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Cops in [Spain] think everyone using a Google Pixel must be a drug dealer
- 15155 1y agoOne random cop makes one ignorant statement and now all "cops in Spain" think something.
- ysofunny 1y agothe police in spain act like anybody using cloudflare is pirating something, so it kinda checks out
- elnatro 1y agoClodFlare does not want to comply with court rulings. Not in Spain, nor in France.
- throw123xz 1y agoWhich court rulings in Spain Cloudflare doesn't want to comply with?
- hibikir 1y agoIt's not quite that. LaLiga got a ruling (310/2024, Dec-18-2024) So that they can demand Spanish ISPs to block IPS that LaLiga claims are used to pirate soccer games. But as one would expect, piracy like this involves some CDNing, and therefore CloudFlare IPs. But since those don't necessarily point to individual customers on the other side, in practice it means parts of the internet don't work well in Spain while a game is going on, as the IP blocks that are deemed to be full of piracy are hosting all kinds of other things. So the issue isn't whether piracy is getting stopped or not, but that the blast radius hits a whole lot of people, including other cloudflare customers.
- elnatro 1y agoCloudflare does not provide the information to the court about the clients that do piracy.
- throw123xz 1y agoDo they have to, especially if they're not from Spain?
- elnatro 1y agoIf they want to operate in Spain, yes.
- throw123xz 1y agoI'm not familiar with Spanish law, but you can see the problem with forcing a company to provide details of customers that are from a different country. It's a bit like the UK demanding that Apple gave them access to user data of all customers worldwide. Apple correctly told them no and stopped offering end-to-end encryption to UK users.
- elnatro 1y agoSo, following your example, CloudFlare should stop offering the service to Spanish clients that allow them to break the law.
- anthk 1y agos,police,laliga,g
- prmoustache 1y agoIsn't it the justice system enforcing La Liga's bullshit? I don't think the police is involved in this.
- BoredPositron 1y agoI've seen news shows at my grandparents that talked about the rage of the masses while quoting three tweets for hours.
- devwastaken 1y agotheir opinion is from their dept reflected in their meetings and street corner conversations. if there were accountability that officer would not feel safe saying that.
- varelse 1y ago[dead]
- munchler 1y ago> “Every time we see a Google Pixel, we suspect it might belong to a drug dealer,” said a police official leading the anti-drug operation in Catalonia Not a random cop, but the leader of an entire operation.
- adolph 1y agoA less than random cop but still anecdata of one. Maybe an RCT of Spanish police attitudes towards crime-associated tech brands would be more convincing of a thesis broader than “one journalist heard one cop.”
- munchler 1y agoYou do understand that he speaks for a number of cops at once, not just himself, right?
- theyinwhy 1y agoSometimes 400 officers: https://www.catalannews.com/society-science/item/drug-arms-trafficking-operation-police-june-3-2025 https://www.catalannews.com/society-science/item/drug-arms-t...
- yorwba 1y agoI think he just made a self-aware observation: noticing a trait being unusually common among criminals he investigates makes him subconsciously associate it with crime even in the general population. Then somebody decided to translate "puede ser" as "must be" and put it in the headline to bait Pixel owners, and now the self-aware cop just looks ignorant instead.
- mistrial9 1y agothis comment seems to indicate a tip of the iceburg situation in law enforcement-at-scale versus crime-at-scale! human (and tech) evolution demand innovations, yet self-motivated predatory peoples also can be quick to benefit and adapt new tech. lots of quick corollaries available from this..
- skybrian 1y agoThe headline is exaggerated to make the cops sound like idiots. If they suspect someone might be a drug dealer (fair - it's a clue), that's very different from thinking they "must" be a drug dealer.
- soraminazuki 1y agoYour characterization is under-exaggerated to make this problem sound normal. It's not. > Every time we see a Google Pixel, we suspect it might belong to a drug dealer Being a Pixel or GrapheneOS user should never be a "clue" of criminality. It should never result in police detaining you or rummaging through your phone. Any police that acts in this way is indeed an "idiot."
- skybrian 1y agoIt would be if they did that, and maybe they do, but the article doesn't say they do that. You've added your own assumption.
- soraminazuki 1y agoOf course they do. What else do you think they're going to do? Keep their "suspicions" to themselves? > Every time we see a Google Pixel, we suspect it might belong to a drug dealer This means something, you know.
- skybrian 1y agoI don't know what specifically it means because I don't know how law enforcement works in Spain. Do you? It seems like you're asking me to imagine something, but I'm not taking the bait. I'm not going to confuse imagining things with having evidence for them.
- soraminazuki 1y agoIt at the very least means people with Pixels or GrapheneOS are treated unfairly by law enforcement. It's unfair because owning either of those is in no way indicative of a crime. You can't possibly IANAL your way out of this fact. It's rich to accuse others of "baiting" while engaging in sealioning. I'm not the one trying to strip all meaning from words. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
- grg0 1y agoNow we just need every other citizen to understand the benefits of GrapheneOS. Glad to see some people are catching up.
- noman-land 1y agoWe also need a better boot screen experience.
- zczc 1y agoThe primary source seems to be https://en.ara.cat/society/technological-warfare-the-drug-traffickers-motive-against-the-police-s-trojan-horses_1_5398821.html https://en.ara.cat/society/technological-warfare-the-drug-tr... (autotranslated from Catalan)
- torben-friis 1y agoBoth the translation and the original news are like one paragraph long with 0 context or source. It’s also quite ridiculous, I’m from Madrid and pixels seem to be the phone of choice for most of my (non tech) friends. Pixels used to be quite unknown, as most people go for budget Chinese brands, now they’re getting popular. “Get an iPhone-level camera for 300 bucks” is a massive selling point.
- k4rli 1y agoLatest Pixels are nearly 1k EUR though. Slightly too expensive but still a top pick for me.
- prmoustache 1y agoLatest highest end model. The "a" model are more in the 550€ area and still have super decent camera, especially if you aren't a selphie addict. Being the models with the longest firmware support, it is not uncommon for people to buy them second hand at around 300€. I bought my Pixel 6a last year for around 200€.
- elnatro 1y agoAra is a pro-secessionist diary so take their news about the national police in Spain with a pinch of salt.
- dofubej 1y agoThat’s the Mossos, not the national police of Spain.
- netsharc 1y agoIf they're wearing a Casio F91W, then they're a terrorist AND a drug dealer! Many years ago: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-13194733 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-13194733
- anthk 1y agoFor Gen-Zers, that's the watch everyone's dad and older millenials used to wear everywhere in the world.
- seabrookmx 1y ago'90 kid here. I have one on my wrist 90% if the time. Cheap, practical, and if I crash on my MTB or scratch it up while I'm gardening, it's no big deal.
- ls-a 1y agowe found him
- prmoustache 1y agomy 11 year old daughter has one too. And she asked for it. I think that was because of Shakira's song against her ex.
- croisillon 1y agoI'm worth two 22-year-olds You traded in a Ferrari for a Twingo You traded in a Rolex for a Casio if anything your daughter should wear a Rolex?
- torbid 1y agoI guess that's a question of whether you like the musician or the music. In the arc of the song, the boyfriend clearly developed good taste.
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- subroutine 1y agoThis "Almost Friday" skit about the Google Pixel is comedy gold... https://youtu.be/faabxveeoZo https://youtu.be/faabxveeoZo
- throwaway74354 1y agoThere's an opinion that it's part of coordinated campaign, not just slow news day. https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114784469162979608 https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114784469162979608 thread lists same activity in Swedish-speaking parts of the internet.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- amelius 1y agoOr a GrapheneOS user ...
- metalman 1y agoThe police in Spain can thank there lucky stars that they are not dealing with the drug gangs in Mexico and South America, where they are flying militerised drones, and are trying to build narco drone subs with starlink https://maritime-executive.com/article/colombian-navy-captures-unmanned-nacro-sub-with-starlink-connection https://maritime-executive.com/article/colombian-navy-captur...
- lupusreal 1y agoThey have been, at least a little. They've captured narco subs crossing the Atlantic, including to Spain specifically. The cartels must have trusted associates in Europe to receive these shipments, and that probably means violent enforcers of the cartels in Europe. With unmanned narco subs making longer voyages simpler, this is likely to become an even bigger problem.
- tiagod 1y agoThey've actually caught one of those subs being built in Spain! https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/spanish-police-seize-first-ever-narco-submarine-made-in-europe https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/span...
- anthk 1y agoThey tried, but the Europeans Mafias know that if the violence hits the fan and craps out civilians (non-gang related members), these would be crushed down in miliseconds. The CNI is no joke and it has -ahem- nonstandard methods to deal with these scum. Spain has grown a huge counterterrorism wisdom over decades.
- pier25 1y agoSpain is one of the biggest gateways of drugs into Europe (if not the biggest one). They've been dealing with LATAM mafia for decades.
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- Mr-Frog 1y agoIn other words, drug dealers are privacy-conscious and the Google Pixel is one of the strongest hardware platforms for privacy-aware configurations.
- bapak 1y ago> GrapheneOS boasts particularly secure and well-executed full disk and metadata encryption, a security feature So, the default iPhone experience?
- SoftTalker 1y agoYeah I would have guessed it was more the easy availability of cheap android burner phones than Google Pixel specifically.
- const_cast 1y agoGrapheneOS goes much, much further than that, providing stronger sandboxes for apps and Google Play Services. GrapheneOS also allows multiple users, isolating things like your filesystem and camera roll from groups of apps. You can do things like install and update apps in one profile with stronger permissions, and then actually operate the apps in another profile that's locked-down. You can also do things like install apps that require Google Play Services in one profile, but then run them in another with no Google Play Services. In practice, you can have a phone that never phone homes to Google while still running apps that depend on Google Play Services. If you're really savvy, you can even protect your identity from google entirely, using anonymous accounts for the Play Store. You can even get RCS up and running with no Google Services running or Carrier apps running. As far as I know, you can't turn off phoning home to Apple on iOS. Nor do you know what, exactly, is being phoned home.
- lazide 1y agoMaybe they can also sideload custom apps that would never pass App Store review?
- bapak 1y ago
- MitPitt 1y agoSounds like an astroturfing stunt from either Google or GrapheneOS
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]