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.
Murena is directly assisting with state anti-privacy campaigns smearing highly private and secure devices as mainly benefiting criminals. They've repeatedly falsely claimed GrapheneOS is mainly used by criminals. Here are 2 of many examples:
https://nitter.space/GrapheneOS/status/2040887784253141142
https://clubic.com/actualite-604786-murena-e-os-interview.html
GrapheneOS, end-to-end encrypted messaging apps, Monero and other projects are being targeted with state and corporate propaganda and anti-privacy laws. Meanwhile, the same governments heavily fund and support phony privacy projects clearly downgrading privacy and security compared to an iPhone.
GrapheneOS is only an initial target for these state actors and their sycophants in corporate news organizations. Apple heavily works on protecting users against exploits too. It would be much harder to convince the public that an iPhone is for criminals so they're starting with open source.
See https://www.ad.nl/binnenland/paniek-in-onderwereld-politie-valt-massaal-binnen-op-zoek-naar-google-pixel-telefoons~a6b87c33/ for an example of what's ongoing in the Netherlands to scare people away from using open source privacy projects. It's also ongoing in Germany at the same time with similar talking points. This largely started in Spain and has been worst in France.
@GrapheneOS I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here?
They hilight the use of GrapheneOS by criminals. That makes complete sense and is understandable. Criminals will abuse privacy, they always have.
It doesn't mean privacy, or GrapheneOS, is bad. Nor does it mean the criminals abusing privacy to commit crimes are not real. The reporting and the policing in this article both seem completely legit to me. (I've used GrapheneOS for 5+ years now)
@Schouten_B @GrapheneOS
The least they could've done is made clear GrapheneOS is an open source project and that it isn't affiliated with the seller in question. And this is ignoring that the seller in question might even flash an OS based on GrapheneOS but with modifications, making it not actual GrapheneOS. Also, it is deontological to ask for a response if you associate an organisation, which isn't self-admittedly or self-evidently criminal, with criminality.
For example, this article talked about crime, but asked for a response, which gives the opportunity to the organisation to make their position clear:
@tranquil_cassowary @GrapheneOS It's unclear to me that the media would have to tell that story. If that is our standard a hell of a lot of media reporting would get incomprehensibly lengthy and complicated. By my reading their article is accurate. Sure. There's subtleties here not called out, but that doesn't feel unreasonable.
@Schouten_B @tranquil_cassowary The claims from the police are largely unsubstantiated claims, deliberately misleading distortions pretending they can do things they can't to scare people and outright falsehoods. Legitimate journalists do in fact have an obligation to do proper research and provide relevant parties an opportunity to respond. It isn't ethical to write a story smearing an open source project by reporting unverified claims about it without providing any opportunity to respond.
@GrapheneOS probably bc the feds can't crack it LMAO