just unavailable as well. Why would stores have wares that people won't buy? I'd have to stock a supply for the lifetime of the device.
> What feature?
Google services
> Samsung can only offer buggy pre installed ad and spyware
The only app I use is the camera and gallery app and they are fine. Do you have any references for the spyware claim?
A software whose focus isn't privacy isn't necessarily spyware. This is a false dichotomy.
You can have sandboxed Google services on GOS in 10 minutes. Almost everything except for NFC payments works.
>> Samsung can only offer [...] > The only app I use is the camera and gallery app and they are fine
You literally said you need Google services. You don't need this for camera and gallery app? Anyway, GOS also has camera and gallery (the latter is pretty....barebones to say it mildly), and also allows use, for example, of ProShot, which may offer better results than the default camera. Or Pixel Camera :)
Other than that your rationale for not getting Pixel is completely fair. Let's hope 2026 will bring support (= secure hardware) from other OEMs.
What I'm trying to say is that not having Google services is a pain, but if getting a phone for grapheneOS was easy I'd be fine with that pain. But if on top of the inconvenience of not having Google services I'd also not have tech assistance and easy access to parts it's not worth it anymore if it's "just" for privacy reasons.
Here in Brazil it's mostly Xiaomi, Samsung, Asus and Motorola. And Apple, but it's a different story with iPhones.
Yeah, I completely understand in that case.
Because online shops and across border shipping exists.
>Google services
As other people pointed out and 5 second of research shows they exist and they are even securely sandboxed unlike any other android os.
>Do you have any references for the spyware claim
You really asking if android OEMS are spying? Whats next asking if windows does it too?
https://www.computerworld.com/article/1671913/samsung-sellin...
https://www.sammobile.com/opinion/why-is-everyone-freaking-o...
https://www.sammobile.com/news/samsung-pay-new-privacy-polic...
I don't understand how anybody could question this when they literally install data harvesting apps like tiktok on there devices
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPipXaaN7hg
>A software whose focus isn't privacy isn't necessarily spyware. This is a false dichotomy.
Never claimed that but any superficial research would show how data harvesting and invasive any stock android os (proprietary for profit software in generally really) are.
This is a hobby project funded by donations that is likely teeming with zero days and backdoors known by state actors.
A far cry from the company who pours millions into their OS and even refused to help the feds decrypt a terrorist’s phone.
But in reality, I think this is a scare piece meant to drive people away from using graphing OS.
You aren't born with a GrapheneOS phone and you can't trivially discard or swap your skin color. Born immutable characteristics of humans are a different moral category entirely, even if the statistical inferences are superficially similar to this case... And that's debatable.
I use GrapheneOS, and I think police profiling people based on phone model is bad. But government profiling based on skin color or other effectively immutable, born traits for enforcement of law or policy is so much worse.
The notes were different but the chord progression was the same.
I don't think wildly inappropriate heuristics for the treatment of others is particularly distinctive of Americans... Even and maybe especially odious racial heuristics are not distinctive of Americans. Everywhere else I've been in the world, the racism that rears its ugly head there is way more blatant and open than what I've encountered at home. It just does so less often because there is more demographic homogeneity in other countries.
Having heuristics derived from evolving in small groups for a very long time (which are inappropriate in the postindustrial environment we have fashioned for ourselves) seems like more a human characteristic than an ethnic or national one.
As for whether it's worse in other countries... I don't think you get to make that determination without being a visible minority. Certainly, ethnic violence and racial violence are akin but not the same, just as treating people as second-class citizens based on the color of their skin is akin but not the same as treating customers as second class citizens because you don't like the strength of their OS's security standards, or don't want to hire Android programmers, or whatever.
Bluntly, I didn't need to be a Turk to notice how Germans treated and talked about Turks, or to compare that to how white Americans treated and talked about minorities.
You seem to think shooting a gun is not stupid in all cases. I think shooting a gun at a person or a paper target are both stupid.
I didn’t bring up the morals, you did.
But besides that point, who says being paranoid, does not have as much genetic roots as having dark skin? I know it’s true for my family, many of us have anxiety and OCD and schizoaffective disorder. And guess what? I’ve owned several pixel phones with graphene OS on them in the past.
> You seem to think shooting a gun is not stupid in all cases. I think shooting a gun at a person or a paper target are both stupid.
In the same way I brought up morals and you did not, you've now brought up "stupid," which I did not.
Seeing your initial comment absent any other context looked to me like a casual moral equivalence that I find reflexively, deeply wrong, for the reasons I gave.
If that wasn't your thinking, I apologize for reading into it.
*: https://www.reddit.com/r/GrapheneOS/comments/1jujvee/finally...
Conversely, there are many safety features in GrapheneOS that don't exist on stock, and they're not the security-through-obscurity type that safetynet employs. As noted in the docs, they often find security issues just by people trying to use an app with these default-enabled extra checks: https://grapheneos.org/usage#bugs-uncovered-by-security-feat...
I know what I'm doing so I don't mind these at all, but they need to be considered when planning with GrapheneOS.
Pocket > Phone > Double Tap pay button -> Tap
Pocket > Open Wallet > Take card out -> Tap
I suppose it's may be more convenient carrying just your phone and not your wallet but I prefer both. Or does America not have tappable Chip&Pin yet?
Ignoring very small shops that don't take cards at all.
What I meant is that I've not seen any other use for NFC apart from bus station adverts?
Yes, it's a form of NFC!
there’s something deeply ironic about trying to claw back privacy while using hardware from the single most invasive company on the planet. yeah, graphene does a solid job locking down user space, but that’s just the stuff you’re allowed to see. underneath? you’ve got a modem running its own proprietary os, full access to memory, fully closed, fully unauditable, even by the graphene devs. no one outside google has eyes on it. not really.
and you gotta ask, why is that? why’s it closed when we all agree open source is the safest model? "security through obscurity" is bullshit, so what’s being hidden? the only answer that makes any sense is that it’s doing things that aren’t meant to be known.
so yeah, you can harden your userland all day long, strip out google play, sandbox everything to hell, but if the lower layers are compromised, it doesn’t mean much. if “they” want in, they’re in. the whole stack is built to serve someone else. and it probably isn’t you.
i know it sounds paranoid, borderline delusional, but the more you think about it, the more it starts looking like a honeypot. a beautiful little funnel. same phones, same os, same dev pipeline, easily watchlisted. a SIGINT wet dream dressed up as freedom.
truth is, privacy is dead. the smart move now might not be to keep chasing it, but to deal with the loss. process it. figure out how to live in a world where you're visible by default. pretending there's still a way to fully hide just keeps you trapped in a false sense of control
I know i sound defeatist here, i am not saying give up, i am saying pick your battles. Your phone is not your friend and nothing you do will change that.
Also, what do these cops and government officials say about iPhones? iPhones, according to what I've heard, also have good privacy, is that not true? Is it not private enough for criminals?
By default, iMessage conversations are backed up iCloud with keys Apple has access to. Governments simply have to ask Apple nicely for the data, or serve them a warrant/subpoena/court order/etc. Apple has a web portal to automate this for them because of how often they share data.
For a while, iOS zero days were cheaper than Android exploits because they were so plentiful, but it looks like prices for iOS and Android exploits are about equal now, suggesting both platforms are similarly exploitable.
In Spain 86% of phone buyers buy from the top 5 brands. Pixel is not among those. Only 1.7% buy Pixel phones. Police say that they have observed that among criminals the percent with Pixels is much higher.
Suppose police have a dead store clerk and only 3 people who could have possibly done it, and those people are 1 Pixel owner, 1 Samsung Galaxy owner, and 1 Apple iPhone owner. Given that criminals are buying Pixels at a rate higher than the general population does, and assuming they are not buying Galaxies and iPhones at a higher rate, can the police use that in statistically valid way to help their investigation?
The answer is yes.
Let (c) = the probability that a random phone owner in Spain is a criminal.
Let (p) = the probability that a random phone owner owns a pixel, which is 0.017 in Spain.
Let (p|c) = the probability that someone owns a Pixel given that they are a phone owning criminal. Police say that this is higher than 0.017, but they do not give a number. I'd expect they wouldn't really notice if it was only a little higher. I'd guess it would need to be at least 0.05 for them to notice, so let's go with that. If someone finds a better number it is easy to adjust in the following calculations.
Let (c|p) = the probability that someone is a criminal given they have a Pixel.
Bayes' Theorem tells us that (p|c)(c) = (c|p)(p).
Rearrange that to get (c|p) = (p|c) (c) / (p). Plugging in 0.05 for (p|c) and 0.017 for (p) gives:
(c|p) = 2.9 (c)
In our case with 3 people to investigate, one with a Pixel and two without, if we are sure that one of them must be the criminal the probability that it will be the Pixel owner is 59.2%. It is 20.4% for the Galaxy owner and 20.4% for the iPhone owner [1]. If the police don't have the resources to investigate all 3 in parallel they should check out the Pixel owner first.
[1] Actually, I don't think that is quite right. I think that because I added the condition that we are sure it must be one of them the distribution will change slightly. It still should be close though.
Replace phone ownership with race or social-economic status and it should be obvious why profiling shouldn't be done.
GrapheneOS is a great project that allows people to have some control over their devices. This is important for receiving patches when manufacturers have abandoned them for whatever reasons. I've used GrapheneOS to revitalize old devices with some success. Additionally, having the option for privacy is fundamental to security and I would argue is important to help maintain democracy. I do not like seeing these attacks on those trying to maintain control of their own devices. There are processes for checking areas of concern and when a cellular device is connected to a network, it's up to those external parties to follow the proper procedures in place.
I suppose as a write my comment my level of tolerance for bullshit continues to be pressed. Because there is too much bullshit to adequately deconstruct here.
Police and politicians talking about outlawing things that help criminals as though it will somehow affect the criminals, will never cease to amaze and amuse me. It's such an elementary error of logic.
The fact is that in a reasonably free society it's quite feasible to get away with lots of crime, if you're smart enough. There is no stopping this. Especially if it's a crime which doesn't leave a whole lot behind in terms of physical evidence. Downloading an OS is one such thing. Sure, if you seize my phone, you could prove it runs Graphene. But in a free society, you need probable cause for that, sorry. And if I am some major criminal, and Graphene stops my criminal enterprise from being proven, in a free society that's always preferable to getting busted, because the punishment for using graphene is gonna be meaningless compared to the punishment I'm avoiding by using it. Because a free society includes a protection against disproportionate punishments for minor crimes. Sure I'll pay your $500 fine to avoid 20 years in prison. Cost of doing business.
Once you realise this, you realise the only way to tackle crime is by legalising as many of them as possible, as long as they're not actively and unambiguously violating people's rights. Murder and other violent acts, obviously stay illegal. Drugs, prostitution etc? Legalise them. That's most of the crime right there, because these classes of crime actually provide something that's in wide popular demand. Demand + black market pricing + lack of taxes means lots of money, and money means power to create strong criminal organisations that can do whatever they want with impunity, including influencing politics. With all that out the window, all you have left is a bunch of individuals going at it alone; murdering psychopaths, desperate poor people, the mentally ill, crimes of passion, sex crimes, etc. And you just freed up a ton of societal resources to channel into those vestiges, both via targeted, intelligent policing and broader societal reforms that target the sociological processes that cause these kinds of crime(like wealth inequality, to name one).
Instead, what we get is a never ending arms race towards a totalitarian society. Oh well, see you after the next revolution, I guess.
Prostitution leads to trafficking, a word I absolutely despise, particularly when it is used as a past-tense verb: "trafficked." Ugh! What poorly educated government hacks do to our language should be criminal! Regardless, human trafficking is terrible and if that part could be fixed, then maybe prostitution wouldn't be so horrible, but it is because it is pretty much never a voluntary situation for the women, but always some kind of coercion.
Cops in [Spain] think everyone using a Google Pixel must be a drug dealer
i guess it's their usual trademark tho -_- 'ew, war is bad' drops bombs on children via proxy state
Luckily, they still, in most countries, need to actually _prove_ criminality. But the line there is also growing ever thinner... confiscating your device as_if you are a criminal despite not being able to prove anything... - they will happily destroy your qubes laptop rather than admit they can't prove anything.
You either unlock it for them, or see it destroyed.
This to the point that if you care about privacy and want to travel internationally, i'd say, take a burner phone u use for holidays and get the local sim -_-. if they take that, nothing is lost except a few $$ for a cheap device.
That does sweep up innocents in the net. But at same time if police see a strong correlation with criminals then focus on it from their side seems logical too. Forcing them to intentionally be blind to that sort of correlation seems insane too.
Tricky
I have run Graphene on my phone for some time. I'm not doing anything illegal with my phone or using it for nefarious purposes. I'm just not comfortable with Google (or any entity) having so much data about me.
By the same logic, anyone who has a knife in their kitchen is a suspect.
People, it's fine to have things to hide. You can write a blog post and admit you have things to hide. Everyone has things to hide.
For one thing, you can care about hiding the private information that friends have shared with you. Nobody should assume that all their friends and contacts will be super happy about having some stranger at a border paw through their private emails, chats, and photos. Yes, you do have things to hide. It's called basic human privacy.
Please stop saying "I have nothing to hide" unless you're some sort of sociopath who is willing to give up the private addresses, emails, phone numbers, and details of all your friends, family members, and contacts.
Nothing to do with your private pictures or shopping habits. Those are things you want to keep private.
Hiding and Privacy are not the same.
The response to that is, yes, I do have things to hide, none of your business.
Why should law enforcement have the privilege to know arbitrary information, especially deeply personal information, about law-abiding individuals?
It is a core requirement of democracy to be able to conceal information from the arm of the state. Political retribution and targeting of ones opponents is not just hypothetical, it's happening now, in America, right now.
Why should law enforcement get to search my phone to find out that I'm critical of the administration? This is information about me that is completely allowed under law, but can be used to discriminate against me.
The definition of legal also changes over time. Giving someone an Uber ride in Texas to an out-of-state abortion center is now a crime. Definitely wouldn't want information on my Uber ride history to be freely available to Texas police. Even if I've never given such a ride, my entire ride history, and possibly my life as a whole, is now subject to deep, targeted scrutiny. Facts would not protect me here, as even if I have done nothing wrong my life could be irrevocably altered. Corruption exists. People make mistakes. Sometimes they have hidden agendas that supersede our shared values of common decency.
They don't and that's called privacy. Seems I didn't make my point clear that saying "I don't have anything to hide" is perfectly fine when applying to anything criminal.
It's NOT the same as saying "I don't care about privacy".
If you commit a crime and hide that, that's a crime.
If you give out your address, that's not a crime and yes stupid to do, but you're not going to prison for it.
Highlighting that people conflate hiding things with privacy and they're just not the same.
You can quibble with the word "hide" but it came from the original post, and it serves just fine. You're free to write your own post that doesn't use that phrasing.
EDIT: sad, Pixel 3a no longer supported, too old
It's also a leap of faith to assume that public code is any safer.
I was hoping someone could give me more than "it's public."
That incident and a few prior ones of his had me remove GrapheneOS from my phone. There's clearly a new lead contributor to the project from the git repo, but the leadership of the project is completely opaque and thus not something that I want to run on my phone.
I just fixed my habits so that I don't really do anything much with my phone. I mostly receive calls and text and do OTP. I use Aegis for that and back that up in the cloud. I wipe my phone basically monthly and I'm back up and running with all my apps/contacts/configs inside of 5 minutes.
Public code is definitely safer than binary blobs.
In fact, if cops say a thing there's a reasonable chance that it's the opposite of what I should be listening to.
they literally planted an backdoor that federal agency can force google to give out information
Cops say guns are only for bad guys.
Cops say 3d printers and bitcoin are for terrorists
Cops say a lot of dumb things because they are generally (and necessarily) not that bright, but also because they are lazy and frequently corrupt.
"encrypted phone" = criminal
Here, "allow" means "doesn't actively work to counter".
If an article is truly inaccessible or illegible, then it shouldn't be on HN. But if it's readable-albeit-with-annoyances, then it belongs here if (and only if) the content is sufficiently interesting, irrespective of annoyances. In that case we want the comments to focus on the interesting content.
Not that annoyances aren't annoying—they are, and they annoy us too. But the cost of having comments about them is much higher than the benefit, especially because they're so repetitive. Annoyance comments also tend to get stuck at the top of the thread, accumulating upvotes and choking out more interesting discussion.