this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2025
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Privacy

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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 315 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)

Just for convenience (since it's hard to read the screenshot on a phone), here's the text:

GrapheneOS is being heavily targeted by the French state because we provide highly secure devices and won't include backdoors for law enforcement access. They're conflating us with companies selling closed source products using portions of our code. Both French state media and corporate media are publishing many stories attacking the GrapheneOS project based on false and unsubstantiated claims from French law enforcement. They've made a clear threat to seize our servers and arrest our developers if we do not cooperate by adding backdoors. Due to this, we're leaving France and leaving French service providers including OVH. We need substantial help from the community to push back against this across platforms. People malicious towards us are also using it as an opportunity to spread libel/harassment content targeting our team, raid our chat rooms and much more. /e/ and iodéOS are both based in France, and are both actively attacking GrapheneOS. /e/ receives substantial government funding. Both are extremely non-private and secure which is why France is targeting us while those get government funding. We need a lot more help than usual and we're sending our the first ever notification to everyone on the server because this is a particularly bad situation. If people help us, it will enable us to focus more on development again including releasing experimental Pixel 10 releases very soon.

[–] SatyrSack@quokk.au 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

we're sending our the first ever notification to everyone on the sewer

That's one way to describe Discord.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

Lol, I've corrected that now. An OCR Freudian slip.

[–] Samsy@lemmy.ml 101 points 1 day ago

Next time I go to the comments first...

[–] Anonymouse@lemmy.world 43 points 1 day ago

Thanks for posting the contents of the image. This is especially important for folks using a screen reader and the source content is behind a paywall or login link.

[–] LuigiMaoFrance@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 day ago
[–] DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

I live in Slovakia and no one gives a shit what you have on your phone here.

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[–] HumanOnEarth@lemmy.ca 139 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If the state can't protect its people from the damage that technology and capitalism can do, they have no right to prevent people from protecting themselves.

Fix climate change. Tax billionaires. Address the housing crisis. Then we can talk about taking away privacy in the name of upholding the law.

[–] manxu@piefed.social 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Doesn't even have to be a lofty goal like fixing climate change. I'd settle for the backdoors not leading to disclosure and scams, as any such weakening of security or privacy inadvertently does.

When there was the leak of ID photos from that one site (forget which one) I sighed, because neither the users nor the site wanted to keep ID photos around, but the government made them do that. It was the most predictable result I could have imagined.

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[–] Zephorah@discuss.online 126 points 1 day ago (6 children)

The billionaires really want all in on no privacy.

[–] greenashura@sh.itjust.works 99 points 1 day ago

For everyone else*

[–] Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 35 points 1 day ago

At this point I'm sure it's not even about control anymore, it's just that privacy sometimes gets in the way of "line go up".

[–] TheHobbyist@lemmy.zip 29 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Made a sizable donation. I encourage you all to help them manage this situation, defend themselves and keep up their good work.

[–] hyacin@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Yep, drama or not, completely true or not (as is being claimed in this thread), they do incredible work, and if you benefit from it, let this serve simply as a reminder that they deserve some support if you don't want to wade into all the details.

Super happy to see they take Interac e-Transfers in Canada too.

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[–] Pierre121000@lemmy.ml 31 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

State surveillance begins when protecting privacy is treated as a suspect act.
Preventing crimes apparently necessitates to forbid any resistance to surveillance.
So much for France/Europe being a defender of (digital )rights.

[–] medem@lemmy.wtf 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Speaking of unsubstantiated accusations, do we have actual, reliable information about what is really going on? Any link in either French or English appreciated.

[–] leftascenter@jlai.lu 70 points 1 day ago (1 children)

From France: news outlets began parroting government stating GrapheneOS is used by narcos.

GrapheneOS reacted strongly.

However, France is on a very shitty auth-right trend (including arresting Telegram founder) so the reaction is very understandable.

[–] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 34 points 1 day ago (1 children)

France and the rest of Europe... sigh Fuck Fascists. That includes our German government, full of selfish fuckheads who further fortify the surveillance state.

[–] nforminvasion@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It's just capitalism reaching it's end stages. Fascism arises either when capitalism is threatened or when it has eaten itself and its contradictions become too great for liberal "democracy" to ignore.

With climate change, refugees from wars and disasters, micro plastics and other pollutants, the waning of social programs, job market collapse across the world, collapsing birth rates, inflation, energy, and a hundred other things, capitalism is reaching its end stage.

There really are only a few options from here. And honestly I only see two major ones: either the rich win and we have literal slavery world wide (not wage slavery, actual no pay, no benefits, no nothing slavery) held up by hyper surveillance and armed bots/drones, or we break capitalism and move onto something better.

[–] nforminvasion@lemmy.world 3 points 16 hours ago

Always interesting how people down vote without any dialogue. Like... Sure you don't owe me any explanation, but idk it would be cool to hear people's opinions instead of just some downvotes.

Call me a cynic but I don't see humanity standing together against oppression, as much as I would want it...

[–] foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml 57 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Not to protect /e/os and Iode (neither to promote the french laws), but I would like to have real source of what's happening, what /e/os and idoe didn't do right, when they conveyed fakes about graphene...

Not to say but the graphene community (mainly his leader) is always having drama with some people. So real proofs and explanations would be greatly appreciated. Wouldn't like to say black or white to this subject and would like to nuance the post

[–] pmk@lemmy.sdf.org 20 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Gael Duval (/e/os) wrote as a response:
"I'd like to state *very clearly* that Murena and e Foundation are not related in case to this ridiculous and pseudo-drama.

What we seek is to totally ignore these guys, and have nothing to do with them.

And again, and again, despite what they are repeating, we are NOT competitors, as we are not in the hardened-security market spaces."

[–] foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Pretty good response but somehow they will suffer from Graphene accusations

They (graphene) are really playing childish this time

EDIT : misinterpretations

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[–] Grass@sh.itjust.works 24 points 1 day ago (2 children)

yeah as a graphene user I have been worried for a while now about the mental state of the project head. It also doesn't seem like he cares much for the opinions of the users

[–] foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml 45 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

If you're wondering, I checked a bit online and here's what I understood :

The 19th November a newspaper in France called "Le Parisien" published an article about GrapheneOS and that it was a dream OS for drug dealer (and whole networks).
That it could erase itself if a intrusion was detected by showing for example a fake Snapchat page (which is btw totally false and doesn't take part in the official releases), these claims where besides made by french cops.

For that, the newspaper contacted Graphene, and they (graphene) answered that the tool they're providing is simply working and that like a knife it could be used for malicious activities, but as with a knife most people would use it responsibly (to protect their privacy)

At this point I think that the Graphene reaction was pretty great and acted to defend citizens privacy.

But what follows next didn't make the same impression, by quitting the France they are not really focusing on the good topics :

1 - France cops are no exceptions to others, surely all of them around the world would like to break encryption and privacy (grapheneOS for example)

2 - That's not the government that propagates wrong statement about graphene, but the journalists from "Le Parisien" (if they can be called "journalists")
(The authorities maybe lied (not the first time btw) to scare the public, the newspaper shouldn't published it with fakes in it...)

And accusing any French based initiative is not an argument (at first they didn't have anything to do between french authorities and graphene)
Even if FOSS projects have a country on the paper, it's not really much more of a negative aspect than to respect the laws in place...
So why Graphene doesn't blame Framasoft (guys that are maintaining peertube) for example?

And lastly in Europe many initiatives gets money from governments (whatever they're doing)

Note : I'm not saying that /e/os and Iode aren't guilty of anything sketchy but that in this case Graphene are just insulting FOSS privacy projects....

To conclude, I would say that Graphene done right by replying and arguing to a bullshit article.
BUT they shouldn't generalize to all french projects and promote hate against frenchies and/or french projects (Btw they moved their servers from France to Germany and Canada, these countries are no more private than France and any others countries)

Original article : https://archive.is/20251124210306/https://www.leparisien.fr/faits-divers/google-pixel-et-grapheneos-la-botte-secrete-des-narcotrafiquants-pour-proteger-leurs-donnees-de-la-police-19-11-2025-NTGPQE4JCNGEHLF7XGIQ3CCA2I.php

[–] Grass@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is roughly what I thought, part sensible part taking tinfoil hat a little too far even for a privacy developer. Really the ones doing the most harm to graphene seem to be google

[–] helix@feddit.org 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Well if anyone is out to get you it sure seems everyone is out to get you, or something.

I think I'd get paranoid and antsy as a lead dev of GrapheneOS, too. Couple that with a certain brain structure needed to be a lead developer and connect two and two to figure out why lead developers are rarely good community managers.

I hope Daniel Micay doesn't go cray cray. I really like what they did here.

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[–] obsoleteacct@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The Venn diagram of privacy focused and paranoid has a good bit of overlap.

But anything private enough for the most paranoid dev is private enough for me.

[–] DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Eastern Europe is more democratic than the western one.

[–] houjou@jlai.lu 47 points 1 day ago (3 children)

what exactly is /e/ doing against graphene ?

[–] CoyoteFacts@piefed.ca 55 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Graphene (more specifically its founder) is always in a vicious cycle of claiming that everyone asking for proof of Graphene being "under attack" is in itself making an "attack". You can consider yourself Graphene's enemy for life for your transgression.

Watching these youtube links makes you an attacker also, so be careful: https://youtu.be/Dx7CZ-2Bajg https://youtu.be/4To-F6W1NT0

[–] Armand1@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Given this, do we actually know that the French government is targeting GrapheneOS in a significant way, or is this just another dramatisation?

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[–] freeman@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 day ago

Existing, probably.

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[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 31 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

Is there any information on this from a more reliable source than a screenshot of a discord message from a generic account? Especially from a project whose leader is known for persecutory claims.

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[–] birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 day ago

Fuck France and its government-sponsored terrorism! When will they learn from the days of Vichy France and its mass surveillance?

[–] artyom@piefed.social 19 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Please just copy and paste the text. It's not private information.

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[–] RodgeGrabTheCat@sh.itjust.works 16 points 2 days ago (2 children)
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[–] AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net 13 points 1 day ago (13 children)

So in the drama between the Graphene team vs every other privacy-focused Android dev - who should I trust?

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[–] Catalyst_A@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 day ago

Me and the boys on our way to help Graphene in France.

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