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Comment by jcsager | Hacker News Reader

I think EncroChat scared them pas-de-merde, and this may be an overreaction by untutored civil servants.

In the end, wasn't EncroChat a larger problem for the criminals than the governments?

Once it became a big enough target it got taken down, and then quietly run by the police who collected everybody's messages for months before triggering a huge round of arrests, including quite a bit of major organized crime across Europe. The dangers of centralization. They'd love another EncroChat!

Doesn't apply so much to GrapheneOS of course since they're not in the messaging platform market, but it's definitely a cautionary tale.

I watched a fascinating documentary about EncroChat (https://www.channel4.com/programmes/operation-dark-phone-mur...). It was obvious the police absolutely loved having this real time feed into criminal communications, and thought "let's have more of that please". They don't realise the consequences are that criminals won't use such forms of communication once they know they're backdoored.

Of course they realise it, and they know it's irrelevant, because their job is to catch actual dissidents today, not hypothetical future dissidents.

> scared them pas-de-merde

Huh?

French for "shitless"

I think it may be a tongue in cheek semi-literal translation from English, I’ve not come across this as idiomatic French before.

No it's not

"without shit" translated...

"Scared them shitless" in faux franglais.

Probably something like this would be close to the same colloquial meaning (I'm not familiar with any pants-shitting slang in French): EncroChat leur a foutu les jetons de ouf.

(closer to "scared the hell out of them")

Ils en ont ch... dans leur culotte.

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