This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
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.
This is a weird advertisement, but I kind of want grapheneOS now.
Been on it for ~2 years and never going back, fuck Google, fuck the government.
I've also been using it for like 2 years but I really want the hardware of something like the Fairphone. A fairphone or something similar with Graphene would be amazing
You can technically put GrapheneOS on a Fairphone, but it's not officially supported.
Long term, the GOS team is looking to branch off from their reliance on Pixels.
The Graphene OS people have always been talking about how they eventually intend to develop their own hardware. So, possibly they will make something good eventually.
Been on it for about 19 months now, it's what Android should be.
I've used Samsungs for years, but they have gotten too expensive for what I need, so I went for a Pixel this time around. I got issues with it, but mostly because I'm so used to the Samsung universe. Still way better than an Apple.
I guess I'm a Spanish drug dealer now.
Update, July 3, 2025 (11:45 AM ET): The crew behind GrapheneOS is understandably none too pleased about their good name being dragged through the mud, and members are speaking out about these reports from Spain. Over on X, the official GrapheneOS account posts:
European authoritarians and their enablers in the media are misrepresenting GrapheneOS and even Pixel phones as if they’re something for criminals. GrapheneOS is opposed to the mass surveillance police state these people want to impose on everyone.
Security is a tool, and can be wielded just as much for good as it can for bad. While some people may see this as an indictment, we’d say it’s more the inevitable consequence of GrapheneOS just being very, very good at what it does.
Yeah, when the media is wrong, GrapheneOS out here correcting the media!
The police: 'We've encountered a difficulty with our paid spying software. Welp it must be just the criminals.'
Edit: Missed the R and hit the T on our.
pretty much. The original article says that if they have a pixel they have to ask for a warrant
Well I do use a Pixel (for lineage OS) and I do make my living selling drugs... wait wait this is a bad example.
Police are not the brightest in any society.
So I guess somebody needs to tell them that they need to focus their efforts a little better if their current plan is 'anyone with a Google Pixel is a drug dealer'.
Can I suggest they start with the people with drugs, rather than the people with the -- not uncommon - google phones in their search for drug dealers?
Police are not the brightest in any society.
It's a literal job requirement. If you're smart, you're not going to blindly follow orders. Police cognitive testing literally discards candidates that perform well in intellectual tasks. This is not a conspiracy or a joke, it's how police works.
Reminds me of getting a notice in Middle School, decades ago, about how a pager was considered "drug paraphernalia"
There was also a big Bloomberg-Era push by the NYPD to arrest any woman carrying condoms on her person, on the grounds that a woman carrying a condom must be a sex worker.
Everything I hear about Bloomberg make me question how he ran as a democrat, and then I remember he fits the democratic party better than anyone else...
"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!
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
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.
Grapheneos also has options to just disable data over the USB port when its locked. Or disable it outright.
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.
Isn't it likely the police is kind of right?
I mean, how many people in that community used grapheneos phones before the drug dealers figured out how good they were for their purposes? So in that community, it's indeed very likely that a grapheneos user is in a drug gang.
Does that mean that grapheneos is an issue, or bad? Not at all. But i see a lot of digs at the police here at how dumb they are. But if literally most grapheneos users there are drug dealers, is it dumb? It's just a plain observation that's pretty correct.
And it's kind of logical that proper open source tools that are not full of spyware are better for also such purposes. Doesn't make these tools a problem. If a politician would now start a crusade against such operating systems, that i would agree is dumb.
But i don't see an issue with police somewhere realizing that drugdealers use a specific tool, and focusing on that. Of course sucks for the couple of regular users there that just do it to have control over their device....
That really depends on what they do with that information. If people get arrested for having a pixel, that's a huge issue. If someone merely gets a closer investigation if they're suspected of another crime, that's fine.
The article is light on details.
I think most of the criticism towards police is because they are discriminating based on Google Pixels, which is a completely normal car that you can install GrapheneOS on. It would be like targeting anyone driving a Kia because of the Kia Boys
Pixel has a market share of 1.5%, so they kind of stand out. Also, there is no such thing as "federales" in Spain. Spain is not a federation. If they are talking about National Police or Guardia civil, they go through a pretty hard entrance exam, and then have a minimum of one year instruction. Executive ranks must have a university degree. Generally reasonably competent. Mossos (regional) and local police are another story. They are quite a bit less competent.
Reminds me of when the US tried to fight "terror" by kidnapping people and shoving them in Gitmo because they were wearing Casio watches, which is apparently a brand favoured by terrorists.
Can confirm. Own pixel, deal drugs.
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?
Yes. Cops are idiots. Duh.
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.
Solid cop logic. Of the exact level you'd expect.
Hey, the security is nice, but I really like the detailed control over notifications, GMS prompts, and network access. When I used PixelOS, my phone did things I didn't want it to, and it was hard or impossible to make it stop. On GrapheneOS, the defaults are a pretty good experience. I even recommend it to non-techies since they can use it with the Google apps and its still a more respectful experience, even if they don't need or want the level of control that I like.
TL; DR-- There are many good reasons for regular people to prefer GrapheneOS
