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GrapheneOS recommended for domestic abuse victims

privacypros.com.au

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Re: GrapheneOS recommended for domestic abuse victims

#161
Reasonably happy with GrapheneOS, but the number of bugs (maybe more ecosystem bugs) would make me hesitant to suggest other people rely on it as a communication device.

I have notifications turned ON for WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram. I never receive notifications from Telegram. I have to open that app to see if anyone said anything. WhatsApp and Signal notifications seem to vary between late or never? This is despite a constant notification reminder that Signal has Background connection enabled.

Also I can only send messages to some whatsapp contacts. My messages appear as pending for a while and eventually turn into 'could not send'.

Re: GrapheneOS recommended for domestic abuse victims

#162
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of high moral principles, but "let's build technology that explicitly protects criminals - especially child and women traffickers - against investigation" ain't one of them for majority of people living in democracies.

Your assumption that "criminals" are doing something morally wrong is fundamentally flawed. Civil rights activists were criminals, as were suffragettes, and the people who protected Jews in Nazi Germany, and gay or trans people just existing in countries where that isn't allowed. All criminals. Law enforcement isn't even always carrying out the law, as we've seen with ICE arresting, assaulting, searching, deporting p…

Yes, exactly, but if you actually follow all of those groups, none of them changed things by building bunkers into which police couldn't ever enter and any crime could happen there.

As someone who grew up on the other side of the iron curtain, I find this idea that you'll make your own government an enemy and shield criminals against it utterly naive, since that's not what actually changes society. It's a form of techno-cowardice, where people hide behind technology to avoid doing the hard stuff.

Re: GrapheneOS recommended for domestic abuse victims

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why can't we install whatever we want on "our" devices?

Because you are buying a device without the feature of installing a custom OS. If you want a feature, buy a device offering it.

The whole point of this discussion is the trend towards societal scale denial of that feature by both market forces and governmental forces.

There is no such a thing as "just buy a different device" when this "different device" is actively discriminated against to the point it's a paper weight. I wouldn't be surprised if remote attestation becomes necessary to even get an internet connection in the future.

Re: GrapheneOS recommended for domestic abuse victims

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your "development build" is another person's daily driver. Case in point: GrapheneOS (or any other custom Android distro) is unlikely to be able to ever pass remote attestation, even a signed, secure boot build with the bootloader relocked, because it's not the original OS for the hardware. Same goes for any desktop Linux.

GrapheneOS implements its own attestation so you can attest that it's real GrapheneOS. The valid approach they've chosen is to try and get on a level playing field with the big guys rather than destroy the playing field. They have a good argument their OS is very secure, so you should accept its attestation. This is how a user-friendly OS backdoors into the attestation system. I still think destroying the playing fie…

GrapheneOS doesnt implement its own attestation. It simply inherits the existing, generic attestation system provided in the android open source project. Any fork of AOSP can provide this, the keys would just need to be whitelisted per OS.

Re: GrapheneOS recommended for domestic abuse victims

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your "development build" is another person's daily driver. Case in point: GrapheneOS (or any other custom Android distro) is unlikely to be able to ever pass remote attestation, even a signed, secure boot build with the bootloader relocked, because it's not the original OS for the hardware. Same goes for any desktop Linux.

GrapheneOS implements its own attestation so you can attest that it's real GrapheneOS. The valid approach they've chosen is to try and get on a level playing field with the big guys rather than destroy the playing field. They have a good argument their OS is very secure, so you should accept its attestation. This is how a user-friendly OS backdoors into the attestation system. I still think destroying the playing fie…

> so you can attest

This isn't about you attesting anything though. It's about corporations attesting that your device is 100% corporate owned. Can't have you running software that impacts their bottom line after all.

GrapheneOS could be the most secure operating system to ever exist, it doesn't matter to the corporation because it's still under your control. When they say "security", they mean "the corporation's security against the user", not "the user's security against the hostile world out there".

Re: GrapheneOS recommended for domestic abuse victims

#166

It's absolutely insane that phones have online accounts deeply integrated into the OS. You need to give Apple your phone number to download any apps on iOS. For example: Say anyone that downloaded IceBlock commited crime, Apple could give the govt everyone who downloaded its phone number, the govt could get the realtime location of everyone based on their phone number from the carrier. And that's not even mentioning…

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GrapheneOS does not interfere with law enforcement doing their jobs.

Thats like saying the right to remain silent interferes with law enforcement doing their jobs. Law enforcement has one job, enforcing the law, and that includes following their own laws. People have a right to privacy, and GrapheneOS is one of the many methods that allow people to exercise that right.

Re: GrapheneOS recommended for domestic abuse victims

#167
post #79
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why not? Law enforcement does not represent supreme justice and good. There are higher moral principles out there. Respect for law enforcement in the absence of justice is a disaster for society. All it does is give cover for bad actors.

There's plenty of high moral principles, but "let's build technology that explicitly protects criminals - especially child and women traffickers - against investigation" ain't one of them for majority of people living in democracies.

If you are referring to GrapheneOS, there is nothing that GrapheneOS offers or advertises that "explicitly protects criminals".

GrapheneOS is not for criminals, its not aimed at criminals, its not designed for criminals. Not implicitly or explicitly.

Re: GrapheneOS recommended for domestic abuse victims

#168
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your assumption that "criminals" are doing something morally wrong is fundamentally flawed. Civil rights activists were criminals, as were suffragettes, and the people who protected Jews in Nazi Germany, and gay or trans people just existing in countries where that isn't allowed. All criminals. Law enforcement isn't even always carrying out the law, as we've seen with ICE arresting, assaulting, searching, deporting p…

Yes, exactly, but if you actually follow all of those groups, none of them changed things by building bunkers into which police couldn't ever enter and any crime could happen there. As someone who grew up on the other side of the iron curtain, I find this idea that you'll make your own government an enemy and shield criminals against it utterly naive, since that's not what actually changes society. It's a form of tec…

Thats... exactly what they did. They relied on secrecy and hidden locations to aid their cause.

Like... this is how the entire underground railroad and many other examples worked out.

Re: GrapheneOS recommended for domestic abuse victims

#169

[flagged]

Grapheneos is the least shady OS. Why would a mass surveillance agency compromise hardware when they can simply spy at the software level though Google's deep insights into devices? Those Android distributions you refer to are not up to date, don't fully remove Google services, don't ship patches fast, don't improve exploit protections, have worse compatibility, don't make Google's services more private by running th…

[flagged]

Re: GrapheneOS recommended for domestic abuse victims

#170
post #161

Reasonably happy with GrapheneOS, but the number of bugs (maybe more ecosystem bugs) would make me hesitant to suggest other people rely on it as a communication device. I have notifications turned ON for WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram. I never receive notifications from Telegram. I have to open that app to see if anyone said anything. WhatsApp and Signal notifications seem to vary between late or never? This is despi…

This is not an issue with GrapheneOS, this is an issue with your configuration, which is trivial to solve.

All of those apps support using google services FCM for push notification delivery. I dont think Telegram has a fallback, and Signal and Whatsapp have power-intensive fallbacks. You may also need to reinstall these apps for them to detect google services (apps generally dont check for google services more than once on initial launch).

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