> if some lobbies are pulling the strings
Sure looks like it. Many people don't understand the consequences of the ChatControl proposition (backdoors for governments into all messaging apps) [1].
Politicians insists it is only about protecting kids from predators online, but see for example Sweden:
* Police and secret police will have this access for swedish citizens.
* Secret police have an agreement with NSA about data sharing (see Snowden).
* NSA will end up storing all my DM:s.
* Another country also have an agreement with NSA about data sharing.
* This other country will find out about my sexual orientation or political beliefs the moment I board a plane to their country.
All of this will be outside of control from my country or the laws of my country (Sweden), that is supposed to protect my free speech [2] and anti discrimination laws [3].
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_to_Prevent_and_Comb...
2: https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/sven...
3: https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/sven...
F*k Ylva Johansson:
> Research by several newspapers led to allegations of questionable connections between Johansson and her staff and companies that would benefit financially from her proposal, including Thorn and WeProtect.
> Johansson rejected the accusations as being untrue, true but not illegal and as not even being accusations.
> Her claim to have given data protection organizations the same access as to the backers of her proposal was rejected as untrue by several organizations and members of the EU parliament. Johansson reacted to growing rejection of her proposal by ordering commercial advertisement on Twitter paid for with EU funds. The advertisement was criticized as being misleading and illegal according to the EU's rules for targeted advertisement. [4]
4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ylva_Johansson#Surveillance_of...
"European authoritarians and their enablers in the media are misrepresenting GrapheneOS and even Pixel phones as if they're something for criminals. GrapheneOS is opposed to the mass surveillance police state these people want to impose on everyone"
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114784469162979608
State employees in their official capacity making inaccurate claims to media about GrapheneOS to smear it as being for criminals and as the users as largely being criminals is a state sponsored attack on the GrapheneOS project.
> GrapheneOS is not immune to exploitation, but the fearmongering done in these ongoing attacks on it is very clearly fabricated. They feel threatened enough by GrapheneOS to engage in coordinated attempts at convincing people that it's unable to protect their privacy and security.
So... they (cops and friends) are saying that GrapheneOS is for criminals, AND that it does not work at protecting anyone's privacy and is not for security. Amazing.
See: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114784553445461948 and the rest.
At least in my country, there has been serious laws protecting the users from police opening letters (1962:700; Postlagens tystnadsplikt). This was changed in January 2023 because people exploited it to send drugs thru post office [1].
Of course without any protests in Sweden because again people don't realize their rights to privacy are taken away from them.
1: https://www.svenskhandel.se/nyheter/nyhet/lagandring-ger-moj...
The so-called israelization[0] of the police. Certainly you see that in the US. If you compare the local police, say, 50 years ago with their counterparts today, you definitely notice a strong militarization. That may be appropriate for special units handling dangerous cases, but it should not characterize the rank and file that handle petty crime or public disorder.
> No state is your friend, its not normally an outright enemy but rather a party focused on its own interests
The state is the only recourse of the common man against powerful private interests. In this case (surveillance, etc), private interest has been used as a way to get around the legal limitations of government. Companies like Google and Facebook can track people with greater ease than the government can.
[0] https://www.amnestyusa.org/blog/with-whom-are-many-u-s-polic...
*: https://www.reddit.com/r/GrapheneOS/comments/1jujvee/finally...
Cops in [Spain] think everyone using a Google Pixel must be a drug dealer
You're free to run GrapheneOS or Windows or whatever, so long as you also have a device that is attested to be untampered by Google Play or Apple's equivalent
Graphene replied in that thread (just ctrl+f for them), saying "Unfortunately, the EU is adopting the Play Integrity API enforcing having a Google Mobile Services device instead. We've repeatedly raised this issue with the EU Commission and many apps including ones tied to this specific project. We've never been given reasoning why they can't use the hardware attestation API instead."
I'm personally not so keen on that lesser DRM requirement either, since it's just another level of gatekeeping: ok now it's not only Google/Apple but also a few OSes that meet ?some? requirements, but e.g. GrapheneOS also doesn't unilaterally let me access data on my device, maintaining that full access is dangerous and cannot be allowed -- yeah, I'll agree data is safer when I can't even access it myself, seeing how much malware goes around for NT/Linux distributions where you can have root, but I'd still much rather live in a world where I'm the root on my systems. But anyway, that's maybe another discussion, the broader point is that even GrapheneOS can't talk sense into the EU with their lesser-but-still-DRM option
Secret police definition [1]
> Secret police (or political police) are police, intelligence, or security agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, ideological, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.
Security police definition [2]
> In some countries, security police is the name given to the secret security and intelligence services charged with protecting the state at the highest level, including responsibilities such as personal protection of the head of state, counter-espionage, and anti-terrorism.
Specific example for Swedish 'Security Police'.[3] if you look up any EU agency with similar roles it will be found that they are all security, not secret.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_police
https://es.ara.cat/sociedad/sucesos/guerra-tecnologica-movil... ("Guerra tecnológica: el móvil de los narcos contra los troyanos de la policía")
or https://www.ara.cat/societat/successos/guerra-tecnologica-mo... ("Guerra tecnològica: el mòbil dels narcos contra els troians de la policia")
> "Cada vegada que veiem un Google Pixel pensem que pot ser un narcotraficant"
(You'd have to navigate through four layers of links to find this: two layers of androidauthority linking to itself, then through xatakandroid, then finally you get to the primary source, the Catalan-language daily Ara. Though, for reasons, it's linking to a Spanish-language machine translation of the Catalan original—the "es." subdomain, which says Traducción no verificada at the top. So, we're five levels removed from the primary source, which is one sentence, which has gone through two rounds of machine translation (ca -> es -> en)).
If you start caring more about how it supports your side rather than the truth, you're playing politics. And in that battlefield you'll lose to eurocrats.
[1] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114784488424006190 and so forth.
Conversely, there are many safety features in GrapheneOS that don't exist on stock, and they're not the security-through-obscurity type that safetynet employs. As noted in the docs, they often find security issues just by people trying to use an app with these default-enabled extra checks: https://grapheneos.org/usage#bugs-uncovered-by-security-feat...
* Touch of Evil, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052311/quotes/?item=qt0321627
Here is the relevant section from our current laws: https://danskelove.dk/straffeloven/134b
FWIW, the distinction is not as clear cut to me. In the 1970s, the ruling government body (social democrats) passed on information in order to make registers of political opponents in the far left and far right to SÄPO.
More of that part here: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A4kerhetspolisen#%C3%96ve...
The Nixon watergate scandal was also similar to your first definition there.
Not literally, but there was some criminally bad warfare going on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Balaclava
1: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_harm_asse...
No spray, no airgun, no folding mace, absolutely nothing can be used in self defense.
Except for the alarm.
It's not only the design of the hardware, but also patches for vulnerabilities and delivering updates for several years.
You're suggesting it's ideological (which is completely untrue), while the fact is: pixels are at the very moment the only Android hardware secure enough to even care about hardening: https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
(there's little sense in securing the OS if the hardware doesn't allow disconnecting the USB or there is no secure element throttling PIN attempts, right?)
Palantir, founded by Peter Thiel (currently funding JD Vance), is building a vast person database [1].
I believe their biggest customer is the US government, and is being used by ICE [2].
1: https://beyondthefirewall.substack.com/p/palantirs-new-maste...
2: https://www.404media.co/leaked-palantirs-plan-to-help-ice-de...
Doubt. More like 70K. Far fewer than incidents where guns were used to cause harm.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/debunking-the-guns-...
https://www.history.com/articles/black-panthers-gun-control-...
Your second amendment defenders are actually on the side of tyranny, ready to torch the Capitol a second time when their caudillo orders so.
[1]https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/polands-top-cop-accidenta...
it’s is both slang for sports uniform (usually shirt) and also is a type of fabric material super common in clothing [0]
[0] https://fabricwholesaledirect.com/collections/jersey-knit-fa...
Couple of pieces on hardware:
- Fairphone does not include a secure element making brute-forcing PIN trivial
- Fairphone 4 used TEST KEYS for verified boot: https://forum.fairphone.com/t/bootloader-avb-keys-used-in-ro... The above alone shows insecurity by design.
I cannot find any of Fairphone technical documentation that would provide details on their implementation of the TEE/HSM. As of now I believe it's only Pixel's Titan and Samsung's KNOX that provide a discrete secure element on Android devices.
Android project recommends secure element to process sensitive data: https://source.android.com/docs/security/best-practices/hard... What it's supposed to provide: https://developer.android.com/privacy-and-security/keystore
On vendor: Drivers, firmware patches, OS upgrades are a necessity, not an option: most security and privacy updates are not backported. Vendor can't just wait for AOSP to deliver all the patches. Vendor must show a track record providing updates to their hardware
- After a lengthy two-year delay, the phone got a taste of Android 12 in February 2023, with Android 13 arriving relatively quickly in October 2023. For Android 14, Fairphone promised to roll out the update in H2, 2024, almost a year after Google released it. Now, with less than two months left in the year, the company is postponing the update's release to 2025. -- https://www.androidpolice.com/fairphone-4-long-delayed-andro...
- their Security Bulletin patches are consistently 1-2 months behind
- Fairphone 5 is still on Android 14 (since Jul 2024). Android 15 has been released in September 2024. Year and a half later AOSP is on Android 16.
- Fairphone 6 is still on Android 15
- Fairphone 5 and 6 latest security patches are from June 2025: https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/244637136412...
For comparison GrapheneOS had eight releases in July alone (GrapheneOS had a full A16 release on 30th of June for all supported devices). Security patches are usually released within one-three days (or earlier, from the tree, without waiting for being published in the bundle)
GOS Release for Pixel 9 was ready three days after the device launch.
Exploitability matrix as per Cellebrite: https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/updated-cellebrite-iphon... That supports the claim the hardware + OS holds.
Also looks like they improved security even further, hopefully exceeding Pixels: https://semiconductor.samsung.com/news-events/news/best-in-c...
In general I'm quite sure dev any hardware that meets these requirements would be considered: https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
Re: OEM:
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114722432094158776
> We have talks with a large Android OEM ongoing and they're doing initial work towards supporting GrapheneOS. We hope there will be another device we can support in 2026 or 2027 based on this. Qualcomm releasing MTE support this year is key and appears to be happening.
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114729018035689722
> The initial devices built for us by an OEM are going to be their regular devices improved to meet our security and support time requirements. We aren't going to have much influence over the initial hardware. If GrapheneOS on these devices is highly successful, then we can make the business case that it makes sense to have custom hardware and firmware beyond meeting our minimum requirements. Our minimum requirements cannot require more than what we have on current devices. A.K.A: the minimum requirements are current requirements (currenly only met by Pixels)
Also older one: https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/1490518600339308544?cx...
I, for one, am excited. I like my Pixels because they can run GOS (and my Pixel 9 Pro XL has a great camera), but I'd love to have a choice.
It is also worth mentioning that Android Security Bulletins generally only contain backports of patches for High and Critical vulnerabilities. Most non-Pixel/GrapheneOS phones only get all the other fixes when moving to the next major release [1]. So getting the next major Android release is important (getting to a recent patch-level alone is not enough).
I can completely understand that Graphene does not want to support Fairphone and others, their security/privacy goals are the complete opposite of what those phones provide.
[1] https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/23462-grapheneos-version-20...
Why would those be region locked there are hundreds of 3rd part accessories that sell world wide regardless of phone model especially for a device as popular as pixels.
>device less feature-packed than you regular Samsung phones.
What feature? GOS offers the most secure and private phone feature [1] while Samsung can only offer buggy pre installed ad and spyware...
> - Fairphone 5 is still on Android 14 (since Jul 2024).
The Android 15 update was actually released this week! https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/186828004651...
> - Fairphone 6 is still on Android 15
Android 16 was released less than half a month before the release of the FP6, which itself is less than a month ago. Seems reasonable that it wouldn't ship the latest version under those circumstances.
Fairphones don't switch USB ports automatically into "charging only" like GrapheneOS does.
Because online shops and across border shipping exists.
>Google services
As other people pointed out and 5 second of research shows they exist and they are even securely sandboxed unlike any other android os.
>Do you have any references for the spyware claim
You really asking if android OEMS are spying? Whats next asking if windows does it too?
https://www.computerworld.com/article/1671913/samsung-sellin...
https://www.sammobile.com/opinion/why-is-everyone-freaking-o...
https://www.sammobile.com/news/samsung-pay-new-privacy-polic...
I don't understand how anybody could question this when they literally install data harvesting apps like tiktok on there devices
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPipXaaN7hg
>A software whose focus isn't privacy isn't necessarily spyware. This is a false dichotomy.
Never claimed that but any superficial research would show how data harvesting and invasive any stock android os (proprietary for profit software in generally really) are.
Everything I'm seeing says that Verizon Pixels can't install Graphene, since Verizon doesn't let you unlock the bootloader. [1]
Galaxy Buds come with 3 Bluetooth codecs: SBC, AAC, and Samsung's proprietary codec. SBC and AAC are low-quality, low bandwidth codecs. Samsung's proprietary codec supports high bit rates, but only Samsung phones support their codec.
Competing non-Samsung & non-Apple earbuds will typically also support other codecs, like aptx-HD, aptx-Adaptive, and LDAC. These are all high-quality codecs, that are supported on every new Android phone except for Samsungs.
The Galaxy Watch situation has improved. I think all that's currently missing is a couple of health features like the ECG when not using a Samsung phone. Last time I checked, there was a modded apk out there that you could install to get the full functionality.
tl;dr galaxy buds will have subpar audio quality when connected to a non-Samsung phone, galaxy watch requires sideloaded apk for certain health features.
[1] https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/18422-google-pixel-9-is-car...
