[Lariscus]

This looks hugely blown out of proportion. The project founder has a well documented history of what I would consider a persecution complex. Once again he has provided no substantial evidence. The only thing they provided are some, admittedly borderline libelous, news articles. Unless they provide some more concrete information about these supposed attempts of getting a backdoor installed into the system, I will consider this as just another day of GrapheneOS drama.

[concinds]

The evidence is not "news articles", but the contents of those articles where a high-ranking prosecutor threatened to go after GrapheneOS "if they don't cooperate with the law".

No matter your feelings about the creator, I think this was entirely the rational choice.

France is pro-Chat Control. For about a year now there's been an anti-drug trafficking fervor among legislators and government, in which they've pushed for encryption backdoors (separate from Chat Control at the EU level) and recently threatened GrapheneOS. The country is politically unstable so future politics are hard to predict, but anti-encryption politicians stand a good chance of winning the next election. Any rational project would move out.

[0x1ch]

Didn't France intercept Telegram's CEO to force him to backdoor the app while in country?

Yes. Yes they did.

[Lariscus]

I don't disagree about leaving France over their position on chat control or legislation.

I disagree about them essentially spreading misinformation about what actually happened. One prosecutor, that probably doesn't even know what GrapheneOS is, making boisterous claims to the press, is not the same as being contacted by the state about adding a backdoors.

[aunty_helen]

Don’t you need that sort of paranoia to go out and create a privacy focused mobile OS?

[cladopa]

It is not called "paranoia" if it is real that they are coming after you.

Have you not seen what happened to Telegram CEO?

[jjgreen]

A world-weary cynicism suffices.

[gruez]

>The project founder has a well documented history of what I would consider a persecution complex.

Source?

[richbell]

One highly publicized incident was https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivacyGuides/comments/13s7mv3/why_...

[ls612]

When you are in this business it's better to be safe than Pavel Durov.

[sunshine-o]

What happened to the founder of Telegram should be enough to discourage any of them to travel in France.

Especially since I guess they do not have the same kind of money and influence to fight it back.

[rgblambda]

A European Arrest Warrant would make the entire EU off limits. Which makes me think they haven't thought this through and are just overreacting, as many on this thread suspect.

If the GrapheneOS maintainers were being advised by a lawyer, they'd surely know that if French Authorities wanted them arrested and they were standing on a street corner in Stockholm, they could just as easily be picked up by police as if they were in a café in Paris. Making the whole France travel ban just a load of theatrics.

[yownie]

I did a deep dive and Daniel Micay stepped down as lead dev back in 2023 FYI.

[dijit]

I mean, maybe?

Multiple accounts have said the same thing in this thread, and I'll be honest here: given the Jia Tan situation, it could be true (in the way that he's being pushed by external forces). It could it be character assassination... Or it could be totally valid: idk.

But what I do know is that nobody is providing any citations.

I also know that progress depends on the tyranny of unreasonable people.