The foundation behind the ultra-secure Android-based OS is speaking out after an activist was indicted for using a 'duress password' to prevent federal agents from searching his phone.

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[–] 183 points 2 months ago (28 children)

So puzzled why it even needs defending in a country that is constantly screaming about free speech and rights, it is your data and no one has the right to it but you

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  • [–] [S] 118 points 2 months ago* (9 children)

    The US thinks it's a lot of things it isn't, and really has never been. A democracy for example.

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  • [–] 38 points 2 months ago (8 children)

    Yes unfortunately with each passing year another piece of the facade that holds this noodle house together falls and reveals it's wobbly spineless innards

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  • [–] 26 points 2 months ago (7 children)

    All societies are flimsy

    Held up one generation at a time by the educational and cultural matrix in which the new generation form their reality

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  • [–] 15 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Mmm I was just talking about this, when people are so wrapped up in their own lives and don't care about each other or look out for each other, what's the point any more, society is gone. It's like people don't see it? I know it's not that bad all over but it's not a good trend and it doesn't seem to be fading

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  • [–] 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    You do realize that as recently as the 1800's the average household had at least one member infected with tapeworm at any given time?

    Science and technology have brought such riches

    Fuck MAGA, religion, and Trump-Orban

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  • [–] 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

    We can have advanced medicine without all this bullshit surveillance machinery technology, it is possible, people just have to set aside their greed but they are not willing to

    I have no idea how my lament of the lack of socialism inspired your technology rant

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  • [–] 17 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    Came here to say this. It's like taking a note out of your own pocket and ripping it up. What's actually the criminal offence?

    The police just want to go on a fishing expedition on your data. Just try kicking in the doors of their house to do the same thing.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    It's definitely an unlawful search though right? I mean what crime are they looking for they can't just say they have some suspicion in order to dig through someone's personal life, that's unacceptable

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    [–] [S] 73 points 2 months ago* (25 children)

    This is what happens when you try to maintain your rights in a fascist country: you risk five years in the slammer.

    I wonder why GrapheneOS makes a big flashy rebooty show when using the duress password instead of quietly unlocking to an empty phone though...

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  • [–] 24 points 2 months ago* (16 children)

    Not sure there's a realistic way they don't notice. It takes time to wipe things and then the phone is empty. I feel like they'll figure it out.

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  • [–] 31 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    Less than a second to make a new partition, unmount the old one, and have a background process start wiping

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  • [–] 21 points 2 months ago* (4 children)

    I just realized there are ways you could do plausible deniability.

    What if we keep a decoy partition ready to go? Pre-populate it with some AI-generated slop Facebook account, photos, etc. Keep A small random sample of music files. etc. Something that looks as plausible and bland as possible.

    This is a feature that could get better & better over time. Don't just wipe my old data; make my adversary unaware that there was anything worth wiping.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    This is a very common complaint, and the main reason is that it's way more complicated than it sounds. The duress feature is designed to immediately erase any chance to recover the unencrypted data from the phone by destroying part of the data used to derive the decryption keys (the other part being your pin/password, which can't be destroyed for obvious reasons). Any attempt to boot into a fake OS would be obvious to anyone familiar with the OS, thus making it effectively security theater. Not to mention the waste of space maintaining a fake OS, which would require fully featured apps and settings, all of which would have to be designed to pass verified boot, which means you can't actually destroy the original OS the way they do.

    There's currently no known way to extract data from a locked GrapheneOS device, especially once it's in BFU, unless you've heavily reduced the default security measures, so the duress pin/password is likely unnecessary unless the danger of someone accessing the data is greater than the punishment for destruction of the data.

    Also, the "big flashy rebooty show" is less of a feature and more of an unintended happenstance caused by the device immediately losing critical data and being forced to restart. The articles make it sound flashier than it is. It looks more like the device is powering on but the screen keeps disconnecting for a second, before going black.

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    [–] 73 points 2 months ago (22 children)

    Hello people, you realize THAT this is the best free advertising that our dear graphene organization can get.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago* (21 children)

    yup, already tried to find phones with GrapheneOS installed.

    • I don't want a from Google, so no pixel
    • Motorola made plans
    • only a compatibility list :(
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  • [–] 47 points 2 months ago (9 children)

    Why do you have to defend against what is advertized as a feature and is working as advertized? The fascists can stuff it right up their arse.

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    [–] 45 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Those fascist fucks didn't have a right to confiscate his phone, nor any probable cause.

    He was well within his rights to do with his property as he saw fit.

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  • [–] 30 points 2 months ago

    The whole thing is just for show, I don't believe they expect to win this, it's a message to anyone who wants to try on the future "we will try to destroy your life if you resist even slightly"

    They are claiming he destroyed evidence.

    Evidence of what? What crime did he commit that you are searching the phone for evidence? If you don't believe a crime occurred, not only do you not have a reason to search the phone, but it doesn't matter if he took out a hammer and smashed it to little bits, it's his own property and he's free to do with it what he likes. He wanted to wipe it, and he got it wiped. What you wanted in that moment didn't matter in the slightest since you have no probable cause to search, no crime committed, no reason to baselessly charge someone for destroying something that doesn't exist.

    It sounds exactly as ridiculous as someone being charge only with resisting arrest. If the person had provably done a crime worth arresting, that charge would be there as well.

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  • [–] 38 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Why is the phone owner being accused? It was the border guard that put in the code and wiped the device. He should be the one prosecuted, if anyone.

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  • [–] 21 points 2 months ago

    IKR - if there were genuine concerns that this guy might have something nefarious on his phone, surely they should confiscate it and pass it on to their tech guys to try to backdoor or whatever. Instead, this shit finger just types in whatever he's told and oops, he deleted any potential evidence.

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  • [–] 33 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    i mean they should it's a good feature and the person accused of using it didn't do a single thing wrong.

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    [–] 16 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    The reboot isn't cosmetic, it's structural. The duress PIN nukes the key derivation material, and a device with no keys has nothing left to boot into. There's no quiet version of that.

    But your instinct is right and worth pushing one step further. An empty phone has the same problem as a rebooting one. Nobody owns a phone with four apps and two weeks of messages, so it just takes them a bit longer to notice.

    What you actually want is to quietly unlock into a phone that's full. Real apps, real photos, real history, and the sensitive half behind a second PIN stored so it reads as random noise, same as any unused encrypted space. Nothing gets destroyed, so there's nothing to reboot from and nothing to argue about afterwards.

    Catch is the decoy has to be believable, and keeping one believable is a chore most people drop after a month.

    (I work on DeniableOS, which does this, so grain of salt. Graphene's own statement this week made roughly your point, that wiping can carry physical or legal consequences.)

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago

    That's actually a good use of onboard LLMs imo

    Give it a short innocent history, have it generate stuff.

    Do what their president does, fill the air with so much shit that you can't tell what's real anymore.

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    [–] 14 points 2 months ago*

    Boy this story sure is getting a lot of publicity. Makes you wonder why. I forgot about this feature on Graphene phones, I'm gonna turn it on right now

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  • [–] 11 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    Ya know, all this can be avoided by simply not flying in with a phone in the first place. Or just not even going to the US.

    Any plane ticket to the US is money given to an airline company that deals in abetting fascism by providing victims.

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