this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
446 points (98.1% liked)

Technology

72764 readers
1877 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Aitolda@lemmy.world 4 points 40 minutes ago

This is a weird advertisement, but I kind of want grapheneOS now.

[–] Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 21 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] Gonzako@lemmy.world 7 points 1 hour ago

pretty much. The original article says that if they have a pixel they have to ask for a warrant

[–] Bluewing@lemmy.world 13 points 2 hours 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.

[–] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

Merci per la idea de negoci. (/s)

[–] TherapyGary@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 3 minutes ago

I was was very confused why I could read this without knowing what language it was lol. Catalan is interesting

[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 28 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

"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!

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 3 points 53 minutes ago

If she floats, she's a witch and we'll burn her at the stake.

[–] dastanktal@lemmy.ml 131 points 10 hours ago

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

Thanks catalonian police

[–] rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works 221 points 11 hours ago (22 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 7 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 2 points 51 minutes ago

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.

load more comments (21 replies)
[–] besselj@lemmy.ca 63 points 10 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 32 points 10 hours ago (2 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.

[–] realitista@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 2 points 47 minutes ago

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.

[–] Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 8 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 16 points 8 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 3 points 6 hours ago
[–] Yupa@ani.social 82 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Sounds like a good recommendation.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 38 points 11 hours ago (16 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 69 points 11 hours ago

Yes. Cops are idiots. Duh.

load more comments (15 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›