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Daniel Micay / strcat / strncat / thestinger / GrapheneOS - Schizo software programmer and developer of GrapheneOS Android ROM. Starts drama with everyone and accuses them of harassment. Chronic brigader and bridge burner.
But his expression of it is such that he isn't universally paranoid at all. He and his inner circle GrapheneOS devs often imply that anyone who questions their trusted authorities has some personality defect like schizophrenia. They claim that we must trust some large amorpheous entity like Google or the government for any security model to actually protect us. Is that not at least somewhat at odds with a "privacy-oriented software" claim? There is something to be said for their argumentation, but his clearly isn't a directionless paranoia... It isn't really a paranoid conclusion to propose that we must trust the closed source Titan M chip that protects the only supported phone and its root-of-trust (because we can't be trusted) - and that we should support this trend of remote trust and basically non-ownership of our devices (so things like DRM can be universally applied).
It is possible that he has a very specific sort of paranoia, but it must be the sort that is paranoid about basically anything the mainstream tells him to be paranoid about - terrorism, right wing people, non-American chip companies, and the like. Or perhaps some form of degeneracy in his very private lifestyle motivates this focused paranoia. There were claims that he was doxxed, but that might just be a story considering that we still do not have a single picture of him. I'm actually unsure if it is possible to find a single picture of any core GrapheneOS dev.
In one way or another I do not deny that mental disorders and disease are perhaps a significant factor in all of this... But I'm someone who wants the same sort of OS Daniel claims he wants - and after trying to get one working well year after year, there seems to be something much less movable subverting our efforts than your boiler plate Canadian leftist compsec expert.
Thread tax. Daniel once again accuses /e/ of being "literal scammers" who "engage in harassment towards security researchers" and no proof is provided. source (a)
For what it's worth, risen (a) says to avoid /e/OS like the flu. But the accusations of harassment are laughable.
@Regular_Non_Spy_Phone you may be interested in this, Daniel defends against accusations of the Pixel phone being proprietary. source (a)
Daniel blames the attacks against GrapheneOS on vague "other organizations" that "make products directly based on GrapheneOS." source (a)
I have personally observed trolls posting CSAM and gore in the Graphene chat rooms so I won't doubt that, but everything on the Internet gets attacked this way, you're not special Daniel. Furthermore it's disingenuous to lump CSAM and gore in with "fabricated" stories "targeting our project members" as if both things are done by the same people, when they're not.
He also keeps accusing CalyxOS and Techlore of swatting him but doesn't explicitly name them. source (a)
Today he got upset at a Twitter rando taking issue with him constantly going into threads where people praise other privacy-minded projects (LineageOS, CalyxOS) and pointing out how GrapheneOS is so much better. Didn't take long for him to start whining about harassment either. source (a)
Daniel is so retarded he automatically assumes that everybody in the conversation will know which alleged perpetrators of "harassment" he's talking about just by telling people to check a following list. source (a)
The rando he's referring to, @veterantechio, does indeed follow Whonix, Techlore, F-Droid and Seth For Privacy on Twitter (archive), all of whom have been previously established as enemies of GrapheneOS. Does that mean anything? No.
He has claimed it was leaked as part of the lawsuit with Copperhead. Having said that, he was still dumb enough to use his address on the trademark application and corporate filings for GrapheneOS.
I used to think he was schizo, but now I lean away from that. Someone mentally ill wouldn't be able to hold it together for this long.
I think he is just a narcissistic asshole. He is constantly deleting tweets and re-framing things to make himself look right, which shows a high level of self-awareness and is textbook narcissism.
For example, deleting the original announcement about himself leaving the project, then pretending it was because everyone misunderstood what he said. There are also many minor dust ups on twitter where he gets called out, then deletes tweets and claims the conversation was getting "off topic."
Today Kiwi Farms gets a positive mention from a Twitter user after Daniel Micay spergs out about harassment. But it's different this time, he's claiming that a different project named DivestOS is being harassed (while attacking /e/OS for being insecure, or allegedly insecure at least). source (a)
What he's referring to is a text file that used to exist on DivestOS's website at https://divested.dev/misc/e.txt which is now deleted but you can still find it on GitHub (a). It's a text file that Tad Davanzo made which alleges several issues with /e/OS that make it insecure, such as
- Currently shipping Chromium 108.0.5359.156 from 2022/12/12 with 296 known security vulnerabilities
Daniel Micay of course has provided precisely zero proof that Tad Davanzo was the target of "recent escalated harassment." I speculate that Davanzo was challenged on his claims against /e/OS and interpreted that as harassment, which might be the reason why he blacklisted divested.dev from the Wayback Machine as I have recently documented. So you won't find this text file there.
This text file is shared frequently in GrapheneOS spaces to encourage people to use GrapheneOS instead of /e/OS. For example:
Interspersed with unsubstantiated allegations of harassment:
GrapheneOS moderator matchboxbananasynergy outright claims that /e/ "pretty heavily" attacked Tad for this. No proof is provided.
More sperging about "harassment".
Eventually someone brings up the F-Droid drama (documented in the OP):
But banana fag shuts it down.
And then he says something funny.
The hostility isn't unique to one group or project, eh? Check the list of enemies in the OP. Is it more likely that everyone on the list is an asshole, or that you are the asshole? Such self-introspection seems to escape GrapheneOS people.
Once again I must clarify that I am not saying that /e/OS is good in any way, rather that the claims of them harassing people are unfounded and Graphene fags have never provided proof of them (or anyone for that matter) harassing anyone.
He has claimed it was leaked as part of the lawsuit with Copperhead. Having said that, he was still dumb enough to use his address on the trademark application and corporate filings for GrapheneOS.
You're right, I found a tweet where he claims "the person who co-founded a company with Daniel in 2015" leaked his address, and the only person that description matches is James Donaldson of CopperheadOS. source (a)
Of course there is no proof to this and I wouldn't know where to go looking for it. Daniel is extraordinarily useless at backing up his claims. It's not like I could ask James either since he's likely not a reliable source.
And once it's leaked, why he doesn't just move is beyond me.
Does this mean that Louis is secretly daily driving GrapheneOS and has been lying the whole time about distrusting Graphene, as the Canadian schitzo developer argues?NO! He's clearly using it on a phone meant for demonstration, such as showing off a voice app he made (or helped with). This in no way proves that he trusts Daniel Micay enough to install Graphene on a phone he will store sensitive secrets on and do banking and taxes on and all that. Show me proof of that and I'll change my mind, but for now, this is a nothingburger.
Pardon the necro, but it looks like the default AOSP keyboard icon. Could be any custom ROM that's based on it, be it LineageOS, Calyx or whatever else.
The /r/privacy subreddit has a rule banning discussion of mobile OSs. This was implemented in part to stop GrapheneOS shills from infecting every thread.
Some poor, unaware soul doesn't know why that rule exists, and asked that it be removed. This was the mod response:
Of course, users immediately sussed out "one set of developers" means our favorite schizo.
Pardon the necro, but it looks like the default AOSP keyboard icon. Could be any custom ROM that's based on it, be it LineageOS, Calyx or whatever else.
So I found the GrapheneOS chatroom logs this claim originates, it comes from a user named green_sheep. It turns out it's only named "Keyboard" on GrapheneOS. These logs also contain Daniel Micay's spin blaming the swatting on Techlore, Jonah Aragon and Louis Rossmann including his Kiwi Farms account.
As for this specific claim it doesn't matter because Louis said earlier in the video it's his coworker's phone. But green_sheep also claimed he saw a GrapheneOS System Updater icon in his notification bar in another video. He didn't link it so if anybody can find that let me know. Here is matchboxbananasynergy inheriting another of Daniel Micay's many bad traits--refusing to take responsibility. source (a)
Lord forgive me for citing XKCD but this comic is perfectly applicable to what banana man is doing here.
Hey dumbass, when you say stepping down, people will use that 99% of the time to mean that somebody is leaving entirely. They won't think oh he's stepping down from lead developer to regular developer. And even that is also misleading because Daniel is still very active contributing to GrapheneOS, especially on the socials, so nothing has changed. The announcement was bullshit from the very beginning and shouldn't have been made.
Credit where it's due, at least banana fag didn't take the position that if you were an Average Joe who misunderstood this easily misunderstood message, you are part of the "people doing the harassment". source (a) Recently, Mullvad VPN discovered a few bugs involving leaking DNS traffic, and claimed these were Android bugs. (a)
Daniel Micay begs to differ and says they are bugs with the VPN app, not Android.
In response to a troll, Daniel said he was "not making allegations" against Mullvad. source (a)
But then in the GrapheneOS chatroom he banned all links to Mullvad.net, because they were allegedly "making more misleading claims" and promoting them is "marketing spam". What was that about "not making allegations against them" again?
Slight double standard here--Daniel Micay always chimes in to any discussion involving CalyxOS and GrapheneOS, just to say GrapheneOS is better than CalyxOS. That doesn't count as marketing spam somehow, but now linking to Mullvad does? Of course we already know it's due to the fact he thinks Mullvad is making "misleading claims," and if Mullvad retracted everything tomorrow linking to them would no longer be considered marketing spam, but it's wild to see such a naked double standard.
If you have to ban links to them in your chats because they are considered untrustworthy, then yes, you are making allegations against them, Daniel. Just some miscellaneous sperging from Daniel about the usual suspects.
Recently Daniel posted this in the Graphene chats:
So somebody is allegedly spreading misinformation on Reddit, and for some reason Daniel highly prioritises "dealing with it" over actually working on his project. Not only that, he's calling for people to brigade the Reddit post. What was posted that was so bad that he needs to drop everything and sperg about it?
Oh, somebody mentioned CalyxOS and GrapheneOS in the same breath. You can't ever compare two privacy-respecting OSes because Calyx sucks!
Daniel writes walls of text and the original poster sighs. To his credit, the original poster actually stops responding to Daniel instead of getting the last word, making him the better person in this situation than Daniel.
Interestingly enough, it seems nobody else in the chatroom answered Daniel Micay's call for a personal army, and the Reddit thread is Micay alone responding to alleged misinformation. Are Graphene chat regulars secretly sick of his shit too? source (a) And finally, a reply to Meredith Whittaker, president of the Signal foundation, quoting a tweet from Nikka Systems: source (a)
When I first read this, I had no idea who the fuck Nikka Systems was or why Daniel hated them so much. I had to do some searches to find that it's a site owned by the random Swedish guy that made an appearance in this thread last year:
I was the one who documented Karl Emil Nikka's interactions with Micay, and even I had completely forgotten about his existence. It was only half a year but since then I've been living my life, while Micay has just stewed in his own misery. I'm pretty sure this is proof that Daniel Micay keeps a list of his enemies, or at least remembers them like an elephant, because else I don't know how the hell he would have recognised Nikka Systems as an enemy just from a passing quote tweet alone.
For context, you can read this post for info on the connection between Liz Fong-Jones, Katherine Maher, and Meredith Whittaker. Also a little bit in this post.
Very concerning that these are the people in control of Signal. And then there's also Daniel Micay, who's the founder & lead dev at GrapheneOS (a privacy/security-focused mobile OS).
Oh, somebody mentioned CalyxOS and GrapheneOS in the same breath. You can't ever compare two privacy-respecting OSes because Calyx sucks!
Daniel writes walls of text and the original poster sighs. To his credit, the original poster actually stops responding to Daniel instead of getting the last word, making him the better person in this situation than Daniel.
Here's Daniel Micay talking about the "precious bodily fluids" of Null: Daniel Micay continues his fight against Privacy Guides by making this really bizarre claim (while accusing them of harassment again with no evidence): source (a)
I agree, it would be very concerning if somebody said that "privacy/security are only for criminals." The only problem is... this is not what was said.
He links to post #7 of the thread (a). If you actually check the link for yourself, this is what it says:
No, there's no tricks here. You can check everything yourself. It's just Jonah Aragon expressing concern about GrapheneOS' marketing.
In no way does this mean that Jonah is somehow saying that "privacy/security are only for criminals." Quite the opposite, actually. This is expressing concern that GrapheneOS are drawing unwanted attention by talking about how they patched exploits based off of leaked documentation of Cellebrite (a company that makes data extraction tools), precisely because GrapheneOS isn't meant for criminals.
Meanwhile, people blindly believe Daniel Micay's words without scepticism: (archive)
Over on Mastodon, Daniel Micay copy pastes the same drivel about Kiwi Farms and Techlore to sceptics: source (a)
But there are still people simping for Micay: source (a)
Jonah is a "toxic person" that's "trying to harm GrapheneOS" and is allegedly going to remove Graphene from PG recommendations. Well if you keep this up then I'm sure it will happen, but that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. source (a)
Daniel accuses Jonah of having the "intention of attacking GrapheneOS," just more schizo rambling. source (a)
Jonah is "a serial fabricator and harasser" and the Privacy Guides community was "promoting Kiwi Farms harassment material." Anybody know what he's referring to? I sure don't. source (a)
Anybody pointing out that Daniel is misrepresenting Jonah gets blocked: source (a)
Somebody made this post in the GrapheneOS discussion forum expressing concern that Graphene is losing trust. source (a)
Unsurprisingly, it was quickly deleted because criticism of GrapheneOS is censored on their own forum.
A freshly created new account shows up to cape for GrapheneOS: source (a) source (a)
Jonah Aragon responds to the attack with a smile. source (a)
Ouch. Daniel's going to hate that. Although now that you say it, do we know what Daniel's level of education is?
Daniel's litany of complaints against Jonah feels eerily similar... source (a)
Hrmm, so he can "essentially do whatever he wants", "controls all the infrastructure", nobody in the project is willing to stand up to him, and exerts control over the project with an "iron fist" even during times he's supposedly barely active. Yup, sounds like Daniel Micay with GrapheneOS to me. He can't even claim he doesn't misuse donations, because he has stated he will use a million-dollar donation to fight the developer of JaguarOS and TheAnonymouseJoker! (a) (Two people who are arguably GrapheneOS a-logs and lolcows themselves, but that's for another thread.) Literally every single one of these counts is something Micay has done if not worse, it's projection all the way down
Source? no u! source (a)
Micay is horrible at providing proof as usual, so I have begrudgingly looked in the Privacy Guides Matrix rooms myself. I couldn't find anybody who posted links to Kiwi Farms, so I have no clue if it's true that they are "permitting promoting Kiwi Farms doxxing/libel content in their chats which their core project members engaged with directly" but probably not.
Never knew about this alt. Android ROM having a lolcow behind it. I just hated that a majority of all the alt. ROM's supports only the Pixel phones.
> wants to avoid google
> have to buy the google exclusive phone
LMAO, who is falling for this. Maybe some tech autists can do the mental gymnastics enough to do it, but I just can't justify giving google $800 to larp being "free from google".
Yes, I'm tech illiterate and I will not buy an iPhone because of it. I didn't choose the retard life, the retard life chose me.
> wants to avoid google
> have to buy the google exclusive phone
LMAO, who is falling for this. Maybe some tech autists can do the mental gymnastics enough to do it, but I just can't justify giving google $800 to larp being "free from google".
I'm not a phone expert by any means, but as I understand it, the "Pixel" argument goes as follows
1. Pixels supposedly have a built in 'secure element' chip (TrustZone / StrongBox) that ostensibly thwart a common attack surface when properly leveraged.
2. When you are doing an open-source project like graphene os (or lineage os, whatever) on hardware devices, the less types and models you have to support, the more you can focus on essentials like security.
The truth is you can't really trust your phone hardware at a 99.999% level unless you are xraying your semiconductors.
At the end of the day I probably trust graphene os over calyx os, and calyx os over stock Android.
I want to like graphene os, but the insane drama makes it hard.
As far as I remember, Pixel was Google's line of phones for developers. As much as they were riddled with google shit, they were open enough to let you upload a custom de-googled ("GAPless") ROM with relatively little problems. Unlocking the bootloader was a case of running a few SDK commands, getting or making a specially wired cable for $5, and clicking yes on a few warnings. Compare this to Samsung, where, depending on the model unlocking the bootloader requires using leaked service software (Odin) or some clones of it which did not even have an english localization. Motorola and Huawei are also a hassle to unlock. Hence most custom ROMs are going to be developed on Pixels and maybe some flagship Samsung phones, and maybe some open ones like Pinephone. If you have anything else you are seriously out of luck unless the model got hacked on XDA and somebody prepared a rom for it.
I had no idea that one of the main developers for Graphene OS is completely insane. I will be immediately retracting my professional recommendation that it should be used as a more secure/higher privacy replacement for Android and providing recommendations for appropriate replacements. I doubt the people I directly support will make even a noticeable drop in the number of individuals that use GrapheneOS, but hopefully as I make more IT directors and managers in the medical community, who are equally oblivious to the behavior and conduct of Daniel Micay, aware of this situation, it will have some impact.
The medical IT community, as well as the clinicians and executives they support, can't afford to take a chance with something as important as the security/privacy of critical devices when the main developer of the OS suggested to them is so publicly and obviously mentally ill and unstable.
Fortunately the medical IT community for the largest healthcare systems in the US is a relatively small group of individuals, so ensuring that everyone is acutely away of the behavior of Mr. Micay won't be difficult, but it will probably take some time to filter down to the smaller players. I really need to stop making more work for myself and everyone else just because I want patients and staff to be safe. Just when I thought we might get to actually enjoy this summer season. Sigh.
The developer line was the Nexus series of phones. They were manufactured by various companies (HTC, Motorola, Huawei, forgot the others) and were sold at reasonable prices. They discontinued that and started the Pixel line with much higher prices (but thankfully left the ability to unlock the bootloader). The Pixel line is still a good value considering the latest release (8a) will receive software updates until mid 2031. There's also an abundance of older ones, so you can buy used and get a deal.
You are right, I stand corrected. The Nexus line was pretty OK and I think Pixel was supposed to be the successor to it, at least that's what I heard when they were introducing it. The point is still valid - Pixel are the easiest phones to develop for, because they are not that locked down and there is only a handful of models.
For what it's worth, there is a consensus that GrapheneOS is more secure than CalyxOS. Micay can and should take pride in making a better OS, but where he goes too far is lambasting anybody who dares put CalyxOS and GrapheneOS in the same sentence.
LMAO, who is falling for this. Maybe some tech autists can do the mental gymnastics enough to do it, but I just can't justify giving google $800 to larp being "free from google".
To be fair, Daniel has never advertised GrapheneOS as being "degoogled" and has said the aim of the project isn't to avoid Google. It's only other people unaffiliated with him that extol the virtues of Graphene as somehow being anti-Google, when it isn't. Jonah Aragon responds again in the thread, and because Daniel Micay and his cronies can't leave shit alone, matchboxbananasynergy jumps in to the Privacy Guides thread almost a year after he left PG (likely because of Micay forcing him to) and writes walls and walls of text.
The thread is too long for archive.ph so I will archive it here with screenshots:
And then Jonah edits his post to debunk Daniel's nonsense:
Banana fag is displeased with this but what I find really funny is his claim that Jonah is "attributing a specific person to a project post."
Hey retard, everybody and their mom knows that Daniel Micay is behind all GrapheneOS posts. Nobody else has the same tone and makes the same claims about muh harassment and Kiwi Farms and that bullshit. So there's two possibilities here:
matchboxbananasynergy is too dumb to realise that it really is Micay behind all those GrapheneOS posts, or:
matchboxbananasynergy is upholding Micay's easily-broken kayfabe that the GrapheneOS project account is controlled by a group of nameless faceless GrapheneOS developers.
Either way, banana fag is retarded.
He also ballwashes Micay by making a mountain out of the molehill of Jonah's comments, calling it "an incredibly bad take", accusing them of "intentionally misrepresenting events", of having "an axe to grind", accusing Jonah of getting to "build a dangerous narrative" which could "cost people their freedom down the line", whining about "personal attacks" (oh but it's okay for Micay to accuse people who haven't swatted anybody of swatting him and that's not a personal attack), and saying that it's "weird" that some people aren't satisfied no matter what they do (when it's just a fact of life you can't please everybody, but apparently Micay can't accept that).
Daniel's reaction to this is to delete his original thread and make a new one, under the guise that because Jonah directly named Daniel Micay, they are "direct[ing] harassment" towards "a specific GrapheneOS project member". So Jonah talking about Micay is "harassment" but Micay talking about Jonah isn't? Smells like a double standard to me.
This is a bullshit reason so I'm betting he deleted it because he didn't like that Jonah edited the post he linked to debunk his nonsense and doesn't want people making up their own minds on this issue.
He also keeps twisting Jonah's words and smearing them as "authoritarian" to claim that Jonah is claiming that privacy and security are only for criminals, when that was far from what Jonah meant. He also reiterates the previous unproven bullshit about Jonah and Techlore somehow being responsible for swatting.
The shit about Jonah talking about GrapheneOS going in to a forensics Discord is... okay on the merits but Micay is really taking their words too seriously.
Jonah made a final reply in the PG thread and it's a banger:
Over on the Fediverse, Daniel smears Louis Rossmann's name by using his Kiwi Farms account: source (a) source (a)
"We want peace and quiet but they won't stop."
*continues to start drama for no reason* source (a)
Good luck getting a legal order to remove """harassment content""" (literally just republishing your own words). Unlike you, Techlore lives in the US and enjoys First Amendment protections.
Daniel is under the impression that the "future damages" Techlore will have to pay have been "building up" the whole time he hasn't retracted his "fabrications/harassment." I would love to know what legal theory justifies this because it sounds pretty novel. source (a)
Jonah Aragon calls Daniel Micay a cyber-stalker source (a)
Oh, good, spreading some frivolous lawsuits around against anyone who crosses you (whether they know it or not) is a good way to wake people up to the harassment happening.
I get the feeling that someone else has taken over the GrapheneOS Twitter account in the last week or two.
The writing style seems a bit different, they are RTing content from other users, and I don't see the usual spam about how CalyxOS and LineageOS actually reduce security, and here's a table comparing operating systems, blah blah blah. He used to post this every time someone mentioned GrapheneOS and CalyxOS together, which was at least once or twice a day.
Or maybe I'm just talking out of my ass.
Edit: here's an example from Mastodon talking about F-droid (one of Micay's enemies as detailed in the OP) . What are the odds that Micay could respond without mentioning that F-droid is complicit in a years-long campaign of harassment of their lead developer, including attempted murder?
It definitely seems a bit more persuasive. I have also heard similar concerns about F-droid from other sources so I don't think this is a response to some petty slight.
