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 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?
> 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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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 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?
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
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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?
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.
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.
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)).
> 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.
84 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 64.8 ms ] threadI 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).
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?
But in reality, I think this is a scare piece meant to drive people away from using graphing OS.
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.
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 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.
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.
"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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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 situation would be different in, say, Silicon Valley. But they're dealing with the world they're in.
Cops in [Spain] think everyone using a Google Pixel must be a drug dealer
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44473694
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.
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.
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)).
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.