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Comment by torium | Hacker News Reader

Does anybody else here see as problematic that this OS supports mostly Pixel, a Google phone?

Over and again people on HN make the following argument: "Google is a company that makes most of its revenue from ads and surveillance. Therefore, you should always assume that Google is spying on you". But somehow when it comes to Pixel people give it a pass?

Prediction: If Pixel isn't already hardwired to phone home and report on your activities, it will slowly become so over time, as Google realizes its interest. You know, as it happened with Android, Chrome, and everything else that Google touches.

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I think it's perfectly valid to consider this as problematic (the GrapheneOS team certainly seems to think this is not ideal, for example). However - somewhat counter-intuitively - it's also valid to consider Pixels as among the most secure and most appropriate Android phones for something like GrapheneOS.

They write about their reasoning and criteria for device support here, for example: https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-device.

Your prediction is about a hardware product, and your examples are both software products (one is a browser and another is a mobile OS, both of which are platforms for running other software, and thus extremely well-suited to the task of reporting user data back to Google).

I'm not an expert, but baking telemetry into the hardware (or at least the kind of telemetry that I assume Google is interested in) seems like skipping a few levels of abstraction, and thus more trouble than it's worth.

> baking telemetry into the hardware (or at least the kind of telemetry that I assume Google is interested in) seems like skipping a few levels of abstraction, and thus more trouble than it's worth.

This isn't really a practical way of doing it. Google Play and Google Play Services having privileged access is more than sufficient.

Which they don't have under Graphene OS - they are the same as any other service you could write.

Yes, thanks for pointing that out. I meant they get all that on the stock OS, but didn't make that clear.

So what computer you use which is 100% open-source?

This is just conspiratorial fearmongering based on vibes. If pixels somehow phoned home on a hardware level, do you think we wouldn't be able to tell? Do you think we wouldn't see it in our network logs? GrapheneOS supports pixels because they are currently the only devices that fulfill their list of requirements, like an actually usable secure element, hardware memory tagging, etc. They have said and continue to reiterate that they would support other devices that fulfill their requirements and seem to be currently looking into working with OEMs to move away from pixels in the long term. Just saying "you claim to degoogle phones yet the phone you use is a GOOGLE pixel, suspicious" is baseless nonsense.

+1. It is kinda sad that folks seem to have lost critical thinking or even just some plain perspective on things.

They hear their favorite influencer spout something, and they parrot it everywhere. Google bad, hurr durr.

See the response at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44686895.

> If pixels somehow phoned home on a hardware level, do you think we wouldn't be able to tell?

Yes.

> Do you think we wouldn't see it in our network logs?

If it's done on the baseband processor, no.

I believe grapheneos has some sort of band band processor isolation, but I'm not sure exactly how it works.

But yes - your phone has a separate SOC, with its own operating system you can't access, which communicates with cellular networks. We don't know what, exactly, it's used for or what, exactly, is being transmitted. We do know it's used for location tracking because this is utilized by law enforcement somewhat regularly. But cellular triangulation isn't too accurate, not like precise location services.

> If it's done on the baseband processor, no.

The baseband firmware is not obfuscated and people can/do analyze the cellular protocol and how it functions. Which devices receive more privacy/security research than Pixels do? Which devices avoid trusting multiple companies making the hardware? Nothing. Similar things could be said about any hardware we supported, but all the other available options supporting using another OS would be far less secure and unable to provide what GrapheneOS offers. Core features would be missing elsewhere.

We're working with an OEM to have their future devices meet our requirements and provide official GrapheneOS support, but how would that change anything? It's another big tech company making devices. What do you think is special about Google and what reason is there to think they would be putting a backdoor but other companies wouldn't?

> I believe grapheneos has some sort of band band processor isolation, but I'm not sure exactly how it works.

Isolation for the radios is a standard security practice on most modern smartphones. GrapheneOS improves the security of the isolation through hardening the drivers and services against exploitation after exploiting the radio firmware.

> But yes - your phone has a separate SOC, with its own operating system you can't access, which communicates with cellular networks. We don't know what, exactly, it's used for or what, exactly, is being transmitted. We do know it's used for location tracking because this is utilized by law enforcement somewhat regularly. But cellular triangulation isn't too accurate, not like precise location services.

The CPU, GPU and many other components in laptops, desktops, tablets and smartphones are closed source hardware with closed source firmware. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are implemented with a separate processor and operating system. There's nothing about that specific to cellular and it's a misconception that it's different from other components in this regard. Modern computers have a bunch of processors and little operating systems across a bunch of components. Many people have the wrong idea that it's somehow specific to a few things like AMD PSP, Intel ME or cellular radios when in reality that's just how things are at a hardware level across many components. Cellular radios are normally an isolated component.

Cellular can be used to detect location, but so can Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Wi-Fi is the main way network-based location works. Most Wi-Fi networks are from ISP routers and some even have an official way for other subscribers to use it.

Cellular doesn't need to be left enabled all the time. There's airplane mode. Using cellular is an option. GrapheneOS runs on portable computers with support for Wi-Fi, USB ethernet, etc. too not onlyg cellular.

See the response at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44686895.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44686811.

Please don't copy-paste comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44686811).

Linking is fine, as you did here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44686876.

It had some changes to what was written due to a different context, but I've changed it to a link.

Yeah, I appreciate that that happens sometimes. Probably the best thing is to link to the original comment and then add the diff in the new context.

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