GrapheneOS being targeted by France

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GrapheneOS being targeted by France

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Just for convenience (since it's hard to read the screenshot on a phone), here's the text:
GrapheneOS is being heavily targeted by the French state because we provide highly secure devices and won't include backdoors for law enforcement access. They're conflating us with companies selling closed source products using portions of our code. Both French state media and corporate media are publishing many stories attacking the GrapheneOS project based on false and unsubstantiated claims from French law enforcement. They've made a clear threat to seize our servers and arrest our developers if we do not cooperate by adding backdoors. Due to this, we're leaving France and leaving French service providers including OVH. We need substantial help from the community to push back against this across platforms. People malicious towards us are also using it as an opportunity to spread libel/harassment content targeting our team, raid our chat rooms and much more. /e/ and iodéOS are both based in France, and are both actively attacking GrapheneOS. /e/ receives substantial government funding. Both are extremely non-private and secure which is why France is targeting us while those get government funding. We need a lot more help than usual and we're sending our the first ever notification to everyone on the server because this is a particularly bad situation. If people help us, it will enable us to focus more on development again including releasing experimental Pixel 10 releases very soon.
- Next time I go to the comments first...
- Thanks for posting the contents of the image. This is especially important for folks using a screen reader and the source content is behind a paywall or login link.
- Thank you
- we're sending our the first ever notification to everyone on the sewer
  That's one way to describe Discord.
  
  Lol, I've corrected that now. An OCR Freudian slip.
- Real heroes are in the comments.
- I live in Slovakia and no one gives a shit what you have on your phone here.

If the state can't protect its people from the damage that technology and capitalism can do, they have no right to prevent people from protecting themselves.
Fix climate change. Tax billionaires. Address the housing crisis. Then we can talk about taking away privacy in the name of upholding the law.
- Doesn't even have to be a lofty goal like fixing climate change. I'd settle for the backdoors not leading to disclosure and scams, as any such weakening of security or privacy inadvertently does.
  When there was the leak of ID photos from that one site (forget which one) I sighed, because neither the users nor the site wanted to keep ID photos around, but the government made them do that. It was the most predictable result I could have imagined.
  
  I'd also settle for the billionnaires getting a French revolutionary treatment. It's high time the reactionary leeches get what they fucking deserve: they must pay their taxes, hand over all their media ownership to the public, and a shitton more. And if they don't want that, then by police force, or by the will of the people.

The billionaires really want all in on no privacy.
- For everyone else*
- At this point I'm sure it's not even about control anymore, it's just that privacy sometimes gets in the way of "line go up".
- Made a sizable donation. I encourage you all to help them manage this situation, defend themselves and keep up their good work.
  
  Yep, drama or not, completely true or not (as is being claimed in this thread), they do incredible work, and if you benefit from it, let this serve simply as a reminder that they deserve some support if you don't want to wade into all the details.
  Super happy to see they take Interac e-Transfers in Canada too.
- This isn’t the US.. French billionaire have next to no stakes in tech industry. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_billionaires_by_net_worth, the only tech company on there is datadog and that’s a US one)
  I doubt L’Oréal or Chanel much for your online data.
  
  French billionaires are actively promoting fascism, headed by Bolloré who owns a TV station similar to foxnews and has a neo Nazi body guard on his private island.
  French police is killing more people every year, with little to no consequence. French protests have changed from family walks to full riots as police attacks peaceful protests (a recent leak shows amongst other things a riot-cop telling his officer during what can only be described as a battle that protesters have children amongst them, officer replies that it's what you choose when protesting).
  It's not about tech, it's about control of the masses so they don't rebel.

From France: news outlets began parroting government stating GrapheneOS is used by narcos.
GrapheneOS reacted strongly.
However, France is on a very shitty auth-right trend (including arresting Telegram founder) so the reaction is very understandable.
- France and the rest of Europe... sigh Fuck Fascists. That includes our German government, full of selfish fuckheads who further fortify the surveillance state.
  
  It's just capitalism reaching it's end stages. Fascism arises either when capitalism is threatened or when it has eaten itself and its contradictions become too great for liberal "democracy" to ignore.
  With climate change, refugees from wars and disasters, micro plastics and other pollutants, the waning of social programs, job market collapse across the world, collapsing birth rates, inflation, energy, and a hundred other things, capitalism is reaching its end stage.
  There really are only a few options from here. And honestly I only see two major ones: either the rich win and we have literal slavery world wide (not wage slavery, actual no pay, no benefits, no nothing slavery) held up by hyper surveillance and armed bots/drones, or we break capitalism and move onto something better.

Not to protect /e/os and Iode (neither to promote the french laws), but I would like to have real source of what's happening, what /e/os and idoe didn't do right, when they conveyed fakes about graphene...
Not to say but the graphene community (mainly his leader) is always having drama with some people. So real proofs and explanations would be greatly appreciated. Wouldn't like to say black or white to this subject and would like to nuance the post
- yeah as a graphene user I have been worried for a while now about the mental state of the project head. It also doesn't seem like he cares much for the opinions of the users
  
  If you're wondering, I checked a bit online and here's what I understood :
  The 19th November a newspaper in France called "Le Parisien" published an article about GrapheneOS and that it was a dream OS for drug dealer (and whole networks).
  That it could erase itself if a intrusion was detected by showing for example a fake Snapchat page (which is btw totally false and doesn't take part in the official releases), these claims where besides made by french cops.
  For that, the newspaper contacted Graphene, and they (graphene) answered that the tool they're providing is simply working and that like a knife it could be used for malicious activities, but as with a knife most people would use it responsibly (to protect their privacy)
  At this point I think that the Graphene reaction was pretty great and acted to defend citizens privacy.
  But what follows next didn't make the same impression, by quitting the France they are not really focusing on the good topics :
  1 - France cops are no exceptions to others, surely all of them around the world would like to break encryption and privacy (grapheneOS for example)
  2 - That's not the government that propagates wrong statement about graphene, but the journalists from "Le Parisien" (if they can be called "journalists")
  (The authorities maybe lied (not the first time btw) to scare the public, the newspaper shouldn't published it with fakes in it...)
  And accusing any French based initiative is not an argument (at first they didn't have anything to do between french authorities and graphene)
  Even if FOSS projects have a country on the paper, it's not really much more of a negative aspect than to respect the laws in place...
  So why Graphene doesn't blame Framasoft (guys that are maintaining peertube) for example?
  And lastly in Europe many initiatives gets money from governments (whatever they're doing)
  Note : I'm not saying that /e/os and Iode aren't guilty of anything sketchy but that in this case Graphene are just insulting FOSS privacy projects....
  To conclude, I would say that Graphene done right by replying and arguing to a bullshit article.
  BUT they shouldn't generalize to all french projects and promote hate against frenchies and/or french projects (Btw they moved their servers from France to Germany and Canada, these countries are no more private than France and any others countries)
  Original article : https://archive.is/20251124210306/https://www.leparisien.fr/faits-divers/google-pixel-et-grapheneos-la-botte-secrete-des-narcotrafiquants-pour-proteger-leurs-donnees-de-la-police-19-11-2025-NTGPQE4JCNGEHLF7XGIQ3CCA2I.php
  
  The Venn diagram of privacy focused and paranoid has a good bit of overlap.
  But anything private enough for the most paranoid dev is private enough for me.
- Gael Duval (/e/os) wrote as a response:
  "I'd like to state very clearly that Murena and e Foundation are not related in case to this ridiculous and pseudo-drama.
  What we seek is to totally ignore these guys, and have nothing to do with them.
  And again, and again, despite what they are repeating, we are NOT competitors, as we are not in the hardened-security market spaces."
  
  Pretty good response but somehow they will suffer from Graphene accusations
  They (graphene) are really playing childish this time
  EDIT : misinterpretations

what exactly is /e/ doing against graphene ?
- Graphene (more specifically its founder) is always in a vicious cycle of claiming that everyone asking for proof of Graphene being "under attack" is in itself making an "attack". You can consider yourself Graphene's enemy for life for your transgression.
  Watching these youtube links makes you an attacker also, so be careful: https://youtu.be/Dx7CZ-2Bajg https://youtu.be/4To-F6W1NT0
  
  Given this, do we actually know that the French government is targeting GrapheneOS in a significant way, or is this just another dramatisation?
  
  Ok, first I was very worried when I saw the original message, but after watching these videos... well, The Boy Who Cried Wolf came to mind.
  
  I doubt it. I think these kind of comments are a very classic "divide and conquer" tactic.
  We should not be divided, but stand behind both e/ and Graphene as perfectly good privacy defenders.
- Existing, probably.
- https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/1946274731927204184
  
  all I see is graphene attacking /e/ . I mean yes we get it they are less secure but still in the industry standard. It's just not for the same users.

Is there any information on this from a more reliable source than a screenshot of a discord message from a generic account? Especially from a project whose leader is known for persecutory claims.
- https://lemmy.ml/comment/22408630

State surveillance begins when protecting privacy is treated as a suspect act.
Preventing crimes apparently necessitates to forbid any resistance to surveillance.
So much for France/Europe being a defender of (digital )rights.

Please just copy and paste the text. It's not private information.
- It's in the alt text
  
  Alt text is like putting Braille next to a sign; it's a tool for the blind (who use screen readers to access alt text).
  It's also a backup when the image fails to load, but it's not a substitute for making sure the image is legible for people who can see.
  If you add a transcription in the body of the post, that should cover your remaining bases.

Speaking of unsubstantiated accusations, do we have actual, reliable information about what is really going on? Any link in either French or English appreciated.
- https://lemmy.ml/comment/22408630

Got a link?
- Just added to the post
  
  Appreciated.

So in the drama between the Graphene team vs every other privacy-focused Android dev - who should I trust?
- Yeah the most secure android operating system vs a bunch of custom roms which are significantly less secure than stock due to less updates, being less hardened, and using insecure components (like reverse engineered gapps)
  
  Secure from what? Security isn't a dick measuring contest, it's a living process and arms race. If someone is trying to tell me, "My stuff is the mostest of the biggest security because, hard!" - what I'm hearing is that their threat modeling is ill-defined, maybe not defined at all, and something misleading is going on. Especially when the lead dev of a platform appears to be screaming and shouting about everyone else with a dubious persecution complex.
- Examples of who is on the other side besides "everyone"?
  
  CoyoteFacts posted those videos above https://youtu.be/Dx7CZ-2Bajg https://youtu.be/4To-F6W1NT0 so it seems like the other side is literally everyone, from every other android project, random other software, to big yt channels that actually promote GrapheneOS... I wonder how long it will take for the lead dev to start saying his own userbase is after him...
  Pixels are very expensive in my country but I was looking forward acquiring one in the future, if my finances permitted, just because of GrapheneOS... but honestly, after discovering its creator is a real mental case, unless the project gets forked out of his control, I wouldn't trust it.
  
  Graphene was going against Calyx or said Calyx was going after them. I only ever seen the Graphene part though so don't know who was right.
- Both, and probably more Graphene.
  France's put up a lot more mass surveillance these days. The fact that the French state tries to blackmail defenders of privacy, should tell you enough.
- Don't trust graphene lol