It will be used as evidence that the person who has GrapheneOS on their phone is attempting to break the law. Telegram and Signal chats are often used as circumstantial evidence of malfeasance in Indian national security cases, so the jump to using GrapheneOS as evidence of malfesance is tiny.
"Cops in this country think everyone using a Google Pixel must be a drug dealer" (because of GrapheneOS)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44473694
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114784469162979608
> European authoritarians and their enablers in the media are misrepresenting GrapheneOS and even Pixel phones as if they're something for criminals. GrapheneOS is opposed to the mass surveillance police state these people want to impose on everyone.
I see it more as an extra reason to use it:
- If only criminals want privacy, privacy becomes suspicious
- If more people use an open OS, it's more profitable for commercial entities to not put in extra effort to block these devices due to the FUD going around about them being insecure
So if someone suggests that using open source software is increasingly being seen as suspicious, the #1 thing to do is start using it
India already considers communications they can't monitor illegal. Specifically, satellite communication devices. Not just the crazy expensive satellite phones, but the satellite texting devices a lot of us backcountry types have. And some have been arrested for having them. Yeah, terrorists have used such stuff, but to us it's 911 for when we are far from the cell grid.