"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"
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.
I have never been to Spain, and I have only slight familiarity with issues in Barcelona and greater Catalonia, but this gives me pause:
"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."
Five Eyes is (or was, as its status is undetermined) an intelligence sharing agreement between the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. Each nation has to abide by its own constitution and intelligence gathering limits. For example, the United States generally refrains from sharing intelligence on American citizens with other Five Eyes partners. Canada generally won’t share information on people who only hold Canadian citizenship, etc.
The poster knows the answer. It was a rhetorical question. Five Eyes is the thing countries with "constitutional protections" use to cheat their way around those protections. The US isn't allowed to spy on US citizens without a warrant but the other countries can do it and then provide the results to the US and vice versa.
And if they're going to be allowed to cheat then why hasn't the cheating done any good?
I personally take issue with this because it can be used by the USA to effectively target data protected under EU's GDPR, because the US has an agreement with Israel to send and share raw, non minimized, sigint without going through legal loopholes to sign proper consents within the US Agencies chain of command as required by the 2023 EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework.
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).
Force removal from Mobile App Stores, make EU companies avoid implementing their Pixels or Services or face fines, etc.
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.
Isn't the theory that this is because Clinton was one of them, and he was president at the time?
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.
> Clinton was one of them, and he was president at the time?
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?
> 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.
Fridges are for criminals too. The very good ones can keep the severed body parts cold for longer, thus preventing spoilage and reports of foul odours from downstairs neighbours. Will Frigidaire and Bosch stop selling this criminal technology to criminals?
I think the best way to prevent the sale of crime fridges to criminals would be to have national governments integrate the entirety of data that each nation has, from every level, on every citizen. Then we can create an API which market participants like Frigidaire and Bosch can use to query whether a purchase should be permitted based on the purchaser.
Exactly, and I hope we keep track of all fridge purchases with biometrics from customers (and as thus, should not be able to order from online). That better be hooked up to an API that the cops can query at any time.
A better analogy would be a balaclava. Lots of legitimate uses but it's uncommon to see people wearing them day to day and is very popular with criminals. But we don't imagine we could ban balaclavas to prevent crime.
It depends on what you mean by 'ban'.
In the country where I live (Denmark), they are very much banned, unless you can demonstrate your legitimate current use case for them.
In particular, you are not allowed to wear them in public places where people gather or gather in groups.
And 'beating up cops anonymously' is not an approved use case :-)
The rule as I understand it, also covers [sic] extreme religious dress rules for women.
I wear one when I ride my motorcycle. Keeps my neck warm, and keeps the cold air off my face. And helps keep the dust off my face when I'm off road. And adds an extra layer of protection. They are also nice when you borrow someone else's helmet. The GoKart places near me give them out to help keep rental helmets from getting nasty.
I thought in the US "Jersey" refers to t-shirts worn during American football or something like that? At least I have seen people saying "these are my Jerseys" and then pointing to their t-shirts worn during having played American football.
What I am saying is that I have seen the term "knitwear" everywhere, and when I am looking for "knitwear", I am not looking for t-shirts or "jerseys", but those sweatshirts that look like this (or the like): https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1181/5370/files/knits_1_48....
Don’t forget about the Charge of the Light Brigade, commanded by the Earl of Cardigan. After the war he became famous and people copied the knit jumper he wore, naming it the cardigan. That’s two knit garments from the same battle.
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.
In Sweden at leasts, balaclavas and other wearables "preventing identification" is specifically illegal _at_ protests. From what I remember the danish case is similar.
I wear one for taking photos of reflective objects, particularly car interiors. Sure minimizes retouching my stupid face out of reflections. Black cloth gloves, too.
The local police forces can start offering a service where they will cause a controlled leak of the refrigerant in your fridge to reduce its efficiency therefore making it less useful for refrigerating body parts.
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?
Even better, the US has a higher knife murder rate than the UK does.
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?
Back to the parental comment - it's been decided there isn't really a good reason to have most guns and so they are strictly controlled - I mean what's the legit reason for having an assault rifle?
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.
> I mean what's the legit reason for having an assault rifle?
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.
The NRA are self-interested, racist scum, Trump supporters are authoritarian fascists - almost totally opposed to freedom and resisting tyranny. What do they have to do with anything?
Are American people allowed to have F-35s jets and Abrams tanks too? NO?! Then what kind of tyranny is this where your elected government's military has the monopoly on violence?
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.
You missed out Haiti as a shining example of citizen rule against the tyranny of government.
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!
In a democracy the government is the people ( more or less ). Tyranny of the majority, enforcing the collective view via collective organised violence.
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.
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.
I don’t know who the “you people” in that comment refers to. I actually hope we never have another civil war. Historically, you’re much more likely to end up with the French Revolution, the current situation in Syria, etc. than a fresh, bright future. Many would die and everyone would suffer. Those who long for war (foreign or domestic) are evil, foolish, or both.
But my opinion doesn’t change the rationale for the 2nd Amendment.
Another civil war? That’s not desirable, for obvious reasons. But another revolutionary war? That might be inevitable. Thomas Jefferson has an appropriate quote on such things.
"Elected" doesn't mean much if the system is rigged - starting from the choices you get, and how accountable they are to you. After a point it's just a charade.
It's essentially a critical mass type of thing, no?
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.
I understand that "there has to be a counter to dictatorship" and such actions are not without consequence.
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.
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”.
If the Second Amendment (2A) meant to preserve the ability to overthrow the government then why can we not have bombs and tanks?
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.
Did they fear a national army? Legitimately curious here. They certainly couldn't afford one, but military-lead coups weren't the problem then that they are today (or were during the Roman empire).
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.
Yeah, they even threw in a thing about well regulated militias, but left in a comma that got interpreted as "any toon can own as many guns as they want."
Zombie knives yeah, but you can get into serious trouble for the multitool with locking blade if you forgot to take it our from your backpack after a camping trip.
So are the laws on swords. You can have a straight sword but not a curved one, unless its either an antique or craft made using traditional methods.
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.
> I mean what's the legit reason for having an assault rifle?
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.
Not quite. From the proponents' standpoint… it’s to defend themselves and their property from anyone who is a treat. It could be a tyrant. It could be agents of that tyrant.
Most countries ( ie people in those countries ) have decided that it's generally better for everyone that protecting people and property( enforcing the law ) is left to a well regulated professional police force rather than individuals of varying moral quality, mental stability or narcotic status.
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.
Yeah, but knives have a wide range of use, whereas guns do not.
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.
The part that baffles me is that there is a right to self defense that the courts seem to acknowledge, that some cases find a person justified in using a weapon/tool that just happens to be at their disposal at the time of an attack, but having a similar tool/weapon for the purpose of defense is not allowable, even something as simple as spray.
Because you’re then routinely going about the place armed, and more likely to be the cause of violence or escalation.
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.
"and more likely to be the cause of violence or escalation."
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).
In most countries, the default is whether the person had a lawful reason to be carrying the weapon used and that the defense is proportional to the attack. There’s nothing insane about that - there’s zero reason to arm yourself and millions of reasons not to.
"whether the person had a lawful reason to be carrying the weapon used"
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.
I think you've lost the plot. I did say "under age", in fact, I was called out for not having been specific in my initial message, to which I said that the two are not comparable because the prohibition of selling knives for people underaged happened at the time they were starting to fight "knife crime".
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.
Okay, but not selling knives to kids really reduces knife crime? I wonder by how much, if at all. I am having difficulties believing it does.
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 can buy a kitchen knife - just not if you are under age. Not it's perfectly legal for an adult to buy one for a budding cook - all the age ban does is put a 'responsible' adult in the loop.
You also can't carry one in public without reasonable cause - which in the end is decided by a judge.
Chefs can typically get away with carrying their knives (they get very possessive over the care of their own knives and so won't leave them in the kitchen) if they're in a knife roll and in a backpack or similar.
A gun can stop an attacker whether human, ursine, or large feline.
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?
Yet strangely, Canada has almost the exact same media and near identical mental health statistics and the country has a tiny fraction of the school shootings in the United States. Like it or not, the availability of military grade weapons sure seems to increase the likelihood that a kid will get killed at school.
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.
I am not saying it is not different, and I mentioned this in another comment that guns and bombs are definitely useful to "hurt as many as possible", but I think my question still stands regardless of this. In fact, it might make even more sense to ask the question.
Let's fund and destigmatize mental healthcare! And also ban guns!
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.
I do not disagree. It should be focusing on the fact that a student wanted to cause violence. It could have been done through a gun, a knife, a fork, and a thousand different items. In fact, a fist may suffice. Or an item that is readily available at schools. Any item. That said, guns are especially good at "harm as many as possible". Just like bombs are.
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.
It's like my bank's application, your mobile with all the latest security update is prohibited, because the bootloader is unlocked. But your 6-year-old mobile that received its last security update 3/4 years ago is fine!
I think people are misinterpreting your comment? Or I am.
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.
Yes, the police are arguing both sides, according to what I have read[1], and that they are not doing it in English but in other languages, e.g. Swedish. I am not sure why I am getting down-voted though.
I edited my comment. I thought it was obvious because it was the police claiming the former, and connected the two with an "AND". I was not criticizing GrapheneOS. Thanks!
It was obvious, people just have terrible reading comprehension, and they also don't read to the end of a comment if something near the beginning triggers them.
I came to the same conclusion based on some of the comments addressed to me. It is like they did not even bother reading the comment to which I replied, or the last 2 comments.
This whole thing is quite the stretch. Someone who clearly has no idea what they’re talking about acted like a know it all on a forum. I don’t see how that’s evidence of a coordinated attack. Police saying dumb things about security tech is nothing new either nor is it a smoking gun.
Occam’s razor applies even when we want to believe a cool story.
This is basically the ploy with many secure phones - say it's for criminals but actually have a backdoor for law enforcement. I wonder if there's some exploit on the Pixel or Graphene that law enforcement is now aware of.
well if it doesn't work for protecting your data it doesn't work for protecting criminals' data as well, right? or is this a lot less about making rational sense and a lot more about manufacturing consent to violate our rights?
So, can i be the voice of reason here?
The Panopticon is unavoidable! Everyone who has a spark of self-preservation in himself, knows it already. Technology has given the individual insane powers to take down state-level actors (drones in shipping lanes) and soon the whole planet(mirror life etc.). We can no longer afford privacy, as sad as this is.
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.
Basically the same old argument that Linux is used by black hat hackers.
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.
That's a very high bar for "state sponsored attack." I'd say the various internet ID verification laws being rolled out qualify as a state sponsored attack on our privacy/individual rights writ large.
And that's a very low bar for "state sponsored attack". Essentially everything you disagree with that the state does is a "state sponsored attack." This muddies the waters and when there is a "state sponsored attack" on a group of people, everyone is numb and we're out of words.
“Attack” doesn’t exclusively mean physical assault/restraining people. It’s called a “DDoS attack” after all. You’re creating a strict and narrow definition that most of the world does not subscribe to.
If I say “stop attacking me” during a heated argument no one thinks you’re physically assaulting me. That would be ridiculous.
This is all based off a one-line quote, by one police officer, interviewed anonymously in one newspaper in its "society" column. I don't want to go against the feeding frenzy, but, I think this one's a bit over-interpreted.
> "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)).
The anti-privacy movement in Europe is really concerning.
In particular as general population don't really care about it, we are going toward some major shifts.
I'm wondering though how this radical turn was initiated and if some lobbies are pulling the strings behind the scene...
It's just a neutral tool, open for everyone to use. There's plenty of people that used the tool for completely legitimate reasons, simply wanting to protect their privacy just like GrapheneOS users.
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.
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.
I agree with you that creating a tool is different from providing a service. However, I disagree on the rest of what you said, here's why:
> 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.
That's like saying Adi Shamir helps drug cartels, Tim Berners-Lee helps facilitate online fraud or that Henry Ford helped kill millions of people on the road.
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.
Also to add to this discussion, to me, it makes zero sense that you would deploy such a system that could be weaponized by a rogue government to hunt down political opponents.
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.
They don't care, what they're absolutely terrified is another Arab Spring happening at home.
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.
A person doesn't need to be elite to be terrified that something like Arab Spring will happen in their own country: the Arab Spring was really terrible for ordinary people: millions violently killed, millions of refugees, over ten million made homeless. In Syria, the mass killing is still going on.
(I'm surprised anyone still calls it the Arab Spring now that we know how disastrously it turned out.)
Of course lobbies are pulling the strings. That is a given.
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.
> The worst part is that you still have European governments who feel the need to give lessons of democracy to China et al.
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.
> The EU is not a country. It may very well be in 50 years from now but not presently.
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).
> In particular as general population don't really care about it
> 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].
> 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]
One can't rely on some sort of 'decency' of a given country and hope for the best, that ship has long sailed.
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.
> Police are generally very nice but I've also seen some unprovoked brutality
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.
It's not that complex. Policing in general attracts certain kinds of people with a desire for authority. It should go without saying that it's not 100% of police officers joining.
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.
> 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?)
The same reasons Nazis studied American segregation: they admired what they were able to accomplish and want to do something similar themselves.
Agreed. Although to be the devil's advocate for a moment: Governments can currently easily tap email, and phone tapping is more feasible at scale due to machine transcription. So the apps gave use a temporary safe haven, which may get compromised by Chat Control. And before email we had mail, handled directly by the government, although reading mail is more difficult without leaving traces.
The devil doesn't need an advocate here. "Temporary safe haven" is the kind of phrasing the advocates of anti-privacy policies use to argue that this "temporary" state of affairs should be destroyed.
> And before email we had mail, handled directly by the government, although reading mail is more difficult without leaving traces.
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.
I'm increasingly annoyed by the extent at which our state (Sweden, EU) is willing to sacrifice our rights to hinder the usage of recreational drugs by a minority of the population. How can it be that alcohol is endorsed so widely, given that we know many of the drugs we are being sacrificed to stop are safer, less addictive and less potent [1]? It's perhaps cynical to ask, but are we protecting the citizens, or the alcohol industry?
> And before email we had mail, handled directly by the government, although reading mail is more difficult without leaving traces.
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.
Good point about those constraints. It's bad when governments have a superhighway of information with an email provider. If they have to go through a painful process for each email, it would be like the paper envelope. But if they have an arrangement with the email provider where they can access whatever they want, that would be a terrible downgrade for the people compared to the paper mail days indeed. We have proof that such mass data collection happened in some countries.
You are misleading by using "secret police" when what you are are looking for is the "security police".
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.
Okay, I was not aware of this distinction. Thanks for correcting me!
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.
The distinction between "counter-espionage" and "covert operations against a government's political, ideological, or social opponents and dissidents" is historically extremely permeable.
The argument "why do you care about your privacy if you have nothing to hide" needs to be addressed. The problem with this argument is you don't decide what you need to hide or not, the authorities do, and we all know authorities can be corrupted. Just look at the US government right now for example A.
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.
Agreed, I once read someone put it like this: Saying you have nothing to hide, so you don't care about privacy is like saying you have nothing to say, so you don't care about freedom of speech. In both cases the ramifications are far reaching.
> "Why do you care about privacy if you have nothing to hide"
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 :)
I have nothing to hide and I'm not doing anything wrong, but I still close the door when I'm taking a shit and wouldn't like someone taking pictures of me doing it.
I think this "argument" has always been flawed. I don't need to justify what information I would like to share especially with state agencies. In Germany, this is even encoded in a legal principle called "Informationelle Selbstbestimmung" (informational agency). It's not about the information, it's about my right to decide about sharing it.
Saying "I don't care about 'privacy' because I have nothing to hide" can be compared to saying "I don't care about free speech because I have nothing to say". Which says a lot, frankly.
Everyone is commenting as if this is an attack on privacy. Read the article, I might have missed it, but I saw literally nothing on this.
The main point is that police are profiling people using Pixel phones. Nothing about making it illegal, or trying to remove encryption.
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.
>The main point is that police are profiling people using Pixel phones. Nothing about making it illegal, or trying to remove encryption.
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.
Profiling isn’t taken as evidence of criminal intentions. It can be as simple as, you do random searches, but you increase the frequency of random searches for people who match multiple behavioral criteria empirically associated with criminals.
> 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.
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 original quote was a comment from one police representative about Pixel phones being the preferred choice of narco traffickers in their region.
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.
Critiquing police for doing fishing expeditions, where they cast a broad net in hopes to catch criminals among a large batch of regular people has long been a thing.
> This should be a discussion on how valid it is for police to profile people.
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.
I'll take it even farther - this should be a discussion about what constitutes crime, and how a system that didn't criminalize common, victimless acts would have such a small pool of criminals to deal with that widespread demonization of this or that technology wouldn't be neccesary.
It seems they're profiling based on specific local conditions. Not many folks are installing graphene in their area, but there are lots of criminal gangs that do.
The situation would be different in, say, Silicon Valley. But they're dealing with the world they're in.
Arguments shouldn't be soldiers[1]. In fact, this I'd say this is harmful to privacy.
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 use grapheneOS, it's the reason I bought a pixel but not for nefarious reasons but rather I don't like how much control Google has (it's ironic I had to buy a google phone) on android phones even from other manufacturers and the targeted marketing and information that I would be giving out. I also don't like that Android implimented the feature where you couldn't access the Android>Data folder for 'security reasons' and have to plug it into a computer to access any of those sub folders, it's my phone let me do what I want with it. Graphene lets me access any of those folders without issue
the fact that they refuse to consider other phones ie fairphone or nothing phones that have the bootloader relockable is the reason that i do not use graphene.
it seems like a great os but i am not giving google money to get away from google.
Fairphone is dangerously insecure. Nothing phone is not much better.
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?)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> what are you talking about? are you talking about the kernel or the vendor?
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
They don't refuse other manufacturers, it's quite the opposite -- GrapheneOS provides list of requirements for future device support. AFAIK Fairphone and Nothing don't fit more than a few requirements from this list.
Oh, I forgot to add and can't edit my comment, so: they are talking with another OEM about the potential alternative hardware for the future GOS.
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?
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?
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.
Samsung devices have basically everything except hardware memory tagging, afair (which is allegedly being added now?), and it looks like it's possible to both OEM unlock and relock the bootloader?
> 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.
> 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)
You can't OEM unlock Snapdragons/North American models.
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).
Not sure what you are saying. In the Android space, only Pixels have a good secure element and Samsung has an acceptable secure element. Of those only Pixel allows unlocking the phone without blowing an eFuse. So, Pixel is currently the only phone that allows installing an alternative OS and provides a secure element.
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
> I don't like how much control Google has (it's ironic I had to buy a google phone) on android phones even from other manufacturers and the targeted marketing and information that I would be giving out.
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.
> One could say the same thing about matchboxes being used for arson and cash being used for money laundering, but no one’s calling on regulators to outlaw either.
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.
Meta: broken all possible privacy laws with "localhost tracking"
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 installed GrapheneOS just recently and I'm in the process of migrating all my various apps to it.
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.
You also do it to protect your friend and family, by for example sandboxing your contacts to prevent them from being shared with the messaging app you need to use to keep in touch with a specific group.
I think we aren't far from GrapheneOS being rendered unusable. We desperately need to make Linux phones viable daily drivers. Desperately. It's the only way we'll have access to critical funcionality while being independent from mega corporations like Google and whatever they decide to do with AOSP and their Pixel phones. Right now everything regarding our privacy is in their filthy hands.
I cannot say I am surprised. You care about your privacy -> you are a criminal. "If you are not a criminal, you have nothing to hide.". sighs.
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).
I maintain that if the NSA ever really needs to know something, if I somehow possess critical knowledge in a legitimate matter of national security, they are welcome to visit. (They'll have to settle for coffee, I'm not much of a tea drinker.) In this way, I really do have nothing to hide. But I do insist on knowing about it in the moment.
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.
Avoiding marketing surveillance is both reasonable and increasingly sought after; consider how many mainstream services now offer paid options just to reduce data collection by advertisers.
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.
>Modern surveillance states operate on the premise that every individual, out of billions worldwide, could become a potential threat.
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.
One of life's bizarre contradictions that it's largely down to Google that some of the most egregious and shady third party techniques for tracking and fingerprinting devices that dominated the 2010s no longer work.
I think what this is really about is the ability to manipulate elections. Panopticon surveillance means it will inevitably dig up dirt on a presidential or other candidate somewhere down the line. Then once they have a shot at winning, pull them aside and say "do what we say and you can maybe win, or we can force your loss now when the story breaks about how you used the n word once in 8th grade"
The idea that privacy is only for those doing something evil is so brain damaged, I cannot understand how anyone took that seriously.
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.
I would go further and say that even if these things are for criminals, that is okay; and allowing some amount of criminal activity is necessitated by the basic humility of conceding that we might not have figured out the best set of rules for humanity to live under.
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?
It's not a specifically "democratic" thing. It's a moral question, and good monarchies that are grounded in a strong moral tradition and a respect for subsidiarity can be much better at resisting the ebb and flow of mass sentiment manipulated by the media. The war on terror showed us how easily fear can be deployed to get the masses to hurt themselves, and revolutions show how envy and grievance can be deployed in a similar fashion.
GrapheneOS lost me on PR. For every updates they post on their social media there's guaranteed to be a rant about how other projects are doing things Wrong. They talk down on any and every security- and privacy-related projects (or open-source projects in general) if they align even slightly out of line according to their idea of security and privacy, regardless of their own merit. Dig even deeper they also like throwing around the word "slander" and "attack" without backing it up. In fact I am certain I will be greeted with a friendly wall of text by somebody from GOS in this very thread sooner rather than later.
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.
FWIW I think its good to elaborate on how other projects are doing things incorrectly (though I agree the GOS people could use some diplomacy and decorum). For example, with the fairphones for the longest time the only answer you could get on why grapheneos doesn't support it is that the phone is not secure. That answer doesn't leave me informed, all it leaves me with is "someone on the internet told me it wasn't secure". For the newest fairphone 6 they actually elaborated and covered things like the lack of a secure element. That leaves me informed, so now I can look up what a secure element is, why I want it, and then make an informed decision for my next cellphone purchase.
I looked it up (as in spent a last few weeks going through the forum and PRs) and when they say "slander", it's backed up.
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?
In a true democracy where government serves the people, the people would be opaque to the government and the government would be transparent(nothing to hide) to the people. As we can't impose transparency on government, we can at least obtain opacity for ourselves.
Agreed. It's wild to realize that the current US administration campaigned on the promise that they would provide transparency regarding certain matters. Yet now they're doing everything they can to combat transparency for those same matters.
Next, as countries are requiring more and more age verification online, the EU accidentally outlaws GrapheneOS by introducing an age verification system that requires an OS certified by Google or Apple. https://chaos.social/@luc/114860815364169550
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
Tying legislation/compliance requirements to specific vendor (Apple/Google) that happen to be dominant today feels wild to me (as opposed to open standards).
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.
> You can fairly easily build and flash a rooted version of GOS yourself.
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
I like my privacy. I'm not using grapheneOS yet because I've not bought one of the limited number of devices it can run on.
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?
This is an old, tired lesson: technology is morally neutral. It can serve equally well both good and bad purposes, and there's no way to coax technology make moral decisions for you.
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.
That got me interested in it for the privacy claims, but unfortunately it only supports Pixel phones. The reasons are technical and fair. It's just unfortunate that Pixel isn't sold or supported in many countries in the world. I live in Brazil and even in Mercado Libre where it's supposed to support the entire Mercosul market, I can't find a single Pixel 8 for purchase. It's sad we're excluded from accessing this amazing project.
I think that you could get similar privacy capability with LineageOS if you do not install Google Play (via MindTheGapps).
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).
It's not a matter of just purchasing. I can very well import from Amazon or AliExpress. Problem is support post sale and finding accessories like screen covers and cases. It's a lot of hassle for a device less feature-packed than you regular Samsung phones.
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.
Its Because I'm terrible at expressing myself sometimes...
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.
This is the best possible advertisement in these computer-savvy circles. I guess my next phone will be a Pixel with Graphene. I won't do anything illegal on it. If even the police hate it, it must be very safe from hackers.
Governments are a lot like abusive parents: they see people as difficult kids that must be managed. They believe that what they do helps them become good adults, but in reality they just love to control and abuse people. Rejecting this abusive parenting or simply setting personal boundaries makes them really angry and suspicious, and get you labelled a criminal. In the future, when thought-reading brain implants will be a thing, you will be labelled a criminal for not having one, for hiding your thoughts or even for refusing to have your thoughts managed by that device.
> This is just a continuation of “well a lot of people who commit crimes have dark skin, so let’s profile all people with dark skin.”
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.
Americans (at least) approach many dynamics with the same zeal (and irrationality) as they do racial issues. Think about the "green iMessage bubble" controversy. Think about sports fandom. It's not that those situations are comparable in their seriousness, but people do use dumb things as alarmingly inappropriate heuristics for how to treat others. They project unrelated behaviors onto things that apparently rise to the level of minor identity signifiers, and then people get genuinely hurt - or, speaking more directly to HNer interests, products fail because markets go underserved as second-class customers (waves at Meerkat).
I think about my experiences as an American living in Germany as an exchange student, at an age when the green-bubble nonsense would've been most relevant to my life, and there were also similar socioeconomic status markers in Germany that teenagers took deeply seriously... It just wasn't iPhones. Brands of jackets. Particular surnames that hinted at recent foreign ancestry could invite bullying... Foreign, as in from other parts of Europe. And sports fandom there (soccer/football) is arguably more fanatical than in the USA.
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.
I said that it was at least American. The tendency to link other types of identity with a basic sense of racial identity is probably not uniquely American, but the way that connection links those types of mundane signifiers of identity with American racial violence (social and physical) probably is (tautology appreciated). Maybe wearing the wrong jacket in Germany conjures the ghosts of social dynamics involved in pogroms where a patch was sewn into one's jacket, I don't know. In America, having a "second-class" phone or car or location of residence does seem to prompt people to treat you as we've come to know "second-class" people ought to be treated.
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.
I don’t see how you could think I disagree with that. As I said, it’s a continuation like an extension like something connected to, but not the same as.
I'm saying, even if both things are bad, there's a moral category difference between profiling based on immutable, born characteristics and profiling based on choices (in this case, choice of phone). They are not continuous or connected, but two different categories with a hard break or line between them you have to deliberately cross. That both involve profiling does not connect them, just as shooting a human and shooting a paper target are fundamentally different moral categories which are not made continuous by dint the fact that both involve pulling a trigger.
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.
Fair enough. But I think we're talking past each other:
> 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.
It looks like it doesn't. You might find alternative solutions like this user here*, but there is no guarantee any of it to work indefinitely on GrapheneOS. It's essentially a modified aftermarket firmware, and so, many security related features don't work out of the box, for example, the SafetyNet that many banking apps need.
"Many" safety features don't work? My understanding is that Google unsafetynet is the *only* thing that doesn't work because it's by-design trying to detect if the OS has been modified (or completely reinstalled in this case) by the user. It's like you would install a fresh Windows and now it says your device is no longer secure because you used your access to install something at the OS level and the warranty seal is broken. It's obviously bullshit but the impact on app support is how they keep the majority of people afraid of doing this. Any developer that adds "Google Safetynet" is imo complicit in this
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...
From the user's perspective though, however safe is GrapheneOS, the banking app won't work, Google Pay won't work, Google Play asks a good bunch of questions and might work only some of the time, and the bootloader cannot verify the OS, it will say that there is something unknown on the device, on every restart and powerup.
I know what I'm doing so I don't mind these at all, but they need to be considered when planning with GrapheneOS.
I'm unsure how paying with your phone is any more convenient. Sure the wallet requires you to open your wallet, but is that too much effort? I'd rather just pay in cash.
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?
Really? Even in England everything is just tap. I have an Android phone, so my flow is "take phone out of pocket -> tap" (because it's already unlocked by fingerprint by the time it comes out). That's basically the same as with the wallet, I just don't carry the wallet.
no, nfc payments don’t work on grapheneos. but honestly, the more interesting question is why you'd even want that.
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.
With this news, I am inclined towards buying Pixel and install GrapheneOS in the future just to stick to the pro-mass surveillance police state. However, I am concerned about the warranty. Does anyone know if installing Graphene on Pixel eliminate the hardware warranty?
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?
> 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.
installing third-party OSes on pixels does not void its warranty. It's one of the biggest reasons why GrapheneOS only supports Pixels and not e.g. Samsung's Galaxy lines.
Do criminals do those things much more frequently than non-criminals?
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.
Please read about Bayes' theorem. If 50% of criminals use the os, and 1% of population it is goodnpoint to check any the OS owner. The same way Police Will check your id if you Wear robbery mask, or sell small packets on the Street.
When I see articles like this, I'm conflicted with a number of thoughts. There's a strong factor of engagement baiting and engaging with it spreads the messaging.
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.
Not sure why this is downvoted, it's just factually true.
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.
Legalizing drugs had a pretty bad outcome for Portland, which is why they re-criminalized some drugs.
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.
its a bit ironic governments push policies advocating for user privacy and data protection etc. yet criminalize use of good encryption and privacy preserving technologies. :')
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.
The core issue here is that privacy concerned looks the same to police regardless of motivations - criminal or principled.
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.
This is ridiculous ignorance and akin to Canada's near ban on the Flipper Zero. We might as well ban cars because they can be used to transport drugs and dead bodies.
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.
Going to seriously consider Graphene for my next phone. Does it work only on pixel or any other android, what are the minimum requirements? (pardon, non tech HN user here).
This trope of "I have nothing to hide" is really tired.
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.
I agree, its funny to see the trope from someone advocating GrapheneOS. Like its pretty typical to see from regular internet users who seemingly stopped caring a long time ago that FAANG has essentially their entire life in various databases. We all have private lives, or at least we should, that's just a normal part of being a human.
> you're not doing something you WANT to hide from law enforcement.
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.
> Why should law enforcement have the privilege to know arbitrary information, especially deeply personal information, about law-abiding individuals?
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.
Perhaps you should acquaint yourself with Venn diagrams. The area of overlap between the two concepts is called having something to hide.
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.
He isn't. It's literally used in bad faith in its literal sense ("if you have nothing to hide, why can't I see your phone?"). Of course, the same argument would never be accepted by the very law enforcement officer who's making it.
The response to that is, yes, I do have things to hide, none of your business.
I don't trust Graphene but I want to. Who are the devs and who are their sponsors? I worry about supply chain attacks. Why should I trust their supply chain and anon devs?
Unless you build it yourself you do trust the devs. You aren't running public code on your phone you're running compiled binaries. Compiled by who? How securely? Who has keys?
It's also a leap of faith to assume that public code is any safer.
You're not wrong that one needs to have some trust in the devs of open source code, but if you are this level of paranoid then having the code available is essential to your threat model because it allows you to build it yourself so you know what you're running. Nobody can audit everything, but if enough people are involved in the development, they would all have to collude (or the malicious one has to hope they get lucky) since each one of them has a chance to spot when one of the developers were to be malicious
Well, the prior lead dev of the project did have some very strong personality quirks and odd behavior in conflicts with a lot of people. So much so that he was encouraged to leave the project and did so.
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.
When is the last time you inspected your smoke detectors for covert audio/video surveillance components? And if you have not done so, why do you trust they do not possess such capabilities?
any method of evading the ever-increasing centralization and regulation of society will inevitably be destroyed. efficient policing demands these obstacles be removed.
Yeah. They have a duress password feature which cleans up the device.
Now.. if only you can use it like a linux computer and be able to make full system backups, it would be a lot easier to use that feature. The lack of proper backup facilities make it untenable for holding any critical data.
Just saying "Catalunian" or even "Spanish" instead of only "cops" may get the article less clicks but it would've gone a long way at least pretending to be a worthwhile read. This is a very narrow case in point for basically advocating for a specific product not a class of products. That smells like a sales pitch to me.
Would very much like something like this. But I still don't get it .. a system that cuts out g**gle, but is based on g**gle hardware? How could that grow or last?
..
In the meantime, using an Android with location disabled, Duck browser, and bare minimum apps.
each and every technology has and will be used in the commision of the very worst possible crimes.
anything can and is bieng weaponised.
any rational society would simply use our vast data sets to determine which specific preventable harm is effecting the most humans and can be elliminated for the lowest cost and effort.....do that, and then start working on the now new greatest harm ellimination.
but in spite of asking and trying to figure this out myself, I can find no effort to actualy just gather that data and work from there
.....everything is just another "cause".....for debate
They spew assertions like this not so that people believe them but so that they can reference them when establishing probably cause, applying for warrants, etc.
I tried to read this article on digital privacy but after five minutes spent unticking boxes allowing my usage data to be sent to an augean list of data collectors I gave up and left.
> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
Yes, it's tangential in the sense that we're using the word there: it veers in a different direction from the article.
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.
That might be true but it's been done to death because it's applicable basically every time commercial coverage of a privacy-related topic. It has the vibe of "we should improve society somewhat. yet you participate in it. curious!". Not to mention in publications with proper editorial independence, the "business side" (ie. the side that's responsible for adding the ads/trackers) is firewalled from the side writing the articles, so there isn't even really a contradiction.
It's more like, "you complain that people throw sand in your eyes, yet you also throw sand in people's eyes, curious." This is not "yet you participate in society." Unlike participating in society, these behaviors are entirely optional and they can stop any time they want, they just prefer not to. Editorial independency doesn't absolve them. It just means that they're doing the right thing in one area but not another.
GrapheneOS says
"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.
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114813613250805804
I have never been to Spain, and I have only slight familiarity with issues in Barcelona and greater Catalonia, but this gives me pause:
"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."
All this surveillance tech and law enforcement still don't know who the child abusers on the Epstein list/island were.
Something tells me domestic surveillance is only applied to peasants not the wealthy and powerful.
>Something tells me domestic surveillance is only applied to peasants not the wealthy and powerful.
Well not only surveillance, but also things like 'law', 'constitution', etc. applies only to the peasants.
Oh they know https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjPHq-Ez0nc
>"Something tells me domestic surveillance is only applied to peasants not the wealthy and powerful."
I think all are surveilled no matter the status. Acting upon it is a different matter of course.
> applied to
> Acting upon it
Same same.
they know, they don't want to tell us, so as to maintain said power structure.
Of course they know....
Or maybe the democracies at the centre of the Epstein issue have constitutional protections limiting how dragnets get used.
what is five eyes?
Five Eyes is (or was, as its status is undetermined) an intelligence sharing agreement between the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. Each nation has to abide by its own constitution and intelligence gathering limits. For example, the United States generally refrains from sharing intelligence on American citizens with other Five Eyes partners. Canada generally won’t share information on people who only hold Canadian citizenship, etc.
Couldn’t you have googled that?
The poster knows the answer. It was a rhetorical question. Five Eyes is the thing countries with "constitutional protections" use to cheat their way around those protections. The US isn't allowed to spy on US citizens without a warrant but the other countries can do it and then provide the results to the US and vice versa.
And if they're going to be allowed to cheat then why hasn't the cheating done any good?
I personally take issue with this because it can be used by the USA to effectively target data protected under EU's GDPR, because the US has an agreement with Israel to send and share raw, non minimized, sigint without going through legal loopholes to sign proper consents within the US Agencies chain of command as required by the 2023 EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework.
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.
What kind of power and leverage does the EU have in cases like these to say 'NO'?
Force removal from Mobile App Stores, make EU companies avoid implementing their Pixels or Services or face fines, etc.
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.
Judging by recent display of ass licking it does not look like the EU has any say in a matter
Ever heard of the “Patriot” Act? Or was that sarcasm?
Isn't the theory that this is because Clinton was one of them, and he was president at the time?
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.
> Clinton was one of them, and he was president at the time?
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?
>(and his blackmail material collected from his properties)
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?
And at the same time:
> 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.
Fridges are for criminals too. The very good ones can keep the severed body parts cold for longer, thus preventing spoilage and reports of foul odours from downstairs neighbours. Will Frigidaire and Bosch stop selling this criminal technology to criminals?
I think the best way to prevent the sale of crime fridges to criminals would be to have national governments integrate the entirety of data that each nation has, from every level, on every citizen. Then we can create an API which market participants like Frigidaire and Bosch can use to query whether a purchase should be permitted based on the purchaser.
/s, if not obvious. Strange times.
I think all reasonable citizens could agree that a simple licensure for fridge ownership is for the best.
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?
Exactly, and I hope we keep track of all fridge purchases with biometrics from customers (and as thus, should not be able to order from online). That better be hooked up to an API that the cops can query at any time.
I bought a used fridge and flashed it with a custom ROM
A better analogy would be a balaclava. Lots of legitimate uses but it's uncommon to see people wearing them day to day and is very popular with criminals. But we don't imagine we could ban balaclavas to prevent crime.
It depends on what you mean by 'ban'. In the country where I live (Denmark), they are very much banned, unless you can demonstrate your legitimate current use case for them. In particular, you are not allowed to wear them in public places where people gather or gather in groups. And 'beating up cops anonymously' is not an approved use case :-) The rule as I understand it, also covers [sic] extreme religious dress rules for women.
Here is the relevant section from our current laws: https://danskelove.dk/straffeloven/134b
I used to wear one as a kid in the UK in the winter. They weren't invented for crime.
I wear one when I ride my motorcycle. Keeps my neck warm, and keeps the cold air off my face. And helps keep the dust off my face when I'm off road. And adds an extra layer of protection. They are also nice when you borrow someone else's helmet. The GoKart places near me give them out to help keep rental helmets from getting nasty.
> They weren't invented for crime.
Not literally, but there was some criminally bad warfare going on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Balaclava
Knitwear is often a cause for conflict[0]!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jersey
I read the article and I don't see his it's connected. Maybe I missed something?
Jersey is another term for knitwear in English
I thought in the US "Jersey" refers to t-shirts worn during American football or something like that? At least I have seen people saying "these are my Jerseys" and then pointing to their t-shirts worn during having played American football.
it is also that.
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...
Thanks. I never thought the term "Jersey" ever referred to knitwear, to be honest.
T-shirts are knit
What I am saying is that I have seen the term "knitwear" everywhere, and when I am looking for "knitwear", I am not looking for t-shirts or "jerseys", but those sweatshirts that look like this (or the like): https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1181/5370/files/knits_1_48....
Don’t forget about the Charge of the Light Brigade, commanded by the Earl of Cardigan. After the war he became famous and people copied the knit jumper he wore, naming it the cardigan. That’s two knit garments from the same battle.
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.
May I ask what it has to do with the mask?
Since the British troops weren't properly kitted out for the cold weather lots of them were sent over balaclavas which had been knitted at home.
Thanks, interesting.
Nothing. Balaclava is a location.
Are protests considered a legitimate use? If not, then that seems pretty problematic.
In Sweden at leasts, balaclavas and other wearables "preventing identification" is specifically illegal _at_ protests. From what I remember the danish case is similar.
I wear one for taking photos of reflective objects, particularly car interiors. Sure minimizes retouching my stupid face out of reflections. Black cloth gloves, too.
Gathering in groups in public? Thats wild, thats been banned since many years in many Dutch major cities. (“samenscholingsverbod”)
Can you wear one for fashion?
No.
https://politi.dk/lov-og-information/tildaekningsforbud
(Trigger warning: danish)
Actually, the Irish government considered exactly that! I'm not sure if they moved forward with it though.
And Southend in England tried to do the same (but failed...)
But if the police asks you to remove your balaclava, you can only do so.
Well, in the United States, they are getting associated with the secret police.
UK should have an answer to that (see: knives). :D
They really are absurd.
The local police forces can start offering a service where they will cause a controlled leak of the refrigerant in your fridge to reduce its efficiency therefore making it less useful for refrigerating body parts.
https://kentandmedwayvru.co.uk/project/pointless/
I like the URL, "pointless". :D
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?
Can I take a moment to say how jealous I am that the UK's mass attack problem is largely about knives and not guns?
Here in the land of more-guns-than-humans it feels so much more bleak.
Even better, the US has a higher knife murder rate than the UK does.
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?
No, emergency rooms will quickly fix immediate threats to life long before any of the insurance crap enters the conversation.
What about geography, or facilities, or willingness to go into emergency?
Back to the parental comment - it's been decided there isn't really a good reason to have most guns and so they are strictly controlled - I mean what's the legit reason for having an assault rifle?
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.
> I mean what's the legit reason for having an assault rifle?
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.
Has the NRA ever defended the right of black people like the Black Panthers to bear arms?
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.
The NRA are self-interested, racist scum, Trump supporters are authoritarian fascists - almost totally opposed to freedom and resisting tyranny. What do they have to do with anything?
Are American people allowed to have F-35s jets and Abrams tanks too? NO?! Then what kind of tyranny is this where your elected government's military has the monopoly on violence?
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.
You missed out Haiti as a shining example of citizen rule against the tyranny of government.
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!
In a democracy the government is the people ( more or less ). Tyranny of the majority, enforcing the collective view via collective organised violence.
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.
“Give me liberty or give me death.”
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.
> The real reason America is armed is so that if our government ever gets too tyrannical
It’s been doing that for at least two decades, yet I’m still waiting for you people to get on with it.
I don’t know who the “you people” in that comment refers to. I actually hope we never have another civil war. Historically, you’re much more likely to end up with the French Revolution, the current situation in Syria, etc. than a fresh, bright future. Many would die and everyone would suffer. Those who long for war (foreign or domestic) are evil, foolish, or both.
But my opinion doesn’t change the rationale for the 2nd Amendment.
Another civil war? That’s not desirable, for obvious reasons. But another revolutionary war? That might be inevitable. Thomas Jefferson has an appropriate quote on such things.
An elected official doing things you don't like isn't a reason to kill them.
That way lies fascism and anarchotyrrany.
What if the elected official is a fascist? It happened in Germany.
"Elected" doesn't mean much if the system is rigged - starting from the choices you get, and how accountable they are to you. After a point it's just a charade.
If that were true there would never be a reason to kill anyone.
Where is the line on tyranny?
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.
It's essentially a critical mass type of thing, no?
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.
I understand that "there has to be a counter to dictatorship" and such actions are not without consequence.
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.
The questions here are very good.
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”.
One could make the exact same arguments in favor of monarchy.
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.
Since you mentioned "moral duty", yeah, of course not, and it should not, IMO.
If the Second Amendment (2A) meant to preserve the ability to overthrow the government then why can we not have bombs and tanks?
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.
"And why does it mention the right within the context of a "well regulated militia"?"
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."
Did they fear a national army? Legitimately curious here. They certainly couldn't afford one, but military-lead coups weren't the problem then that they are today (or were during the Roman empire).
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.
Yeah, they even threw in a thing about well regulated militias, but left in a comma that got interpreted as "any toon can own as many guns as they want."
> The real reason America is armed is so that if our government ever gets too tyrannical, we can do something about it.
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.
you say it as if it's inherently bad
historically, when a government became too tyranical, either the government went on and on, or people did the quiet part
Zombie knives yeah, but you can get into serious trouble for the multitool with locking blade if you forgot to take it our from your backpack after a camping trip.
This is very much absurd.
So are the laws on swords. You can have a straight sword but not a curved one, unless its either an antique or craft made using traditional methods.
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.
I can think of a country where they should probably ban windows, given how many people fall out of them.
> I mean what's the legit reason for having an assault rifle?
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.
Not quite. From the proponents' standpoint… it’s to defend themselves and their property from anyone who is a treat. It could be a tyrant. It could be agents of that tyrant.
Most countries ( ie people in those countries ) have decided that it's generally better for everyone that protecting people and property( enforcing the law ) is left to a well regulated professional police force rather than individuals of varying moral quality, mental stability or narcotic status.
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.
My unpopular European opinion is that mass shootings are a cultural problem, not an "access to guns" problem.
Cars (especially trucks) can help you achieve similar aims, and are much harder to restrict.
Yeah, you may want to check https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44665755.
Yeah, but knives have a wide range of use, whereas guns do not.
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.
According to the CDC, guns are used to prevent at least 500,000 violent acts per year in the USA.
Why is "wide range of use" being used as the metric rather than "societal good"?
While there are downsides, there's more to it.
> guns are used to prevent at least 500,000 violent acts per year in the USA.
Doubt. More like 70K. Far fewer than incidents where guns were used to cause harm.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/debunking-the-guns-...
I was not arguing against guns though. I just tried to say that it is a bit more absurd to ban knives to prevent violence.
> You cannot buy a kitchen knife because people MAY use it cause harm.
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?
> 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.
If you were to carry sharpened pencil and stopped by police claimed it's for self defense, you might get arrested: https://www.askthe.police.uk/faq/?id=fefeb701-3a75-ed11-81ac...
No spray, no airgun, no folding mace, absolutely nothing can be used in self defense.
Except for the alarm.
The part that baffles me is that there is a right to self defense that the courts seem to acknowledge, that some cases find a person justified in using a weapon/tool that just happens to be at their disposal at the time of an attack, but having a similar tool/weapon for the purpose of defense is not allowable, even something as simple as spray.
Because you’re then routinely going about the place armed, and more likely to be the cause of violence or escalation.
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.
"and more likely to be the cause of violence or escalation."
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).
In most countries, the default is whether the person had a lawful reason to be carrying the weapon used and that the defense is proportional to the attack. There’s nothing insane about that - there’s zero reason to arm yourself and millions of reasons not to.
"whether the person had a lawful reason to be carrying the weapon used"
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.
Why isn’t self defence a reason?
Criminals are not known for telling the truth, however.
I see, so when you said "You cannot buy a kitchen knife" it's in the same way as if you live in the USA "You can't drive a car".
Not quite, because they prohibited this purchase to prevent "knife crime".
What do you mean? I cna buy kitchen knives in IKEA or literally any supermarket or online shop.
Care to explain?
I think you've lost the plot. I did say "under age", in fact, I was called out for not having been specific in my initial message, to which I said that the two are not comparable because the prohibition of selling knives for people underaged happened at the time they were starting to fight "knife crime".
Under 16s in the UK can't buy kitchen knives, and that's an ok balance for me
Yeah, but does it really prevent knife crimes?
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?
> Yeah, but does it really prevent knife crimes?
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.
Okay, but not selling knives to kids really reduces knife crime? I wonder by how much, if at all. I am having difficulties believing it does.
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 can buy a kitchen knife - just not if you are under age. Not it's perfectly legal for an adult to buy one for a budding cook - all the age ban does is put a 'responsible' adult in the loop.
You also can't carry one in public without reasonable cause - which in the end is decided by a judge.
Chefs can typically get away with carrying their knives (they get very possessive over the care of their own knives and so won't leave them in the kitchen) if they're in a knife roll and in a backpack or similar.
Of course - most judges are reasonable ( unless the chef has the wrong social background or skin colour of course ).
A gun can stop an attacker whether human, ursine, or large feline.
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?
Yet strangely, Canada has almost the exact same media and near identical mental health statistics and the country has a tiny fraction of the school shootings in the United States. Like it or not, the availability of military grade weapons sure seems to increase the likelihood that a kid will get killed at school.
I think there is more to it than availability.
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.
Hurting one kid with a knife is drastically different to hurting thirty with a gun or rifle.
It’s almost like gun enthusiasts are, conveniently, completely incapable of processing the concept of “force multiplication”.
I am not saying it is not different, and I mentioned this in another comment that guns and bombs are definitely useful to "hurt as many as possible", but I think my question still stands regardless of this. In fact, it might make even more sense to ask the question.
Let's fund and destigmatize mental healthcare! And also ban guns!
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.
I do not disagree. It should be focusing on the fact that a student wanted to cause violence. It could have been done through a gun, a knife, a fork, and a thousand different items. In fact, a fist may suffice. Or an item that is readily available at schools. Any item. That said, guns are especially good at "harm as many as possible". Just like bombs are.
I should be free to do whatever I want with my Javelin missile as long as I don't initiate a violent interaction.
You are right. Polish Head of Police had one in his office[1]. He launch it in his office without violent interracion.
[1]https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/polands-top-cop-accidenta...
Don't forget about range tops: they are used for cooking, and what is "cooked"? Methamphetamines. When will the police stop Big Appliance! /s
The base purpose of a range top is cooking.
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?
My guns are made for hunting, are your saying they should be exempted from this discussion (are you only talking about handguns and automatic rifles)?
> The base purpose of a gun is shooting things, generally living breathing ones.
Sounds like your hunting rifle still qualifies.
That is what I have been trying to say, too.
It's like my bank's application, your mobile with all the latest security update is prohibited, because the bootloader is unlocked. But your 6-year-old mobile that received its last security update 3/4 years ago is fine!
I think people are misinterpreting your comment? Or I am.
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.
Yes, the police are arguing both sides, according to what I have read[1], and that they are not doing it in English but in other languages, e.g. Swedish. I am not sure why I am getting down-voted though.
[1] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114784488424006190 and so forth.
>I am not sure why I am getting down-voted though.
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.
I edited my comment. I thought it was obvious because it was the police claiming the former, and connected the two with an "AND". I was not criticizing GrapheneOS. Thanks!
It was obvious, people just have terrible reading comprehension, and they also don't read to the end of a comment if something near the beginning triggers them.
I came to the same conclusion based on some of the comments addressed to me. It is like they did not even bother reading the comment to which I replied, or the last 2 comments.
This whole thing is quite the stretch. Someone who clearly has no idea what they’re talking about acted like a know it all on a forum. I don’t see how that’s evidence of a coordinated attack. Police saying dumb things about security tech is nothing new either nor is it a smoking gun.
Occam’s razor applies even when we want to believe a cool story.
This is basically the ploy with many secure phones - say it's for criminals but actually have a backdoor for law enforcement. I wonder if there's some exploit on the Pixel or Graphene that law enforcement is now aware of.
> “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.” - Umberto Eco, Ur-Fascism
well if it doesn't work for protecting your data it doesn't work for protecting criminals' data as well, right? or is this a lot less about making rational sense and a lot more about manufacturing consent to violate our rights?
Knowing my chosen configuration of phone stymies law enforcement overreach enough that criminals use same one? I chose wisely.
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.
So, can i be the voice of reason here? The Panopticon is unavoidable! Everyone who has a spark of self-preservation in himself, knows it already. Technology has given the individual insane powers to take down state-level actors (drones in shipping lanes) and soon the whole planet(mirror life etc.). We can no longer afford privacy, as sad as this is.
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.
Basically the same old argument that Linux is used by black hat hackers.
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.
"being criminals is a state sponsored attack on the GrapheneOS project."
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.
That's a very high bar for "state sponsored attack." I'd say the various internet ID verification laws being rolled out qualify as a state sponsored attack on our privacy/individual rights writ large.
And that's a very low bar for "state sponsored attack". Essentially everything you disagree with that the state does is a "state sponsored attack." This muddies the waters and when there is a "state sponsored attack" on a group of people, everyone is numb and we're out of words.
“Attack” doesn’t exclusively mean physical assault/restraining people. It’s called a “DDoS attack” after all. You’re creating a strict and narrow definition that most of the world does not subscribe to.
If I say “stop attacking me” during a heated argument no one thinks you’re physically assaulting me. That would be ridiculous.
This is all based off a one-line quote, by one police officer, interviewed anonymously in one newspaper in its "society" column. I don't want to go against the feeding frenzy, but, I think this one's a bit over-interpreted.
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)).
Sorry I'd rather just read the title and then start arguing against my fantasy
The anti-privacy movement in Europe is really concerning. In particular as general population don't really care about it, we are going toward some major shifts. I'm wondering though how this radical turn was initiated and if some lobbies are pulling the strings behind the scene...
Not just in Europe, in the US too - Roman Storm is on trial as of last week for building a privacy tool that ended up getting used by criminals.
Not much good coverage on it out there apart from the great work by The Rage journalists.
will save a google search for some: - “privacy tool” == cryptocurrency mixer - “ended up getting used by criminals” == claimed to help launder $1b
Let’s just say it is in a different category than Alexandra Elbakyan.
It's just a neutral tool, open for everyone to use. There's plenty of people that used the tool for completely legitimate reasons, simply wanting to protect their privacy just like GrapheneOS users.
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.
> It's just a neutral tool
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.
I agree with you that creating a tool is different from providing a service. However, I disagree on the rest of what you said, here's why:
> 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.
Roman Storm helped North Korea launder billions. That’s a bit different than average person just wanting a phone detached from the hivemind.
That's like saying Adi Shamir helps drug cartels, Tim Berners-Lee helps facilitate online fraud or that Henry Ford helped kill millions of people on the road.
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.
Also to add to this discussion, to me, it makes zero sense that you would deploy such a system that could be weaponized by a rogue government to hunt down political opponents.
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 don't care, what they're absolutely terrified is another Arab Spring happening at home.
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.
A person doesn't need to be elite to be terrified that something like Arab Spring will happen in their own country: the Arab Spring was really terrible for ordinary people: millions violently killed, millions of refugees, over ten million made homeless. In Syria, the mass killing is still going on.
(I'm surprised anyone still calls it the Arab Spring now that we know how disastrously it turned out.)
>how can they so confident that "the good guys" will always be in charge?
They implement such systems precisely to always be in charge.
Of course lobbies are pulling the strings. That is a given.
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.
> The worst part is that you still have European governments who feel the need to give lessons of democracy to China et al.
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).
> Its the only country in the world
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.
> The EU is not a country. It may very well be in 50 years from now but not presently.
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).
> In particular as general population don't really care about it
> 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...
One can't rely on some sort of 'decency' of a given country and hope for the best, that ship has long sailed.
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.
> Police are generally very nice but I've also seen some unprovoked brutality
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...
I have in the past often advocated for more training for police, so I have to say this is an eye opener for sure. Thanks for posting this.
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.
It's not that complex. Policing in general attracts certain kinds of people with a desire for authority. It should go without saying that it's not 100% of police officers joining.
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.
> 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?)
The same reasons Nazis studied American segregation: they admired what they were able to accomplish and want to do something similar themselves.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang
Yea, I started using ProtonVPN specifically because they are placed in Switzerland.
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.
> This other country will find out about my sexual orientation or political beliefs the moment I board a plane to their country.
That is literally going to put people's lives at risk. Crazy.
Agreed. Although to be the devil's advocate for a moment: Governments can currently easily tap email, and phone tapping is more feasible at scale due to machine transcription. So the apps gave use a temporary safe haven, which may get compromised by Chat Control. And before email we had mail, handled directly by the government, although reading mail is more difficult without leaving traces.
The devil doesn't need an advocate here. "Temporary safe haven" is the kind of phrasing the advocates of anti-privacy policies use to argue that this "temporary" state of affairs should be destroyed.
> And before email we had mail, handled directly by the government, although reading mail is more difficult without leaving traces.
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...
I'm increasingly annoyed by the extent at which our state (Sweden, EU) is willing to sacrifice our rights to hinder the usage of recreational drugs by a minority of the population. How can it be that alcohol is endorsed so widely, given that we know many of the drugs we are being sacrificed to stop are safer, less addictive and less potent [1]? It's perhaps cynical to ask, but are we protecting the citizens, or the alcohol industry?
1: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_harm_asse...
Sweden is a nanny state. Can't buy booze on Sundays and the government shop's are only open 5 hours on Saturday.
Yet I can go to certain neighborhoods in Stockholm and get pretty much every thing under the sun and that's open 24/7.
> And before email we had mail, handled directly by the government, although reading mail is more difficult without leaving traces.
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.
Good point about those constraints. It's bad when governments have a superhighway of information with an email provider. If they have to go through a painful process for each email, it would be like the paper envelope. But if they have an arrangement with the email provider where they can access whatever they want, that would be a terrible downgrade for the people compared to the paper mail days indeed. We have proof that such mass data collection happened in some countries.
You are misleading by using "secret police" when what you are are looking for is the "security police".
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
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_police
3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Security_Service
Okay, I was not aware of this distinction. Thanks for correcting me!
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.
Just wanted to add an important piece about us not living in authoritarian states...
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...
The distinction between "counter-espionage" and "covert operations against a government's political, ideological, or social opponents and dissidents" is historically extremely permeable.
The argument "why do you care about your privacy if you have nothing to hide" needs to be addressed. The problem with this argument is you don't decide what you need to hide or not, the authorities do, and we all know authorities can be corrupted. Just look at the US government right now for example A.
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.
You don't even have to go that far. Just ask them for their banking information, passwords, and maybe some naked photos of them to top it off.
Everyone has something to hide... unless there's something utterly wrong with them.
That argument is easily refuted by "sure, I don't mind the government/Google/etc. having access to all that".
The GP argument is the correct one. You might not mind now, but that's not the problem.
Agreed, I once read someone put it like this: Saying you have nothing to hide, so you don't care about privacy is like saying you have nothing to say, so you don't care about freedom of speech. In both cases the ramifications are far reaching.
> "Why do you care about privacy if you have nothing to hide"
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 :)
“The average person commits felonies a day” is probably a better way to communicate this idea.
… three felonies…
I have nothing to hide and I'm not doing anything wrong, but I still close the door when I'm taking a shit and wouldn't like someone taking pictures of me doing it.
I think this "argument" has always been flawed. I don't need to justify what information I would like to share especially with state agencies. In Germany, this is even encoded in a legal principle called "Informationelle Selbstbestimmung" (informational agency). It's not about the information, it's about my right to decide about sharing it.
Saying "I don't care about 'privacy' because I have nothing to hide" can be compared to saying "I don't care about free speech because I have nothing to say". Which says a lot, frankly.
Everyone is commenting as if this is an attack on privacy. Read the article, I might have missed it, but I saw literally nothing on this. The main point is that police are profiling people using Pixel phones. Nothing about making it illegal, or trying to remove encryption.
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.
> The main point is that police are profiling people using Pixel phones. Nothing about making it illegal, or trying to remove encryption.
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.
>The main point is that police are profiling people using Pixel phones. Nothing about making it illegal, or trying to remove encryption.
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.
Profiling isn’t taken as evidence of criminal intentions. It can be as simple as, you do random searches, but you increase the frequency of random searches for people who match multiple behavioral criteria empirically associated with criminals.
> In most western countries surveillance requires prior evidence of wrongdoing
Less and less so. Take a look at the way the laws are going in the UK and the EU.
> 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.
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.
It is about running a false campaign to say using Graphene OS is the same as being a criminal.
The original quote was a comment from one police representative about Pixel phones being the preferred choice of narco traffickers in their region.
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.
Critiquing police for doing fishing expeditions, where they cast a broad net in hopes to catch criminals among a large batch of regular people has long been a thing.
> This should be a discussion on how valid it is for police to profile people.
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.
I'll take it even farther - this should be a discussion about what constitutes crime, and how a system that didn't criminalize common, victimless acts would have such a small pool of criminals to deal with that widespread demonization of this or that technology wouldn't be neccesary.
It seems they're profiling based on specific local conditions. Not many folks are installing graphene in their area, but there are lots of criminal gangs that do.
The situation would be different in, say, Silicon Valley. But they're dealing with the world they're in.
Is disparagement of GrapheneOS good or bad for privacy?
Arguments shouldn't be soldiers[1]. In fact, this I'd say this is harmful to privacy.
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.
- [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/w/arguments-as-soldiers
I use grapheneOS, it's the reason I bought a pixel but not for nefarious reasons but rather I don't like how much control Google has (it's ironic I had to buy a google phone) on android phones even from other manufacturers and the targeted marketing and information that I would be giving out. I also don't like that Android implimented the feature where you couldn't access the Android>Data folder for 'security reasons' and have to plug it into a computer to access any of those sub folders, it's my phone let me do what I want with it. Graphene lets me access any of those folders without issue
the fact that they refuse to consider other phones ie fairphone or nothing phones that have the bootloader relockable is the reason that i do not use graphene.
it seems like a great os but i am not giving google money to get away from google.
Fairphone is dangerously insecure. Nothing phone is not much better.
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?)
Source on Fairphone being insecure? I'm moving to Android app development and considered it for repairability/mission factors.
From what I found they're brilliant on repairability, but not so much on security, which is a bummer :(
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.
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.
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...
Just adding minor context:
> - 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.
> - Fairphone does not include a secure element making brute-forcing PIN trivial
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??
what are you talking about? are you talking about the kernel or the vendor?
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
> what are you talking about? are you talking about the kernel or the vendor?
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
then i d rather use lineageOS that does change vendor, kernel and system lol
They don't refuse other manufacturers, it's quite the opposite -- GrapheneOS provides list of requirements for future device support. AFAIK Fairphone and Nothing don't fit more than a few requirements from this list.
https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
Oh, I forgot to add and can't edit my comment, so: they are talking with another OEM about the potential alternative hardware for the future GOS.
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?
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?
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.
Do you have a source for this?
Samsung devices have basically everything except hardware memory tagging, afair (which is allegedly being added now?), and it looks like it's possible to both OEM unlock and relock the bootloader?
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.
You can't OEM unlock Snapdragons/North American models.
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).
You're welcome to donate money to them so they can hire developers who can support multiple phones.
they flat out said they would not
They _can_ if it makes sense: https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
Swappa is your friend. A used pixel doesn’t directly give Google money.
that is true but i know how people treat their phones ..
It's crazy that you care about privacy and buy a Google phone.
Not sure what you are saying. In the Android space, only Pixels have a good secure element and Samsung has an acceptable secure element. Of those only Pixel allows unlocking the phone without blowing an eFuse. So, Pixel is currently the only phone that allows installing an alternative OS and provides a secure element.
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
> I don't like how much control Google has (it's ironic I had to buy a google phone) on android phones even from other manufacturers and the targeted marketing and information that I would be giving out.
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.
> One could say the same thing about matchboxes being used for arson and cash being used for money laundering, but no one’s calling on regulators to outlaw either.
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.
Meta: broken all possible privacy laws with "localhost tracking"
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 installed GrapheneOS just recently and I'm in the process of migrating all my various apps to it.
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.
You also do it to protect your friend and family, by for example sandboxing your contacts to prevent them from being shared with the messaging app you need to use to keep in touch with a specific group.
I think we aren't far from GrapheneOS being rendered unusable. We desperately need to make Linux phones viable daily drivers. Desperately. It's the only way we'll have access to critical funcionality while being independent from mega corporations like Google and whatever they decide to do with AOSP and their Pixel phones. Right now everything regarding our privacy is in their filthy hands.
I cannot say I am surprised. You care about your privacy -> you are a criminal. "If you are not a criminal, you have nothing to hide.". sighs.
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).
I maintain that if the NSA ever really needs to know something, if I somehow possess critical knowledge in a legitimate matter of national security, they are welcome to visit. (They'll have to settle for coffee, I'm not much of a tea drinker.) In this way, I really do have nothing to hide. But I do insist on knowing about it in the moment.
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.
Avoiding marketing surveillance is both reasonable and increasingly sought after; consider how many mainstream services now offer paid options just to reduce data collection by advertisers.
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.
>Modern surveillance states operate on the premise that every individual, out of billions worldwide, could become a potential threat.
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.
One of life's bizarre contradictions that it's largely down to Google that some of the most egregious and shady third party techniques for tracking and fingerprinting devices that dominated the 2010s no longer work.
Not just criminals. Your own government can be co-opted and suddenly things like IRS records for honest taxpayers become weaponized deportation lists.
Don't forget supply chain attacks opening doors and windows all over the shop.
I think what this is really about is the ability to manipulate elections. Panopticon surveillance means it will inevitably dig up dirt on a presidential or other candidate somewhere down the line. Then once they have a shot at winning, pull them aside and say "do what we say and you can maybe win, or we can force your loss now when the story breaks about how you used the n word once in 8th grade"
The idea that privacy is only for those doing something evil is so brain damaged, I cannot understand how anyone took that seriously.
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.
I would go further and say that even if these things are for criminals, that is okay; and allowing some amount of criminal activity is necessitated by the basic humility of conceding that we might not have figured out the best set of rules for humanity to live under.
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?
If I am not a criminal you should not need to tap my phone
[flagged]
Please don't do tropes like this here. You can make your substantive points without that.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It's not a specifically "democratic" thing. It's a moral question, and good monarchies that are grounded in a strong moral tradition and a respect for subsidiarity can be much better at resisting the ebb and flow of mass sentiment manipulated by the media. The war on terror showed us how easily fear can be deployed to get the masses to hurt themselves, and revolutions show how envy and grievance can be deployed in a similar fashion.
The course you suggest would itself damage the social fabric of democracy. Not really a good idea, though it might be cathartic.
It's like the tolerance of intolerance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
I wanted to reply to him "that would definitely make me a criminal".
GrapheneOS lost me on PR. For every updates they post on their social media there's guaranteed to be a rant about how other projects are doing things Wrong. They talk down on any and every security- and privacy-related projects (or open-source projects in general) if they align even slightly out of line according to their idea of security and privacy, regardless of their own merit. Dig even deeper they also like throwing around the word "slander" and "attack" without backing it up. In fact I am certain I will be greeted with a friendly wall of text by somebody from GOS in this very thread sooner rather than later.
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.
FWIW I think its good to elaborate on how other projects are doing things incorrectly (though I agree the GOS people could use some diplomacy and decorum). For example, with the fairphones for the longest time the only answer you could get on why grapheneos doesn't support it is that the phone is not secure. That answer doesn't leave me informed, all it leaves me with is "someone on the internet told me it wasn't secure". For the newest fairphone 6 they actually elaborated and covered things like the lack of a secure element. That leaves me informed, so now I can look up what a secure element is, why I want it, and then make an informed decision for my next cellphone purchase.
I looked it up (as in spent a last few weeks going through the forum and PRs) and when they say "slander", it's backed up.
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?
I don't need PR from my free mobile OS developer. I just need regular secure updates, which they seem to do a good job providing.
I'm a happy CalyxOS user for precisely this reason.
"I would use a thing but they were mean" doesnt seem like the amazing argument you might have thought it was.
In a true democracy where government serves the people, the people would be opaque to the government and the government would be transparent(nothing to hide) to the people. As we can't impose transparency on government, we can at least obtain opacity for ourselves.
I do like that the government has entities that thwart attacks, and I'm not sure full transparency for these entities works well for everything.
Of course, I don't want this to be used as an argument to mass spy on the people.
Throughout history one of the most popular things people want government to do is oppress and police other people.
If the will of the people is to be trampled, then the people is to be trampled. True democracy is not mass democracy.
Agreed. It's wild to realize that the current US administration campaigned on the promise that they would provide transparency regarding certain matters. Yet now they're doing everything they can to combat transparency for those same matters.
Happy GrapheneOS user here since 3+ years now. What's next now? People can't fucking use Linux because Microsoft or Apple can't spy on it?
Next, as countries are requiring more and more age verification online, the EU accidentally outlaws GrapheneOS by introducing an age verification system that requires an OS certified by Google or Apple. https://chaos.social/@luc/114860815364169550
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
Tying legislation/compliance requirements to specific vendor (Apple/Google) that happen to be dominant today feels wild to me (as opposed to open standards).
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.
You can fairly easily build and flash a rooted version of GOS yourself.
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.
> You can fairly easily build and flash a rooted version of GOS yourself.
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
I was commenting on "but grapheneos won't let me access my data".
Of course it won't pass the attestation.
I like my privacy. I'm not using grapheneOS yet because I've not bought one of the limited number of devices it can run on.
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?
"A policeman's job is only easy in a police state."
* Touch of Evil, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052311/quotes/?item=qt0321627
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_of_Evil
This is an old, tired lesson: technology is morally neutral. It can serve equally well both good and bad purposes, and there's no way to coax technology make moral decisions for you.
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.
Good enough for protecting the privacy of criminals, good enough for the rest of us. Seems like a solid ad campaign for Pixel+Graphene
That got me interested in it for the privacy claims, but unfortunately it only supports Pixel phones. The reasons are technical and fair. It's just unfortunate that Pixel isn't sold or supported in many countries in the world. I live in Brazil and even in Mercado Libre where it's supposed to support the entire Mercosul market, I can't find a single Pixel 8 for purchase. It's sad we're excluded from accessing this amazing project.
I think that you could get similar privacy capability with LineageOS if you do not install Google Play (via MindTheGapps).
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).
AFAIK Nitrokey sells Pixel phones with GrapheneOS preinstalled worldwide.
It's not a matter of just purchasing. I can very well import from Amazon or AliExpress. Problem is support post sale and finding accessories like screen covers and cases. It's a lot of hassle for a device less feature-packed than you regular Samsung phones.
>accessories like screen covers and cases
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...
[1] https://grapheneos.org/features
> Why would those be region locked
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.
>> What feature? > Google services
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.
Its Because I'm terrible at expressing myself sometimes...
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.
This is the best possible advertisement in these computer-savvy circles. I guess my next phone will be a Pixel with Graphene. I won't do anything illegal on it. If even the police hate it, it must be very safe from hackers.
Or maybe that’s what they want you to think.
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.
If they said this. about some obscure platform then yes, but Graphene already had a privacy- and security-focused reputation.
Governments are a lot like abusive parents: they see people as difficult kids that must be managed. They believe that what they do helps them become good adults, but in reality they just love to control and abuse people. Rejecting this abusive parenting or simply setting personal boundaries makes them really angry and suspicious, and get you labelled a criminal. In the future, when thought-reading brain implants will be a thing, you will be labelled a criminal for not having one, for hiding your thoughts or even for refusing to have your thoughts managed by that device.
This is just a continuation of “well a lot of people who commit crimes have dark skin, so let’s profile all people with dark skin.”
But in reality, I think this is a scare piece meant to drive people away from using graphing OS.
> This is just a continuation of “well a lot of people who commit crimes have dark skin, so let’s profile all people with dark skin.”
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.
Americans (at least) approach many dynamics with the same zeal (and irrationality) as they do racial issues. Think about the "green iMessage bubble" controversy. Think about sports fandom. It's not that those situations are comparable in their seriousness, but people do use dumb things as alarmingly inappropriate heuristics for how to treat others. They project unrelated behaviors onto things that apparently rise to the level of minor identity signifiers, and then people get genuinely hurt - or, speaking more directly to HNer interests, products fail because markets go underserved as second-class customers (waves at Meerkat).
I think about my experiences as an American living in Germany as an exchange student, at an age when the green-bubble nonsense would've been most relevant to my life, and there were also similar socioeconomic status markers in Germany that teenagers took deeply seriously... It just wasn't iPhones. Brands of jackets. Particular surnames that hinted at recent foreign ancestry could invite bullying... Foreign, as in from other parts of Europe. And sports fandom there (soccer/football) is arguably more fanatical than in the USA.
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.
I said that it was at least American. The tendency to link other types of identity with a basic sense of racial identity is probably not uniquely American, but the way that connection links those types of mundane signifiers of identity with American racial violence (social and physical) probably is (tautology appreciated). Maybe wearing the wrong jacket in Germany conjures the ghosts of social dynamics involved in pogroms where a patch was sewn into one's jacket, I don't know. In America, having a "second-class" phone or car or location of residence does seem to prompt people to treat you as we've come to know "second-class" people ought to be treated.
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.
I don’t see how you could think I disagree with that. As I said, it’s a continuation like an extension like something connected to, but not the same as.
I'm saying, even if both things are bad, there's a moral category difference between profiling based on immutable, born characteristics and profiling based on choices (in this case, choice of phone). They are not continuous or connected, but two different categories with a hard break or line between them you have to deliberately cross. That both involve profiling does not connect them, just as shooting a human and shooting a paper target are fundamentally different moral categories which are not made continuous by dint the fact that both involve pulling a trigger.
My point is in all cases profiling is stupid.
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.
Fair enough. But I think we're talking past each other:
> 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.
Proudly reading this on a Google Pixel 8 with GrapheneOS
Does Google Pay work? Paying with my phone is just too convenient.
It looks like it doesn't. You might find alternative solutions like this user here*, but there is no guarantee any of it to work indefinitely on GrapheneOS. It's essentially a modified aftermarket firmware, and so, many security related features don't work out of the box, for example, the SafetyNet that many banking apps need.
*: https://www.reddit.com/r/GrapheneOS/comments/1jujvee/finally...
"Many" safety features don't work? My understanding is that Google unsafetynet is the *only* thing that doesn't work because it's by-design trying to detect if the OS has been modified (or completely reinstalled in this case) by the user. It's like you would install a fresh Windows and now it says your device is no longer secure because you used your access to install something at the OS level and the warranty seal is broken. It's obviously bullshit but the impact on app support is how they keep the majority of people afraid of doing this. Any developer that adds "Google Safetynet" is imo complicit in this
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...
From the user's perspective though, however safe is GrapheneOS, the banking app won't work, Google Pay won't work, Google Play asks a good bunch of questions and might work only some of the time, and the bootloader cannot verify the OS, it will say that there is something unknown on the device, on every restart and powerup.
I know what I'm doing so I don't mind these at all, but they need to be considered when planning with GrapheneOS.
No, but curve pay or paypal pay work (or any other app not relying on google pay)
I'm unsure how paying with your phone is any more convenient. Sure the wallet requires you to open your wallet, but is that too much effort? I'd rather just pay in cash.
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?
I don't carry a wallet and I'm not in the US, and I use NFC whenever I do carry a card.
Apologizes for the assumption. I have yet to find anywhere here in Scotland that uses NFC practically other than billboards.
I can't think of a single retailer in the UK that takes card payments, but doesn't support contactless (including Google Pay and Apple Pay).
Ignoring very small shops that don't take cards at all.
Are the tap&pay NFC? -- I thought it was different tech under the hood.
What I meant is that I've not seen any other use for NFC apart from bus station adverts?
>Are the tap&pay NFC? -- I thought it was different tech under the hood.
Yes, it's a form of NFC!
Really? Even in England everything is just tap. I have an Android phone, so my flow is "take phone out of pocket -> tap" (because it's already unlocked by fingerprint by the time it comes out). That's basically the same as with the wallet, I just don't carry the wallet.
Cash = change/smaller denomination issues
No. It's the only feature that will never work sadly. But everything else is OK.
That and satellite communication.
no, nfc payments don’t work on grapheneos. but honestly, the more interesting question is why you'd even want that.
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.
With this news, I am inclined towards buying Pixel and install GrapheneOS in the future just to stick to the pro-mass surveillance police state. However, I am concerned about the warranty. Does anyone know if installing Graphene on Pixel eliminate the hardware warranty?
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?
> 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.
installing third-party OSes on pixels does not void its warranty. It's one of the biggest reasons why GrapheneOS only supports Pixels and not e.g. Samsung's Galaxy lines.
Criminals also go to department stores. And to hairdressers. And they drink water. There is no end to deeply suspect activities criminals engage in!
Do criminals do those things much more frequently than non-criminals?
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.
They can but they shouldn't.
Replace phone ownership with race or social-economic status and it should be obvious why profiling shouldn't be done.
Please read about Bayes' theorem. If 50% of criminals use the os, and 1% of population it is goodnpoint to check any the OS owner. The same way Police Will check your id if you Wear robbery mask, or sell small packets on the Street.
When I see articles like this, I'm conflicted with a number of thoughts. There's a strong factor of engagement baiting and engaging with it spreads the messaging.
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.
If you outlaw privacy-focused operating systems then only outlaws will use privacy-focused operating systems.
Not sure why this is downvoted, it's just factually true.
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.
Legalizing drugs had a pretty bad outcome for Portland, which is why they re-criminalized some drugs.
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.
Related context:
Cops in [Spain] think everyone using a Google Pixel must be a drug dealer
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44473694
its a bit ironic governments push policies advocating for user privacy and data protection etc. yet criminalize use of good encryption and privacy preserving technologies. :')
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.
The core issue here is that privacy concerned looks the same to police regardless of motivations - criminal or principled.
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
So they are profiling people using Pixel phones with GrapheneOS....because its good at what it does? Am I reading this right?
This is ridiculous ignorance and akin to Canada's near ban on the Flipper Zero. We might as well ban cars because they can be used to transport drugs and dead bodies.
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.
Ha! Instead of Canada encouraging more secure solutions, they just ban the flipper zero. Figures.
Still waiting for the day I get in trouble with the cops for not having a phone at all.
Criminals use knives to stab people.
By the same logic, anyone who has a knife in their kitchen is a suspect.
If you are a criminal, you should learn to blend in and use common phones/operating systems, but in a way that still evades the authorities.
Wonder how companies handle this. As a company you'd want to protect all the IP on a company device. And make sure no tmp gov is fiddling with the HW.
Going to seriously consider Graphene for my next phone. Does it work only on pixel or any other android, what are the minimum requirements? (pardon, non tech HN user here).
Only on pixels, specifically only pixels that still get security updates from Google.
https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices
Cops say a lot of things. I trust next to none of them.
In fact, if cops say a thing there's a reasonable chance that it's the opposite of what I should be listening to.
Impressions from grapheneOS users? Alternatives? I have an old but essentially never used Pixel 3a I'd like to set up with something as a backup.
EDIT: sad, Pixel 3a no longer supported, too old
I'd say Pixel 7 if you want patches and releases for a couple more years.
Thanks, but my motivations were more "what should I do with this perfectly good old phone" LineageOS has been ok during a quick try
This trope of "I have nothing to hide" is really tired.
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.
I agree, its funny to see the trope from someone advocating GrapheneOS. Like its pretty typical to see from regular internet users who seemingly stopped caring a long time ago that FAANG has essentially their entire life in various databases. We all have private lives, or at least we should, that's just a normal part of being a human.
Plus, I really am working to bring down big government and have been for my entire existence.
Only absolute normie losers have “nothing to hide”. Like, how boring do you have to be
You're taking it too literally, it's to signify, you're not doing anything illegal, you're not doing something you WANT to hide from law enforcement.
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.
> you're not doing something you WANT to hide from law enforcement.
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.
> Why should law enforcement have the privilege to know arbitrary information, especially deeply personal information, about law-abiding individuals?
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.
Perhaps you should acquaint yourself with Venn diagrams. The area of overlap between the two concepts is called having something to hide.
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.
He isn't. It's literally used in bad faith in its literal sense ("if you have nothing to hide, why can't I see your phone?"). Of course, the same argument would never be accepted by the very law enforcement officer who's making it.
The response to that is, yes, I do have things to hide, none of your business.
I have private photos on my phone, photos that I do want to keep private, photos that I want to keep "hidden".
I don't trust Graphene but I want to. Who are the devs and who are their sponsors? I worry about supply chain attacks. Why should I trust their supply chain and anon devs?
You don't trust the devs, you trust the public code
Unless you build it yourself you do trust the devs. You aren't running public code on your phone you're running compiled binaries. Compiled by who? How securely? Who has keys?
It's also a leap of faith to assume that public code is any safer.
You're not wrong that one needs to have some trust in the devs of open source code, but if you are this level of paranoid then having the code available is essential to your threat model because it allows you to build it yourself so you know what you're running. Nobody can audit everything, but if enough people are involved in the development, they would all have to collude (or the malicious one has to hope they get lucky) since each one of them has a chance to spot when one of the developers were to be malicious
Well, the prior lead dev of the project did have some very strong personality quirks and odd behavior in conflicts with a lot of people. So much so that he was encouraged to leave the project and did so.
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.
My point is if I don't trust Google why should I trust anons and anime characters more?
I was hoping someone could give me more than "it's public."
Sorry, it is what it is
Graphene builds are verifiable, go build them yourself if you feel like.
Public code is definitely safer than binary blobs.
When is the last time you inspected your smoke detectors for covert audio/video surveillance components? And if you have not done so, why do you trust they do not possess such capabilities?
It's not explained why pixel.
says a lot about android in general
they literally planted an backdoor that federal agency can force google to give out information
As long as the baseband is closed source, GrapheneOS is just a false sense of security.
Why do we keep using a thing that exists to subvert the interests of the average person?
And I say cops are criminals, and we are both right, and both wrong, at the same time.
any method of evading the ever-increasing centralization and regulation of society will inevitably be destroyed. efficient policing demands these obstacles be removed.
Cops say low speed limits and speeding tickets are for your safety and not just another tax.
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.
I voted you back up because it's important to understand that if the powers that be had their way, encryption would be illegal.
Phones and guns are just throwaway tools to criminals.
I get the feeling this is likely a better setup than the linux phones
It depends on your goals and threat model. If you consider dependence on Google hardware as a threat, it's not better.
Yeah. They have a duress password feature which cleans up the device. Now.. if only you can use it like a linux computer and be able to make full system backups, it would be a lot easier to use that feature. The lack of proper backup facilities make it untenable for holding any critical data.
GrapheneOS is based on the Linux kernel just like Android.
It's an android fork.
Criminals also drink water and breathe air. Quick, ban those.
Just saying "Catalunian" or even "Spanish" instead of only "cops" may get the article less clicks but it would've gone a long way at least pretending to be a worthwhile read. This is a very narrow case in point for basically advocating for a specific product not a class of products. That smells like a sales pitch to me.
The claim seems plausible as far as capable criminals go.
Heard this in Sweden too. Normals dont know what it is and dont question it.
"encrypted phone" = criminal
Would very much like something like this. But I still don't get it .. a system that cuts out g**gle, but is based on g**gle hardware? How could that grow or last? .. In the meantime, using an Android with location disabled, Duck browser, and bare minimum apps.
Honeypot much?
each and every technology has and will be used in the commision of the very worst possible crimes. anything can and is bieng weaponised. any rational society would simply use our vast data sets to determine which specific preventable harm is effecting the most humans and can be elliminated for the lowest cost and effort.....do that, and then start working on the now new greatest harm ellimination. but in spite of asking and trying to figure this out myself, I can find no effort to actualy just gather that data and work from there .....everything is just another "cause".....for debate
They spew assertions like this not so that people believe them but so that they can reference them when establishing probably cause, applying for warrants, etc.
I tried to read this article on digital privacy but after five minutes spent unticking boxes allowing my usage data to be sent to an augean list of data collectors I gave up and left.
When this happens I disable JS for the website permanently and reload, sometimes it is not live loaded and the article is readable.
Bless the hearts of webmasters who allow reader mode to function normally.
No webmaster allows reader mode to function normally. There are, however, webmasters who don't try to prevent reader mode from functioning normally.
Potato, potato.
Here, "allow" means "doesn't actively work to counter".
> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
An article being inaccessible or illegible counts as tangential?
Yes, it's tangential in the sense that we're using the word there: it veers in a different direction from the article.
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.
Not to mention it's directly related to the subject of the article.
That might be true but it's been done to death because it's applicable basically every time commercial coverage of a privacy-related topic. It has the vibe of "we should improve society somewhat. yet you participate in it. curious!". Not to mention in publications with proper editorial independence, the "business side" (ie. the side that's responsible for adding the ads/trackers) is firewalled from the side writing the articles, so there isn't even really a contradiction.
It's more like, "you complain that people throw sand in your eyes, yet you also throw sand in people's eyes, curious." This is not "yet you participate in society." Unlike participating in society, these behaviors are entirely optional and they can stop any time they want, they just prefer not to. Editorial independency doesn't absolve them. It just means that they're doing the right thing in one area but not another.
Yes
The hypocrisy in the context of the content of the article is, in its self, interesting. It's not tangential by any means.
Those are just placebo buttons.