- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
TLDR: Drug dealers in Catalonia have started to adopt GrapheneOS en masse leading to Catalan police suspecting anyone with a Google Pixel is a drug dealer
You must log in or # to comment.
Reminds me of when the US tried to fight “terror” by kidnapping people and shoving them in Gitmo because they were wearing Casio watches, which is apparently a brand favoured by terrorists.
deleted by creator
Update, July 3, 2025 (11:45 AM ET): The crew behind GrapheneOS is understandably none too pleased about their good name being dragged through the mud, and members are speaking out about these reports from Spain. Over on X, the official GrapheneOS account posts:
>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.Security is a tool, and can be wielded just as much for good as it can for bad. While some people may see this as an indictment, we’d say it’s more the inevitable consequence of GrapheneOS just being very, very good at what it does.
Yeah, when the media is wrong, GrapheneOS out here correcting the media!
Police are not the brightest in any society.
So I guess somebody needs to tell them that they need to focus their efforts a little better if ‘anyone with a Google Pixel is a drug dealer’.
Can I suggest they start with the people with drugs, rather than the people with the – not uncommon - google phones in their search for drug dealers?
Police are not the brightest in any society.
It’s a literal job requirement. If you’re smart, you’re not going to blindly follow orders. Police cognitive testing literally discards candidates that perform well in intellectual tasks. This is not a conspiracy or a joke, it’s how police works.
Sounds like a good recommendation.
Yeah, this is legitimately an amazing ad, though Google may bot want it because they probably make more money off your data than you buying the device.
Doesn’t a Google Pixel device come with its own OS image by default, independent of Graphene OS? Is there some kind of step that we’re missing here?
Yes. Cops are idiots. Duh.
You can buy them with either stock Android, or Graphene. Meaning you don’t need to re flash the device or anything.
I think this is incorrect but I could be wrong.
You can not buy a Pixel device preloaded with GrapheneOS. They only come from Google with their standard Android and it’s up to the end user to install GrapheneOS
Hmm, you used to be able to buy them directly from Google, but that doesn’t seem to be the case any more.
Umm… I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think you could ever buy a phone from Google with GrapheneOS.
If friends asked I would flash their pixel with Graphene, then set it up basically as they would use it for them.
Getting started was complex, your average user won’t have a good experience getting their apps added without a power user helping.
I would like to install it someday but I’m afraid of this process
Its really not too complicated. Id recommend doing it using a other phone as the installer rather than a PC though, just goes smoother IMO. Very straightforward web installer, just push buttons alongside the instructions.
What’s the complex part?
Technically if something goes wrong you will need help and need to find answers on your own. If you are confident using duckduckgo searches to find answers for technical problems already you should be fine, and most likely won’t even need support at all.
Yeah I’d consider that as a used phone. I’d only get the hardware from the OEM and install GrapheneOS myself. Less chance of man in the middle. It’s super easy to install using the web installer.
You cant buy grapheneos preloaded on anything and doing so would be pretty foolish since it could be backdoored. GraphenOS is aimed at people who value security and privacy, you dont let some rando flash your phone if you value those things.
It does, but a lot of people but the pixels specifically to put graphene on it because graphene they’re compatible and graphene offers better privacy and security. What I’m getting here is drug dealers are using graphene to dodge digital narcs and it’s becoming common enough that the Venn diagram skews heavily to drug dealing.
I mean yeah, I’d say 250k is a lot for a 3rd party phone OS.
The experience speaks for itself. I dont know of anyone who’s ever willingly gone back to stock android either.
How’s Catalan independence going
any moment now
The right (or far right) will probably win the next Spanish elections, which might rekindle independentist sentiment (both left and right have traditionally fucked with Catalonia, but the right has worse excuses), but personally I think we lost our best opportunity when we didn’t follow up on the 2017 declaration of independence.
The far righ would straight try to genocide us, so there might be an opportunity there. We need to be uncomfortable enough to get off our fat arses and work for our freedom, like back in the 2010s.
The cops quite obviously don’t think owning a Pixel makes somebody a drug dealer. But if they arrest or detain a suspect then owning a Pixel flashed with GrapheneOS isnt exactly a sign of innocence. Even if nothing could be extracted from the phone, I’m sure a judge and jury could be convinced what they were doing if they have such a device in their possession.
Also, regardless of the security the OS claims to have, most criminals are not the brightest and I bet some can be squeezed to hand over the key or the phone can be unlocked with a face id or fingerprint. It also motivates the cops to do what they’ve done in the past where they have compromised supposedly secure operating systems or apps and installed backdoors.
Why would they need a “sign of innocence”?
This is not hard to understand.
Having a phone installed with an OS favoured by criminals doesn’t exculpate a person arrested for criminal activity, or make the cops think they’re innocent.
OK. Owing an iPhone or Samsung also isn’t a sign of innocence, it’s just a phone, just like a Pixel. There may be a higher incidence of people owning Pixels being drug dealers/traffickers, but there’s also likely a lot of people who have them who aren’t drug dealers/traffickers, so that fact isn’t useful as evidence.
You’re getting it the wrong way around. People aren’t arrested for the phone they have. This is a complete nonsense by a clickbait article. They are arrested based on observation or intelligence of criminal activity. After the fact, when they are arrested they are found to have one of these phones flashed to use a privacy OS. Do you think such a phone convinces the cops they got the wrong person or not? The answer quite obviously is it convinces the cops this person is a criminal and is attempting to hide what they are up to.
It would be absurd to think cops are staring at people’s phones to initiate arrests because they are not.
Whether it convinces the cops isn’t nearly as important as whether it convinces a judge/jury. I highly doubt “suspect’s phone is too hard to break into” would sway a jury to believe they’re a drug dealer.
Cops need to do a proper investigation and prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The type of phone someone has shouldn’t significantly impact any of that, though having a phone they can break into may make that investigation easier.
Feds??? WTF!
They’re mad they can’t use cellbrite to snoop on properly configured GOS phones and that they actually have to do real police work to catch drug dealers
Yes. They (cellebrite) don’t mention GrapheneOS support very loudly because it’s poor. They can’t decrypt one that’s BFU (Before First Unlock), not even by brute force if it’s a 6 digit passcode apparently. Don’t know if they can get data from an AFU GOS pixel. A year ago when their internal docs leaked, they also had no support for latest iOS at the time, but had brute force support for older versions as long as phone itself wasn’t too new and had AFU access without brute force for even older versions.
Moral of the story: if there’s a chance police might take your phone to investigate for a crime you hopefully didn’t even commit, shut down your phone completely - the 5x power button trick on iOS disables biometric unlock, but the device itself stays decrypted and thus more vulnerable. Also keep your OS up to date.
If you’ve got a phone that’s neither iOS nor GrapheneOS, it’s probably pretty much Swiss cheese anyway. IOS isn’t as good as GrapheneOS either, but it offers some protection against Cellebrite if up to date and BFU. But if they keep your phone for long enough (months, years), they’ll get it unlocked because you can’t install updates that would patch any newly discovered vulnerabilities and one day they’ll find a BFU unlock for it, probably.
Graphene OS in particular comes with a default feature enabled called Auto Reboot to protect against this. I think it’s set to 18 hours by default because that’s what mine is, but you can go as low as 4 hours.
If you have it set to four hours, I’d wager your phone would reset way before the pigs had enough time to try and get their way in.
Yeah, I have mine at 4 hours and it’s pretty good. It triggers while I’m at work sometimes, but other than that, it’s mostly just when I sleep.
Does a full shutdown encrypt all contents on iOS? This is something that everyone entering the USA as I have to do annually needs to think about.
It’s all encrypted in storage. The decryption key is in the secure element / TPM chip, additionally protected by your PIN / password. Shutting it down unloads all encryption keys from memory.
Beware that US customs / immigration / border control can seize your phone and refuse entry.
What happens if I turn it back on but don’t unlock it? Are the encryption keys in memory?
They’re not in memory until the first unlock, that’s why there’s the AFU vs BFU distinction for cellebrite unlocking devices incl iPhones.
But as the other person said, they can seize your phone and refuse entry. If you need to travel to the USA annually and you don’t want them to see your shit, you may want to have a decoy phone that’s not logged into your real accounts or have many photos on it. Just enough to make it believable it’s your real phone, but not enough to help them forge anything on you.
I am a non-resident US citizen so I believe it would be more difficult for them to search and hold me without trial or legal representation. But these days anything is possible.
Yes, but customs can still compel you to unlock your phone as we have recently seen with the Norweigan tourist who was denied entry due to having a JD Vance meme on his phone.
I would recommend having a separate phone with non-important data on it to take with you to the US, or have a self hosted cloud service that you can backup your data to before wiping your device.
You essentially don’t have rights at the border (or in general with the current US government).
How can they compel me?
Threatening to detain you indefinitely (your rights aren’t the same at the border/customs as they are after entering the country), or just outright deny you entry.
I heard they can’t actually hold you more than a couple days if you are a citizen./?
You either unlock it or we send you back.
Can they really deport a US citizen?
Other countries can. But technically, the US government cannot deny a US citizen access.
can != will
…the current regime will continue doing whatever the f*ck they want as long as nobody stops them…
Are they allowed to? Absolutely not. But… who is stopping them?
Grapheneos also has options to just disable data over the USB port when its locked. Or disable it outright.
LineageOS also has this feature.
Yep, disabling it entirely allows for charging when the device is off, but otherwise, it is functionally useless and is disabled at the hardware level.
Ooh nice.
TLDR: Drug dealers in Catalonia have started to adopt GrapheneOS
Gonna guess that’s probably a lie.
Why?
I don’t doubt the claim, but I would imagine others do because there’s a relatively minor technical skill hurdle on replacing a phone’s operating system which would turn most people away.
I never used a Pixel or Graphene OS, but when I installed Lineage OS on a Redmi, Xiaomi made me wait a week to unlock the bootloader. Huge pain in the ass.
Or there might be a better “drug-dealer-friendly” OS. I only know of Lineage and Graphene as open source alternatives, so I could just be speculating.
Also, all my former drug dealers used WhatsApp on the stock vendor OS. But then again… I live in South Africa, so the police are more focused on violent crimes (both enforcement and perpetration)
You can unlock the bootloader on a Pixel in about a minute.
I can understand some people finding the whole process a bit daunting, but it’s not actually that difficult with Graphene.
Yup, whole process is something like 15 min. It’s really not an issue whatsoever.
There’s for sure different tiers to drug dealing and OPSEC. While some guys who throw around shrooms and LSD may not care too much about OPSEC, big time players who import “sensitive” drugs like fetanyl have extreme OPSEC procedures
Basically, if you don’t have a phone the cops can easily backdoor, you must be a criminal.
“What do you have to hide?” taken to it’s logical conclusion.
Humans are apes desiring power, there’s no excuse under which you can give it to them. They’ll invent authority giving them right to judge you and think they are in the right.
Also why I absolutely despise the Silicon Valley - it’s many such people who think they are the elite now. I want that place detroited as soon as possible. Zuckerberg prosecuted for all the murders he’s committed (I’m certain there are plenty, a person with ASPD with such power just can’t be anything else) which are now unknown, Brin and other jerks playing “cooperating with legal elected authorities” while giving them something with no mandate whatsoever feeling themselves powerful - prosecuted for high treason, all these playing censorship and recommendation - prosecuted for scams on the scale of billions, yadda-yadda.
Cops saying this should be immediately sued for inciting hate or defamation or whatever against people who don’t want to be backdoored.
I have a right to not be surveilled, they don’t have a right to surveil me.
Anyway, I might all the time fly a weird trajectory between various ideologies, but they are all anarchist and Silicon Valley bosses are all thieves.
they are all anarchist and Silicon Valley bosses are all thieves.
Nothing is ever absolute, but Silicon Valley has been going in a consistently bad direction for 20+ years now.
Basically, if you don’t have a phone the cops can easily backdoor, you must be a criminal.
… and if it’s an obscenely expensive one.
Normal people either can’t afford these devices or don’t have time for all the hassle of installing and using a rare operating system on a phone.
You can buy a Pixel with Graphene already installed, and they’re by no means obscenely expensive.
Now THAT is something I wouldn’t ever trust.
Supply chain attacks? Never heard of 'em. /s
I get the instinct but that is why GrapheneOS only runs on Pixels. Pixels have hardware needed to verify you are running the genuine GrapheneOS. Still safer and cheaper to buy stock and spend 10 mins installing Graphene of course.
LET ME HANDLE YOUR PRIVACY FOR YOU MY GOOD SIR!
From whom? That sounds inadvisable
GrapheneOS is most used on old Google Pixels which are anything but “obscenely expensive”
The A series lines have been the best value smartphones generation after generation. I would not say theyre expensive. I have bought each current gen for about $350 or less (excluding tax), no trade in.
Pixel 9 pro with 512Gb is obscenely expensive. Pixel 8a, with minimal storage is pretty affordable. 7a dare I say cheap.
rare operating system
android
🤔
maybe they dumbed down “a custom ROM” or just didn’t want to name GrapheneOS
The refurbished pixel 8 I bought cost a fraction of what I’d have paid for a new phone and the installation took 5 minutes.
Pixels are mid range if you buy a generation back. I have 6a and paid $250 two years ago.
No one forces you to root your Pixel, you are allowed to use it with stock android.
I paid $350 or so for my Pixel 8 refurb. New wasn’t that much more.
And yeah, the Pixel is fine without a different ROM, I just like what GrapheneOS offers, so I specifically bought it instead of an alternative.
I have 6a
Well shit. Guess I need a battery
Oh my, I hear Google is going to brick the batteries of the 6a just like they did with the 4a phones. Due to worry about them catching fire. So good luck!
Batteries are a part of the device that will wear down over time anyways. The real problem is making them inaccessible. I have no idea how hard it is to replace on a pixel though.
It looks to be a pain between the tools needed and the hassle. It supposedly takes between 30 minutes to a couple of hours depending on your skills and some luck.
You can install Graphene from the browser, it’s really not a huge hassle to install especially if you do it right when you get the phone.
Normal people either can’t afford these devices or don’t have time for all the hassle
Had a friend who was getting by on $2k/mo and got herself a $1400 top of the line iPhone, because her carrier gave her a reduction in her monthly payment plan (for an obscene amount of debt and locked-in service on the back end). Her brother jail-broke it for her and did the normal “cleaning off all the bloatware” due-diligence.
This is just something we all put up with in the modern day. “Normal people” have a harder time navigating the bullshit, but its a lake we all have to paddle through.
Interesting, at least four people in my closer circle aren’t normal people. Including myself.
What sorts of drugs do you and your gang sell?
Mint?
Maybe Arch or even Ubuntu?
Only one of those.
I use Arch, btw.
I am not allowed to tell you. I don’t want you to buy a Google Pixel.
Do you live in that region?
No. Do I have to, to be a “normal people”?
Minimum wage in Spain is €1,300 per month. A Pixel 9a is under $500 and under €550 and currently on sale for $449 and €500. A couple of hundred can get you a Pixel 9. What exactly is a not obscenely price for a flagship phone to you?
And I don’t even understand your second comment. People spend over an hour a day on social media alone.
So the normal person in Spain could buy this phone and the normal person in Spain does have the time to figure out how to install a “rare” operating system. A “rare” operating system that’s free and easily copied.
Rare is a matter of popular practice, not difficulty.
It’s rare to walk around with an actual tinfoil hat, but not difficult or expensive to do.
When someone says “rare operating system”, the word “rare” describes “operating system”.
Here is the statement again:
Normal people either can’t afford these devices or don’t have time for all the hassle of installing and using a rare operating system on a phone.
In your sentence, “rare” is used to describe “it”, a pronoun, which refers to the action “to walk around with an actual tinfoil hat”.
Yup, install process takes a few minutes, it walks you through it on a pretty friendly web page.
Well I do use a Pixel (for lineage OS) and I do make my living selling drugs… wait wait this is a bad example.
Well in that case two marijuanas please
Original or hot n spicy?
1/2 and 1/2 with extra cheese pls
As long as you are in my province then sure! Gotta obey the law after all.
You too!?
Oh crap, are they onto us?
Shhhh! They don’t know yet.
Gotta some of that good ket?
No not a veterinarian, sorry.
Reminds me of getting a notice in Middle School, decades ago, about how a pager was considered “drug paraphernalia”
There was also a big Bloomberg-Era push by the NYPD to arrest any woman carrying condoms on her person, on the grounds that a woman carrying a condom must be a sex worker.
Everything I hear about Bloomberg make me question how he ran as a democrat, and then I remember he fits the democratic party better than anyone else…
NYC’s greatest act was tricking everyone into thinking it’s a progressive city. I am interested in Mamdani at least.
Can confirm. Own pixel, deal drugs.
Merci per la idea de negoci. (/s)
I was was very confused why I could read this without knowing what language it was lol. Catalan is interesting
It’s been influenced by both spanish and french cultural erasure to the point modern catalan is quite similar and readable to people who speak Spanish or French. (Though still quite a distinct language).
