Comment by piyuv
1 day ago
> Police were looking for […] Google Pixel phones. These have become popular among criminals in recent years […]. Among others, the murderers of Dutch crime reporter Peter R. de Vries had Google Pixel devices with them during the attack.
This is so braindead, it’s the same as “a black person committed a crime, lets search all black people!”
If someone with an iPhone commits a crime, will they do the same?
You can't decide to stop being black, but you can choose to not buy an iPhone. That's why race is a protected category and your smartphone is not.
And it is not "braindead". EncroChat was a "privacy service", selling phones featuring E2E encryption, disabled cameras and microphones, etc... Even though it wasn't marketed as such, it was mostly a service for criminals. And they effectively searched everyone using these devices (they hacked the firmware), and maybe a few people who weren't criminals got searched, as it happens in many investigations, most people turned out to be. The result was many arrests of people you really want to get arrested, with weapons, murder, torture, etc... being involved.
That's also the reason why mainstream apps like Signal are important for privacy, if only criminals use an app, having that app is a legitimate reason for being suspected. If most people using the app don't really need privacy and it is mostly used to talk about what to eat for dinner, that protects those who really need that privacy. And yes, it includes criminals, unfortunately, so it is actually a good thing for society when criminals use their own communication channels instead of using mainstream ones, good thing most of them are not so smart.
> You can't decide to stop being black, but you can choose to not buy an iPhone. That's why race is a protected category and your smartphone is not.
There are protected categories which person can choose to belong to. In USA these include for example religion. In EU political beliefs as well. So would it be okay to start suspecting anyone who is Christian if some Christian committed crime? Or anyone who supports AfD if AfD supporter committed crime? You can always choose to stop being Christian or AfD supporter.
EncroChat wasn't illegal. It was hacked by the government and used to catch crimes. Its creators are not in jail.
Anom is one where the creators were in jail, but only after they were caught directly participating in drug operations.
There is an actual Peter de Vries? Is that a coincidence? Or something Frank Herbert deliberately put in?
Peter R De Vries was a prolific crime reporter / journalist who did exceptional work in the Netherlands for many years until he was murdered in cold blood.
The reference: https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Piter_de_Vries
de Vries is one of the most surnames in Holland. It literally means "from Frisia (the modern day dutch province of Friesland)".
So Peter de Vries is effectively the dutch equivalent of John Smith.
I guess, though John Smith would more literally be Jan Smit, and the surname de Vries might be a name more like North or York.
What it boils down to is that governments tend to prefer that the tools people have available to them are limited in capability.
iPhones and Apple systems in general are the most locked-down phones on the mainstream market, so very government-friendly in that sense.
It's why I'm always slightly disappointed to see developers using Apple systems. They're a far cry from the systems that Steve Wozniak originally built.