this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2026
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Privacy

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If you're not familiar with the LEGO scandal, the tl;dw is that this YouTuber Reckless Ben (Ben Schneider) has been investigating a stolen set of LEGO worth ~$100-200k (depending on who you ask) and the local police dept and criminal justice system has been colluding with the criminals (all members of the local Mormon church) to get him to STFU. The long version is, very long. You can check his channel for more.

Previously the local police dept managed to get a warrant to raid Ben's rental home with guns drawn and arrest him, based on what is clearly fabricated evidence. Here they appear to have done it again to get access to his Google account.

The linked video is mirrored on Peertube and timestamped to the relevant section.

Ben does also provide a copy of the subpoena in the video but I cannot vouch for its' validity, and he has used placeholder evidence before, but that's neither here nor there.

Anyway, the part that was relevant to this community was that in the course of their investigation they subpoenaed Google, and Google handed over basically his entire life to them. I'm sure this was very useful in their investigation.

I don't necessarily blame Google here for complying with a subpoena, but the moral of the story is to stop giving Google your data, because everything you say and do can and will be used against you in a court of law, with or without legitimate justification, and the more stuff you give them, the more ammunition you're providing the prosecutor.

This is also not exclusive to Google. Anything not local, self-hosted or encrypted a la Proton can be subpoenaed and the provider will have to comply. It just so happens that Google probably has more information about literally everyone in the world than any other particular entity.

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[–] Kyouki@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Yeah never made sense to me either, its the only device they support. Other options are /e/os and lineage is from my knowledge on other limited device options.

[–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 hour ago

It looks like onnos comments haven’t been populated in the modlog yet so I might be way off on the context but here’s some possibly useful information: the reason graphene is pixel only is because the hardware was originally intended as a reference implementation of an Android handset. It’s incredibly well documented by design and intention with none of the abstracted away components, functions and interfaces that almost everything else is filled with.

Pixels also have relockable bootloaders, which most people don’t care about because for their purposes (installing some custom rom) it only needs to be unlockable, and that means you can generally rely on their security if someone else gets their hands on your phone because the bootloader is locked after installing graphene.

Graphene is a security and privacy focused project.

If all you want is not to have the google apps then graphene isn’t really pointed at you. If you feel it’s more important to have not paid money to a company you don’t trust than it is to be private and secure, graphene isn’t pointed at you. That’s not a judgement, just the reality.

[–] robear@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

CalyxOS is back too and also supports older hardware than Graphene.

[–] non_burglar@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm not seeing much of a difference between the two, it's basically the same list.

[–] robear@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Graphene doesn't support Pixels older than the 6.

[–] non_burglar@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yeah, but updates only until the end of 2026, so no really a good option.

Plus, it's still mostly a list of Pixel phones.