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.
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 The reporting is highly inaccurate and based around taking inaccurate claims from the state at face value. They make unsubstantiated and outright false claims along with distortions of the truth to achieve an agenda which are presented as facts. This is one of many similar stories filled with misinformation and misrepresentations as part of another propaganda push. We weren't contacted and neither were any neutral experts. This is not journalism, it's state propaganda.
@GrapheneOS I'm talking about the AD.nl article (as a native Dutch speaker). Not any of the other ones. Which parts of it is inaccurate?
@Schouten_B @GrapheneOS I think the problem of the AD article is that they don't mention that the vast majority of GrapheneOS users are not criminals and that it's unclear what modifications these resellers make.
But I'm not sure it's necessarily state-driven malice. It wouldn't surprise me at all if AD simply doesn't have the tech know-how to write a proper article. Plus like De Telegraaf, they are not known as kwaliteitskrant (quality newspaper) and they thrive on short, sensational articles.
@danieldk @Schouten_B The attack is not from the journalists but rather from the state telling them untrue things to scapegoat GrapheneOS, pretend disk encryption doesn't work and pretend exploit tools they purchase are more advanced than they are. We're not saying the journalists are knowingly part of the attack on the GrapheneOS project but rather they're useful idiots.
This is the not the only article and is only the beginning similarly to what happened in France already.
@GrapheneOS @danieldk Where is the state telling them this? The Dutch government has only ever mentioned GrapheneOS in a positive way afaict. And even the DAWO-mobile project considers it a candidate afaik.
@Schouten_B @danieldk Dutch law enforcement and prosecutors are the state and have repeatedly made false claims about GrapheneOS. They've repeatedly tried to mislead about what it is, what it provides and the vast majority of the people using it. They've also tried to pretend the security is weaker than it is and that they have capabilities they don't to mislead people into using less secure devices. That has been ongoing for years. Starting to push it through the media makes it worse.
@GrapheneOS @danieldk Can you point me at these false claims?
@Schouten_B @danieldk The article is an example of false claims and misrepresentations from agents of the state to journalists. There are many past examples of making false statements to courts about GrapheneOS. You can search our discussion forum and find multiple threads about it. It isn't new for Dutch law enforcement and prosecutors to be making highly inaccurate claims about GrapheneOS and scapegoating it. They conflate non-GrapheneOS devices with it and mislead about what people use.
@GrapheneOS @danieldk The article makes no claims of any sources in terms of agents of the state. Afaict it is completely based on OSINT.
Can you point to an *actual* case of the state speaking to this?
@GrapheneOS
Please stop spreading misinformation! There is no such thing as "state media" in Germany.