Promised NSA-Proof Phone Shockingly not NSA-Proof

I wish I could say I was surprised when I read that the founders of Blackphone finally admitted their product is not, as promised, NSA-proof, but I kind of called it back when the product was first announced. The only surprise at this stage is that Silent Circle, the creator of the super-secure, heavily encrypted phone, are admitting they can’t actually stop a federal agency from looking at your data before they reveal their product at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress today, rather than after they’ve started selling it.

But hey, integrity in business. At least they have their pride 

In a statement for Mashable, Blackphone co-founder Mike Janke admitted before the product’s launch that “there’s no such thing as a 100% secure phone,” and “there is no such device that is NSA-proof.”

That’s probably why your promise to create such a thing got so much press 

As Silent Circle has actually produced previous secure communications apps, and Blackphone co-founders SCP Technologies are responsible for Geeksphone, Blackphone is actually a very secure, very private phone. You just can’t commit criminal activities, acts of terrorism, or other illegal shenanigans, malarkey or tomfoolery using it without a certain government agency finding out. Which is, all in all, not a terrible drawback. You give me time and I could learn to live with it, is what I’m saying.

Blackphone’s core privacy feature will be something called PrivatOS, a custom version of Android which offers its users the choice of how much data they want their phone to leak, from calls, contacts, Internet browsing, and app usage. According to Janke, this means that users can download apps and then decide who has permission to use that data, which certainly makes PrivatOS a unique feature. Blackphone users will also have access to the complete range of Silent Circle’s encrypted communications apps, 5GB of encrypted cloud storage—thanks to SpiderOak—as well as anonymous browsing and a Disconnect.me Virtual Private Network.

Along with unique privacy features, Blackphone also sports a 2GHz quad-core system-on-a-chip (SoC) processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, a primary 8-megapixel camera with flash and much, much more. So despite the utterly unsurprising fact that the phone won’t protect you from your government, Blackphone is still a good buy both as a phone and if you want to protect your privacy from nearly anybody else.

The only snag is the $629 price tag which, should you be willing to pay it, will get you the phone sometime this June as the device is already available for pre-order. Just don’t go too wild with your newfound privacy—remember, the government is still watching.

Source Mashable