I would need more information about this story
Unless there is a verified source it’s FUD and it’s actually not helpful for freedom and privacy.
(I live in Spain and use GrapheneOS BTW). How would police even know it’s GrapheneOS? Shit, why would they be looking at my pone in the first place? The only possible situation is: you were arrested for something, as part of investigation they have a warrant to access your phone, they try to unlock it with common tools, they fail, they realize it’s GrapheneOS.
Or, scenario 2: they are in a shady neighborhood, they see a guy with a Pixel phone (you can tell because of the camera bar) and they think “that’s a strange choice for an unemployed dude sitting in bar whole day” and they assume he’s dealing and, I don’t know, make a mental note about it.
Source?
What I think is that I should probably look into installing GrapheneOS on my Google Pixel.
You should, its honestly crazy how simple the installation process is
Check your banking app first, chances are it won’t work on GrapheneOS.
I’m a bit of a luddite in that respect, I don’t trust apps for anything that important. I know, it’s probably fine, and I probably should, but I don’t. Just one of my weird hangups I guess.
I’m similar but I don’t like the idea of someone swiping my phone and maybe being able to get into my payment apps so while I use online banking, I don’t let it save my login information. Is kind of a birch to have to log in everytime, but makes me feel safer
Especially if you’re a drug dealer.
Once they start just taking your stuff, they are thugs. You deal with them like any other thugs.
I recommend a M84 Zastava.
Sounds like a great way to get yourself killed. They have guns too.
That’s why I open carry a W88
ICBM in the back of a truck with the control switch or we riot.
What’s weird is that former eastern European countries like Slovakia are more democratic than wester the western European ones.
If a cop stops me, he doesn’t care what I have on my phone or what my phone is. He just asks me for an ID card (and also driver’s license and papers for the vehicle if I’m driving).
That is more freedom inthis particular way, but not necessarily more democracy.
Edit: and reading more about it, it’s not even true about the Spanish confiscations.
This is the second time I’ve come across this story.
If you look closely, random people are not being taken aside for being seen with a Pixel as the headline would have you believe.
What is true is that Graphene OS on a Pixel is a popular, easy setup that can’t be cracked open with Cellebrite et al., and that makes the piggies very sad. Methinks someone wants readers to fear using Graphene OS.
Also, Graphene has that duress mode, you set a pin/password that when entered locks out storage, does a wipe, while leaving grapheneOS in place. It seems US citizens maybe needing this in the future.
If autocrats manage to fully take over, they’ll just enact a policy that assumes you’re guilty of the charges if the phone, for whatever reason, gets wiped (especially after entering a code you provided). Your “right to silence” isn’t gonna last forever.
You can’t fix an abuse of power issue with a technological solution, its only a bandaid, and it will stop working when blood keeps gushing out (aka: the instutions of democracy starts to completely fall apart)
It needs to be a smarter mode where it only removes specified content (apps, browser history, and saved passwords maybe), so that the phone looks plausibly used when it unlocks.
90% of cases they want your chat history and maybe search queries. You would need a decoy history because no history is very suspicious
Where can I find these hacktools ? I have a whole damn bunch of android 9 phones I can’t root because their bootloaders are non-unlockable and that pisses me off.
Back in my day, hackers would just publish that shit in 2600 zine, now they’re all corporate sellouts selling on 0day to the fucking fed.
You could ask Moxie Marlinspike of Signal messenger. I heard he has an older version of cellebrite laying around.
I doubt these tools would help you. They are primarily for pulling data off devices, spying on them, or controlling them.
Even if you could buy them as a private individual you wouldn’t want to pay that cost. There might be pirated versions, but most who have use of these tools have no interest in pirated software.
There are extremely skilled people who make a living finding vulnerabilities, so there’s not a lot of low-hanging fruit left and those who find serious vulnerabilities have generally worked hard to do so.
When a single exploit can pay enough that you could pay off all your loans, buy a house, or not have to work again for years, or maybe ever. Why would you go through all the trouble of finding it to release it publicly and get nothing? Especially when it’s going to be used by these shady companies either way.
I’m not saying exploit selling is morally right, it certainly isn’t, but if I was offered millions of dollars to do the wrong thing, I’m not sure I would turn that down.
Grapheneos is only installable on unlocked phones. Specifically pixels. There is a complete list on their site
xda probably has that
He has the right, but not the ability…
Arch took away his right to remain silent.
Headline is not true.
A police spokesperson from one Spanish region told that they suspect of people carrying google pixel phones because they are commonly used by drug dealers with GOS installed. It was made more as a comment than as a serious threat.
I have heard nothing about any actual confiscation based on phone OS being made.
All this comes from one quote
Every time we see a Google Pixel, we think it could be a drug dealer
There’s a paywall that can be removed with the element zapper of uBlock
I mean, as long as they don’t have evidence, the cops can think what they want, right?
I could be a serial killer. I am not, but… I could be!
In fact, I remembered incorrectly, the Pixel phones that were seized were put in packages that prevented data from being deleted remotely.
Spanish police are allowed to hack phones to counter illegal activities
In the particular technological war between drug traffickers and the police, an important element has recently come into play: Trojans. With judicial authorization, the police infect traffickers’ phones and thus gain access to most of the applications, images, and documents on a device
Oh of course it’s not because you carried a Pixel, but when your Pixel showed up on the tower, we started sniffing your shit and the people you associate are quite unsavory persons so we’re going to audit you and maybe if find some illegal drugs or porn near something you own, you’re going to spend some quality time in out concrete buildings until we come to some arrangement. We will have an offer you CANNOT refuse for you.
Statists speak only one language and it comes out of a 155 millimeter mouth.
What? Sauce?
Not OP but there is few sources on that :
https://www.androidauthority.com/why-i-use-grapheneos-on-pixel-3575477/
Thanks!
Turns out that OPs heading is a little bit exaggerated, as nobody is confiscating anything.Those articles don’t really support the claim? At all?
https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-organized-crime-preferred-phone-3573578/ is unsourced but, taking at face value, seems like what one would expect. People aren’t getting stopped at checkpoints and forced to divulge what OS their phone is running and being taken to a black site if they run GrapheneOS. But someone holding up a pixel in a sea of cheap motorolas DOES raise some eyebrows. Same as someone with a ridiculously expensive rolex walking around The Hood and so forth. And, presumably, people who have been arrested for other reasons raise even more eyebrows if their phone isn’t running a stock OS which…
Look, with a just police force (ha!), that actually is a very reasonable stance. Back in the day it was having a Blackberry. For a decade or so it was having two phones until people learned to not do anything personal on a work phone and that became kinda normal. There are activities that are generally associated with “weirdos” and “criminals” and I think even the GraphenOS devs would acknowledge their userbase fall firmly into the former. If you see someone with a Blackberry hanging out leaning against a 7-11? You maybe hang out across the street for an hour and keep an eye on them. Arrest someone and they have three burner phones in their pants pockets? Maybe you look a bit deeper.
That is actual investigative work. Of course, the problem is that it instead becomes “That gameboy looks like a drug dealer’s phone. We are going to stop and frisk you and maybe sexually assault you in the back of the cruiser if we are bored”.
I’m keyed in on a lot of “high level” protest discussion as well as what investigative journalists need to do for actual safety. And one of the biggest topics that regularly comes up is the idea of “the burner”. In theory, if you are crossing a questionable border or think you might be stopped, you bring a completely blank burner. If they hack into it, you are safe, right?
Wrong. Because you are now an anomaly. NOBODY has no social media and NOBODY has no documents on their laptop. So what are you hiding? Let’s beat it out of you.
Which is why general best practices are often considered to have a real device that you actually use everyday and take through those checkpoints and on the riskier protests. But you make damned sure there is nothing incriminating or sensitive on there. Optimally through having your “burner” be the one you do said activities on, but also through just removing it well before you get on the plane or get in the car.
And a lot of that applies to device choice too. That cool ass Linux Phone might seem like a great idea but now you stand out from the crowd quite a bit. Same with taking your top of the line iphone to Korea where Samsungs grow on trees and so forth.
if you’re expecting your burner to get searched, they could access your social media through the phone. if you have none, you might look suspicious. if you have lots, you’re giving out tons of metadata.
plus with regular phones you’re giving out your location 24/7 to Google and your carrier. the intervals you’re on airplane mode are suspicious.
I think the more normies use GOS, the less it stands out. Tor still stands out, but Signal doesn’t, because tons of people use Signal. maybe even use GOS for burners - just get used Pixels. maybe say you use it to skip ads on YouTube and pirate shit? and if they try to unlock the burner, well… it wastes their time, only to find you were telling the truth all along.
Well, in my region it typically is already sufficient to look Arabic to become the guest of a “random” police control.
Compared to that, having a closer look at people running GrapheneOS on their phones sounds relatively well-grounded and almost reasonable.
At least not totally crypto-racist (although I have the feeling that still comes on top…)Oh I 500% assume racism is a big part of this too.
Not familiar with Catalonia but I assume there are at least a few ethnic groups that are associated with “rich” and this is a way to group them in.
Which, funny enough, was also kind of the deal with Blackberries. Yeah, Dealers had them. Because Dealers like buying expensive shit (See also: really expensive Rolex in a neighborhood where everyone is on food stamps) AND because they were ridiculously ahead of their time tech wise. You know who else had them? Business and (proto-)tech folk. And cops LOVED to say that the kid who actually made something of themselves going back home to visit family must be a Dealer because they have the same phone all their co-workers do.
Which gets back to: As part of an investigation, it is good. It is one part of a potential puzzle. In the reality of ACAB… ACAB.
associated with “weirdos” and “criminals” and I think even the GraphenOS devs would acknowledge their userbase fall firmly into the former
What a fucking absurd statement.
Yeah. GrapheneOS is focused on security against external agents, so its userbase is prosecuted people, like journalists.
Which are not normal people, aka weirdos.
The good kind though
Well of course!
I am about as “normal” as you get. I am a middle-aged white male, and I use a Pixel 6 Pro with Graphene OS installed. I switched to Graphene OS for security in the wake of an ugly divorce involving a campaign of stalking and harassment when I began to suspect my prior phone had been compromised.
But “searching for an answer” and “actually implementing the answer” makes you not a normal person.
To be fair, most people are stupid and trust the shitty system they are born in, so they don’t look for their own freedom, as they are convinced they are free.
Same with taking your top of the line iphone to Korea where Samsungs grow on trees and so forth.
Fun fact: iPhones are really popular in South Korea, especially for younger generations and considered more cool than boomer’s Samsung, though Samsung is gaining some traction with newer flagship models recently, so yeah it won’t make you stand out.
Fair enough. I was mostly just thinking back to when I was researching luggage tags and the general guidance was “airtags have the best coverage in the US and some Western European countries. For East Asia, it is generally fine but a lot more hit and miss as most countries vastly prefer Samsung Androids”. And my experience in Japan and Korea lined up with that where my luggage had ridiculously high fidelity with a samsung tag or whatever they are called.
But the point still stands. If you have a high end phone that basically nobody around you will have, you’ll stand out.
Barbaric
Kinda how in some countries using any circumvention tools are a means of arrest and suspicious behavior
Has everyone on this site forgotten how to do a web search? Literally the first article if you search for Google Pixel phones being confiscated in Spain:
https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-organized-crime-preferred-phone-3573578/
Onus is on the one making the claim or it’s just Facebook tier image macros “do ur own research” standards.
It’s not about saving ten seconds of typing. It’s about supporting OP’s claim with credible sources. And I have to stress credible because mainstream journalism has a tendency to turn unverified or downright false claims into a woozle.
I do know, but I also refuse to do OPs work for him.
Would be minimal effort to post a link together with a click-baity (and wrong - nobody is confiscating anything) heading.
Should have put Hannah Montana Linux on their phone instead. SMH my head
Shaking my head my head?
thatsthejoke.jpg
It’s what HML will do toy you SMHMH.
SMHMH my head
Confiscated for having GrapheneOS? What?
Unbelievable! I’d expect at least confiscated and arrested for indefinite time without charges.
That would be treason.
One thing is certain:
The day the related news story got viral, champagne corks must have been flying in the marketing department at GrapheneOS…it’s literally what made me decide to go buy a Pixel and install it.
