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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@joschu123 It's you spreading misinformation by falsely accusing us of saying something we never did.
None of our posts says anything about state media in Germany. There's zero mention of it in our posts and nothing which could be reasonably interpreted as saying it. We never said anything about state media in the Netherlands either.
We only mentioned state media in our replies about France where state media ran highly inaccurate articles, radio segments, etc. about GrapheneOS. That is a fact.
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@danieldk @GrapheneOS If you're a drug dealer using iOS you're an idiot. Any drug dealer that's any good uses Graphene.
As does any other criminal. Again, I think this is a testament to the work of the GrapheneOS project. Criminals have a strong incentive to use secure phones. If they weren't using GrapheneOS that would mean GrapheneOS doesn't offer a marginal security benefit.
@danieldk @GrapheneOS (Hell, if it said criminals were mostly using another OS I'd be getting that. I want to have the same level of privacy and security competent criminals have, at least. And they are the folks with the strongest incentive to do their homework in this regard :-))
@Schouten_B @GrapheneOS I think that's really naive. There was an article in a Spanish newspaper that roughly said 'Spanish police profiles Google Pixel users, because they might run GrapheneOS, and so do criminals'.
Do you really think people go "oh, this is so secure, I have to use it too"? No, they will not use a Pixel or GrapheneOS, because they are worried that they will be targeted, even though they are law-abiding citizens, like 99.99% of GrapheneOS users.
@GrapheneOS "eine staatlich geförderte Desinformations- und Verleumdungskampagne gegen GrapheneOS" findet in Deutschland wo grade "großangelegt" statt? Und das wäre hier dann noch nicht in aller Munde? 🥴
@rogson It's ongoing in Germany and is in an earlier stage of the story being shopped around to news publications in a similar way to how it was in France. We're aware of it because multiple journalists have contacted us. The fact that the media in Germany has been much more responsible and far less willing to spread propaganda doesn't change that this is ongoing. France's media was by far the worst and many major publications happily gave a platform to unverified propaganda against GrapheneOS.
@GrapheneOS I suppose I’ll hear about it from an official source soon, then. I’m looking forward to it.
@rogson It's already public and you can find it being spread around already. It just isn't being amplified by major publications yet. You can find part of it here:
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/41609-graphene-phones-cracked-says-german-lawyer
We know journalists have been contacted about it too because they've contacted us and we know there are at least several stories on the way from smaller publications. Perhaps when the major publications cover it, they may actually do a good job and apply skepticism to what they're being told without evidence.
@GrapheneOS I love your OS thank you for keeping me private. And I don't read that crap. And tell every one who wants to listen the truth. Two converts and counting ;-)
@GrapheneOS probably bc the feds can't crack it LMAO
@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.
@GrapheneOS
Please stop spreading misinformation! There is no such thing as "state media" in Germany.