No, graphene isn't being targeted by the french government.
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.
Is France finally standing up for encryption and privacy? | Tuta
Finally some good news: French MPs want to make it illegal to break encryption and limit surveillance.Tuta
frongt
in reply to Blisterexe • • •Blisterexe
in reply to frongt • • •unexposedhazard
in reply to Blisterexe • • •Blisterexe
in reply to unexposedhazard • • •HikingVet
in reply to Blisterexe • • •Blisterexe
in reply to HikingVet • • •unexposedhazard
in reply to frongt • • •Catalyst
in reply to frongt • • •leobluefish
in reply to Blisterexe • • •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: leparisien.fr/faits-divers/tel…
Téléphones protégés utilisés par les narcotrafiquants : « Rien n’est inviolable ! »
Julien Constant (Le Parisien)Blisterexe
in reply to leobluefish • • •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.
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.
leobluefish
in reply to Blisterexe • • •Blisterexe
in reply to leobluefish • • •chloroken
in reply to Blisterexe • • •TonyTonyChopper
in reply to Blisterexe • • •Sonalder
in reply to Blisterexe • • •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.
eldavi
in reply to Sonalder • • •this sounds insane but common for judges; do you have any sources for this?
Sonalder
in reply to eldavi • • •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 or "L'Affaire du 8 décembre" in french.
Edit:
- archive.is/lemonde.fr/societe/…
Sept militants de l’ultragauche mis en examen pour « association de malfaiteurs terroriste »
Samuel Laurent (Le Monde)Mas
in reply to Sonalder • • •Except that for the moment, no decision of the judges shows that they have retained the fact of having Linux, Signal, /e/OS or GrapheneOS installed, even in the case of 8 December. And I'm talking about not the investigating judges here, but the decisions of the judges of the court.
These articles speak only of investigating judges, not of conviction.
PiraHxCx
in reply to Blisterexe • • •Da Oeuf
in reply to Blisterexe • • •ganymede
in reply to Da Oeuf • • •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.
rayf
in reply to Blisterexe • • •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.