One thing though is - knives, fast cars and cash aren't built with deliberate motivation of thwarting the law enforcement and criminal investigations.
GrapheneOS and its systems are - you can walk through history and see that they're deliberately working on systems that defeat law enforcements efforts of collecting data from seized devices and tracking criminal networks.
This is a massive difference - even for knives and cars, you'd get into some hot water (or outright illegal behaviour) if you build them with express purpose to make them hard to find and track by law enforcement. Try making a company that focuses on cars that hide its license plates from the police and you'll see how far that will go.
This is one thing that GrapheneOS, Signal and others will need to at some point reckon with - the fact that they deliberately work at making law enforcements work harder and provide effective cover for criminals will get them into hot water. And I don't think population will stand at their side when they find that they've been helping CSAM traffickers hide their loot.
Having all that anti-governmental rhethoric won't end well for longerm survivability of these projects - which sucks for all of us.
Graphene shouldn't have to reckon with the abuse of government, we should step in and speak up for them. If having a secure device becomes criminal, only the criminals will have secure devices.
Law enforcement is being lazy by trying to rely on mass surveillance rather than espionage tactics to catch criminals. Criminals learned long ago how to work around surveillance, so this doesn't really work on them. But it does subject the public citizen to undue scrutiny and violation of privacy, which history has shown is then used against the innocent. We don't need any more reminders of how popular authoritarianism has become. And it's often used to pin a crime on an innocent person (a common police controversy), or intimidate and harass them (see FBI).
> I don't think population will stand at their side when they find that they've been helping CSAM traffickers hide their loot.
This is just one of many examples of a false rhetoric used by politicians to manipulate the public into cow-towing to mass surveillance. We cannot stand for this and must fight it at every turn. "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
I don't think quoting American politicians which failed to setup a government preventing Trumpism is going to be very persuasive for European governments... or European people.
Beware, though, the key words in that quote are not "liberty" and "safety" but rather "temporary" and "essential". You can replace "liberty" and "safety" with any other nouns (including "safety" and "liberty") and it's still true.
Which is not to excuse the fascist actions of the French government. I just don't like that quote.
To hell with the governments and law enforcement, privacy is a right and is not a weapon.
Yes, repeat that loudly again so they'll know you're really their opponent :P
Genuinely curious: what did you see in GrapheneOS history that indicates that the OS is specifically designed to defeat law enforcement (as opposed to their stated goals of defeating ad surveillance and stalkerware)?
This is a very counter-productive distortion of privacy, and borders on a lie about Graphene.
Something designed to be private doesn't know the difference between a law enforcement officer trying to break into it and a criminal trying to break into it.
There is no special "anti-cop only code" that gets executed, any more than there are special "cop tools" that exist on some physical plane where criminals don't.
It's how the governments and law enforcement see it.
You can slam onto the downvote button all you want, but if you don't UNDERSTAND it, you can't FIGHT it effectively.
It's a typical left failing where you pretend to be too dumb to understand where the authoritarians are coming from to effectively fight it.
I didn't downvote anything, and understand the point well.
I think your point is that there is evidence that the intention of some or all of the developers and/or the organization as a whole is to make law enforcement more difficult. You go on to argue that this intention fundamentally alters how society, or at least law enforcement arms of government, should view this technology. Specifically, I take your argument to be that law enforcement should or will treat them as accomplices to some degree of the crimes they enable.
This is exactly what is going to happen no matter how much you downvote me or scream about it.
They'll be targeted by the governments because of that perception.
There is no way to have a completely secure operating system, safe from hackers and spy organizations and thieves, that is also accessible at the whim of law enforcement. Period.
If we can't trust hosted services to protect our data, and we can't trust our own computers to preserve our data, the right to privacy simply doesn't exist.
The goal of law enforcement isn't to give you secure operating system. It's to find people who they perceive as criminals.
You don't need to persuade me about it. You need to persuade your cops and governments that having your OS secure outweighs their wish to make crime fighting easy.
So which knife makers are serializing their kitchen knives so they can be traced back in case of a crime? How many knives come with a GPS tracking its position? Well too expensive, what about an Airtag. No? By your roundabout logic this qualifies as “deliberately working on systems that defeat law enforcements efforts”. It’s an absurd argument.
To actually do any crime with GrapheneOS you would also need at least a VPN and basic understanding of operational security. Just as you would need a lot more than just a knife and car to be a successful criminal.
A Pixel phone with GrapheneOS is not some magic device that let's you do crime without immunity, but that’s the story they want to sell you.
Are you livestreaming your face on Twitch right now? If not, why are you deliberately making it harder for police to catch criminals? It would be so much easier for police to catch criminals if everyone livestreamed on Twitch 24/7, it should be a crime not to do that.