this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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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

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[–] Bluewing@lemmy.world 4 points 28 minutes ago

Glances at my new Pixel, Welp, I guess I ain't ever goin' to Catalonia. Not that I was planning to go there anyway.

***Tinfoil conspiracy: Maybe this a scare tactic to keep the British out of Spain.

[–] Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 1 points 12 minutes ago

The police: 'We've encountered a difficulty with out paid spying software. Welp it must be just the criminals.'

[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 15 points 2 hours ago

"Feds"

checks Wikipedia page for Spain

Government: "Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy"

🧐

(Sorry for nitpicking lol 😅)


But serious tho:

I kinda hate these weird associations. Its like arresting people who wear glasses because intellectual rebels wear glasses? (Pol Pot?)

Like can't someone just use a phone in peace? Most Pixel users don't even use Graphene OS.

Hey you know what, drug dealers drink water. Lets arrest people who drink water!

[–] dastanktal@lemmy.ml 102 points 8 hours ago

This is the best recommendation for a phone I've seen yet.

Thanks catalonian police

[–] rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works 190 points 9 hours ago (20 children)

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.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 5 points 3 hours ago

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.

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[–] besselj@lemmy.ca 49 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 27 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

Grapheneos also has options to just disable data over the USB port when its locked. Or disable it outright.

[–] AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today 9 points 6 hours ago

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.

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 2 points 4 hours ago
[–] Yupa@ani.social 73 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Sounds like a good recommendation.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 9 points 7 hours ago

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.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 34 points 9 hours ago (15 children)

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?

[–] TheBat@lemmy.world 61 points 9 hours ago

Yes. Cops are idiots. Duh.

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[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 5 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

TLDR: Drug dealers in Catalonia have started to adopt GrapheneOS

Gonna guess that's probably a lie.

[–] icegladiator@lemy.lol 5 points 8 hours ago (1 children)
[–] tourist@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

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)

[–] qqq@lemmy.world 4 points 1 hour ago

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.

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