TLDR: Drug dealers in Catalonia have started to adopt GrapheneOS en masse leading to Catalan police suspecting anyone with a Google Pixel is a drug dealer
Update, July 3, 2025 (11:45 AM ET): The crew behind GrapheneOS is understandably none too pleased about their good name being dragged through the mud, and members are speaking out about these reports from Spain. Over on X, the official GrapheneOS account posts:
European authoritarians and their enablers in the media are misrepresenting GrapheneOS and even Pixel phones as if they’re something for criminals. GrapheneOS is opposed to the mass surveillance police state these people want to impose on everyone.
Security is a tool, and can be wielded just as much for good as it can for bad. While some people may see this as an indictment, we’d say it’s more the inevitable consequence of GrapheneOS just being very, very good at what it does.
Yeah, when the media is wrong, GrapheneOS out here correcting the media!
Spain can get fucked. They hate tourists and air conditioning too.
Aaand don’t come back!
You clearly don’t live in a tourist heavy zone. Also the fact that you generalise what some locals in selected very tourist heavy cities are doing with the whole fucking country is very telling. We are better without you <3
You’re allowed to be as anti-tourist as you would like but don’t even dare say anything about migrants or else you’ll get hit with hate speech charges
Your Airbnb was someone’s home.
there’s nothing wrong with being anti-gentrification. don’t act like a tourist and you’ll be fine
Police are not the brightest in any society.
So I guess somebody needs to tell them that they need to focus their efforts a little better if their current plan is ‘anyone with a Google Pixel is a drug dealer’.
Can I suggest they start with the people with drugs, rather than the people with the – not uncommon - google phones in their search for drug dealers?
Police are not the brightest in any society.
It’s a literal job requirement. If you’re smart, you’re not going to blindly follow orders. Police cognitive testing literally discards candidates that perform well in intellectual tasks. This is not a conspiracy or a joke, it’s how police works.
How it used to be old GSM phones like those from Nokia that were then the thing for the underworld.
Can confirm. Own pixel, deal drugs.
But do you live in Catalonia?
Glances at my new Pixel, Welp, I guess I ain’t ever goin’ to Catalonia. Not that I was planning to go there anyway.
***Tinfoil conspiracy: Maybe this a scare tactic to keep the British out of Spain.
Install Graphene
Installing Graphene doesn’t lessen the danger of your Pixel bursting into flames because of the old and dangerous batteries.
Maybe it helps
become a dealer
First install GrapheneOS, then become a dealer. You’re welcome.
Reminds me of when the US tried to fight “terror” by kidnapping people and shoving them in Gitmo because they were wearing Casio watches, which is apparently a brand favoured by terrorists.
There was a guide to craft a timed bomb with the f-91w and other common materials. Uploaded by the terrorists. It worked
Guess they’re gonna throw my kid into Gitmo then…
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.
OK. Owing an iPhone or Samsung also isn’t a sign of innocence, it’s just a phone, just like a Pixel. There may be a higher incidence of people owning Pixels being drug dealers/traffickers, but there’s also likely a lot of people who have them who aren’t drug dealers/traffickers, so that fact isn’t useful as evidence.
You’re getting it the wrong way around. People aren’t arrested for the phone they have. This is a complete nonsense by a clickbait article. They are arrested based on observation or intelligence of criminal activity. After the fact, when they are arrested they are found to have one of these phones flashed to use a privacy OS. Do you think such a phone convinces the cops they got the wrong person or not? The answer quite obviously is it convinces the cops this person is a criminal and is attempting to hide what they are up to.
It would be absurd to think cops are staring at people’s phones to initiate arrests because they are not.
Whether it convinces the cops isn’t nearly as important as whether it convinces a judge/jury. I highly doubt “suspect’s phone is too hard to break into” would sway a jury to believe they’re a drug dealer.
Cops need to do a proper investigation and prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The type of phone someone has shouldn’t significantly impact any of that, though having a phone they can break into may make that investigation easier.
Why would they need a “sign of innocence”?
This is not hard to understand.
Having a phone installed with an OS favoured by criminals doesn’t exculpate a person arrested for criminal activity, or make the cops think they’re innocent.
Sure, but it’s also not evidence of wrongdoing. What phone you choose or what OS you run on it isn’t evidence of anything.
Solid cop logic. Of the exact level you’d expect.
This is the best recommendation for a phone I’ve seen yet.
Thanks catalonian police
Be wary since as of Android 16, Google no longer provides device source for Pixel phones.
I’ll keep in mind thanks
The grapheneOS team still got an android 16 release out relatively quickly
Because no new Pixel has come out yet, so they were likely able to adapt the A15 code. Once the Pixel 10 series comes out, it will be more difficult.
Google is still required to publish kernel sources, some of the higher level android code might be tricky but I’m not sure if the GOS team have said anything yet.
I’m not talking about kernel sources, but the Android device sources, which are separate.
AOSP is still open source, it’s just the source code is no longer released continuously and the reference device has changed from the pixels to a virtual device.
This is a weird advertisement, but I kind of want grapheneOS now.
Been on it for ~2 years and never going back, fuck Google, fuck the government.
I’ve also been using it for like 2 years but I really want the hardware of something like the Fairphone. A fairphone or something similar with Graphene would be amazing
The Graphene OS people have always been talking about how they eventually intend to develop their own hardware. So, possibly they will make something good eventually.
Not develop their own hardware, but contract an established manufacturer to do it for them. Which is good, they have no business doing hardware!
Would be sick. If they also make it open enough to try out mobile Linux, I’d totally buy it and try to transition (esp. if it can dual boot).
Epic
You can technically put GrapheneOS on a Fairphone, but it’s not officially supported.
Long term, the GOS team is looking to branch off from their reliance on Pixels.
Well you still bought a Google phone
True, with the intention of installing Graphene OS on it. No other options.
They’re easy to get used!
Strange that google is the only option for the only “secure” operating system.
Hey, do you know what is Ring Level minus One ?Strange that google is the only option for the only “secure” operating system.
The have their reasons: https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
Hey, do you know what is Ring Level minus One ?
I know you’re only trolling here and I’m feeding into it, but you nerd sniped me just right to explain why your question is stupid on multiple fronts.
First of all, “Ring -1” is the hypervisor, at least on virtualization-capable devices (which modern Pixels are), and the hypervisor will be Linux’s KVM in this case, which is open source and compiled by the Graphene team as part of the kernel from source.
Secondly, Arm (which is the architecture basically all phone chips use, including Pixels) has a slightly different model of security, where apps are Exception Level 0, the OS is EL1, the hypervisor is EL2, and the “secure monitor” (or management firmware) is EL3 (and is probably what you were trying to refer to).
So yeah, I don’t think you know what “Ring -1” is. At least not enough to warrant a snarky comment.
“-1” is not just hypervisors, things like Intel Management and AMD Platform Security Processor can peer into system memory. I have no doubt similar system exist on ARM, I suspect the radio transceiver can also read system memory and read secrets out of the security devices.
I don’t think modern phones are trustable devices. They are opaque blackboxes, pretending to have high security but this security only really protects the spyware operators from being notices.
I don’t think it’s coincidence that the most “secure” and “private” operating system only operates on a very narrow model selection of phones from just one manufacturer. Probably because they have the best technology to keep the inherent backdoor invisible and implausible. A backdoor to a system nobody trusts wouldn’t be very useful.
The original post is about how it’s so secure the piggies can’t get in. Unless the super secret backdoor is only for the shadow government to disappear dissidents with no trace, thus keeping their super secret backdoor secret.
I have an iPhone since the first one and I wanna try it to.
Shameless plug for SwapMyOS
Been on it for about 19 months now, it’s what Android should be.
Feds??? WTF!
Isn’t it likely the police is kind of right?
I mean, how many people in that community used grapheneos phones before the drug dealers figured out how good they were for their purposes? So in that community, it’s indeed very likely that a grapheneos user is in a drug gang.
Does that mean that grapheneos is an issue, or bad? Not at all. But i see a lot of digs at the police here at how dumb they are. But if literally most grapheneos users there are drug dealers, is it dumb? It’s just a plain observation that’s pretty correct.
And it’s kind of logical that proper open source tools that are not full of spyware are better for also such purposes. Doesn’t make these tools a problem. If a politician would now start a crusade against such operating systems, that i would agree is dumb.
But i don’t see an issue with police somewhere realizing that drugdealers use a specific tool, and focusing on that. Of course sucks for the couple of regular users there that just do it to have control over their device…
That really depends on what they do with that information. If people get arrested for having a pixel, that’s a huge issue. If someone merely gets a closer investigation if they’re suspected of another crime, that’s fine.
The article is light on details.
I think most of the criticism towards police is because they are discriminating based on Google Pixels, which is a completely normal car that you can install GrapheneOS on. It would be like targeting anyone driving a Kia because of the Kia Boys
Pixel has a market share of 1.5%, so they kind of stand out. Also, there is no such thing as “federales” in Spain. Spain is not a federation. If they are talking about National Police or Guardia civil, they go through a pretty hard entrance exam, and then have a minimum of one year instruction. Executive ranks must have a university degree. Generally reasonably competent. Mossos (regional) and local police are another story. They are quite a bit less competent.
Hey, the security is nice, but I really like the detailed control over notifications, GMS prompts, and network access. When I used PixelOS, my phone did things I didn’t want it to, and it was hard or impossible to make it stop. On GrapheneOS, the defaults are a pretty good experience. I even recommend it to non-techies since they can use it with the Google apps and its still a more respectful experience, even if they don’t need or want the level of control that I like.
TL; DR-- There are many good reasons for regular people to prefer GrapheneOS
I wouldn’t exactly call the people that run a non-stock OS “normal”
Sure, but they’re also not especially likely to be a drug dealer. I’m a GrapheneOS user and bought the Pixel specifically for it, and I’ve never done drugs in my life, much less traffic in them.
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?
It does, but a lot of people but the pixels specifically to put graphene on it because graphene they’re compatible and graphene offers better privacy and security. What I’m getting here is drug dealers are using graphene to dodge digital narcs and it’s becoming common enough that the Venn diagram skews heavily to drug dealing.
I mean yeah, I’d say 250k is a lot for a 3rd party phone OS.
The experience speaks for itself. I dont know of anyone who’s ever willingly gone back to stock android either.
Yes. Cops are idiots. Duh.
You can buy them with either stock Android, or Graphene. Meaning you don’t need to re flash the device or anything.
You cant buy grapheneos preloaded on anything and doing so would be pretty foolish since it could be backdoored. GraphenOS is aimed at people who value security and privacy, you dont let some rando flash your phone if you value those things.
You absolutely can, just not from the manufacturer. But I agree that it’s dumb, installation is easy and doesn’t come with the added risk of the seller putting on some spyware or whatever.
I think this is incorrect but I could be wrong.
You can not buy a Pixel device preloaded with GrapheneOS. They only come from Google with their standard Android and it’s up to the end user to install GrapheneOS. Unless you buy a used Pixel device with GrapheneOS already installed.
Hmm, you used to be able to buy them directly from Google, but that doesn’t seem to be the case any more.
Umm… I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think you could ever buy a phone from Google with GrapheneOS.
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Yeah I’d consider that as a used phone. I’d only get the hardware from the OEM and install GrapheneOS myself. Less chance of man in the middle. It’s super easy to install using the web installer.
If friends asked I would flash their pixel with Graphene, then set it up basically as they would use it for them.
Getting started was complex, your average user won’t have a good experience getting their apps added without a power user helping.
I would like to install it someday but I’m afraid of this process
Its really not too complicated. Id recommend doing it using a other phone as the installer rather than a PC though, just goes smoother IMO. Very straightforward web installer, just push buttons alongside the instructions.
What’s the complex part?
Technically if something goes wrong you will need help and need to find answers on your own. If you are confident using duckduckgo searches to find answers for technical problems already you should be fine, and most likely won’t even need support at all.
