There's a major state sponsored misinformation and smear campaign towards GrapheneOS in the Netherlands and Germany. The misinformation campaign includes unsubstantiated security claims not holding up to scrutiny to scare people away from it. They're also heavily misrepresenting who uses it overall.
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@GrapheneOS can you point me to an example of this misinformation in the Netherlands? Fortunately, I haven't seen it yet, but I want to know what they are saying. (I am myself Dutch, btw)
@bartavi https://www.ad.nl/binnenland/paniek-in-onderwereld-politie-valt-massaal-binnen-op-zoek-naar-google-pixel-telefoons~a6b87c33/ is one of many as part of an initial round of highly inaccurate stories taking the word of the state at face value. We've seen the same thing recently happening in Germany and it's likely coordinated between law enforcement and other parts of the government across both countries. They're making similar unsubstantiated and outright false claims along with trying to fearmonger and smear GrapheneOS in the same way. Most corporate/state media goes along with it.
@bartavi This was most prominent in France where there was a massive smear campaign against GrapheneOS and threats made against us as an open source project by national law enforcement. We fully removed all of our servers from the country because of it and no longer host anything there. We've ignored or rejected multiple offers for server sponsorships in France because of it, although we could do less important development or testing stuff on servers there and may accept some offers for it.
These smear campaigns conflate GrapheneOS with forks and modifications of it sold by shady companies. Those usually include a device management app to remotely manage the devices of their customers as if they're employees. These are largely not GrapheneOS devices or have preinstalled malware apps.
A common tactic being used in these smear campaigns is to make unsubstantiated and outright false claims about the capabilities of forensic data extraction tools. They misrepresent how they get into devices. They want to scare people into using far less secure devices which are easier to exploit.
France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands are becoming increasingly authoritarian surveillance states with an ongoing crackdown against privacy. It's happening throughout the whole EU and it's likely both secure devices and end-to-end encryption without backdoors are going to end up outlawed.
@GrapheneOS I respect your work, but if you use 'authoritarian' and 'the Netherlands' in one sentence then that word loses all of its meaning. Same goes for the other countries you mentioned.
There are a bunch of companies based in the EU selling phones with drastically worse privacy and security than an iPhone including Jolla, Volla, Murena and iodé. These products are effectively backdoored by not providing standard privacy and security patches/protections while misleading users.
France and other EU countries are actively cracking down on legitimate privacy and security projects while supporting unsafe products within their control. These products make it far easier to remotely exploit devices and also to bypass encryption to extract data. They're phony privacy products.
Each of the companies we've listed have participated in the misinformation and smear campaigns against GrapheneOS. Jolla spent years working closely with Putin's regime. Volla, Murena and iodé are building an EU Play Integrity API. None provides the crucial standard privacy patches/protections.
@GrapheneOS
Exactly, how is Jolla supposed to collaborate with Putin's regime? I understand that you have proven information and that can be verified.
@ferrebam Jolla openly formed a deep partnership with the Russian government in 2015 and ended up being largely owned by the Russian government via Russian state-owned corporations. This is publicly available information which is easily found. Russia was close to owning the majority of Jolla. SailfishOS is largely closed source but the partnership with Russia enabled Russia to create Aurora OS. Jolla got rid of Russian state ownership in 2023 and claims there's no more involvement by Russia.
@ferrebam Jolla has made multiple announcements about this and there's no point denying it happened. The same management who chose to form a deep partnership with Russia and to take a massive amount of Russian state investment are still the people running Jolla.
Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014, 1 year before the partnership with Jolla. His government has been clearly authoritarian and openly killing political opponents for a long time. SailfishOS was developed in partnership with his government.
@GrapheneOS I understand. Similarly we can say the same of all companies that collaborate in some way with the U.S. and Israeli governments, countries that have not respected (nor respected) international law, just as Russia has done.
I don't think it's okay but what you think is irrelevant, the world works like this.
@GrapheneOS probably bc the feds can't crack it LMAO