Comment by olalonde
14 hours ago
> France isn't a safe country for open source privacy projects. They expect backdoors in encryption and for device access too. Secure devices and services are not going to be allowed.
If this is true, it's a bit concerning for Ledger users. One state-mandated firmware update away from losing all your crypto?
Fortunately it's not true. GrapheneOS seem https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/1993061892324311480#m to be reacting to news coverage https://archive.ph/UrlvK saying that although legitimate uses exist, if GrapheneOS have connections to a criminal organization and refuse to cooperate with law enforcement, they could be prosecuted nonetheless:
« il existe pour une certaine partie des utilisateurs une réelle légitimité dans la volonté de protéger ses échanges. L’approche est donc différente. Mais ça ne nous empêchera pas de poursuivre les éditeurs, si des liens sont découverts avec une organisation criminelle et qu’ils ne coopèrent pas avec la justice. »
Charitably, GrapheneOS are not in fact a front for organized crime, but merely paranoid, assuming that the news coverage is laying the groundwork for prosecution on trumped-up charges. Notably, there doesn't appear to have been direct communication from law enforcement yet.
Isn't it the same for every country?
Of course if your organization have connections to a criminal organization, you are going to be in trouble. Same thing for refusing to cooperate with law enforcement, this is not some abstract thing, it is about following the law, for example relating to evidence tampering or search warrants.
I don't think France is anything special in that regard.
Paranoid? Telegram CEO was arrested and held for days, his movements out of France restricted for months. And he is a connected billionaire, not an open source developer.
Open source developers have been given jail sentences in the last months.
If you're a broke open source developer - even if you believe under the law you're not doing anything wrong - would you want to be exposed to law enforcement harassment (lawfare) for no reason?
Also: chat control.
>Charitably, GrapheneOS are not in fact a front for organized crime, but merely paranoid
The difference between someone being paranoid and someone being right, is time.
If that paranoia is related to their participation in organized crime... well, governments should be the least of their problems in a few years.
How would the government mandate a backdoor of such a hardware/software system without attracting eyeballs?
Easy. They'll just demand major tech companies implement in Europe exactly what they did to comply with China's government surveillance request. They already have the blueprint of the apparatus, they just need to throw a blue coat of paint and a circle of gold stars over it to legitimize it and make it less scary looking.
And they don't give a damn about attracting eyeballs since the surveillance will be mandated by law and done legally by the book, and it will be done "for your own safety and protection against the boogieman", so that people will accept it.
I can't speak to the political or legal aspects, but technically, Ledger firmware updates are closed‑source binaries delivered from Ledger's servers. That centralization makes it possible for a state actor—or anyone with access to Ledger's signing keys and servers—to slip in a backdoor. Even if the firmware were fully open source, a backdoor could still be inserted during the build process and never appear in the repositories. Avoiding it would require building the firmware yourself, which most users don't do.
As a side note, Bitcoin Core mitigates this risk with deterministic builds and multiple independent developers verifying and signing releases. But this option isn't available for Ledger as most of the firmware is closed source.
The government just doesn't care.
If there is a backdoor in an open-source system, and people know about it, then they will organize independently to patch it out. So it will be ineffective to the extent that the technology allows reprogrammability.
The only way you can beat it, as a governement trying to insert a backdoor, is through use of tivoization or some other technology that clinches control during manufacturing or other centralization weak points around economies of scale that the re-programmers don't have.