fliptop writes:
"Promising that orders will start shipping in June, Silent Circle has announced the Blackphone is ready for pre-orders. (Domain registered in Switzerland)
Touted as 'The high-end smartphone which puts privacy and security ahead of everything else' the Blackphone has a 4.7" screen, 2GHz quad-core CPU and 16GB storage. It also includes several Silent Circle apps.
The Blackphone makes use of a customized version of Android called PrivatOS, is fully unlocked, and the encryption can be used on any compatible network. Purchase includes a 1-year subscription to the apps; after that it's $10 a month (in addition to your carrier's charges).
In order to take advantage of the encryption, the other person you're communicating with has to have their own Blackphone or use Silent Circle apps on their Android or iOS phone."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by marcello_dl on Monday February 24 2014, @03:46PM
Never mind the problem of backdoors on chips, but IIRC, no matter how secure the OS is, many smartphones have the modem able to access fully the phone's RAM, which makes spying on the device still possible, by powerful parties, even with a secure OS installed.
BTW a hackable modem chip (was it possible with the n900?) makes for a very versatile item.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tibman on Monday February 24 2014, @04:24PM
I remember reading that the Neo900 was being designed to treat the modem as a possible hostile chip. Complete separation of the modem from all resources. Check it out: http://neo900.org/faq#privacy [neo900.org]
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by bd on Monday February 24 2014, @05:05PM
But why go to the hassle of hacking into the modem if you are one of those powerful parties that have seen a lot of attention lately?
Two parts of their terms of service that disqualify them in my view:
in combination with:
How is this anything other than the next lavabit? They just have one big expensive hardware dongle for their encrypted messaging app.