Sending e-mail via a possibly sanctioned entity
Sending e-mail via a possibly sanctioned entity
Posted Nov 12, 2025 17:08 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341)In reply to: Sending e-mail via a possibly sanctioned entity by malmedal
Parent article: Debian to require Rust as of May 2026
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.
Posted Nov 12, 2025 17:10 UTC (Wed)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link]
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.
Posted Nov 12, 2025 19:28 UTC (Wed)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link]
Along those lines, the Iranian revolution in the late 70s was famously seeded via already-ubiquitous cassette tapes of Khomeni's speeches.
Posted Nov 13, 2025 10:11 UTC (Thu)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link] (1 responses)
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.
Posted Nov 13, 2025 11:54 UTC (Thu)
by malmedal (subscriber, #56172)
[Link]
Sending e-mail via a possibly sanctioned entity
Sending e-mail via a possibly sanctioned entity
Sending e-mail via a possibly sanctioned entity
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.
Sending e-mail via a possibly sanctioned entity
Sending e-mail via a possibly sanctioned entity