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[TC] Blackphone: A Pro-Privacy Android-Based Smartphone

5K views 59 replies 39 participants last post by  caenlen 
#1 ·
Quote:
...meet Blackphone, a smartphone that's been designed to enable secure, encrypted communications, private browsing and secure file-sharing.


Source

Website

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Blackphone is unlocked and works with any GSM carrier. Performance benchmarks put it among the top performers from any manufacturer.
It has the features necessary to do all the things you need, as well as all the things you want, while maintaining your privacy and security and giving you the freedom to choose your carrier, your apps, and your location.
drool.gif
I know what my next phone will be.
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#8 ·
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Originally Posted by Daredevil 720 View Post

I don't think it's smart to buy a product that's made for privacy. People who buy such things want privacy more than others, so it would be a more interesting device to spy on (for the NSA and such).
Kind of agree, real security is by obscurity

no harm in creating a competitive market though
 
#9 ·
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Originally Posted by Domino View Post

And then, in a few years, the Phone "magically" disappears as it was linked to numerous crimes, etc. Crimes that could have easily be filtered through an automatic detection of certain key words that could have been investigated upon.
It's a crime for the government to investigate people without due cause. How about we start there?
 
#10 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by phill1978 View Post

Kind of agree, real security is by obscurity

no harm in creating a competitive market though
Security by obscurity only gets you so far, and quite frankly only helps against skids who don't know what they're doing that just download a program and attempt to use it. Obscurity has it's uses, but it is not "real" security. You can do some fun things that do buy you time, but overall, obscurity won't protect you.
 
#12 ·
Android-based and secure don't go well together.
 
#14 ·
LOL at the guy in the comments @source complaining that nobody is defending his "right to privacy..." Wow.
 
#15 ·
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me="Mookster" url="/t/1459306/tc-blackphone-a-pro-privacy-android-based-smartphone/10_10#post_21588141"]
Quote:
Originally Posted by Domino View Post

And then, in a few years, the Phone "magically" disappears as it was linked to numerous crimes, etc. Crimes that could have easily be filtered through an automatic detection of certain key words that could have been investigated upon.
It's a crime for the government to investigate people without due cause. How about we start there?
Sure. When someone states, out loud, they are going to kill, plan a bomb threat, etc, people take interest. They don't investigate your phones, they look for key info that warrants a cause to investigate. :)
 
#20 ·
Thought we had established that according to the law, no backdoor = not allowed to be imported and sold...no?
NSA = you can market it whoever you want, we access it however we want.

Oh, and the "informed" that still throw around the "crime prevention" thing, they are missing the point, totally.
In theory no one is "safer" than someone in his prison cell. That's not what we want.
The sense of safety, a very important aspect of life, should not interfere with other qualities that also form the basis for a higher quality of life.

Spying on individuals without probable causes, which is what is being done universally for more than a decade as recent revelations show, stumbles upon rights that people fought and died for.
Many, many people died for that which is taken away, and billions get aspired to. Human life and suffering is hard to quantify, but nomatter how hard you try, no matter how much crimes you prevent, it want even out the impact on society.

Lower income inequalities, increase education and social mobility (all 3 rank the US VERY low as far as developed countries go), and you will see crime declining. True crime, true terror and sense of un-safety that is everywhere, not the random premeditated rape or murder that monitoring telecoms could prevent (i.e. a very small % of crime).
 
#21 ·
I thought the only official rulings on the legality of all of it was the ruling that the N$4 could access stuff without a warrant. I've never heard anything about it being illegal to buy non-bugged hardware
 
#22 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by kpoeticg View Post

I thought the only official rulings on the legality of all of it was the ruling that the N$4 could access stuff without a warrant. I've never heard anything about it being illegal to buy non-bugged hardware
It is not officially spoken, as all companies that are "involved" are prohibited to disclose what and how their devices and/or software is accessed.
All they can do, is push for people to demand more information from the government agencies, so gradually the bubble will be exposed and busted.
 
#23 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by pcfoo View Post

Thought we had established that according to the law, no backdoor = not allowed to be imported and sold...no?
NSA = you can market it whoever you want, we access it however we want.

Oh, and the "informed" that still throw around the "crime prevention" thing, they are missing the point, totally.
In theory no one is "safer" than someone in his prison cell. That's not what we want.
The sense of safety, a very important aspect of life, should not interfere with other qualities that also form the basis for a higher quality of life.

Spying on individuals without probable causes, which is what is being done universally for more than a decade as recent revelations show, stumbles upon rights that people fought and died for.
Many, many people died for that which is taken away, and billions get aspired to. Human life and suffering is hard to quantify, but nomatter how hard you try, no matter how much crimes you prevent, it want even out the impact on society.

Lower income inequalities, increase education and social mobility (all 3 rank the US VERY low as far as developed countries go), and you will see crime declining. True crime, true terror and sense of un-safety that is everywhere, not the random premeditated rape or murder that monitoring telecoms could prevent (i.e. a very small % of crime).
I just don't see where this mentality comes from other than looking at sensational arguments. When you factor in the man power that CSIS, NSA, and other related national security firms have access to, why on earth would, or how, could they even investigate every case? They can't, nor do. They merely screen certain content, and if the content, being text and location while also considering known threats, etc., give enough correlation to investigate upon, they will. It's no different then someone yelling out "I'm going to kill you" and then someone takes preventive action on the street. The only difference is one is in the digital field and one is physical.

What do you think our grandfathers fought for? What do you think was going on during the war? You think every letter that was sent was not screened for important information that soldiers would accidentally "leak" to their loved ones, etc. We fought for the protection of our nations, our freedoms, etc., but even than, you can't have safety without some levels of preventive control to protect the greater scheme of things. All of these we fought for, and had the moral structure not to abuse like other nations and individuals with psychological disorders did. Give a handgun in the hands of a trained, ethical, moral, and ethical police officer and then give it in the hands of a random untreated schizophrenic individual and tell me who is more safe? Using filters on your texts are no different. Put the power behind you and me and we'll use such to protect our country, give it in the hands of Stalin, and well, you would know what the outcome would be.

The concept of screening digital means of communication, and blacking out military letters home is no different. I don't see anyone on this site getting their panties in a knot over the latter (but hey, we'll probably start seeing that now too)!
 
#25 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mookster View Post

It's a crime for the government to investigate people without due cause. How about we start there?
to the NSA, everything has due cause.
rolleyes.gif
 
#26 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Domino View Post

What do you think our grandfathers fought for? What do you think was going on during the war? You think every letter that was sent was not screened for important information that soldiers would accidentally "leak" to their loved ones, etc. We fought for the protection of our nations, our freedoms, etc., but even than, you can't have safety without some levels of preventive control to protect the greater scheme of things. All of these we fought for, and had the moral structure not to abuse like other nations and individuals with psychological disorders did. Give a handgun in the hands of a trained, ethical, moral, and ethical police officer and then give it in the hands of a random untreated schizophrenic individual and tell me who is more safe? Using filters on your texts are no different. Put the power behind you and me and we'll use such to protect our country, give it in the hands of Stalin, and well, you would know what the outcome would be.
Soldiers are not citizens. They willingly give away some of their citizen rights as they enlist.
According to the law, you cannot treat your citizens like that, and according to my sense of morality, anyone that believes in the bills of human rights, should not believe in those apply only for his/her own countrymen. "All Men are equal under the law".

At any rate, the only governmental system that is applying the same "rules" to its citizens as it would to its soldiers, is either under "martial law" on a temporary basis, or a full-on dictatorship (most of which do start with Martial Law declarations).

The grandfathers/forefathers lived in a different era. Their sense of morality and understanding of the world, tho in some cases genius and foreword thinking, is far less broad and shortsighted in our context. My Greek forefathers had some genius ideas too for their times. Far from current tho.
Yes, interception of information in digital form is a reality that they could never predict to this extent 50 years ago...200 or 2500 years ago? Please...

Something has to be done, true, but the way it is currently done, is overriding any president: they simply rip the whole thing (phone, text, site, w/e) "just in case", process it, then getting warrants bundled together in the thousands. They treat everyone as if we were effectively under "IT" martial law, and it is already proven that they abuse that power.

Claiming that doing it in the way it is done is valid as it protects the average person from a very small % of interpersonal crime, is like claiming that advertising junk mail is fully justified, as the wasted paper might end up being used in a post-consumer recycled paper-tower. Goverments that work and treat like that are part of the problem, not the solution. Wackos will always be there. But wackos do not create animosity. Bad internal and external politics do (e.g. like broadening the inequalities within borders, or abusing your military power within foreign borders).ZE]

/OP: I don't know how they claim they will keep things "clean" with this device...the attacks are easily carried through the service provider anyways...it is not like they have to hack into the device itself.
 
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