GrapheneOS user reported to authorities for using GrapheneOS
discuss.grapheneos.org
discuss.grapheneos.org
Not saying what this company did is right, but it feels like this guy has been testing how far he can push these various age verification companies with bypass attempts, and as a result got banned. Additionally the email response from the company could have been trivially edited before the screenshot was taken, so I’m not even convinced that the story is real. If I was running an age verification company I would absolutely not share with the banned users the reason we caught them, that’s like sharing the recipe for your secret sauce.
The only surprising thing about this story is that the user didn't get a visit by the police to be charged with a "non-crime cybersecurity incident". The UK has become such a shithole.
I won't be visiting. Despite many flaws, the US has some damn good rights for its citizens compared to the rest of the world.
Even if you take the European Union alone and ignore all the other European countries, the EU only legislates over a subset of things for member countries.
As opposed to what? Armed invasion?
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48423657
I mentioned that Europe is a lot more than the EU, and even within the EU member countries diverge.
2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48423908
trumpdong then makes a comment that I interpret as saying the EU doesn't have a lot of power over member states, and saying that the worst which could happen to one of them is to be kicked out of the EU.
3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48424244
Slightly shocked by the idea that the EU should be doing something worse than expelling a member for not following the Union's rules, I use a _reductio ad absurdum_ and ask if they thought the EU should be harder and actually perform an armed invasion of a member state that didn't follow them.
4. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48425100
To my shock, trumpdong literally says "yes".
5. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48425487
I, due to the shock described above, decide to question again in more words if that's actually what they mean.
---
Hopefully that responds your question. I see no straw man, but if you still do, please present it.
"ask if they thought the EU should be harder and actually perform an armed invasion of a member state that didn't follow them."
You asked this:
"> the worst they can do is kick them out of the EU
As opposed to what? Armed invasion?"
Where trumpdong reploed with a affirmative "yes". So the worst they can do is kick someone out. No one demanded the EU should do armed invasion.
I don't know why you're taking their pain.
AFAIK, not even that. This topic came up in relation to Hungary (before Orban was gone). What I understood from the discussion is that a country can only be punished by not giving them EU funds, etc.
(Vague memory that someone used this to avoid paying a bill, because refusing a cheque when offered counted as discharging the debt it represents (if I have the right terminology), and as cheques could be written on anything they chose to write it on a car that physically would not fit through the door).
Famously bereft of a written constitution, the closest single document along these lines which the UK had for a long time was ("the") Magna Carta, which basically exists because King John's lords were tired of King John directing the courts that King John personally owned to not hear cases against himself.
But if your point is that some constitutions may as well be toilet paper for how much the people with power care about their contents, then I agree.
As an outsider, it seems to me (big talk on the Internet! Amazeballs) that UK laws are written to be illiberal and gradually watered down to an acceptable degree. I think that happened with RIPA and later with the whole nazi saluting dog mess. Whether they can survive the rise of free speech double talkers like Farage remains to be seen. But the Blair/Brown years made it clear that even supposedly intelligent middle of the road leadership is capable of imposing surprisingly illiberal legislation. I don’t much care for the Tories but I don’t think they have much interest in my personal life.
I actually think it might be worse.
You need to be able to hand over encryption keys too.
Claiming to not know them is also not allowed, whether you actually know them or not.
I am reasonably convinced that if you wipe the key slots on an encrypted drive but leave encrypted blocks around, they might be able to argue that you are obligates to store all the block keys for such an occasion. So using any kind of multi-tier encryption in the UK might be a massive liability unless you permanently store all the material required to derive any key that is used to encrypt anything.
This also probably has impact on TLS now that I think about it.
Now, real world criminal cases are likely to proceed differently than how they proceed in the mind of a programmer interpreting the law as a program. But, I am not too convinced such a farcical thing wouldn't happen, the UK government and police have engaged in much dumber things.
Now that I think about it, storing randomness on a disk could probably be used to incriminate you in case that disk was seized. Since the police wouldn't be able to tell if it wasn't encrypted data.
This is precisely the reason why I don't want to visit the US at the moment.
The USA immigration officers can ask me to forfeit my phone's password and look at all my photos, documents, messages, call logs etc, WITHOUT SUSPICION.
Some of that data can even stay on their servers for decades, and who knows if it ends up on a CIA/NSA server.
Of course, I can always refuse, but non-cooperation with CBP means immediate denial of entry and risks of lifelong headaches with future immigration checks.
Some of ICE’s detainees may have different opinions on that point.
The UK may endow her citizens with fewer rights. But I have a lot more trust in British due process. British civil servants seem much less … capricious than Americans.
I was almost denied entry to Hawaii once because I told the CBP agent I didn’t have any cash on me. (My money is in a bank account, obviously). He went on a big rant about how expensive Hawaii is. I think he was worried I’d end up homeless. (Even though my visit to hang out with my then employer.) Over the years I’ve heard so many stories from other Australian friends about wild and unfortunate encounters with US police and officials.
By comparison, the British government seems far more civilised. If something happened while visiting the UK, I have much more confidence that everything would be resolved in a fair and reasonable manner.
Got subjected to hour long questioning because I only had a little cash on me and told them truthfully that I would travel the country so I didn’t have one place to stay for the entirety of the trip (because I was TRAVELLING).
I since learned that my first mistake was to tell them the truth but alas.
After asking me about every single detail of my life they eventually let me in.
It’s a pity, such a great country being ruined by kleptocrats.
Henry Nowak would disagree.
Only it had no teeth and whatever Stalin or Brezhnev wanted, the KGB would do.
Or freedom of protest... Er ehm, that was three years ago
Well at least no Double jeopardy... until 2003
Right to silence! Oh no not that one either
Shrugs and scratches head
I am not saying the US is better in practice. The bottom line is that authority worshippers will take whatever liberties they can get away with in any system.
Which is not to excuse the errors, but to put it in context: it is a European country… albeit just like Turkey and Azerbaijan.
In the US I'd be worried about being murdered. By police. In cold blood.
That's not going to happen unless you commit a serious crime, in which case it's not arbitrary. I can't think of a single case that's made the news.
Meanwhile across the pond in America you have the nightly news reporting on children and people in cages screaming. People being rounded up for not being white. Little to no due process at all until you've been through 6 rounds of hell.
They are currently a proscribed group, so yes, that is included in the list of things you probably shouldn't do. You're not going to get killed for it though. You're probably not even going to get arrested in most cases.
Whether or not they should be proscribed is a different issue. The best course of action is probably to wait for the courts to decide. Pressure groups damaging military assets probably aren't going to be well received by the public regardless of which cause they're for.
Simply don't chase, harass, attempt to run over, or assault LEOs doing their jobs
Hope that helps.
Why did people suddenly stop talking about body cams after mass adoption. Maybe it didn't show you what you thought it would.
I‘m also careful with what I say online. US CBP tracks what people post online, and has been known to deny entry to people for being critical critical of the current president. I don’t want to risk losing out on future opportunities in the land of the free.
I'll probably just buy a decoy phone for the border.
I will rather choose not to visit the US for the foreseeable time, maybe never again (have been to the US more than 10 times). Freedom of speech is more important than tourist visits to the US. Well and working there was never an option for me, worker protection, universal healthcare, etc. make life much nicer.
Maybe the US will be free enough again in the future, but with its trajectory, I am not betting on it.
They would have to individually steal keys from every OEM, in GraphenOS' case meaning Google. Then they'd have to do the right dance to fake the right stuff to satisfy the Secure Element(TM) and get it to let them use the data encryption keys. Which, by the way, I believe requires forking over a hash that may vary among individual phones; you have to know which version of the appropriate stage you want to fake.
... and you'll excuse me if I'm skeptical of your confident statements about what TLAs do or don't have access to, especially when you start talking about keys that don't exist.
Legally, you can't surrender these devices, access to them or their passwords, as they are company property.
Hard LOL. Doesn't apply at borders. Any country borders.
Edit: ah, because the word is pavement in British English :).
There's a whole complex terminology of footway, cycleway, bridleway, bridle path, footpath, cycle path, and carriageway. Even more fun: It's ever so slightly different in Scotland to England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
Unless you turn up to a protest against the ICEtapo, with a holstered gun. Then you can be murdered and called a domestic terrorist.
As a brown visitor to the US.... Well I won't be one. They can ask for access to my entire digital life without the slightest suspicion of any crimes.
Absolute Mickey Mouse country singing itself propaganda about building the future whilst having a healthcare system that lets people die regularly for being too poor. Not exactly freedom if you’re dead is it?
Then they come to London and realise it’s just a much cleaner, safer, nicer looking city than anywhere in the US and has more culture, food and diversity than all but a few American cities. But have to justify going back to a chicken coop country where they grind out the prime of their lives, get no maternity pay, and like 10 days of holiday.
It was pretty funny because right next to Trump they had a man/woman in a Easter bunny suit.
It is not about christianity. Authoritarian and populist leaders will always coopt/corrupt whatever is convenient for them. Christianity, socialism, capitalism, whatever works to rally a substantial portion of the population.
Do immigrants have the same full rights as British citizens?
Would I be willing to re evaluate my visa every X years? Will I be willing to be uprooted if it's denied?
And how will childcare work when my elders are all here?
I think your post was correct as far as the state of the US, but your final paragraph is reductive. It's not always easy for someone to drop everything and uproot their life, even if it's possible
I have lived in European countries all my life (except for ~6 months in Australia) and let's say I'm opinionated, I have never feared that the country I lived in or its authorities would arrest me or harm me otherwise. Of course, there are certain boundaries - you don't threaten someone, etc. But once you cross those lines, you are not interested in free speech anyway, only intimidating people or inciting hate.
This is why many companies have procedures for when employees visit certain countries, including the US. For instance that you are not allowed to bring your personal phone, your personal and work laptop or any medium that can hold sensitive or proprietary information.
The first minute my brain didn’t register because though Spanish is my mother tongue, I guess it was not ready for that. The police officer started to get irritated. Eventually my brain switched, I had a chat with him and he left.
I was totally freaked out the rest of the time, till the moment I boarded.
Only then I realized how frail our rights are when you are abroad.
Stop laying down and showing your belly. When are you going to start standing up for yourself?
https://www.bankrate.com/banking/savings/emergency-savings-r...
The quote:
"At a time of sticky inflation and a softening job market, extra money in the bank can serve as a lifeline for many consumers. Yet just 47% of Americans indicate they have sufficient liquidity or access to funds to cover a $1,000 emergency expense, a Bankrate survey found. This can present challenges when dealing with job losses, medical issues or other problems that could exhaust one’s cash reserves."
So this raises the question for most Americans: file a lawsuit with what money? It also raises the question of whether your rights should depend on your bank balance. Now, we can pretend that anyone can start a successful gofundme to fund their efforts to have their basic rights protected, but you see where this is going?
As for the media: what media outlets? And why would they care unless it is a particularly egregious story or it involves someone famous? Thousands of people have their rights violated every day. Why would the media care about any "nobody"?
No you don't live in 1984 or Soviet Russia. You live in much worse circumstances because back in the Soviet times, the state, fortunately, had limited ability to surveil, track and control you. The capabilities a state gone bad have at their disposal today are much, much more invasive and effective. And the brutality you risk (eg CECOT) is arguably not materially better than getting shipped off to Siberia. At least around 90% of those who were shipped off to Siberia had fixed term sentences.
And perhaps you will never have the opportunity to litigate if you find yourself wronged. What if you die in custody due to a medical emergency that was not taken into account? Thousands die of medical neglect in custody every year in the US. (Look it up. State and federal custody, ICE, prison system etc). This happens to thousands of people every year and nobody cares. Least of all the media. What if you find yourself in CECOT -- effectively isolated from the world and anyone in your personal network that could do something about it? Or in ICE detention where the very best case is that you disappear for days without anyone knowing where you are, and without the ability to contact anyone.
It frightens me that people can find their way to Hacker News yet be so ignorant of the reality the majority of Americans face. How can you not know basic statistical facts? How can you not ask yourself how someone who isn't rich, isn't well connected, doesn't have a strong network of people around them are supposed to defend their basic rights?
Know what you are talking about. Find out what reality is like for other people. Don't blab on about remedies that are purely theoretical for much of the citizenry. Know stuff!
People currently do have ways to fight back, even those with limited resources. That may not be the case forever. But lying down and sighing about how hopeless things are helps nobody, least of all yourself.
That's always true for all regimes at all times so it is a pointless NOOP-argument.
The attitude you communicate is essentially that "the small people" do not matter. It is precisely this attitude that empowered the regressive politicians to make life worse for everyone by weaponizing "the small people".
And if you don't think you're small people: it is just because events haven't gotten around to it yet.
Show some self preservation instinct.
Is this really the case? As far as I understand it, US citizens have an absolute right to enter the country. So they can sit you in a room and ask you questions all afternoon, but eventually they have to let you in.
They were held for more than 4 hours at the airport.
But, to counter balance, I had multiple other friends traveling to the US (both on work visas and tourist ones) and it was smooth sailing.
In any case, the story of my first friend is what made me cancel my US trip last summer and go to Japan instead.
The absolute gall of saying this, on this point in in particular, with all that has happened over the past 1.5 years in the US... Gobsmacked
The police can ask for your passwords. You're not required to give them anything until they apply for a Section 49 notice of RIPA. Which they must get from a Judge.
It seems to be recommended to refuse giving them the password before that notice is issued and seek a lawyer before complying.
If the judge agrees with them, you have to comply.
I presume any journalist or competent protest organiser in the UK knows the details better than me, but they can't just stop you on the sidewalk (UK: pavement) and ask you to hand over your PIN on the spot.
I think the "put you in jail" thing is a misunderstanding of the general "police can detain someone suspected of a crime" principle, but then they still need to get a judge to approve them holding you longer than a few* days.
(*) The rules are slightly different for terrorism suspects.
I agree there are a lot of problems (e.g. the online safety Act) but it look as though both the rest of Europe and the rest of the west is going the same way.
I also assume this incident was not in the UK as the details were shared on imgur which blocks the UK. The authorities also do not seem to have taken any action. Anyone can report anything they want.
2. It would only be disclosed on an enhanced DBS check, not basic or standard. This also applies to all other information the police have on you, not just NCHIs. This is just like the rules for disclosing something like a caution issued to someone in your household, an aquittal, allegations made against you, parking and speeding tickets etc.
"Non-crime information can be disclosed on an enhanced DBS check – which is limited to high-risk positions like teachers and carers – but only with the approval of a chief officer. The chief officer must have regard to statutory guidance issued by the Home Office and consider whether the applicant should be allowed to make representations before any information is disclosed."
https://www.college.police.uk/article/protecting-freedom-exp...
It is illegal to request a higher level of check than the guidance allows for a particular role.
By reduced I mean a stricter code of practice that requires a good reason for doing it.: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/non-crime-hate-in...
Example H above is in my view a good example of something should be recorded. A single incident is not a crime, but repeating that conduct could constitute a criminal harassment.
Don't give them ideas!
After having watched too many videos on Auditing Britain, I can not trust the UK cops. In some ways they are worse than US cops, except for shooting down people, where US cops still lead negatively here. Also, UK cops use many more words than US cops, without those words really meaning much at all. The amount of flabbergast-inflated text length is insane.
They both think that all the dystopia is for the greater good, is never abused, and if you fall victim to it, you must have been doing something dodgy to deserve it.
Probably more effective than the US system where they wait until it's actually a crime, then charge you.
please don't
A few weeks later there was a hacking incident! The shared spreadsheet of every pupil's grades that every teacher had full access to was modified, boosting the grades of some students (including me) and lowering the grades of others (including people I didn't get on with). I was immediately sent home during the investigation. Nothing came of it in the end.
Years later my friend revealed the advanced technique of finding his music teacher's password (bassoon) on a post-it note under their keyboard.
One of the websites I downloaded keygens and cracks from was called TheBugs.WS. Another pupil saw that I was downloading keygens and stuff and tried to rat me out to one of the teachers saying like “hey look at his screen, he can’t use the computer for that”.
The teacher had a brief glance at my monitor and read the title of the page TheBugs.WS and just said “nothing wrong about learning about insects” and then just walked away lololol. To this day I still don’t know if the teacher genuinely though the page was about insects just from the title, or if she just didn’t care as long as the briefest of glances at my screen didn’t show anything that seemed really out of place.
Either which way, my situation was kind of the exact opposite of yours. And the inconspicuous name of the site was enough that I didn’t get in trouble even though I could have if a teacher looked closely.
... they only seemed to put a sign on it to say 'stop defaulting it' yet did zero oversight, so I'd just keep on walking over to the printer next to it, reset it, and keep on trucking.
Getting a CR48 from the Google Chromebook pilot program was my next trick to defeat their WRT shenanigans - that 200mb of free 3G every month actually went a long way back then in the halls, and a McJob paid for the rest of the wireless freedom ;)
1. Use of MEGA (it's apparently used to share CSAM)
2. Use of virtual machines
3. "Having Tor on my computer" (I had to put that in quotes because whilst it doesn't make sense, that's what they said).
They're fucking clueless, don't underestimate how little they understand. An explanation of how something is harmless likely sounds to them like an admission of guilt.
It was an eye opening experience. I (and many members of my extended family) have very much less respect for the competence of law enforcement as a direct result of this experience.
MEGA is indeed used to share CSAM and pirate stuff. That is its primary use actually but it's one of those institutions that maintains plausible deniability. Remember it was started after MegaUpload was shut down for being obviously designed to reward copyright infringement - the new one isn't obviously designed for that
There's also a large chasm separating copyright infringing material and CSAM, and putting them together as "the primary use" as you did is, in my opinion, questionable agenda pushing.
I agree with your first paragraph, but your second one leaves me wondering about your motivations for commenting in the first place; MEGA and Kim Dotcom embarrassed US law enforcement for a long, long time.
I happen to think that KDC is a piece of shit. But it seems that would make him perfect tech-bro material, except that his copyright infringement wasn't seen as 'US preferential' at the time.
Which is exactly the same as leading corporate secrets or international espionage or hosting a copy of The Satanic Verses, from a technical perspective.
It's also no different from hosting a blog or any other website from a technical perspective.
Anyone can report anyone else to "the authorities" for anything. It doesn't mean the unnamed authorities act on it. It's also quite strange that Yoti (if this isn't just a hoax) don't specify which policing unit is recieving these reports.
Have you seen the reputations of most "journalists" these days? Several UK newspapers frequently repost stories from forums like reddit and mumsnet.
And I'll remind you that the alternative in this case is just believing the random redditor's version of events.
If you can't criticize or protest Xi in China, try criticize or protesting the laws in rest of the world. Especially the things they do in the name of privacy, I remember UK jailing folks for FB posts, that's stuff that happens in third world countries.
Not that UK ever had much of a leg to stand on, US does the same now very scary.
For trips to any of the countries first thing I check is my socials and delete stuff that might get checked on airports now. This was apparently not supposed to happen in the developed world.
My friends still tell me it's not that bad, but it's just scary reading stuff on HN like this once a month, every month for the last few years.
Not exactly what you asked but here’s something tangentially related
I’m not defending the US policy for a second, it’s totalitarian. But holding China up as a positive comparison to totalitarian impulses is missing the bigger picture.
tell me you know nothing about China without telling me you know nothing about China besides parroted propaganda
The only cases this has happened has been over people actively calling for racial violence over an imagined scare - bunch of morons thought a muslim migrant killed someone, so they went on to riot, burn mosques, assault foreign looking people, etc; on day 2 it was revealed the perpetrator was a Britain born Christian son of foreign origins, but the morons didn't care, they had their excuse.
I struggle to think of many countries where calling for immediate violence, on Facebook or in public with placards, is acceptable. Or any reason why it should be.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyenzdz66wo
Sure courts won but the arrest is the issue. Courts general also win in other democratic third world countries but the initial arrest is enough of an intimidation.
Also this is a slippery slope I remember one person you mentioned were bad but there was another which wasn't nearly as bad.
Also folks on the other side can say the same thing when you call them fascists or something.
Sure saying bad stuff is bad, but it's very very fucking slippery slope.
All speech is hate speech of you are not in line with the current govt.
Another example from what you might consider hateful probably who went to jail and was acquitted but after a lengthy process.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgv785n23eo
I am not saying UK is the next China but, it's rather fascinating people in UK to claim they have so much more freedom and privacy.
Basically if China is 100% authoritarian, UK is atleast 70% there. They just need a leader to abuse these systems to come in power.
Indeed, but police do this kind of thing in a lot of places. Didn't the US have multiple cases of people being arrested over comments on Kirk's death? It's not good, but cops on a power trip because you hurt their feelings is not a thing we can easily root out. Hence why courts matter.
> All speech is hate speech of you are not in line with the current govt.
Not at all what hate speech means.
> Basically if China is 100% authoritarian, UK is atleast 70% there. They just need a leader to abuse these systems to come in power.
Yeah, no, 70% is ridiculous. I'm not sure you can clearly measure this, but at most 50%. Even with an abusive leader you can still criticise them and the monarch without fear of actual repercussions. In China prison time is basically guaranteed.
There are cases where things atleast have a decent ending but that's not even a given in so called free and democratic world.
The only constant is rights for people get stripped and reduced in the name of safety and security. And people consider politicians willing to given fake, and nonsensical answers as the democratic process.
How is that different from an authoritarian state?
> Yeah, no, 70% is ridiculous. I'm not sure you can clearly measure this, but at most 50%. Even with an abusive leader you can still criticise them and the monarch without fear of actual repercussions. In China prison time is basically guaranteed.
Just to note most people just get deplatformed for this stuff in china they don't get jailed. Since they control media China doesn't even care about putting you in an actual jail cell if you aren't a major active threat.
As for actual repercussions, people are getting shot at, put in jail with (even folks with green cards in US), and banned from travel (in UK). I am not sure how that isn't 70% of the way there. But it's fine if it's already alright with you that you consider 50% authoritarianism Free.
I am certain you agree that this nonsense is on the rise. But I am also certain you just haven't considered how close it is to actual authoritarianism.
China isn't just shooting people who have said stuff against China I could get a visa and travel without too much hassle even after showcasing visible displeasure with the country's rules.
US and UK doesn't even like me mentioning them negatively if I am applying for a visa.
Living in Germany so UK might be much worse for all I know , but I would be surprised if Germany is the shining paragon for democracy now.
Sure we have a police state problem and I won’t pretend everything is peachy - but it’s far from as extreme as some comments here make it out to be
They’re also declining hard because of brexit and maybe fear public unrest.
And in China for dissent you go to a reeducation camp. Or maybe the China incidents aren’t newsworthy, just expected.
that may be true, but in the US, you get shot?
The situation is worse than it has been in the past but it’s not at China equivalence levels.
That line of propaganda pushed by the US government worked well for the better part of a century, not any more.
I’m not defending the UK police’s actions here but “it’s just as bad as China!” is a refrain you see often that rarely adds up.
We should be criticizing our governments. But for the things they’re actually doing. Not what we imagine them to be doing.
yup, me and my whole family using VPNs on there phones were arrested and placed in labor camp, I'm writing this now from camp, sending it to gateway on pigeon...
but seriously, these people fear mongering arbor China are completely clueless, China absolutely doesn't care about you unless you go against gov, nobody checked our phones at border, nobody bothered us, at the Beijing province border checks they noticed we didn't register our accommodation which is mandatory and just let us go on our trip anyway telling us to go to police after weekend where we met extremely laid-back police officers smoking under no smoking sign
been living there for years and the situation was same, I fucked up paperwork which would in US lead to detention and deportation, in China we always found solution, there is always workaround for rules, China doesn't care about you unless you do something extreme against the gov
I remember being on high horse about freedom and other BS regarding West vs china, but since COVID I'm more and more failing to see the difference, quite the opposite for West
> didn't register our accommodation which is mandatory
>> Foreigner: just let us go on our trip anyway
>> Citizen: sent to detention and beaten to death [0]. Reverse ICE?
Police is friendly and laid back for foreigners, in China there are even foreigners advertising to call the police for you if you lost something, simply because police will be more responsible if a foreigner is involved. And they are also more flexible like your experience shows, which does not apply to citizens.
There are more examples, like gfw, for foreigner there are even volunteers at major airports helping you install VPN, while for citizens you can get fined or warned with an official record in your dossier.
Or like COVID you mentioned, during the lock-down period foreigners have prioritized access to foods and necessities. One extreme case I remember is a wealthy couple in Shanghai ran out of those things. And how did they get through? They happened to hire a Philippine nanny at the time, and that gives them priority, despite not officially registered like you. Imagine your gov prioritize your servant over you.
maybe visit China to have clue instead parroting someone's propaganda
and no, there are NOT volunteers helping you with VPN at airport, not sure what are you smoking
I pick the previous linked case because what he did is exactly what you did, and I am not arguing for general law enforcement.
I go to major expos in China multiple times a year, and the volunteers are there, every time. You can find advertisements for sim cards, vpn services not only at airports, but also hotels, etc.
"Due to past security concerns, Yoti automatically flags multiple verification attempts and any devices running GrapheneOS. These instances are automatically reported to both the authorities and our security team."
Then:
"Unfortunately, as multiple attempts were made from this specific device, your account has been flagged for suspicious activity."
So the "and" looks like a typo, otherwise their system wouldn't have allowed more than one attempt from a GrapheneOS device to begin with.
i.e. multiple verification attempts from a GrapheneOS device will flag your account.
Congratulations Graphene for being acknowledged as the OS of the next generation. An old version of Android or OsX would just be a confused boomer.
Yoti does not and never would never report any user to the authorities based on their choice of operating system or device. The image of the customer support email being circulated on Reddit does not match anything in Yoti’s customer support records.
We have engaged with GrapheneOS to better understand any issues their users may be experiencing and explore ways to securely resolve those issues.
For more information visit: https://www.yoti.com/blog/yoti-does-not-report-grapheneos-us...
[1] https://grapheneos.org/faq#:~:text=Apps%20can%20detect%20tha...
It's a cat and mouse game that would require significant investment and could make things look more suspicious, better to focus on adoption so it becomes harder for companies to make stupid decisions like this. I've seen a banking apps that have expressly added support for GrapheneOS with their hardware attestation after customers mentioned it.
Even dedicated anti-detect browsers are constantly blocked and need patches. It's not something I would want GrapheneOS to focus on.
If you're using any type of adblock in your browser, you're essentially spoofing countless systems just to have those ads not show up. But if I'm having my operating system tell an app that I'm not OS XYZ that's fraud?
Sibling comment says running this simple curl command would be illegal. Guess what? It is illegal.
0: https://developer.android.com/google/play/integrity/overview
From https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...:
> GrapheneOS not only upholds the app security model but substantially reinforces it, so it cannot be justified with reasoning based on security, anti-fraud, etc.
'you can still do X through Y, they are not removing it' is a popular and often the top reply on posts related to companies tightening their walled gardens. It gives an immediate solution to the problem but it doesn't address the core issue. I wish that wasn't the case.
The discussion might have been mostly theoretical before, but it sure isn't anymore...
Bank is highly regulated service and vital so there's strong incentive and ramp up here
Maybe I’m too niche or not niche enough to run into issues. I also never download software from any site like this so maybe that’s it.
Remember, people use these services largely for convince more than qualms with paying for multinationals. So once they create friction, off we go to the bays again in large masses.
It's resistance against mass surveillance and a State that's grown cancerous. It's any citizen's duty, really.
Piracy is justified action in response to intrusive, mass, and overreaching surveillance by the unholy matrimony of State and Corporate.
Ironically, the big AI companies have scaled copyright infringement and appear to be profiting from it. So, pretty much: "meat's back on the menu boys".
I get that some people have a behavioural addiction to this harmful content but perhaps the age verification is an opportunity to step back and reconsider.
I usually just use the Book of Mormon and that typically helps me get it done well-enough. But when that doesn't work, I allow myself some different material. The New Haven Code of 1656 is my reserve favorite and I have a laminated copy of the Comstock Act of 1873 on-hand for unusually-tricky edge cases.
I tried changing the page, Helaman's 2,000 stripper warriors are even hotter.
Stupid sexy Mormonism...
They need to prove people guilty, not flag all “suspicious activity” then let people prove they are innocent.
This happened in the UK, specifically, and from what we've all seen it's definitely sliding in a bad direction over the past decade. But it's also not in any way so far gone that you can't take action. If you're sitting here on HN complaining and yet doing nothing else, you're a part of the problem. Stop being complacent, take action before it's too late. You won't get thrown in jail for getting involved in politics there (yes, you'll find some specific examples of that happening but if you look deeper they'll all unravel and show there was a deeper reason that's being misrepresented, usually by tabloids/social media).
It shouldn't be about what they call you, it should be about your actions. Neonazis must be allowed to peacefully protest.
Hamas and its symbols are illegal however.
I’m not saying it’s impossibleb but there should be some evidence for such a strong claim
Nah bro a goat like me has much better things to do.
If you make outrageous claims the burden of proof is on you and not the people you’re talking to.
Ironically, I also can't read most of the screenshots because all sharing sites are blocked in the UK because of the threat image sharing represents to the social order.
The uk didn’t block sharing sites because of a threat to the social order, sharing sites blocked uk viewers because they don’t want to comply with uk laws like “don’t gather children’s personal data”.
i love commenting on this stuff to get an insight into the mindset of people who support this...strident ignorance.
The "implied" link between their fines, them rejecting UK connections, and any new laws is very much a PR thing from imgur.
All the breathless online reporting seems to miss just how toothless the law was, and they still failed at following it.
Like I think the new verification laws are an unworkable mess at best, written by people with an idea similar to believing they could "ban one specific species of fish from UK territorial waters" by throwing the odd grenade in, but they're rather unrelated to what imgur actually did.
>The Spanish privacy regulator (hereinafter: AEPD) recently imposed a fine of €950,000 on age verification service YOTI
>For the unlawful processing of biometric personal data in violation of Article 9 of the GDPR, YOTI was fined €500,000. In addition, a fine of €200,000 was imposed for obtaining invalid consent in violation of Article 7 of the GDPR. Finally, the company was fined €250,000 for exceeding retention periods in violation of Article 5 of the GDPR
[0] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuvering_Characteristics_Augme...
Please don't lie.
I will be unclear if you can use your GOS, Linux or BSD computer. You might get stopped, checked, if the authorities want to screw you they can always find something. If you have an accident your insurance will find something.
So you will live in a constant fear of getting caught, and you do not really know why. Until you end up getting a chromebook, aka a bus card or Uber rides.
In most western countries the rules for car safety are draconian but I see everywhere 80+ years old people, out of their mind, driving SUV while looking at their phone.
Since the 2010 people would call themselves hackers because they hang out here, use Github, VSCode and know about Kubernetes. But now you are about to get arrested for using GOS or whatever. At least the meaning of the term hacker is getting its shine back a bit.
Not that I'm arguing the UK isn't accelerating further into an authoritarian nightmare.
[0] Kinda related https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioural_Insights_Team
- Two-tier justice system
- This
How did it come to this? The UK is arguably the country that has done the most for the cause of freedom, having led the way in abolishing slavery.
In could say Jean Charles de Menezes
And know?
> In January 2026, a Met Police review revealed that in an attempt to meet the diversity targets set by Dick, senior figures in the force had allowed recruitment standards to fall. More than 100 applicants who initially failed vetting procedures were later allowed to join after their cases were referred to a special panel set up to scrutinise rejected applications from ethnic minority candidates. Several of these went on to commit criminal offences or misconduct, including violence, sex attacks and drug use.
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/01/08/met-hired-child-...
From the Jay Report [0] showing crimes swept under the rug according to ethnic/socioeconomic background of perp and victim, to arresting people for opposing genocide (sorry: terrorism!) [1] to the recent case of Henry Nowak [2], it's really hard not to see a two-tier policing in the UK. And this very submission; caring about privacy is seen grounds for being reported and potentially investigated, by a private company! Which suggests it's something already internalized, too, for people who resist big corp surveillance.
Back in the 90s and before, the two-tier heavily punished the minorities, and in an overshooting overcorrection, now it's the other way around. Nowak getting handcuffed by cops going "I don't think you have [been stabbed] mate!" says it all. Unless it's regarding opposing/supporting Israel, then the two-tier flips and people with basic human decency and actual antisemites are pigeonholed together, nevermind their background.
[0] https://www.rotherham.gov.uk/downloads/file/279/independent-...
The more nuanced reality is that the police are extremely imperfect and treat all sorts of different groups of people unfairly in all sorts of different ways. That's indeed a problem, but it's not a political conspiracy.
Which is exactly what I said, courts generally do the right thing. The people were still arrested, and the dissent was still crushed, though. Israel is a strategic partner so all protests are equal, but some are more equal than others.
>they're not instances of what the far right would call two-tier policing (i.e. the bogus claim that the police treat white people more harshly than other ethnic groups)
While far-right popularized the term, the awareness is now, at least among the people I know, full-spectrum. The tiers are independent according to the issue at hand and the priorities of the powers and lobbies involved. Simply some camps were unaware until it was their turn, and become confused when they overlap.
>The more nuanced reality is that the police are extremely imperfect and treat all sorts of different groups of people unfairly in all sorts of different ways. That's indeed a problem, but it's not a political conspiracy.
Personally, I think that statement has a pass in many places, but not in the UK. The "policy projection of values" (to give it some name), with the growth of identity politics mixed in to make it worse, attempted to make everyone feel equally protected, but instead succeeded in convincing almost every demographic in the UK that the system is rigged against them.
We are not racist -> certain crimes by given little publicity or ignored depending on the background of who committed them. Two tier.
Israel is a strategic partner -> pro-palestinian/anti-zionist groups labeled as terrorists. Two tier.
Hate has no place here -> police dispatched for nasty online comments, but dragging their feet for actual physical crime. The fact that "Non-Crime Hate Incidents" is an actual term is just baffling. Two tier.
Net Zero -> right wingers complain about blockades of ecologists going unpunished. Two tier. Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023 passed, ecologist arrested (and sentenced!) for protesting against not doing enough for Net Zero. Pendulum swing, still two tier.
Directing mind and will -> individuals are fully accountable by their actions, for corporations one need(ed) to prove "directing mind and will" of the executives. Two tier. See the British Post Office Horizon scandal for extra depression, or how individuals are prosecuted for dumping, yet Thames Water can dump inordinate amounts of sewage but that's just "regulatory failure". While recent acts (Crime and Policing, Failure to Prevent Fraud) are in the right direction, criminal penalties for corporations remain financial, and swallowed into operating costs. Still solid two tier.
Russia is a criminal state -> Londongrad unbothered, alive, moisturized, flourishing. Two tier.
Protect the NHS -> partygate for some, fines for others. Two tier. Don't get me into the defunding of it.
Peace above everything -> the state actors that committed crimes (often acts of terrorism) with impunity in Ireland during The Troubles, were later prosecuted, while IRA members were secretly given out-of-jail cards. Just compare John Downey vs Dennis Hutchings. Since the topic has cooled down and the Hutchings' case fueled the fire, they passed the Legacy and Reconciliation Act to, 25 years later (!) finally providing immunity to British criminals. This is particularly damning because those following orders had been prosecuted, but no single commander, general, intelligence officer, minister actually giving or overseeing those orders had been, at any point. Two tier.
The UK is in a permanent state of "fake it till you make it" of the idea of the perfect state, and in doing so it routinely over/undershoots the mark, in an endless Samsara of overcorrections, because it is all still fake. The state sets the target, but it does nothing to get there. Ultimately the consistent application of the law is second to state, corporate and geopolitical interests, meaning the two tiers will be there no matter how correct the laws are.
I notice that a variant of this experiment is now playing out on HN in real time, with various commenters having their neuronal mappings gradually reshaped to match activation layers trained on Elon Musk's twitter feed.
A few years ago it was possible to have conversations about the UK on HN. Now all you can really do is get into pointless arguments with biological instantiations of Grok.
Unfortunately, there are vastly more people outside the UK consuming this nonsense than there are British people who can flag it or correct it. So in contrast to conversations about the US, it is very hard for perspectives grounded in reality to break through. If you look into it, the vast majority of the users stirring things up in this thread aren't in Britain, and most likely have little to no first-hand knowledge of what the country is like.
But hey, they stopped doing it, after a couple hundred years so let's everyone give Britain credit.
The Arab led slave trade flourished for much longer, by some records it is alive even today.
The words Slav and slave have the same root.
There were times when 30-40% of the Korean population were slaves.
The Mongols killed and enslaved half of the known world.
My point is this, none of these people ever make a point of how much freedom they had, because after a couple hundred years they stopped, quite like the the brits like to.
It's pretty baffling tbh.
Anyone: criticises the British empire.
Brits: after several hundred years of brutal trans Atlantic slave trade, we stopped. Hurrah!
The others he listed didn't stop voluntarily - their empires either collapsed or found themselves at the mercy of another that likely also practiced slavery. As he said, slavery was the default. The UK itself was getting raided by Barbary pirates just 200 years before the Slavery Abolition Act.
Unlike the Romans or the Mongols, the UK made a choice to stop, and they did so, at massive cost, because their values changed. They actual made actual progress, and thus are hated by many calling themselves progressives.
Y'know.... i dunno man, i'm not so sure its the 'stopping' that makes them hated by those calling themselves progressives?
Need a history refresher. Let's skip the Magna Carta since that was really about giving power to feudal lords. Do you mean British empire being the unwitting and unwilling cause of United States?
When, in God's green Earth, have the "lords" that lord it over the "subjects of crown" common people of that island have been vanguards of "freedom" when it did not serve their own class interests?
> having led the way in abolishing slavery
As they like to say in England, bullocks!
So you must be either a saint (who also did a lit of bad things) or the devil himself (who punishes bad people).
You could just simply acknowledge the fact that Britain was one of the first major powers to abolish slave trade and later slavery across its empire, and it actively pushed other countries to follow.
That is the claim that has been challenged by many here. It's just too much, and I am not even Irish ..
I guess the track record of other countries isn’t much better
That should be a few decades before the civil war in the USA about the same issue.
The US was actually pretty much the last Western civilization to abolish slavery from what I recall from history class.
Though the slide ever since Brexit is indeed astounding
Trying not to get my account banned...
The British elite allied with non-British people and betrayed their own.
I wonder if some ideology which believes in tech freedom will become the communism of the next age, and prompt a new wave of 'democracy' purity crusades.
Totally disagree. Everyone has a different threat model. Some people may solely be interested in the exploit protections and not care about their privacy. Some people might just like that it's completely open source or that there's no AI or it's bloat free.
I really dislike this maximalist, "ruin privacy" stance because it discourages people from making a small improvement if they can't be perfect. Changing to GrapheneOS is an insanely large privacy benefit compared to almost any other change and people might see this sort of sentiment and think there's no point if they use one privacy invasive app.
If you don't use it for things like this you don't really see any disadvantage. Occasionally I get cloudflare or vercel blocked when trying to read a blog but that's all.
So they're at a very strange intersection of using graphene but wanting to do exactly the kind of that is difficult on graphene. And just to be able to chat on PSN.
You're right though, different threat model.
But I’m also under no illusion that Google has better analytics sources.
"MineralWater
This is why people should buy a cheap phone with stock android on which zero private data is stored and that is never used for anything other than those verification things or government apps that might be or become mandatory.
What i mean is, use your graphene phone for everything, but don't use it to legitimate yourself.
Take an old phone or cheap one and put nothing on it, no contacts, no email (maybe one exclusively used for this phone without any private conversation on it), no apps like messengers and so on.
A phone that is only used like a passport, to legitimate yourself and or use government apps you are forced to use."
HN commenters consistently argue they, and therefore everyone else, must be able to use the same phone for everything
Otherwise corporate mobile OS alternatives like GrapheneOS are useless
For example if banking app, the proverbial example, requires some corporate mobile OS, then the owner must use this corporate mobile OS for everything else besides banking, too
If they have multiple phones, then presumably they must also use the corporate mobile OS on every one of them
No exceptions
Perhaps next we will see comments trying to argue that users can only have one phone
Or that the only computer user may own is a phone
These HN comments make little sense to me
Perhaps the people using multiple as phones mentioned in MineralWater's comment are not the people commenting on HN
Using GOS itself is not a crime, unless you use it to commit crimes.
That with which the authorities disagree is more than likely the morally, ethically, societally correct direction.
I'm a proud GrapheneOS user.
In the immortal words of Marvin: "I'm mine".
Fuck y'all.
Fun fact: big European bad guy also carbon copied his strategies from the USA.