Can confirm. Own pixel, deal drugs.
This is the best recommendation for a phone I've seen yet.
Thanks catalonian police
Sounds like a good recommendation.
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
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?
You can buy them with either stock Android, or Graphene. Meaning you don't need to re flash the device or anything.
TLDR: Drug dealers in Catalonia have started to adopt GrapheneOS
Gonna guess that's probably a lie.
Why?
I don't doubt the claim, but I would imagine others do because there's a relatively minor technical skill hurdle on replacing a phone's operating system which would turn most people away.
I never used a Pixel or Graphene OS, but when I installed Lineage OS on a Redmi, Xiaomi made me wait a week to unlock the bootloader. Huge pain in the ass.
Or there might be a better "drug-dealer-friendly" OS. I only know of Lineage and Graphene as open source alternatives, so I could just be speculating.
Also, all my former drug dealers used WhatsApp on the stock vendor OS. But then again... I live in South Africa, so the police are more focused on violent crimes (both enforcement and perpetration)
You can unlock the bootloader on a Pixel in about a minute.
I can understand some people finding the whole process a bit daunting, but it's not actually that difficult with Graphene.
Yup, whole process is something like 15 min. It's really not an issue whatsoever.
Spain can get fucked. They hate tourists and air conditioning too.
Spain? Federal? Must be the victim of that American “education”.
Congratulations at finding the most unimportant part of this post and wasting your time by typing out a useless post and clicking "enter"
The cops quite obviously don't think owning a Pixel makes somebody a drug dealer. But if they arrest or detain a suspect then owning a Pixel flashed with GrapheneOS isnt exactly a sign of innocence. Even if nothing could be extracted from the phone, I'm sure a judge and jury could be convinced what they were doing if they have such a device in their possession.
Also, regardless of the security the OS claims to have, most criminals are not the brightest and I bet some can be squeezed to hand over the key or the phone can be unlocked with a face id or fingerprint. It also motivates the cops to do what they've done in the past where they have compromised supposedly secure operating systems or apps and installed backdoors.
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