[deleted]
Eirikr70 It's clear to the French police. 100% trust me too.
is grapheneOS 'worth it'?
[deleted]
Eirikr70 The guys for merhad fired only one round while they were taking a deluge, the Bataclan only 11 rounds fired despite the deluge too ... At least we're sure never to have a swating problem in our country.
Eirikr70 I see your points, its more legal than technical. But imo it seems that the west as a whole is having an issue with police distrust so it would be fair to be a little skeptical for any police force right now.
OK, I am kinda convinced it seems pretty cool. Some say that phones are just a tracking device by default and just to understand- is this due to the whole IMEI/IMSI thing with phones? If so, is there any way to mitigate this bc some replies here claim it is possible. This is the only thing really holding me back at the moment
Cellular/sim tracking is the one thing I can’t get over. That part seems to make the phone a constant location surveillance device
[deleted]
applesbana If you're that up in arms about it, then don't use a smartphone.
[deleted]
- Edited
Every little bit helps, as they say. The opposite of striving for more "agency" in the realm of smartphones is walking into your local telco branch and walking out of there with whatever numeric Redmi series phone they had on sale that week. If running GrapheneOS requires substantial compromises (need Google Pay or Android Auto) or mental energy on your part (how do I sync X with Y), you might be better off going with stock Pixel or an iOS device as they're good enough. It's worth it for me, YMMV.
- Edited
It is worth it, it's the best that you can use, nothing even comes close. If something really important doesn't work for you, then just use stock OS on a Pixel.
The best advice that I can give you is to not go into a next level of copium and get an iPhone for privacy. Just use Pixel devices.
throwingAway France very recently announced some kind of legal framework to permit accessing a phone's cam and mic and geolocation by force and I am not optimistic that any mobile solution will stop something like this, regardless of OS- some tracking is just too powerful.
France government doesn't have the power to force their way through the phone's security. Anything implemented through LEGISLATION will thus require the phone vendor to implement controls to be made available to the French government, or to stop selling their phones in France. What this means is that FUTURE phones sold, and possibly future system updates, will enable this functionality, and this functionality will NOT be implemented in GrapheneOS, therefore GrapheneOS will protect you from this.
can the cellular tracking be stopped by just not connecting to the mobile network e.g. not using a sim and/or having airplane mode on?
throwingAway You need to turn on airplane mode to stop that.
I believe so. Unfortunately that takes away some of the benefits of a cell phone. When I’m around Wi-Fi (home/office) I generally use a laptop vs a phone.
I read a good post on this forum yesterday.
To avoid getting IMEI-tracked use this:
https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-e750/
And when changing SIM make sure to first use this:
https://github.com/srlabs/blue-merle
Seems like a solid solution to not get an IMEI connected to you.
Of course, this is to be used with burner SIM-cards.
csis01 I think just the opposite : France does not have the power to force vendors to leave backdoors, so they will use 0 day weaknesses implemented by spywares. GrapheneOS might protect from those ... or not. Anyway, I'm not concerned about that rule since it applies to people charged for more than 5 years. I might think about it if I were a whistleblower on a sensitive domain (or if I were involved in organised crime).
They will use zero-day exploits to get around the security barriers provided by "vanilla" smartphones. In GrapheneOS there are far less likelihood of zero-day exploits than any other phone, since AOSP and Pixel itself is subject to a lot of security researchers all over the world more so than any other phone. There are way more vulnerabilities in the OSes and all shitty bloatware of a standard smartphone from e.g Samsung or Huawei. AOSP and Pixels are battle-tested and on top of that, add GrapheneOS extra hardening of AOSP with the sole purpose of mitigating whole classes of vulnerabilities and 0-days.
I actually do not think the police authorities will have the means of just willingly access all of your data, camera/microphone and location on a Pixel with GrapheneOS. If you are that high profile of a target they have a jam-packed toolbox of other tried-tested means of spying on you that does not involve your smartphone.
If they have the power to do so, it will most likely not gain full-access to anything on the phone or is captured by the phone's sensors, but only partial access with some level of privilege escalation. Even if they had access to one of those zero-day exploits, remember those are worth a big load of money, and they will not risk of burning one of that exploits on the average joe in mass scale, in case a researcher finds out. They can only use them for very special targets. This is of course true if you have good security practices and use the features of GrapheneOS in a smart way. Of course if you install a bloated app full of security holes and give it all permssions, then Graphene can do nothing about it.
When the police say they can hack your phone and access your microphone and camera, it does not mean that they need to hack into the base layer Android system. It can very well be one of the other pre-installed or commonly used third-party apps that most people use. They probably have access to a plethora of unknown zero-day exploits in all kinds of Android/iOS software that many people, including criminals, use every day.
I would say easily, go for it! Get a Pixel ASAP and flash GrapheneOS on it immediatley. Do not forget, even if there is a possibility that the French police can access your data, there are far more adversaries out there than the them. GrapheneOS indeed does a very good job of protecting your private life at least most of the time. You will see how big of a change this is for your digital wellbeing. There is no other system like this out there.