Comment by maelito | Hacker News Reader

Comment by maelito | Hacker News Reader

The linked article from Le Parisien (a big French billionaire-owned newspaper) is quite nuanced.

It gives the police's view on narco-trafic crime, but also Graphene's take :

"Criminals and traffickers also use knives." This organization, which is not a company but a foundation, emphasizes that its solution is used by ordinary people who dislike how apps and operating systems handle their data. It adds that if criminals use Google Pixel phones and GrapheneOS, it’s because these solutions work well. But that doesn’t make them accomplices, they assure. "Criminals and traffickers also use knives, fast cars, and cash—things that are also widely used by honest citizens," its representatives note.

And GrapheneOS adds that it protects users from hackers and intrusions by the secret services of totalitarian states. "We consider privacy a human right, and we are concerned about projects like Chat Control (a European bill aimed at detecting child sexual abuse material in messaging services, but which has faced significant criticism) that the French government supports. The invasion of privacy enabled by such legislation would have alarming implications under an authoritarian-leaning government," it argues.

I didn't read it[0] as being particularly nuanced. I thought it was a fact-loose, extremist hitpiece against FOSS, containing howlers such as

> "Particularité de GraphèneOS : on peut se le procurer autant sur le darknet que sur des sites grand public." ⇒ "A distinctive feature of GrapheneOS is that it can be obtained both on the darknet and on mainstream websites."

Quoting "both sides" (so to speak) doesn't automatically create a thoughtful dialog.

[0] https://archive.is/20251119082524/https://www.leparisien.fr/... (tr. "Google Pixel and GrapheneOS: drug traffickers' secret weapon for protecting their data from the police")

Ah, so it's kind of like saying "A distinctive feature of Renault vehicles is that they can be purchased both with cash or through regular financing."

I'm unsure whether it's appropriate to trust Le Parisien's equivalencies.

Q: Do they have a track-record of intellectual honesty?

Equivalencies are powerful, and dangerous if mis-handled.

E.g. this is worrying [from the article]: "A unique feature of GrapheneOS is that it can be obtained both on the dark web and on mainstream websites." Le Parisien is calling out GrapheneOS's availability on the "Dark Web" as significant, in the context of "Drug Trafficker's Secret Weapon". Banned books can also be acquired on the Dark Web, and banned books are not illegal, yet, in mainstream democracies. So Le Parisien's equivalency, here, is misleading.

> and banned books are not illegal, yet,

now now comrade, if the book is banned, how is it that you are in possession of it? you're clearly breaking the rules. I do believe it is time for you to start counting trees

<3 I do see this style of speech, which you're obviously playing with here, more and more coming from my US government. "What do you have to hide" kind of stuff. (From my individual perspective.)

It is disconcerting, as it's unclear whether the rule-of-law still stands, given the anti-Constitutionality of the current US Administration -- especially around due-process.

The trend of Democratic Decline seems provably real, along with a rise in Authoritarianism.

"Criminals and traffickers also use knives."

London already did this

Not really? You can buy knives in London, and any laws regulating knife purchases are UK-wide, nothing to do with London specifically.

I think the post you’re replying to is alluding to the fact that London has a knife problem, despite carrying knives being illegal there. Meanwhile a number of places don’t have that problem, even though it’s legal there.

BTW As an outsider, this “knife” euphemism caught me off guard a while ago. When you read about these stories from London, it’s usually about machetes. It’s one of a number of euphemisms Brits use around the topic, making everything around the topic sound pretty mild if you’re not from there. Then you learn one more euphemism and think “oh wait, that guy/gal back then was talking about this? wtf?”

It’s not in general illegal to carry knives in London (or again, in the rest of the country, which has the same laws). Small knives are permitted generally and larger knives may be carried for specific reasons (e.g. religious). To say that it’s illegal to carry a knife in the UK is roughly as misleading as saying that it’s illegal to carry guns in Texas. In both cases there are applicable laws, but there is no blanket ban.

London has a knife crime problem in the important sense that any number of people being stabbed is a problem. However, it’s worth bearing in mind that cities like NYC have a slightly higher rate of fatal stabbings per capita. (Non-fatal robberies and assaults are tricky to compare across countries because of different data collection methodologies and different classifications.) Of course it would be good for fewer people to get stabbed, and knife crime is a serious problem for some specific communities, but the city as a whole is not experiencing the kind of knife crime epidemic that you might imagine if you get your news from alt right TikTok accounts.

Nah, you're right. They title it "knife ban" but they list specific "knifes" that you can't carry, such as a sword (lmao at it being considered a knife)

I used to own many butterfly knifes in Middle School. Feels weird that you could be arrested for that in London

Who are 'they'? There is no official thing called a 'knife ban', and again, there are no laws about knives specific to London. There aren't really any laws about anything that are specific to London, as there is no corresponding legislative body.

Swords aren't considered knives, they are considered (correctly) to be bladed, and thus to fall under the scope of various bits of legislation, like this: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2019/17/section/41

https://www.gov.uk/buying-carrying-knives

You're right that they say "knife or weapon". So they don't classify a knife as a sword

There is also no London specific governing body

There is the GLA.

How could you be so naive?

This article is as absurdly biased as it could be! Of course they provided a quoted response from GrapheneOS devs: that's the only appeal to credibility they have.

A truly responsible journalist would explain to their audience what is actually at stake, not simply spout every available position as if it were equivalent.

>cash

this will be next step

> Le Parisien (a big French billionaire-owned newspaper) They're all billionaire owned. As an example, left wing newspaper Liberation has Kretinsky among the owners

Yeah, "Le media" and "Mediapart" are "left wing" newspaper and not billionaire owned, there is right wing too, but they are smalls. Libé isn't owned by Kretinsky but Patrick Drahi, Kretinsky owns Mariane (right to far-right now...).

But anyway yeah, in France (and in other countries too ) there is a media oligarchy.

Check the France problem: https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cartes/PPA https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/IMG/png/poster_medias_fran...

Other countries with broken media ecosystem: - Australia: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/17/the-br...

But also USA and Poland for example.

One thing though is - knives, fast cars and cash aren't built with deliberate motivation of thwarting the law enforcement and criminal investigations.

GrapheneOS and its systems are - you can walk through history and see that they're deliberately working on systems that defeat law enforcements efforts of collecting data from seized devices and tracking criminal networks.

This is a massive difference - even for knives and cars, you'd get into some hot water (or outright illegal behaviour) if you build them with express purpose to make them hard to find and track by law enforcement. Try making a company that focuses on cars that hide its license plates from the police and you'll see how far that will go.

This is one thing that GrapheneOS, Signal and others will need to at some point reckon with - the fact that they deliberately work at making law enforcements work harder and provide effective cover for criminals will get them into hot water. And I don't think population will stand at their side when they find that they've been helping CSAM traffickers hide their loot.

Having all that anti-governmental rhethoric won't end well for longerm survivability of these projects - which sucks for all of us.

Graphene shouldn't have to reckon with the abuse of government, we should step in and speak up for them. If having a secure device becomes criminal, only the criminals will have secure devices.

Law enforcement is being lazy by trying to rely on mass surveillance rather than espionage tactics to catch criminals. Criminals learned long ago how to work around surveillance, so this doesn't really work on them. But it does subject the public citizen to undue scrutiny and violation of privacy, which history has shown is then used against the innocent. We don't need any more reminders of how popular authoritarianism has become. And it's often used to pin a crime on an innocent person (a common police controversy), or intimidate and harass them (see FBI).

> I don't think population will stand at their side when they find that they've been helping CSAM traffickers hide their loot.

This is just one of many examples of a false rhetoric used by politicians to manipulate the public into cow-towing to mass surveillance. We cannot stand for this and must fight it at every turn. "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Beware, though, the key words in that quote are not "liberty" and "safety" but rather "temporary" and "essential". You can replace "liberty" and "safety" with any other nouns (including "safety" and "liberty") and it's still true.

Which is not to excuse the fascist actions of the French government. I just don't like that quote.

I don't think quoting American politicians which failed to setup a government preventing Trumpism is going to be very persuasive for European governments... or European people.

There is no way to have a completely secure operating system, safe from hackers and spy organizations and thieves, that is also accessible at the whim of law enforcement. Period.

If we can't trust hosted services to protect our data, and we can't trust our own computers to preserve our data, the right to privacy simply doesn't exist.

The goal of law enforcement isn't to give you secure operating system. It's to find people who they perceive as criminals.

You don't need to persuade me about it. You need to persuade your cops and governments that having your OS secure outweighs their wish to make crime fighting easy.

Genuinely curious: what did you see in GrapheneOS history that indicates that the OS is specifically designed to defeat law enforcement (as opposed to their stated goals of defeating ad surveillance and stalkerware)?

To hell with the governments and law enforcement, privacy is a right and is not a weapon.

Yes, repeat that loudly again so they'll know you're really their opponent :P

Are you livestreaming your face on Twitch right now? If not, why are you deliberately making it harder for police to catch criminals? It would be so much easier for police to catch criminals if everyone livestreamed on Twitch 24/7, it should be a crime not to do that.

So which knife makers are serializing their kitchen knives so they can be traced back in case of a crime? How many knives come with a GPS tracking its position? Well too expensive, what about an Airtag. No? By your roundabout logic this qualifies as “deliberately working on systems that defeat law enforcements efforts”. It’s an absurd argument.

To actually do any crime with GrapheneOS you would also need at least a VPN and basic understanding of operational security. Just as you would need a lot more than just a knife and car to be a successful criminal.

A Pixel phone with GrapheneOS is not some magic device that let's you do crime without immunity, but that’s the story they want to sell you.

I think your point is that there is evidence that the intention of some or all of the developers and/or the organization as a whole is to make law enforcement more difficult. You go on to argue that this intention fundamentally alters how society, or at least law enforcement arms of government, should view this technology. Specifically, I take your argument to be that law enforcement should or will treat them as accomplices to some degree of the crimes they enable.

This is exactly what is going to happen no matter how much you downvote me or scream about it.

They'll be targeted by the governments because of that perception.

This is a very counter-productive distortion of privacy, and borders on a lie about Graphene.

Something designed to be private doesn't know the difference between a law enforcement officer trying to break into it and a criminal trying to break into it.

There is no special "anti-cop only code" that gets executed, any more than there are special "cop tools" that exist on some physical plane where criminals don't.

It's how the governments and law enforcement see it.

You can slam onto the downvote button all you want, but if you don't UNDERSTAND it, you can't FIGHT it effectively.

It's a typical left failing where you pretend to be too dumb to understand where the authoritarians are coming from to effectively fight it.

I didn't downvote anything, and understand the point well.

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