You may have seen the recent news about the activist re-entering the US. He was asked to hand over his phone for investigation, and gave the agent his duress pin. When the agent entered his duress pin, the phone irreversibly encrypted all its data. He’s now being charged for destroying evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s already a common sentiment among law enforcement that anyone using GrapheneOS must be up to no good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is absolutely no denying that GrapheneOS is the most secure and private mobile OS out there. But is it too effective for its own good? No-one can break into it. Greedy governments don’t like that one bit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m struggling to articulate my exact thoughts on this, but I’ll try my best: Imagine me, a normal guy with a bit too much knowledge to comfortable with all the data collection going on in relation to smartphones. My phone is used for random web browsing, watching Youtube, reading emails, messaging my family and taking the occasional family photo. In my concern I sell my normal smartphone, buy a Pixel and install GrapheneOS. I have to make a few compromises but I can manage. By using GrapheneOS have I just put a target on my own head? Will having this OS installed raise suspicion towards me?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m not an activist, a reporter, a high ranking official nor is there anything on my phone that I’d be bothered if an officer with a warrant found. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don’t want this to sound like I’m selling out, but at the end of the day I’m just a tech enthusiast. I date back to the early Android custom ROM days. I enjoy learning new things. I enjoy finding alternative software and I especially like open source projects. What I don’t like is the thought of becoming a suspect just because of a hobby. Everyone always says “define your threat model”, and I never could. My threat model is the same as every other ordinary person; I don’t want to come into financial loss through having my phone hacked or stolen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I actually feel like a bit of an imposter. Have I been “LARPing” as someone who needs extreme privacy and security all this time? At the core of it I’m just a geek who likes to try different phones and test their limits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What does this mean then? I already made the decision to stop using GrapheneOS. Regardless of whether using it could put me at risk or not, I recognise that I don’t have any legitimate need for that level of security. With that I think it’s about time I found a new hobby. Smartphones aren’t just a bit of fun anymore, they’re a tool to interface with the modern world. Governments and big corporations have got involved and locked them down and made them a defacto form of ID. I think it’s time that I just accepted that, and begin treating my phone as a device that isn’t private.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You may have seen the recent news about the activist re-entering the US. He was asked to hand over his phone for investigation, and gave the agent his duress pin. When the agent entered his duress pin, the phone irreversibly encrypted all its data. He’s now being charged for destroying evidence. It’s already a common […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-phones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sm1th.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sm1th.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sm1th.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sm1th.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sm1th.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sm1th.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":451,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sm1th.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450\/revisions\/451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sm1th.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sm1th.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sm1th.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}