There's a major state sponsored misinformation and smear campaign...
GrapheneOS@GrapheneOS
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Nov 02, 2026
~3 min read
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There's a major state sponsored misinformation and smear campaign towards GrapheneOS in the Netherlands and Germany. The misinformation campaign includes unsubstantiated security claims not holding up to scrutiny to scare people away from it. They're also heavily misrepresenting who uses it overall.
These smear campaigns conflate GrapheneOS with forks and modifications of it sold by shady companies. Those usually include a device management app to remotely manage the devices of their customers as if they're employees. These are largely not GrapheneOS devices or have preinstalled malware apps.
A common tactic being used in these smear campaigns is to make unsubstantiated and outright false claims about the capabilities of forensic data extraction tools. They misrepresent how they get into devices. They want to scare people into using far less secure devices which are easier to exploit.
France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands are becoming increasingly authoritarian surveillance states with an ongoing crackdown against privacy. It's happening throughout the whole EU and it's likely both secure devices and end-to-end encryption without backdoors are going to end up outlawed.
There are a bunch of companies based in the EU selling phones with drastically worse privacy and security than an iPhone including Jolla, Volla, Murena and iodé. These products are effectively backdoored by not providing standard privacy and security patches/protections while misleading users.
France and other EU countries are actively cracking down on legitimate privacy and security projects while supporting unsafe products within their control. These products make it far easier to remotely exploit devices and also to bypass encryption to extract data. They're phony privacy products.
Each of the companies we've listed have participated in the misinformation and smear campaigns against GrapheneOS. Jolla spent years working closely with Putin's regime. Volla, Murena and iodé are building an EU Play Integrity API. None provides the crucial standard privacy patches/protections.
Murena is directly assisting with state anti-privacy campaigns smearing highly private and secure devices as mainly benefiting criminals. They've repeatedly falsely claimed GrapheneOS is mainly used by criminals. Here are 2 of many examples:
clubic.com/actualite-6047…
GrapheneOS, end-to-end encrypted messaging apps, Monero and other projects are being targeted with state and corporate propaganda and anti-privacy laws. Meanwhile, the same governments heavily fund and support phony privacy projects clearly downgrading privacy and security compared to an iPhone.
GrapheneOS is only an initial target for these state actors and their sycophants in corporate news organizations. Apple heavily works on protecting users against exploits too. It would be much harder to convince the public that an iPhone is for criminals so they're starting with open source.
These smear campaigns conflate GrapheneOS with forks and modifications of it sold by shady companies. Those usually include a device management app to remotely manage the devices of their customers as if they're employees. These are largely not GrapheneOS devices or have preinstalled malware apps.
A common tactic being used in these smear campaigns is to make unsubstantiated and outright false claims about the capabilities of forensic data extraction tools. They misrepresent how they get into devices. They want to scare people into using far less secure devices which are easier to exploit.
France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands are becoming increasingly authoritarian surveillance states with an ongoing crackdown against privacy. It's happening throughout the whole EU and it's likely both secure devices and end-to-end encryption without backdoors are going to end up outlawed.
There are a bunch of companies based in the EU selling phones with drastically worse privacy and security than an iPhone including Jolla, Volla, Murena and iodé. These products are effectively backdoored by not providing standard privacy and security patches/protections while misleading users.
France and other EU countries are actively cracking down on legitimate privacy and security projects while supporting unsafe products within their control. These products make it far easier to remotely exploit devices and also to bypass encryption to extract data. They're phony privacy products.
Each of the companies we've listed have participated in the misinformation and smear campaigns against GrapheneOS. Jolla spent years working closely with Putin's regime. Volla, Murena and iodé are building an EU Play Integrity API. None provides the crucial standard privacy patches/protections.
Murena is directly assisting with state anti-privacy campaigns smearing highly private and secure devices as mainly benefiting criminals. They've repeatedly falsely claimed GrapheneOS is mainly used by criminals. Here are 2 of many examples:
clubic.com/actualite-6047…
GrapheneOS, end-to-end encrypted messaging apps, Monero and other projects are being targeted with state and corporate propaganda and anti-privacy laws. Meanwhile, the same governments heavily fund and support phony privacy projects clearly downgrading privacy and security compared to an iPhone.
GrapheneOS is only an initial target for these state actors and their sycophants in corporate news organizations. Apple heavily works on protecting users against exploits too. It would be much harder to convince the public that an iPhone is for criminals so they're starting with open source.
GrapheneOS@GrapheneOS
Gaël Duval is the founder and president of the /e/ foundation along with the CEO of Murena. Duval and his organizations have consistently taken a stance against protecting users from exploits. In this video, he once again claims protecting against exploits is for only useful pedophiles and spies.
Translation to English:
> There's the attack surface, on that front we're not security specialists here, so I couldn't answer you precisely, but from the discussions I've had, it seems that everything we do reduces attack surface. However, we don't have a "hardened security" approach, we aren't developing a phone for pedo(censored) so they can evade justice. So there aren't difficult things to check if the memory is corrupted, really hardened security stuff that could clearly be useful for executives, in the secret service, or whatever. That's not our goal, our goal is to start from an observation: today our personal data is constantly being plundered and that wouldn't be legal in real life with the mail or the telephone, we want to change that. So we are making you a product that changes that by default for anyone.
Transcription in French:
> Il y a la surface d'attaque, là pour le coup on est pas des spécialistes de la sécurité, donc je ne pourrais pas te répondre avec précision, mais des discussions que j'ai eu, il semblerait que tout ce qu'on fait, ça réduit la surface d'attaque. Donc oui, probablement ça aide. Par contre, on a pas une approche "sécurité durcie", on développe pas un téléphone pour les pédo(bip) pour qu'ils puissent échapper à la justice. Donc il y a pas des trucs pas possibles pour voir si la mémoire est pas corrompue, des trucs de sécu vraiment durcis qui pourraient être utiles clairement pour des dirigeants, dans les services secrets ou que sais-je. C'est pas notre but, notre but c'est de partir d'un constat, aujourd'hui nos données personnelles sont pillées en permanence et ça serait pas légal dans la vraie vie avec le courrier ou le téléphone, on veut changer ça. Donc on vous fait un produit qui change ça par défaut pour n'importe quelle personne.
Translation to English:
> There's the attack surface, on that front we're not security specialists here, so I couldn't answer you precisely, but from the discussions I've had, it seems that everything we do reduces attack surface. However, we don't have a "hardened security" approach, we aren't developing a phone for pedo(censored) so they can evade justice. So there aren't difficult things to check if the memory is corrupted, really hardened security stuff that could clearly be useful for executives, in the secret service, or whatever. That's not our goal, our goal is to start from an observation: today our personal data is constantly being plundered and that wouldn't be legal in real life with the mail or the telephone, we want to change that. So we are making you a product that changes that by default for anyone.
Transcription in French:
> Il y a la surface d'attaque, là pour le coup on est pas des spécialistes de la sécurité, donc je ne pourrais pas te répondre avec précision, mais des discussions que j'ai eu, il semblerait que tout ce qu'on fait, ça réduit la surface d'attaque. Donc oui, probablement ça aide. Par contre, on a pas une approche "sécurité durcie", on développe pas un téléphone pour les pédo(bip) pour qu'ils puissent échapper à la justice. Donc il y a pas des trucs pas possibles pour voir si la mémoire est pas corrompue, des trucs de sécu vraiment durcis qui pourraient être utiles clairement pour des dirigeants, dans les services secrets ou que sais-je. C'est pas notre but, notre but c'est de partir d'un constat, aujourd'hui nos données personnelles sont pillées en permanence et ça serait pas légal dans la vraie vie avec le courrier ou le téléphone, on veut changer ça. Donc on vous fait un produit qui change ça par défaut pour n'importe quelle personne.
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See ad.nl/binnenland/pan… for an example of what's ongoing in the Netherlands to scare people away from using open source privacy projects. It's also ongoing in Germany at the same time with similar talking points. This largely started in Spain and has been worst in France.
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These countries are increasingly crack down on end-to-end encryption, financial privacy and secure devices. The same countries want you to believe that you should use products and services built within their borders under their control, especially ones which are heavily state and EU funded.
4
theglobeandmail.com/canada/article… is a very fair and balanced article. They did proper research and talked to experts.
That's entirely unlike nearly all of the coverage by the media in Spain, France, Germany and the Netherlands. In the few cases we were asked for our perspective, nearly nothing we said was included. They acted as sycophants for the state and did not challenge or verify their claims.
Why is it that nearly all the western European news coverage is sycophantic?
That's entirely unlike nearly all of the coverage by the media in Spain, France, Germany and the Netherlands. In the few cases we were asked for our perspective, nearly nothing we said was included. They acted as sycophants for the state and did not challenge or verify their claims.
Why is it that nearly all the western European news coverage is sycophantic?
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Spain is where law enforcement first began smearing GrapheneOS in the media, specifically in the Catalonia region where it's known the Spanish government has mass deployed commercial remote exploits against political opponents.
xatakandroid.com/sociedad/cada-…
citizenlab.ca/research/catal…
xatakandroid.com/sociedad/cada-…
citizenlab.ca/research/catal…
6
A small sample of the state media campaign against GrapheneOS in France which has happened alongside Murena's similar attacks:
leparisien.fr/faits-divers/t…
archive.is/8Jo17
leparisien.fr/faits-divers/g…
archive.is/AhMsj
lefigaro.fr/secteur/high-t…
franceinfo.fr/faits-divers/n…
leparisien.fr/faits-divers/t…
archive.is/8Jo17
leparisien.fr/faits-divers/g…
archive.is/AhMsj
lefigaro.fr/secteur/high-t…
franceinfo.fr/faits-divers/n…