Sending e-mail via a possibly sanctioned entity

Posted Nov 12, 2025 13:12 UTC (Wed) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172)
In reply to: Sending e-mail via a possibly sanctioned entity by paulj
Parent article: Debian to require Rust as of May 2026

> This is NOT an unrealistic

It's unrealistic to the point where it looks like a parody. Is it intended as one?

Phones are widely available in almost all countries, it is rarely a hard to get item. In a country where they are hard to get, North Korea, they have implemented some kind of authorization scheme so only government provided phones can actually connect to the network, an activist firing up your graphene os phone will be arrested immediately.

(I believe they do have provisions for tourists calling abroad, but an activist trying this will be noticed and arrested)

Sending e-mail via a possibly sanctioned entity

Posted Nov 12, 2025 17:08 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (5 responses)

"It's so unrealistic it's a parody!"...

1. proceeds to give an example of a country where phone purchases generally are restricted as described
2. fails to spot that my comment says "You lack the resources to obtain such a phone", so either I have to send you money somehow (anonymously) or I have to send a phone.
3. I may also be in the same restrictive regime, I just happen to have the resources to be buy the item.
4. There may be numerous other types of items useful to activism that one may wish to purchase for oneself or others anonymously.

If your argument really is that activists never need to buy anything that may be sensitive, where anonymity is desirable, then it is your argument that is parody.

Sending e-mail via a possibly sanctioned entity

Posted Nov 12, 2025 17:10 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Also, even if one lives in a country where phone purchases are not of themselves restricted, it may still be desirable to not leave a record for the tech-surveillance panopticon that you purchased a very particular model of phone capable of running a more secure OS.

Sending e-mail via a possibly sanctioned entity

Posted Nov 12, 2025 19:02 UTC (Wed) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172) [Link] (3 responses)

> "It's so unrealistic it's a parody!"...

> 1. proceeds to give an example of a country where phone purchases generally are restricted as described

No, I'm pointing out that anybody trying to use your OS if likely to be arrested very quickly. The phone will need to authenticate itself to the network in order to prove that it is indeed an approved phone with the correct spyware installed.

> 2. fails to spot that my comment says "You lack the resources to obtain such a phone",

No, I'm saying that phones are ubiquitous, access to one is not a limitation and I'm saying that getting a Graphene OS phone is not going to help if you are physically in a dictatorship.

What activists need to do is to make their electronic signature as innocent as possible. One common tactic is to post coded messages to a popular forum that also used by normal people.

With your solution, as soon as the police finds the first activist with with a Graphene device, they will know what the traffic looks like and can use that that simply the search for the rest.

Sending e-mail via a possibly sanctioned entity

Posted Nov 12, 2025 19:28 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> What activists need to do is to make their electronic signature as innocent as possible. One common tactic is to post coded messages to a popular forum that also used by normal people.

Along those lines, the Iranian revolution in the late 70s was famously seeded via already-ubiquitous cassette tapes of Khomeni's speeches.

Sending e-mail via a possibly sanctioned entity

Posted Nov 13, 2025 10:11 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (1 responses)

The key to this is that "innocent until proven guilty" is an artefact of liberal societies. If you're in an illiberal society of some form, once you've been identified as a troublemaker, you will be found guilty of something; if necessary, police will plant or forge evidence to show that you've been involved with something society at large considers abhorrent.

Thus, your goal is to not do anything that would give the police a reason to look at you; you're reliant on the fact that there's more citizens than police, and thus they cannot monitor everyone in depth. The moment you do something that marks you out as "odd", you're either fully compliant with the regime (just slightly weird - maybe you like brandy more than vodka), or you're marked out as a troublemaker and they will find a way to get you.

Sending e-mail via a possibly sanctioned entity

Posted Nov 13, 2025 11:54 UTC (Thu) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172) [Link]

Arresting innocents is a common tactic yes. I forget the name, but a Soviet dissident recounted a conversation that went like "how long are you in for?" "Fifteen years" "what for?" "Nothing at all" "you're lying, nothing at all is ten years"