There’s been some posts about Graphene leaving france and accusing the government of targeting them.
This isn’t happening. What happened is that le parisien posted an article that presents what french law enforcement think of grapheneOS, which is obviously mostly crap, then present part of graphene’s respone, which does in fact include their references to human rights organizations, large tech companies and others using GrapheneOS, unlike what grapheneOS claims. The main flaw with the article is the fact that the author takes what the french law enforcement says at face value, which is not a good move.
If you haven’t been following this you may be wondering how this was extrapolated into the government targeting them. Well, it’s because government owned news sites also reported on this. This is because le parisien’s article got regurgitated by a bunch of other news sites looking for an easy article to get ad revenue from, normal news site behavior. The government news sites are fully editorially independent from the government, which the GrapheneOS lead should know, since that’s how the canadian CBC works.
For chat control, that measure isn’t supported by the majority of french meps, just the (massively unpopular) head of state and his minority government. No similar law has been passed nationally, in fact, a law that guarantees privacy rights is making it’s way through the legislature (tuta article). If chat control passes, it affects several of the countries (germany and belgium, afaik) they moved to as well, anyways.
Graphene’s announcement also disparages the other two big privacy roms, both based in france, which is odd and makes me personally think this may have more to do with the visible hatred the project lead has for those projects.
Please tell me what you think, and if I missed anything important, because it really seems like a big nothing-burger to me.
I live in France. if I say I use Signal or Grapheneos, peoples who consume major newspaper jokingly say : “oh, you’re using the criminal thing, you must be a drug dealer/terrorist”. It’s a joke, but still, I can see that the misunderstanding of those tools are in their head. So French news does a good job to make them look bad. And recently the Anssi (French agency for security and information system, depending from security ministry) , published a public pdf about mobile phone threat in France since 2015. They talk about hacker, security breach, tools and tips for population to prevent risk. They recommend to use Signal over Sms. But they never mention Grapheneos or any other rom.
You forgot that french juges have used the facts that people installed Linux, Signal, /e/OS and GrapheneOS has evidence to charge them!
I think they were leftists activists charged for eco-terrorism but I don’t remember all the details but you should take a look. La Quadrature du Net has done some blogging and court things over this events of dark times.
You forgot that french juges have used the facts that people installed Linux, Signal, /e/OS and GrapheneOS has evidence to charge them!
this sounds insane but common for judges; do you have any sources for this?
Yes, sorry I was too lazy to provide any sources here are a few (mostly in french sorry). It was called the 8 December case ou “L’Affaire du 8 décembre” in french.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_December_2020_case
- https://lundi.am/Affaire-du-8-decembre-recit-d-une-mise-en-examen-pour-association-de
- https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2020/12/11/sept-militants-de-l-ultragauche-deferes-devant-un-juge-antiterroriste_6063103_3224.html
- https://www.laquadrature.net/2023/10/02/affaire-du-8-decembre-le-droit-au-chiffrement-et-a-la-vie-privee-en-proces/
- https://www.laquadrature.net/2023/06/05/affaire-du-8-decembre-le-chiffrement-des-communications-assimile-a-un-comportement-terroriste/
- https://web.archive.org/web/20230607132838/https://soutien812.blackblogs.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/1922/2023/03/ArticleCamille_RevueZ.pdf
Edit:
You’re missing the important fact that there were other articles published in the same week, directly interviewing law enforcement or magistrate officials, indicating that they were considering measures against the organization.
I think it was this one: https://www.leparisien.fr/faits-divers/telephones-proteges-utilises-par-les-narcotrafiquants-rien-nest-inviolable-19-11-2025-3PP34GIBAJGH3EZOVEJVT7OMU4.php
I mean yeah, but that’s an article from a private company that says that law enforcement is going to try to hack into criminal’s phones. Which, like, duh.
The person being interviewed explicitely says that since there are legitimate users of the service, they won’t take the same approach they did with services used only by criminals.
Avec ce nouvel outil, il existe pour une certaine partie des utilisateurs une réelle légitimité dans la volonté de protéger ses échanges. L’approche est donc différente. Mais ça ne nous empêchera pas de poursuivre les éditeurs, si des liens sont découverts avec une organisation criminelle et qu’ils ne coopèrent pas avec la justice.
they’re saying that if grapheneOS is found to be explicitely working with criminals they’ll take measures against the org, which is completely reasonable.
I guess you can update your initial misleading post, since you didn’t consider all the news coverage and only singled out one article to fit your narrative 👍
The exact same article that the GrapheneOS devs cited, I mentioned the other news coverage, but didn’t find it necessary to cite every article, since the point I’m making still stands.
Just take the L, stop writhing.
I wouldn’t say it’s nothing, because they definitely are trying to weaken or break privacy and encryption, but it also isn’t exactly an ongoing targeted campaign.
France was also leading the charge in the shutdown of those other encrypted phone services. They claimed that those were only used by criminals but never provided any evidence. They also broke multiple laws during their investigation. So yes the french government definitely is dirty in this regard and deserves calling out.
They specified it was a media campaign influenced by law enforcement. They may have referenced law enforcement going after them but they meant through a propaganda campaign and they said the measures they’re taking are entirely preventative. They aren’t interested in fooling around with a government that just got caught trying to assassinate an African leader. Perspective. They always start with a propaganda campaign to label their targets criminals or terrorists. I’d say Graphene’s response during an incredibly dark era of history is definitely called for. Its no longer 2014. Its 2025 with fascist coups taking place all over and digital security is one of their main targets. I strongly disagree with the OP and I’ve been keeping up with entire saga on Graphene’s social media and interacting with them about it.
Yeah, but the they is law enforcement, not the government.
I’m pretty sure law enforcement is an arm of the government…
Law enforcement doesn’t make the law, they just enforce it. When you say “the government” you imply the legislature is part of what you’re talking about.
Outside of states with a parliamentary system, “state” and “government” are synonyms. In states with a presidential system, the police are an arm of the executive branch, which is an arm of the state/government.
Then what do you call the body consisting of the legislature, executive, and judiciary? Because I’m pretty sure that law enforcement is accountable to someone.
You don’t.
Removed by mod
The point I’m making is that law enforcement trying to break into encrypted phones, and news orgs coverting that isn’t “the government targeting them”. There is a distinction between “the government” and law enforcement.
How so?
The police’s job is to enforce the laws that be, and be bound by them. The legislature, in france’s case, the assemblée nationale and sénat, write the laws. As an example, french law enforcement can’t force signal to break their encryption, but the legislature could.
You should be more consistent with your capitalisation of proper nouns so it’s clear your post is about a company, not a chemical
Why do I keep hearing about drama around graphene?
i think i can answer this
personally, when i first encountered graphene’s radical statements about the terrible security landscape we’re all subjected to, i reacted quite negatively & assumed they were crazy.
then i actually check the technical details of their claims, and fuck me it turns out to be SCARILY correct.
most people don’t actually bother with the second part. and you end up with a classic “shoot the messenger” scenario, where the bearer of bad news is equated with the bad news itself & punished by the mob (because they feel it’s easier than actually facing the uncomfortable reality of the bad news).
that scenario can only play out for so long before the messenger gets sick of being shot every day & reacts badly to the crowd. then the crowd points at their poor reaction & uses it as further “evidence” against their character.
It would be hilarious if a German newspaper were to publish the same “criminals like this OS and police hate it” clickbait article.
