Customers wanting to shield communications from the NSA and its spying ilk might be interested in the Blackphone, a smartphone armed with a security suite appealing to more paranoid users.
Launched at Mobile World Congress 2014, the Blackphone is a collaboration between Spanish mobile maker Geeksphone and security developer Silent Circle. It looks like a regular 4.7-inch smartphone with a 2GHz quad-core processor, 2GB RAM 16G storage and an 8MP rear-facing camera but runs on "SmartOS," a modified Android version promising to "keep communications private without extra effort."
Silent Circle provides a number of own security apps-- Silent Phone (provides peer-to-peer encrypted VoIP calls), Silent Texts (encrypted SMS) and Silent Contacts (contact list and call log encryption). All are subscription-based, with Blackphone users getting a 2 years for free.
However, since the apps only kick in when one is calling another Silent Circle user Blackphone customers also get 3 one-year service subscriptions to hand out to family or friends.
Further security additions include 5GB of SpiderOak "zero-knowledge encrypted data backup," Disconnect internet search anonimisation, Kismet Smart wifi management and built-in firewall and remote wipe tools.
Will the Blackphone truly protect users from spying governments? Preorders are already open, and shipments should kick off from June 2014.
Go Blackphone
