The newspaper article referenced contains insinuation (linking GrapheneOS to the darkweb, criminal gangs etc), and unnamed sources quoting a police investigation.
But that sort of thing sells newspapers. There didn't appear to be anything about the French state taking specific action (eg passing a law) against Graphene.
> This doesn't have anything to do with how French journalists have responded to the state actions against GrapheneOS but rather the actions and statements by France's state agencies and law enforcement which are highly concerning. They're making highly inaccurate and libelous claims about GrapheneOS while clearly actively trying to justify taking actions against us. They've shown their hand so we're leaving France including OVH prior to anything bad happening rather than waiting.
Can confirm, this is nothing but more scaremongering from right-wing rags: Le Figaro and Le Parisien, both owned by right-wing oligarchs (Dassault and Arnault respectively) trying to fuel this climate of fear to further their economic interests by getting a right-wing demagogue elected. Both papers are caught lying all the time, like Fox News. You shouldn't be taking this seriously.
What you should take seriously though, is this amping up of right-wing populist rhetoric, manufacturing a mass hysteria about crime (when it's at its lowest point in decades) that is then used to justify increasingly authoritarian policies.
Don't get trapped by right or left they are all owned by oligarchs trying to push or pull the public towards some agenda that benefits them, sometimes other oligarchs but rarely you.
The crime is down stat is a political stat that doesn't tell you are safer. It could mean police are not going after small crimes or people just stop reporting them or they are classified differently. It could say money spent on law enforcement is working and more is needed. On the other hand it could say community outreach and educational coapaigns are working. Many previous crimes reported thats changing with a more racially diverse force.
Keep in mind, until the "liberals" create a proper state that isn't easily capitulated to the far right fear, the risk of these rags becoming defacto, and these threats becoming policy, like they did in America, it's a legitimate threat.
> "Particularité de GraphèneOS : on peut se le procurer autant sur le darknet que sur des sites grand public." ⇒ "A distinctive feature of GrapheneOS is that it can be obtained both on the darknet and on mainstream websites."
Except the two newspapers here aren't public, they're right-wing rags: Le Figaro and Le Parisien, both owned by right-wing oligarchs (Dassault and Arnault respectively) trying to fuel this climate of fear and hate to further their economic interests by getting a right-wing demagogue elected. Both papers are caught lying all the time, like Fox News.
More importantly this is the smart choice, the only thing, to do: Shake the dust from your sandals, walk away, don't look back.
This is the ongoing horror of the overbearing state, which wants to rule efficiently by knowing everything that everybody is doing all the time. Those who focus on and value law enforcement before freedom.
> > I am preparing an article on the use of your secure personal data phone solution by drug traffickers and other criminals.
I think GrapheneOS needs a really good PR expert volunteer, or funding to pay for a non-volunteer.
My non-PR-expert guesses are... If the journalist is in bad faith or flaky, that might need to be handled. But if the journalist is in good faith, this might be an opportunity, to promote GrapheneOS and/or to start to head off adverse gov't actions there.
(GrapheneOS does some great technical work, and has given me what seems to be a more respectful and trustworthy smartphone than I could get from Apple or Google. Right now, I'd think many countries in Europe and elsewhere should be looking at something like GrapheneOS as a possible interim measure on their way to greater digital sovereignty. I understand that the French people especially value liberty.)
There's no single mastermind. This current wave of authoritarianism around the world is a consequence of not designing the Internet with democratic principles in mind. Online content discovery and moderation mechanisms are centralized and authoritarian in nature. And since most communication nowadays happens on the Internet on large platforms with millions of users (this is especially true after smartphones and social media were invented), the structure of human society in the real world is mirroring the Internet.
This can be solved, though. We have to move moderation and ranking mechanisms to the client-side, especially for search engines and social media. Each person should be able to decide what they post and see, but not what anyone else posts or sees.
That doesn't quite explain it. The internet has happily been a niche wild west for a long time that has threatened very little power. Besides generally "most people know how evil all rich people have to be to get where they are now"
As another aspect we're seeing governments and the system elites craving for more power and control than ever.
I know it's borderline conspiracy theorist but I fear that the COVID-19 lockdowns with the surveillance systems and control gained during them gave the elites worldwide a taste for new levels of power and control.
All in the name of doing it for our own good of course. But ultimately its for more power. What terrors man won't inflict on others for "their own good".
I don't think it's coordinated. The animosity and competition between companies and governments couldn't possibly get them to agree on anything of this scale.
Rather, Occam's razor suggests that their interests simply align against individual privacy.
Company executives are plutomaniacs, and companies can't access and exploit your data if you want to keep it private. Politicians are megalomaniacs, highly insecure and defensive of their position, and governments can't monitor your thoughts and activities if you want to keep them private; they take comfort in knowing that you are a good and subservient citizen.
Many decades ago people in governments and companies understood that they can accomplish their goals much easier if they cooperate, which is why lobbying is a legal multi-billion-dollar industry, why we see CEOs in politics, and so on. The world of 1984 is a reality; it's just that our leash is long enough and the carrot enticing enough for us to care about it.
Personally I’ve grown hostile to the concept of anonymous speech but I readily admit that I can’t imagine a way to deanonymize without also losing privacy as most people describe it.
Anonymous posters like what looks like a troll bot that the GrapheneOS account is arguing with have flooded the zone with so much noise its fracturing society imo
Governments can easily hire actual people to argue online. We're hurt the most by surveillance, because we can't hire agents, butlers or newspaper editors (who are the original real-world privacy protection).
Yeah well there is definitely something going on, a coordinated effort to condemn GrapheneOS with faint praise (and outright scare-mongering). Here I have posted a video url I'd downloaded and watched a few days ago. It's TTS slop narration, but it makes an attempt to characterize GrapheneOS as a 'double-edged sword', because, you know, criminals. Just like the hatchet job from France.
'GrapheneOS Update 2025 Privacy Savior or Hacker’s Paradise'
I get all my utube from the bash-prompt (and never have to deal with algorithm or see who is who and what else is there), so I don't know who posted this video to YouTube, but maybe there's more?
This could be a case study in an amateur low-grade half-ass influence operation.
On the other hand, it could simply be a grudge, a coordinated personal attack on the lead dev.
There are a slew of other videos by YouTube personalities who, at various times, seem to be disparaging the guy, including a very upset Grossman (right-to-repair guy).
Or hey, maybe it's just coincidence. C'est la vie!
Authoritarianism is doing well all over; it doesn't have to be deliberately coordinated, so much as people being basically the same everywhere, and the world sharing some serious problems. What works in one country works in almost any other.
On the one hand this its true that monkey see means monkey can do.. On the other, all the nationalists started meeting up with each other internationally and in public because hypocritical cynicism is apparently so hot now that you can be a xenophobe who worships foreigners as long as they are more impressive xenophobes.
Don't fall into this reductionist thinking, there is no secret cabal behind it. It's not even coordinated.
This wave of authoritarianism is simply the result of well-funded right-wing populists taking advantage of an economically tough situation for the masses, after decades of neoliberalist austerity and deregulation. They're using fear and hate to further the goals of their wealthy patrons: deregulating the economy further. Mass surveillance comes for free with these people, it's purely a consequence of focusing the entire public discourse on perceived crime levels and fear of foreigners.
The two articles attacking GrapheneOS come from right-wing rags: Le Figaro and Le Parisien, who make their bread and butter painting a bleak picture of the country, when crime levels are at an all-times low. QED
Is it just a coincidence that the recent action against archive.today and all its other TLDs is also based out of France? It also at least tangentially involves state action against an element outside of state control, i.e., being able to keep records out of the regime memory hole.
I did not follow up with whether there was any kind of understanding or resolution of what was going on with the Archive situation, but it seems oddly coincidental that these types of actions would be going on effectively simultaneously.
Always impressed by GrapheneOS social media painstakingly dealing with these trolls. For those without time the link they post to a 3rd party comparison of Android based OSes is very enlightening:
GrapheneOS is a project with really good intentions, and we should definitely give them credit.
But here’s the thing: criminals end up exploiting tech like this, and that makes the project an easy target for law enforcement. We’ve seen the exact same thing happen with crypto.
We need to just accept that any technology designed for security and privacy is always going to be a double-edged sword.
The problem is not that security solutions are a double edged sword, it's that such solutions stop mass surveillance.
When Ross Ulbricht was arrested, they made sure to do it in a way that they got access to his laptop while logged in. I'm sure competent investigators can figure out the login method used daily by someone on their phone if they follow them because they are committing a crime. Just like they did with Ulbricht. But they can't do that for everyone whenever they feel like it, and that's the problem.
It's funny. It just struck me that the EU is uniquely well positioned to develop an alternative to Android and iOS.
Start with one of the open source projects - I guess an Android derivative, sans all the Google stuff. Give them funding, maybe regulate (that always helps).
Then mandate that within X years, various key apps must provide for this system - things like bank apps, state admin apps etc. In high likelihood, development would be close enough to Android that it would not be a crazy high burden - and anyway, it seems most people use cross platform frameworks.
EU could regulate, or influence via ownership, privacy controls better tailored to European tastes.
That would give the EU a dose of digital sovereignty without doing much, and ensuring some degree of usability.
It's a shame that instead GrapheneOS seems to get sued.
Readit News
But that sort of thing sells newspapers. There didn't appear to be anything about the French state taking specific action (eg passing a law) against Graphene.
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/115584160910016309
> This doesn't have anything to do with how French journalists have responded to the state actions against GrapheneOS but rather the actions and statements by France's state agencies and law enforcement which are highly concerning. They're making highly inaccurate and libelous claims about GrapheneOS while clearly actively trying to justify taking actions against us. They've shown their hand so we're leaving France including OVH prior to anything bad happening rather than waiting.
and more in the thread.
What you should take seriously though, is this amping up of right-wing populist rhetoric, manufacturing a mass hysteria about crime (when it's at its lowest point in decades) that is then used to justify increasingly authoritarian policies.
The crime is down stat is a political stat that doesn't tell you are safer. It could mean police are not going after small crimes or people just stop reporting them or they are classified differently. It could say money spent on law enforcement is working and more is needed. On the other hand it could say community outreach and educational coapaigns are working. Many previous crimes reported thats changing with a more racially diverse force.
It tells you whatever you want to believe.
It's just not today, but tomorrow.
This is public data, it's not a conspiracy. Lots of newspapers would not exist without the taxpayer money: https://www.culture.gouv.fr/thematiques/presse-ecrite/tablea...
But they are not a State tool, they are the tools of they owners which are all private billionaires.
The public money is here to pretend that, because they receive it, they'll work for the interest of the public.
What it actually does is to lower the bill for their owners.
More importantly this is the smart choice, the only thing, to do: Shake the dust from your sandals, walk away, don't look back.
This is the ongoing horror of the overbearing state, which wants to rule efficiently by knowing everything that everybody is doing all the time. Those who focus on and value law enforcement before freedom.
I think GrapheneOS needs a really good PR expert volunteer, or funding to pay for a non-volunteer.
My non-PR-expert guesses are... If the journalist is in bad faith or flaky, that might need to be handled. But if the journalist is in good faith, this might be an opportunity, to promote GrapheneOS and/or to start to head off adverse gov't actions there.
(GrapheneOS does some great technical work, and has given me what seems to be a more respectful and trustworthy smartphone than I could get from Apple or Google. Right now, I'd think many countries in Europe and elsewhere should be looking at something like GrapheneOS as a possible interim measure on their way to greater digital sovereignty. I understand that the French people especially value liberty.)
If you make the response boring or used a canned legalish message, it doesn’t allow them to say you didn’t talk to them.
A better rule is: don’t let anyone untrained talk to journalists.
Unfortunately we still don't know what it is or what its goals are.
This can be solved, though. We have to move moderation and ranking mechanisms to the client-side, especially for search engines and social media. Each person should be able to decide what they post and see, but not what anyone else posts or sees.
It's a stolen quote but rings true:
Those with power fear one thing above all else; losing said power.
I know it's borderline conspiracy theorist but I fear that the COVID-19 lockdowns with the surveillance systems and control gained during them gave the elites worldwide a taste for new levels of power and control.
All in the name of doing it for our own good of course. But ultimately its for more power. What terrors man won't inflict on others for "their own good".
Rather, Occam's razor suggests that their interests simply align against individual privacy.
Company executives are plutomaniacs, and companies can't access and exploit your data if you want to keep it private. Politicians are megalomaniacs, highly insecure and defensive of their position, and governments can't monitor your thoughts and activities if you want to keep them private; they take comfort in knowing that you are a good and subservient citizen.
Many decades ago people in governments and companies understood that they can accomplish their goals much easier if they cooperate, which is why lobbying is a legal multi-billion-dollar industry, why we see CEOs in politics, and so on. The world of 1984 is a reality; it's just that our leash is long enough and the carrot enticing enough for us to care about it.
Anonymous posters like what looks like a troll bot that the GrapheneOS account is arguing with have flooded the zone with so much noise its fracturing society imo
'GrapheneOS Update 2025 Privacy Savior or Hacker’s Paradise'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCgi6bJy-qo
I get all my utube from the bash-prompt (and never have to deal with algorithm or see who is who and what else is there), so I don't know who posted this video to YouTube, but maybe there's more?
This could be a case study in an amateur low-grade half-ass influence operation.
On the other hand, it could simply be a grudge, a coordinated personal attack on the lead dev.
There are a slew of other videos by YouTube personalities who, at various times, seem to be disparaging the guy, including a very upset Grossman (right-to-repair guy).
Or hey, maybe it's just coincidence. C'est la vie!
This wave of authoritarianism is simply the result of well-funded right-wing populists taking advantage of an economically tough situation for the masses, after decades of neoliberalist austerity and deregulation. They're using fear and hate to further the goals of their wealthy patrons: deregulating the economy further. Mass surveillance comes for free with these people, it's purely a consequence of focusing the entire public discourse on perceived crime levels and fear of foreigners.
The two articles attacking GrapheneOS come from right-wing rags: Le Figaro and Le Parisien, who make their bread and butter painting a bleak picture of the country, when crime levels are at an all-times low. QED
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
I did not follow up with whether there was any kind of understanding or resolution of what was going on with the Archive situation, but it seems oddly coincidental that these types of actions would be going on effectively simultaneously.
https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm
But here’s the thing: criminals end up exploiting tech like this, and that makes the project an easy target for law enforcement. We’ve seen the exact same thing happen with crypto.
We need to just accept that any technology designed for security and privacy is always going to be a double-edged sword.
When Ross Ulbricht was arrested, they made sure to do it in a way that they got access to his laptop while logged in. I'm sure competent investigators can figure out the login method used daily by someone on their phone if they follow them because they are committing a crime. Just like they did with Ulbricht. But they can't do that for everyone whenever they feel like it, and that's the problem.
Deleted Comment
I agree, therefore it should be my legal right to use such technology. Like a 2A for encryption and privacy
Start with one of the open source projects - I guess an Android derivative, sans all the Google stuff. Give them funding, maybe regulate (that always helps).
Then mandate that within X years, various key apps must provide for this system - things like bank apps, state admin apps etc. In high likelihood, development would be close enough to Android that it would not be a crazy high burden - and anyway, it seems most people use cross platform frameworks.
EU could regulate, or influence via ownership, privacy controls better tailored to European tastes.
That would give the EU a dose of digital sovereignty without doing much, and ensuring some degree of usability.
It's a shame that instead GrapheneOS seems to get sued.