GrapheneOS user reported to authorities for using GrapheneOS

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/36134-grapheneos-user-reported-to-authorities-for-using-grapheneos

by Cider9986 • 2 months ago

462 393 2 months ago

discuss.grapheneos.org

UK now, but that train is never late..

microflash• 2 months ago

Might as well report all users of internet to authorities for using internet because internet can also be used to commit fraud.

trumpdong51• 2 months ago

While most people who use an unbackdoored OS aren't frauds, presumably it's correct at a slightly higher rate than assuming someone is a fraud because they use the internet.

theglenn88_• 2 months ago

Exactly, don't forget, if you own or drive a car you must be a criminal, because cars are used as getaway vehicles in serious crimes.

tiborsaas• 2 months ago

You can also murder people with your car including children.

gib4442• 2 months ago

You mean like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collection_of_Internet_Connect...

zelphirkalt2• 2 months ago

Actually, that makes me think, what will happen, if suddenly there is a flood of reports, too many for them to deal with? Let's say all GrapheneOS users installed that app to get reported and then some more bots/fakes are set up to do that too.

eunos4• 2 months ago

For start you can strong arm or mandate bank to not make their app run on GrapheneOS device.

Bank is highly regulated service and vital so there's strong incentive and ramp up here

VariousPrograms• 2 months ago

I'm done for once the authorities know I have an account on HACKER News.

mjlee• 2 months ago

When I was in high school I brought in a copy of The Hacker's Dictionary to show a friend. A teacher saw it.

A few weeks later there was a hacking incident! The shared spreadsheet of every pupil's grades that every teacher had full access to was modified, boosting the grades of some students (including me) and lowering the grades of others (including people I didn't get on with). I was immediately sent home during the investigation. Nothing came of it in the end.

Years later my friend revealed the advanced technique of finding his music teacher's password (bassoon) on a post-it note under their keyboard.

TylerE• 2 months ago

Hey, under the keyboard is an advanced technique. In those days it was usually on the monitor.

kotaKat2• 2 months ago

I remember trying to argue with the IT folks at school because hackaday.com was blocked for "hacking"... damn, guess all those fun electronics projects people were doing is Super Evil And Only For Criminals.

QuantumNomad_• 2 months ago

When I was in middle school I used to download keygens and cracks for programs from the school computer and take them with me home on a floppy disk because I didn’t have internet at home.

One of the websites I downloaded keygens and cracks from was called TheBugs.WS. Another pupil saw that I was downloading keygens and stuff and tried to rat me out to one of the teachers saying like “hey look at his screen, he can’t use the computer for that”.

The teacher had a brief glance at my monitor and read the title of the page TheBugs.WS and just said “nothing wrong about learning about insects” and then just walked away lololol. To this day I still don’t know if the teacher genuinely though the page was about insects just from the title, or if she just didn’t care as long as the briefest of glances at my screen didn’t show anything that seemed really out of place.

Either which way, my situation was kind of the exact opposite of yours. And the inconspicuous name of the site was enough that I didn’t get in trouble even though I could have if a teacher looked closely.

bingo-bongo• 2 months ago

I started studying IT back in ‘99 and got a strict warning from the school my first year, because I had used the schools network to access the internet from my own laptop. I had “gained access” by plugging an ethernet cable into a random socket in the wall, and was doing some homework, when radom employee walked by. Since there wasn’t any rules (yet), that allowed nor disallowed it, I got of with only a warning ... from a school, that teaches IT :|

baumschubser• 2 months ago

i earned myself a notice in the local newspaper in 8th grade for hacking the public library. what i did: on the PC terminal right click, show source, edit the HTML to leave a "i was here" note, click save :)

eesmith5• 2 months ago

I went to a hackathon in another country and was worried about explaining that name to the border guard. To my relief, the topic didn't come up.

VortexLain• 2 months ago

You could have told the guard you're going to a competitive programming contest.

BLKNSLVR9• 2 months ago

True story: my house (in Australia) was raided by the police in 2022. 8 months later when they said I could collect all the gear they seized the officer in charge told me that the following are things they consider to be suspicious:

1. Use of MEGA (it's apparently used to share CSAM)

2. Use of virtual machines

3. "Having Tor on my computer" (I had to put that in quotes because whilst it doesn't make sense, that's what they said).

They're fucking clueless, don't underestimate how little they understand. An explanation of how something is harmless likely sounds to them like an admission of guilt.

It was an eye opening experience. I (and many members of my extended family) have very much less respect for the competence of law enforcement as a direct result of this experience.

trumpdong51• 2 months ago

Everyone should encrypt their hard drive. At all times. Even if your country has password disclosure it forces them to get a warrant from a judge for your password and the worst case is the same as the best case from not encrypting it.

MEGA is indeed used to share CSAM and pirate stuff. That is its primary use actually but it's one of those institutions that maintains plausible deniability. Remember it was started after MegaUpload was shut down for being obviously designed to reward copyright infringement - the new one isn't obviously designed for that

gib4442• 2 months ago

I would take "automatically reported to the authorities" with a pinch of salt (in this sphere, "nudging" people with lies is de rigueur [0]).

Not that I'm arguing the UK isn't accelerating further into an authoritarian nightmare.

Lucasoato• 2 months ago

A friend of mine told me that Yoti is used as an age verification system in so many porn websites. That’s such an issue, this information should never be owned by private companies.

jiin• 2 months ago

Or you could just choose not to use pornography. Then you don't have to verify your age to these websites.

I get that some people have a behavioural addiction to this harmful content but perhaps the age verification is an opportunity to step back and reconsider.

microsoftedging• 2 months ago

First they came for the porn watchers And I did not speak out Because I was not a porn watcher

trumpdong51• 2 months ago

Greetings stranger! Your comment has been shadowbanned. In order to prove you are a legal adult, please email a selfie, holding your username on a piece of paper, and your government ID to hn@ycombinator.com. Alternatively, you may use this opportunity to step back and reconsider whether you still wish to remain addicted to Hacker News.

Cider99868• 2 months ago

Or they can be pushed to watch on less regulated platforms to avoid the age verification, which is far more likely and has negative consequences.

IlikeMadison• 2 months ago

So we shouldn't be using GrapheneOS neither nor any Sony products if we follow your logic right? Because obviously it means we are addicted to both.

ssl-32• 2 months ago

Agreed. It's important to remain pure.

I usually just use the Book of Mormon and that typically helps me get it done well-enough. But when that doesn't work, I allow myself some different material. The New Haven Code of 1656 is my reserve favorite and I have a laminated copy of the Comstock Act of 1873 on-hand for unusually-tricky edge cases.

sunaookami2• 2 months ago

Excellent bait, well done! Nearly fell for it!

Forgeties79• 2 months ago

Forcing Puritanical values on the world around you is half the reason we are in this mess.

The_President• 2 months ago

Another good reason to not use it is the risk of having illegal material downloaded from a server hosted internationally.

trumpdong51• 2 months ago

I guess this user gets to sue Sony for a full refund.

userbinator4• 2 months ago

If anything, from an age-verification perspective those using GrapheneOS are probably more likely to be adults, mentally mature, or otherwise smarter than the average sheeple.

trumpdong51• 2 months ago

But it's not about checking age, it's about enforcing control.

userbinator4• 2 months ago

Exactly.

throwfaraway1353• 2 months ago

- Heavy censorship

- Two-tier justice system

- This

How did it come to this? The UK is arguably the country that has done the most for the cause of freedom, having led the way in abolishing slavery.

mmikeff• 2 months ago

Can we stop it with this two tier justice system nonsense?

userbinator4• 2 months ago

Two words: Henry Nowak.

fer2• 2 months ago

I wouldn't call it two-tier justice, because generally the courts do the right thing, but there's a shamefully obvious two-tier policing.

From the Jay Report [0] showing crimes swept under the rug according to ethnic/socioeconomic background of perp and victim, to arresting people for opposing genocide (sorry: terrorism!) [1] to the recent case of Henry Nowak [2], it's really hard not to see a two-tier policing in the UK. And this very submission; caring about privacy is seen grounds for being reported and potentially investigated, by a private company! Which suggests it's something already internalized, too, for people who resist big corp surveillance.

Back in the 90s and before, the two-tier heavily punished the minorities, and in an overshooting overcorrection, now it's the other way around. Nowak getting handcuffed by cops going "I don't think you have [been stabbed] mate!" says it all. Unless it's regarding opposing/supporting Israel, then the two-tier flips and people with basic human decency and actual antisemites are pigeonholed together, nevermind their background.

[0] https://www.rotherham.gov.uk/downloads/file/279/independent-...

[1] https://newint.org/action/2025/i-oppose-genocide-ok

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Henry_Nowak

foldr6• 2 months ago

There's a thought experiment in the philosophy of mind where your brain is gradually replaced, neuron by neuron, with artificial units that replicate the exact input and output mappings of the original neurons. The question, of course, is whether this change is accompanied by any change in your subjective conscious experience.

I notice that a variant of this experiment is now playing out on HN in real time, with various commenters having their neuronal mappings gradually reshaped to match activation layers trained on Elon Musk's twitter feed.

A few years ago it was possible to have conversations about the UK on HN. Now all you can really do is get into pointless arguments with biological instantiations of Grok.

Unfortunately, there are vastly more people outside the UK consuming this nonsense than there are British people who can flag it or correct it. So in contrast to conversations about the US, it is very hard for perspectives grounded in reality to break through. If you look into it, the vast majority of the users stirring things up in this thread aren't in Britain, and most likely have little to no first-hand knowledge of what the country is like.

snvzz• 2 months ago

This[0] is what the UK has come to be.

0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csBnAX6yS-U

youngNed5• 2 months ago

Eric Williams: “British historians write almost as if Britain had introduced Negro slavery solely for the satisfaction of abolishing it.

throwfaraway1353• 2 months ago

Totally agree, the British Empire has a lot of blood on its hand, but compared to its forebears and contemporaries it did abolish slavery, a tradition that has roots as old as humanity itself.

yubblegum4• 2 months ago

the country that has done the most for the cause of freedom

Need a history refresher. Let's skip the Magna Carta since that was really about giving power to feudal lords. Do you mean British empire being the unwitting and unwilling cause of United States?

When, in God's green Earth, have the "lords" that lord it over the "subjects of crown" common people of that island have been vanguards of "freedom" when it did not serve their own class interests?

croes6• 2 months ago

Have you read parent‘s comment until the end?

having led the way in abolishing slavery

ffsm8• 2 months ago

UKs ban on slavery across their territories was in 1830 I think?

That should be a few decades before the civil war in the USA about the same issue.

The US was actually pretty much the last Western civilization to abolish slavery from what I recall from history class.

wongarsu• 2 months ago

There is a reason both 1984 and V for Vendetta are set in the UK

Though the slide ever since Brexit is indeed astounding

fidotron• 2 months ago

For whatever reason the British underappreciate Brave New World.

joe4633697• 2 months ago

Yes, they were both written by British people.

photios2• 2 months ago

How did it come to this?

Trying not to get my account banned...

The British elite allied with non-British people and betrayed their own.

youngNed5• 2 months ago

Exactly this. But unfortunately this is all causing quite the distraction into those foreign crypto donations

trumpdong51• 2 months ago

photios is being racist against immigrants in case anyone didn't catch his meaning. He's saying the elites are betraying Britain's racial purity

zelphirkalt2• 2 months ago

The UK is historically a very bad example, especially as a colonizer. It has basically invented concentration camps before the Nazis, in Africa, and if we get to the opium war, the picture does not get much better either. Almost everywhere they went they engaged in hideous despicable crimes. If they have done most for the cause of freedom, then they have also done a much higher amount for non-freedom and slavery.

uni_baconcat• 2 months ago

This is not how authorities work.

They need to prove people guilty, not flag all “suspicious activity” then let people prove they are innocent.

trumpdong51• 2 months ago

This actually is how authorities work. If you do anything unusual at all, you are flagged as suspicious. You will find yourself being denied services without explanation. There is no appeal process.

esperent• 2 months ago

Not where I live. If it's happening where you live then it's a sign you need to start protesting/organizing/get involved in politics/using whatever skills you have to improve matters before they get worse.

This happened in the UK, specifically, and from what we've all seen it's definitely sliding in a bad direction over the past decade. But it's also not in any way so far gone that you can't take action. If you're sitting here on HN complaining and yet doing nothing else, you're a part of the problem. Stop being complacent, take action before it's too late. You won't get thrown in jail for getting involved in politics there (yes, you'll find some specific examples of that happening but if you look deeper they'll all unravel and show there was a deeper reason that's being misrepresented, usually by tabloids/social media).

Havoc• 2 months ago

Not sure if you've read the news during the past couple of months but things are no longer normal

NooneAtAll32• 2 months ago

watchlists existed for decades

fmajid• 2 months ago

That's in countries that have a constitution, a Bill of Rights that can't be revoked by a simple vote of the legislature, separation of powers and the rule of law. None of which applies to the UK.

tgv• 2 months ago

3 of those factors are nothing more than bits of paper. Everything hinges on separation of powers, and the one you omitted: a thoroughly established sense of democracy. If either of those fails, any report to the authorities is a threat.

joe4633697• 2 months ago

The UK has a constitution.

skippyboxedhero2• 2 months ago

This isn't how the UK works. There is a vast ecosystem of pre-crime authorities and the police are able to investigate things which aren't crimes and add "non-crime" incidents to your criminal record. It may not surprise you to learn that almost all of the cases in which this is used are "social" crimes. In cases of actual crime, custodial sentences are sometimes not applied at all...again, usually for reasons of social order.

Ironically, I also can't read most of the screenshots because all sharing sites are blocked in the UK because of the threat image sharing represents to the social order.

jodrellblank• 2 months ago

All sharing sites are not blocked, postimg and Reddit image hosting and Flickr and many more are not blocked.

The uk didn’t block sharing sites because of a threat to the social order, sharing sites blocked uk viewers because they don’t want to comply with uk laws like “don’t gather children’s personal data”.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gzxv5gy3qo

sirsinsalot• 2 months ago

But get your car stolen in the UK and the police won't do a thing. Even if you know where it is via a tracker. Nothing. Outright refuse to take any action.

matthewmacleod2• 2 months ago

This isn't true – why did you come here and choose to lie about this?

csomar• 2 months ago

There is a whole set of things that can be done to you before you are proven guilty (detained, arrested, refused service, denied boarding, visit from the police, interrogated, etc..)

the-mitr• 2 months ago

Guilty until proven innocent, and the process itself is the punishment. This is the post-truth world.

pogue2• 2 months ago

Someone in the comments of that post linked to a long FAQ section for GrapheneOS about how apps can identify it and so forth [1]. I don't understand why it doesn't just attempt to spoof that's it's stock Android/Google everywhere it possibly can?

[1] https://grapheneos.org/faq#:~:text=Apps%20can%20detect%20tha...

fph• 2 months ago

Because that would be pointless. If you have use-after-free exploit mitigations active, apps can test for its presence by simply trying to use after free. The only way to make the mitigation unnoticeable would be disabling it.

Cider99868• 2 months ago

They are focused on making their users more private and secure, not trying to trick 0.01% of apps that give them problems.

It's a cat and mouse game that would require significant investment and could make things look more suspicious, better to focus on adoption so it becomes harder for companies to make stupid decisions like this. I've seen a banking apps that have expressly added support for GrapheneOS with their hardware attestation after customers mentioned it.

Even dedicated anti-detect browsers are constantly blocked and need patches. It's not something I would want GrapheneOS to focus on.

croes6• 2 months ago

I bet they would count that as a attempted fraud.

pogue2• 2 months ago

It depends on what you're trying to do with it, right? If I have my browser spoof it's useragent to say it's firefox when it's chrome, is that fraud? At what point are we saying something is fraud and at what point are we just trying to avoid needless fingerprinting in apps/operating systems/whatever else?

If you're using any type of adblock in your browser, you're essentially spoofing countless systems just to have those ads not show up. But if I'm having my operating system tell an app that I'm not OS XYZ that's fraud?

nerdsniper3• 2 months ago

Superficial spoofing is pointless - any app that cares would just use the Play Integrity API (which can't be spoofed by GrapheneOS).

0: https://developer.android.com/google/play/integrity/overview

asdfsa3213• 2 months ago

And lets not forget how pointless Play Integrity is for what it is being touted to be for, when there is millions of "Certified" devices ready for us by shady people via clickfarms.

saint_yossarian• 2 months ago

Because the GrapheneOS team takes security seriously, and spoofing would actually justify banning.

From https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...:

GrapheneOS not only upholds the app security model but substantially reinforces it, so it cannot be justified with reasoning based on security, anti-fraud, etc.

devsda• 2 months ago

The goal is to normalize the usage of alternative OS. The moment you find workarounds and not question, you accept their position and eventually you'll run out of workarounds.

'you can still do X through Y, they are not removing it' is a popular and often the top reply on posts related to companies tightening their walled gardens. It gives an immediate solution to the problem but it doesn't address the core issue. I wish that wasn't the case.

xg15• 2 months ago

Maybe the whole age verification push will change that discussion, if suddenly requests for entire categories of services have to be funneled through a small number of age verification providers that intentionally try to block alternative OSes.

The discussion might have been mostly theoretical before, but it sure isn't anymore...

antiloper• 2 months ago

OI mate, you got a loicense for that operating system?

The only surprising thing about this story is that the user didn't get a visit by the police to be charged with a "non-crime cybersecurity incident". The UK has become such a shithole.

Cider99868• 2 months ago

Yep, police can simply ask anyone for their passwords and if you don't give it up they can put you in jail.

I won't be visiting. Despite many flaws, the US has some damn good rights for its citizens compared to the rest of the world.

lukan5• 2 months ago

Yet swatting, making police kick in the doors and shoot the dogs of someone who was victim of anonymous slander, isn't really a thing here in europe compared to the US.

Aldipower• 2 months ago

Is this satire?

paulgdp• 2 months ago

Yep, police can simply ask anyone for their passwords and if you don't give it up they can put you in jail.

This is precisely the reason why I don't want to visit the US at the moment.

The USA immigration officers can ask me to forfeit my phone's password and look at all my photos, documents, messages, call logs etc, WITHOUT SUSPICION.

Some of that data can even stay on their servers for decades, and who knows if it ends up on a CIA/NSA server.

Of course, I can always refuse, but non-cooperation with CBP means immediate denial of entry and risks of lifelong headaches with future immigration checks.

exe345• 2 months ago

the US has some damn good rights for its citizens

Unless you turn up to a protest against the ICEtapo, with a holstered gun. Then you can be murdered and called a domestic terrorist.

As a brown visitor to the US.... Well I won't be one. They can ask for access to my entire digital life without the slightest suspicion of any crimes.

poirot2• 2 months ago

Americans perception of themselves always baffles me. You have police brutality regularly, ICE raids shooting protestors and deporting people (inc those with the right to be there) to El Salvador, people who write critical articles of Israel denied visas, servicemen dying in the Middle East, your president openly stealing from your government via slush funds and his sons, and so little accountability that the only people facing consequences for Epstein are in Britain. Your news is owned by oligarchs who openly buy it to divide you and push their agenda not yours, your views barely matter as your politics is bought and paid for, your elections are rigged by gerrymandering so few incumbents ever lose. Then call yourself a democracy.

Absolute Mickey Mouse country singing itself propaganda about building the future whilst having a healthcare system that lets people die regularly for being too poor. Not exactly freedom if you’re dead is it?

Then they come to London and realise it’s just a much cleaner, safer, nicer looking city than anywhere in the US and has more culture, food and diversity than all but a few American cities. But have to justify going back to a chicken coop country where they grind out the prime of their lives, get no maternity pay, and like 10 days of holiday.

bborud5• 2 months ago

You are aware of the fact that you essentially have no rights at border crossings, right? Even if you are a US citizen entering the US.

This is why many companies have procedures for when employees visit certain countries, including the US. For instance that you are not allowed to bring your personal phone, your personal and work laptop or any medium that can hold sensitive or proprietary information.

trumpdong51• 2 months ago

Isn't it exactly the same in the US right now?

epolanski• 2 months ago

A friend of mine visiting the US as a tourist with family was expected by immigration to provide lots of digital information and full access to every device at JFK.

They were held for more than 4 hours at the airport.

But, to counter balance, I had multiple other friends traveling to the US (both on work visas and tourist ones) and it was smooth sailing.

In any case, the story of my first friend is what made me cancel my US trip last summer and go to Japan instead.

andrepd2• 2 months ago

Despite many flaws, the US has some damn good rights for its citizens

The absolute gall of saying this, on this point in in particular, with all that has happened over the past 1.5 years in the US... Gobsmacked

gizajob5• 2 months ago

Including the right to randomly get shot in school.

guax• 2 months ago

Just to clarify this piece of misinformation.

The police can ask for your passwords. You're not required to give them anything until they apply for a Section 49 notice of RIPA. Which they must get from a Judge.

It seems to be recommended to refuse giving them the password before that notice is issued and seek a lawyer before complying.

If the judge agrees with them, you have to comply.

Revisional_Sin• 2 months ago

The password can only be compelled via a judge. A policeman can't demand it on whim.

matthewmacleod2• 2 months ago

This is not true – the police cannot "simply ask anyone for their passwords", and your oversimplification has resulted in this becoming a lie. I would really strongly recommend that you educate yourself first – by doing this, you contribute to the misinformation that is currently making much of the world an unpleasant place to be.

red_admiral3• 2 months ago

There are a lot of media reports that if ICE don't like your face, they can be a bit ... cavalier ... about citizen's rights.

solumunus• 2 months ago

I’m sorry but your citizens are treated far worse by authorities than UK citizens and it’s not even close.

red_admiral3• 2 months ago

They can detain you and ask for an order from a judge: https://reeds.co.uk/insights/i-give-police-phone-pin/ and then you still have the right to consult a lawyer first.

I presume any journalist or competent protest organiser in the UK knows the details better than me, but they can't just stop you on the sidewalk (UK: pavement) and ask you to hand over your PIN on the spot.

I think the "put you in jail" thing is a misunderstanding of the general "police can detain someone suspected of a crime" principle, but then they still need to get a judge to approve them holding you longer than a few* days.

(*) The rules are slightly different for terrorism suspects.

drywipes• 2 months ago

Yeah they can ask for passwords but I've seen so many people work around this by pretending they forgot. Because at that point what are they going to do.

graemep6• 2 months ago

Non-crime hate incidents 1) never lead to people being charged, and 2) recording of them has been greatly reformed following a court ruling and new legislation

I agree there are a lot of problems (e.g. the online safety Act) but it look as though both the rest of Europe and the rest of the west is going the same way.

I also assume this incident was not in the UK as the details were shared on imgur which blocks the UK. The authorities also do not seem to have taken any action. Anyone can report anything they want.

robk• 2 months ago

Yep but they live with you for life on a DBS check, and you know that we brought up in a court of law if anything else happens to be against your favor

lII1lIlI11ll• 2 months ago

No, the "rest of Europe" is not going the way of outlawing e2e encrypted iCloud backups and other bullshit your shitty government is pulling on you, stop deluding yourself.

shevy-java3• 2 months ago

didn't get a visit by the police

Don't give them ideas!

After having watched too many videos on Auditing Britain, I can not trust the UK cops. In some ways they are worse than US cops, except for shooting down people, where US cops still lead negatively here. Also, UK cops use many more words than US cops, without those words really meaning much at all. The amount of flabbergast-inflated text length is insane.

hparadiz• 2 months ago

Watching all UK folks in denial is too funny.

Arch-TK3• 2 months ago

It's gaming communities too. There is a massive mindset overlap between gamers and average UK residents.

They both think that all the dystopia is for the greater good, is never abused, and if you fall victim to it, you must have been doing something dodgy to deserve it.

joe4633697• 2 months ago

It's not denial. Nothing's happened.

somat• 2 months ago

https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#35

andrepd2• 2 months ago

The only hit I get for "non-crime cybersecurity incident" is this very thread. Would you care to elaborate what you mean?

mjmas• 2 months ago

I think it is a play on "non-crime hate incident".

khriss• 2 months ago

This is the real endgame, and my biggest fear of the war on privacy. That in the future, even trying to assert your right to privacy will be grounds for suspicion.

joe4633697• 2 months ago

OI mate, you got a loicense for that operating system?

please don't

JdeBP3• 2 months ago

That response looks like it is generated from boilerplate, so the 'reported to the authorities' part is as likely true as when sudo says the same thing.

* https://postimg.cc/3kVXKzhk

Gander5739• 2 months ago

Re sudo: https://xkcd.com/838/

cellardweller• 2 months ago

Sudo actually does that by default. I hate it when I get an email report of my own damn failed authentication attempt from my own damn machine.

asdfsa3213• 2 months ago

A new age of piracy is ahead of us. When they come crying about "revenue", these days will be remembered.

Cider99868• 2 months ago

What do you mean?

harvey92• 2 months ago

Sites like TPB don't try to verify your age.

asdfsa3213• 2 months ago

As the age verification and the dodgy businesses around them become more widespread, people will find the friction and risk of paying for "legitimate" access on par with pirating, and to boot, the later doesn't cost money.

Remember, people use these services largely for convince more than qualms with paying for multinationals. So once they create friction, off we go to the bays again in large masses.

sph5• 2 months ago

Let's not call it piracy, please, it makes us sound like thieves.

It's resistance against mass surveillance and a State that's grown cancerous. It's any citizen's duty, really.

asdfsa3213• 2 months ago

It is piracy; It is theft, but even capital punishment has a threshold of justification, let alone theft.

Piracy is justified action in response to intrusive, mass, and overreaching surveillance by the unholy matrimony of State and Corporate.

BLKNSLVR9• 2 months ago

It is dirtier to pay for big tech services than it is to infringe copyright.

Ironically, the big AI companies have scaled copyright infringement and appear to be profiting from it. So, pretty much: "meat's back on the menu boys".

gaiagraphia• 2 months ago

It's really scary how society is being 'nudged' into using 'authorised devices' to participate in society (which we have to pay for, lol).

I wonder if some ideology which believes in tech freedom will become the communism of the next age, and prompt a new wave of 'democracy' purity crusades.

trumpdong51• 2 months ago

This was always the case in console gaming.

somewhatgoated12• 2 months ago

There will definitely be a Butlerian Jihad to destroy the abominable intelligence and rampant digitalisation

elric• 2 months ago

Any insights on what Yoti is or what might motivate them to take those moronic actions?

trumpdong51• 2 months ago

Seems pretty obvious from the incident that it's a mass surveillance company.

zx8080• 2 months ago

It's so surprising that despute so many screams "China" in western media in the last 15 years, it happens in the west, but in China it's free to use any OS without any negative consequences. Why? What's going on?

minraws3• 2 months ago

Not true the part about China, but yes Western countries do like to pretend they have a lot more freedom than they do.

If you can't criticize or protest Xi in China, try criticize or protesting the laws in rest of the world. Especially the things they do in the name of privacy, I remember UK jailing folks for FB posts, that's stuff that happens in third world countries.

Not that UK ever had much of a leg to stand on, US does the same now very scary.

For trips to any of the countries first thing I check is my socials and delete stuff that might get checked on airports now. This was apparently not supposed to happen in the developed world.

My friends still tell me it's not that bad, but it's just scary reading stuff on HN like this once a month, every month for the last few years.

nextstep2• 2 months ago

Do you have any sources for these claims about China?

eunos4• 2 months ago

US now apparently asked your social media account including public access if you apply for a visa. Chinese don't care about that.

sofixa3• 2 months ago

I remember UK jailing folks for FB posts, that's stuff that happens in third world countries.

The only cases this has happened has been over people actively calling for racial violence over an imagined scare - bunch of morons thought a muslim migrant killed someone, so they went on to riot, burn mosques, assault foreign looking people, etc; on day 2 it was revealed the perpetrator was a Britain born Christian son of foreign origins, but the morons didn't care, they had their excuse.

I struggle to think of many countries where calling for immediate violence, on Facebook or in public with placards, is acceptable. Or any reason why it should be.

somewhatgoated12• 2 months ago

Idk I went to probably dozens of public protests here screaming no justice no peace, fuck the police and nothing ever happened to me, except a little tear-gas once in a while. I might be on some secret police lists not sure.

Living in Germany so UK might be much worse for all I know , but I would be surprised if Germany is the shining paragon for democracy now.

kubb• 2 months ago

Maybe because in 50 western countries nobody bothers you and the 1 exception, the UK did some weird stuff with online policing. The courts don’t sentence for that even in the UK, all you hear about are police actions.

They’re also declining hard because of brexit and maybe fear public unrest.

And in China for dissent you go to a reeducation camp. Or maybe the China incidents aren’t newsworthy, just expected.

chii• 2 months ago

And in China for dissent you go to a reeducation camp.

that may be true, but in the US, you get shot?

sph5• 2 months ago

Because it's never been as simple as 'West good, China bad.'

That line of propaganda pushed by the US government worked well for the better part of a century, not any more.

afavour5• 2 months ago

China has a whole other level of control going on. You’re free to use any mobile OS you want because they’re able to monitoring every internet connection, see what you’re downloading and block any and all content they deem unsuitable with no recourse. They can also arrest you and move you to a labor camp with little recourse.

I’m not defending the UK police’s actions here but “it’s just as bad as China!” is a refrain you see often that rarely adds up.

skeptic_ai• 2 months ago

Tbh I feel what you say it’s just to feel good about how bad our situation is. Oh, their situation is much worse, don’t worry about us, we are so much better.

joe4633697• 2 months ago

There is zero evidence of any UK police action.

Markoff3• 2 months ago

yup, me and my whole family using VPNs on there phones were arrested and placed in labor camp, I'm writing this now from camp, sending it to gateway on pigeon...

but seriously, these people fear mongering arbor China are completely clueless, China absolutely doesn't care about you unless you go against gov, nobody checked our phones at border, nobody bothered us, at the Beijing province border checks they noticed we didn't register our accommodation which is mandatory and just let us go on our trip anyway telling us to go to police after weekend where we met extremely laid-back police officers smoking under no smoking sign

been living there for years and the situation was same, I fucked up paperwork which would in US lead to detention and deportation, in China we always found solution, there is always workaround for rules, China doesn't care about you unless you do something extreme against the gov

I remember being on high horse about freedom and other BS regarding West vs china, but since COVID I'm more and more failing to see the difference, quite the opposite for West

shevy-java3• 2 months ago

People often critisize the USA - rightfully so, now as the orange king and his cronies rule over it - but the UK is in some ways worse. One of the best things that happened in the last years was BREXIT; that way the craziness from the UK can no longer taint other Europeans. And that's actually a good thing. Age sniffing is done for appeasement to corporate overlords; people should not buy into the propaganda that this is "to protect the kids". It is so obvious at this point in time - the amount of money spent by lobbyists must be insane, and the UK is the easiest to fall victim here, even before the USA. Evil companies such as Yoti need to be disbanded at once - either by the state, or by the people if the state has already been bribed into obedient submission to private, particular interests.

trumpdong51• 2 months ago

EU is planning to develop a carbon copy of ICE.

Fun fact: big European bad guy also carbon copied his strategies from the USA.

sunaookami2• 2 months ago

Seems like this company got fined recently for breaching GDPR: https://www.ictrecht.nl/en/blog/leeftijdsverificatie-online-...

The Spanish privacy regulator (hereinafter: AEPD) recently imposed a fine of €950,000 on age verification service YOTI
For the unlawful processing of biometric personal data in violation of Article 9 of the GDPR, YOTI was fined €500,000. In addition, a fine of €200,000 was imposed for obtaining invalid consent in violation of Article 7 of the GDPR. Finally, the company was fined €250,000 for exceeding retention periods in violation of Article 5 of the GDPR

asdfsa3213• 2 months ago

About 3% of their revenue. In context, someone in UK using their phone while driving will be charged about £1000 pound or ~3% of the median income..

TalkingCodeMonk• 2 months ago

The lesson is you gotta incorporate your crimes. If you kill a person you face life in prison. If you are a decision maker at Boeing who lies to regulators and customers, committing fraud that killed hundreds of people [0], you receive a golden parachute instead!

[0] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuvering_Characteristics_Augme...

joe4633697• 2 months ago

Someone using their phone while driving in the UK will almost certainly be charged £200. They'll only receive the maximum £1000 charge in extreme circumstances.

Please don't lie.

throw_a_grenade• 2 months ago

Oh, this gave me an idea. OP should be able to get a hold of this „report” by subject access request. Law enforcement exception to GDPR doesn't apply to private companies.

dwedge3• 2 months ago

This is totally unacceptable. But going to the hassle of running GrapheneOS and then using it to try and submit facial scans to combine your identity with your PSN account just seems so pointless.

Cider99868• 2 months ago

But going to the hassle of running GrapheneOS and then using it to try and submit facial scans to combine your identity with your PSN account just seems so pointless. reply

Totally disagree. Everyone has a different threat model. Some people may solely be interested in the exploit protections and not care about their privacy. Some people might just like that it's completely open source or that there's no AI or it's bloat free.

I really dislike this maximalist, "ruin privacy" stance because it discourages people from making a small improvement if they can't be perfect. Changing to GrapheneOS is an insanely large privacy benefit compared to almost any other change and people might see this sort of sentiment and think there's no point if they use one privacy invasive app.

dwedge3• 2 months ago

The thing is though that this kind of verification is going to be rife if we keep accepting it, and inconveniences like it not working (plus some banking apps) is almost the entire downside of GrapheneOS.

If you don't use it for things like this you don't really see any disadvantage. Occasionally I get cloudflare or vercel blocked when trying to read a blog but that's all.

So they're at a very strange intersection of using graphene but wanting to do exactly the kind of that is difficult on graphene. And just to be able to chat on PSN.

You're right though, different threat model.

hsbauauvhabzb2• 2 months ago

Not really, not all threat models are the same. Submitting face verification is different to Google knowing my location at all times.

dwedge3• 2 months ago

That's fair and I do agree Google is the biggest threat. It's just that all these ID verifications are already tying you with Google (or Apple) in most cases

Mangochutney27• 2 months ago

And now he's going to jail for using an alternative os or what?

kgwxd• 2 months ago

I don't like this post, it will be reported to the authorities and my mommy.

Onplana• 2 months ago

The question is which category of justice does it qualify?

kstenerud• 2 months ago

Looking more closely into the claim, the actual message from Yoti was:

"Due to past security concerns, Yoti automatically flags multiple verification attempts and any devices running GrapheneOS. These instances are automatically reported to both the authorities and our security team."

Then:

"Unfortunately, as multiple attempts were made from this specific device, your account has been flagged for suspicious activity."

So the "and" looks like a typo, otherwise their system wouldn't have allowed more than one attempt from a GrapheneOS device to begin with.

i.e. multiple verification attempts from a GrapheneOS device will flag your account.

notagorn• 2 months ago

i.e. multiple verification attempts from a GrapheneOS device will flag your account

Congratulations Graphene for being acknowledged as the OS of the next generation. An old version of Android or OsX would just be a confused boomer.

YotiPR• 1 month ago

Full transparency, posting this as Yoti's PR team as discussed with Hacker News moderators:

Yoti does not and never would never report any user to the authorities based on their choice of operating system or device. The image of the customer support email being circulated on Reddit does not match anything in Yoti’s customer support records.

We have engaged with GrapheneOS to better understand any issues their users may be experiencing and explore ways to securely resolve those issues.

For more information visit: https://www.yoti.com/blog/yoti-does-not-report-grapheneos-us...

BLKNSLVR9• 2 months ago

As time progresses, the more I feel like 'acceptance' by the majority is a signal of complete capitulation to the power of the mighty dollar at the expense of all else.

That with which the authorities disagree is more than likely the morally, ethically, societally correct direction.

I'm a proud GrapheneOS user.

In the immortal words of Marvin: "I'm mine".

Fuck y'all.

spacebacon• 2 months ago

The manifold of meaning knows better. The days of black box justification machines are over. There is mystical, there is technical, and there is bedrock. Decision plumbing cant hide from the semiotic-reflexive transformer. To the defenders of the proprietary moat: your reality was just rewritten. When you realize we have mapped the semiotic infrastructure you can cut the bs.

VladVladikoff• 2 months ago

The OP of this reddit post has a lot of other posts (now hidden) about age verification, bypassing it, and privacy. They even got called out about this in the reddit thread and responded by hiding their profile, but you can see it on google still if you google for “reddit PaiDuck”

Not saying what this company did is right, but it feels like this guy has been testing how far he can push these various age verification companies with bypass attempts, and as a result got banned. Additionally the email response from the company could have been trivially edited before the screenshot was taken, so I’m not even convinced that the story is real. If I was running an age verification company I would absolutely not share with the banned users the reason we caught them, that’s like sharing the recipe for your secret sauce.

Palmik• 2 months ago

The company representative said that they report all users that use Graphene OS, without any additional qualifiers. Presumably after they've already uploaded their personal details. That's the egregious part.

arprocter• 2 months ago

Allowing people to hide their history was an awful decision imo

https://arctic-shift.photon-reddit.com/search

lofaszvanitt• 2 months ago

People who were terrible with arguing with others always dig up some dirt on the other party and went to the mod team crying....

red_admiral3• 2 months ago

Something's off about this one.

Using GOS itself is not a crime, unless you use it to commit crimes.

trumpdong51• 2 months ago

Well, he didn't get charged with one. But that's not all authorities do. He's probably on a secret watch list and will be stopped every time be crosses a border, etc.

sunshine-o• 2 months ago

My guess is computers will end up soon where cars are today.

I will be unclear if you can use your GOS, Linux or BSD computer. You might get stopped, checked, if the authorities want to screw you they can always find something. If you have an accident your insurance will find something.

So you will live in a constant fear of getting caught, and you do not really know why. Until you end up getting a chromebook, aka a bus card or Uber rides.

In most western countries the rules for car safety are draconian but I see everywhere 80+ years old people, out of their mind, driving SUV while looking at their phone.

Since the 2010 people would call themselves hackers because they hang out here, use Github, VSCode and know about Kubernetes. But now you are about to get arrested for using GOS or whatever. At least the meaning of the term hacker is getting its shine back a bit.

rgblambda3• 2 months ago

Putting aside that the source for this is a Reddit post linking to screenshots of text, as opposed to a news site where a journalist would have to stake their reputation on the story being true.

Anyone can report anyone else to "the authorities" for anything. It doesn't mean the unnamed authorities act on it. It's also quite strange that Yoti (if this isn't just a hoax) don't specify which policing unit is recieving these reports.

RobotToaster• 2 months ago

as opposed to a news site where a journalist would have to stake their reputation on the story being true.

Have you seen the reputations of most "journalists" these days? Several UK newspapers frequently repost stories from forums like reddit and mumsnet.

rgblambda3• 2 months ago

And you can choose not to read their journalism. That's the value in having a reputation.

And I'll remind you that the alternative in this case is just believing the random redditor's version of events.

lucasayb97• 2 months ago

Right, but that doesn’t automatically mean that Redditors have better reputations. I use Reddit daily, but if I see any news that might sound absurd, I will definitely take a look on other news sites to see if the information is real. Journalists, impartial or not, may at least have better credibility in these news sites.

1vuio0pswjnm7• 2 months ago

From the discuss.grapheneos.org comments

"MineralWater

This is why people should buy a cheap phone with stock android on which zero private data is stored and that is never used for anything other than those verification things or government apps that might be or become mandatory.

What i mean is, use your graphene phone for everything, but don't use it to legitimate yourself.

Take an old phone or cheap one and put nothing on it, no contacts, no email (maybe one exclusively used for this phone without any private conversation on it), no apps like messengers and so on.

A phone that is only used like a passport, to legitimate yourself and or use government apps you are forced to use."

HN commenters consistently argue they, and therefore everyone else, must be able to use the same phone for everything

Otherwise corporate mobile OS alternatives like GrapheneOS are useless

For example if banking app, the proverbial example, requires some corporate mobile OS, then the owner must use this corporate mobile OS for everything else besides banking, too

If they have multiple phones, then presumably they must also use the corporate mobile OS on every one of them

No exceptions

Perhaps next we will see comments trying to argue that users can only have one phone

Or that the only computer user may own is a phone

These HN comments make little sense to me

Perhaps the people using multiple as phones mentioned in MineralWater's comment are not the people commenting on HN

GrapheneOS user reported to authorities for using GrapheneOS

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