No matter your feelings about the creator, I think this was entirely the rational choice.
France is pro-Chat Control. For about a year now there's been an anti-drug trafficking fervor among legislators and government, in which they've pushed for encryption backdoors (separate from Chat Control at the EU level) and recently threatened GrapheneOS. The country is politically unstable so future politics are hard to predict, but anti-encryption politicians stand a good chance of winning the next election. Any rational project would move out.
I disagree about them essentially spreading misinformation about what actually happened. One prosecutor, that probably doesn't even know what GrapheneOS is, making boisterous claims to the press, is not the same as being contacted by the state about adding a backdoors.
Interviewed cop says they'll go after them if they don't cooperate, which would mean a) requesting assistance to law enforcement via means such as backdoors and server seizures and b) resulting in legal steps against the organization and its members by France. Who in their right mind wouldn't take this a threat? After Wikileaks, the Telegram CEO, pushes for chat control and other authoritarian techniques?
Sure, the cop might be a nobody in the grand scheme of things but they're representing a government agency publicly so they're probably not babbling out nonsense in a bar somewhere, being overheard by a reporter.
Yes. Yes they did.
Doubly funny as you seem to be implying Telegram has worthwhile encryption to start with.
In any case, the back door may be more of a Room 641A arrangement where all messages are intercepted by the host government, saving them the trouble of installing sockpuppet accounts in all the chatrooms they want to keep an eye on
between Durov and Sir Tim Berners-Lee?
You guys hurt your argument so much by straight up lying so you can feel self righteous anger over it
Yes, the intense idealism of the brainwashed and oblivious prompted the realistic Graphene creators to do something themselves instead of waiting for other realistic folks who happen to be few and far between.
Have you not seen what happened to Telegram CEO?
Source?
Especially since I guess they do not have the same kind of money and influence to fight it back.
If the GrapheneOS maintainers were being advised by a lawyer, they'd surely know that if French Authorities wanted them arrested and they were standing on a street corner in Stockholm, they could just as easily be picked up by police as if they were in a café in Paris. Making the whole France travel ban just a load of theatrics.
You're contradicting yourself. If "they haven't thought this through" they clearly haven't been paranoid enough but in that case they aren't overreacting, they're under-reacting. They need to transfer development out of the EU, not just out of France. That's one unexpected benefit of Brexit, btw.
I suspect they'd get told to calm down while the lawyer sends a letter to the authorities explaining what they're currently attempting to articulate via social media.
The lead developer seems to have a history of this style of communication in response to any minor critique of himself or GrapheneOS.
There is no contradiction between "being paranoid" and "not being rational".
Oh my mistake, you intentionally put "benefit" and "Brexit" in the same sentence; yes, there's absolutely a contradiction there, well done lad.
My comment wasn't an endorsement of Brexit, UK or EU. I was only thinking that if a quick change to a nearby jurisdiction was needed, the UK would be a place to consider, at least in the short term.
The UK doesn't even pretend the laws are for "child safety" they call it what it is - "snoopers charter".
Multiple accounts have said the same thing in this thread, and I'll be honest here: given the Jia Tan situation, it could be true (in the way that he's being pushed by external forces). It could it be character assassination... Or it could be totally valid: idk.
But what I do know is that nobody is providing any citations.
I also know that progress depends on the tyranny of unreasonable people.