This is Blackphone. It's a smartphone born out of a growing desire for privacy, as months of leaks
have proven that agencies like the NSA are monitoring our
communications. It runs Android, which many might perceive as a
relatively insecure mobile operating system; its makers, however, have
made significant changes both visible and behind the scenes. They've
relabeled it "PrivatOS."
The Blackphone looks like a
fairly standard Android phone. It has a 4.7-inch HD (the exact
resolution has yet to be announced) IPS display, a 2GHz quad-core
processor, 16GB of storage, an 8-megapixel camera, LTE — pretty much
everything you'd want in a smartphone, and very little you wouldn't.
Produced by Silent Circle, a company with an existing portfolio of security- and encryption-related software,
and Geeksphone, a Spanish hardware startup, the Blackphone claims to be
the first smartphone to place "privacy and control directly in the
hands of its users." How it achieves this is through a mixture of secure
applications and Android modifications that give users more insight
into and control over what third-party applications are doing with their
data.
Silent Circle's suite of apps
consists of Silent Phone, an app that offers peer-to-peer encrypted VoIP
calls; Silent Text, which gives the same level of encryption for
messaging; and Silent Contacts, which replaces the stock Android app to
safeguard your contact list from apps that may seek to skim your
contacts for nefarious purposes. All of the applications are already
available for iPhone and Android devices with a paid subscription, and
the Blackphone comes with two years of service included.
It's not quite as simple as
just buying a Blackphone and suddenly having secure communications,
though. Silent Circle's applications can only offer peer-to-peer
encryption when you're calling another Silent Circle user, and you need
to pay Silent Circle to be a user. To solve this problem, everyone using
a Blackphone will receive three extra one-year subscriptions to Silent
Circle's services to hand out to friends, colleagues, or family members.
After one year the free subscription runs out, and users will be
presented with a choice: pay $10 per month to continue using the suite,
buy a Blackphone, or go back to regular phone calls and text messages.
It's clear that Silent Circle is hoping you'll choose one of the two
options that makes it some money.
"It gives the user the chance to choose the level of privacy."
Not all communication needs to
be secure. Mike Janke, CEO and co-founder of the company, suggests there
are certain calls you'll want to encrypt, but "if you're ordering a
pizza or calling your grandma," it's unlikely you'll feel the weight of
the NSA on your shoulders. "This is why Blackphone is so unique — it
gives the user the chance to choose the level of privacy."
A Blackphone placing an encrypted call to a Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
Silent Circle has also
partnered with other security-focused companies to offer a broader range
of services. The Blackphone comes with SpiderOak, which provides 5GB of
"zero-knowledge encrypted data backup," and Disconnect, a search
provider that utilizes a VPN to anonymize internet queries through
regular search engines like Google or Bing. Both are subscription
services, and buying a Blackphone gives users two years free. After
that, it's assumed you'll be looking to buy the latest Blackphone with
the latest specifications, which will no doubt come with new
subscriptions.
"There's no such thing as an NSA-secure phone."
Is the Blackphone totally
secure? No. "There's no such thing as 100-percent secure," explains
Janke, "and there's no such thing as an NSA-secure phone. If you have a
phone it can always be hacked." People will try to break Silent Circle's
security, and the company says it's "not so arrogant" as to think they
won't succeed. The company will open source the vast majority of its
code for the phone in order for third parties to properly audit its
techniques, find holes, and ultimately help to improve the product.
The majority of security and
privacy issues with Android smartphone don't come from your calls,
texts, or from the operating system itself. They come through apps. The
Blackphone, security apps aside, is still an Android phone, and although
it will only install Google services like the Play Store if you ask it
to, the third-party apps it runs are no different to those on a Galaxy
S4 or HTC One. Silent Circle's answer to the Android app problem is a
Security Center that gives granular control over what apps can do.
"Normally," explains Toby
Weir-Jones, GM at Blackphone, "when you download an app from the Play
Store, it tells you all the permissions it wants in a single aggregate
list, and you only have the option to accept or decline that list in
full." What Security Center does is give users the option to modify
every permission every app can take advantage of. You'll be able to set
system-wide permissions, like saying "no app can have access to my
location data or my contact information," or set permissions on an
app-by-app basis. This won't necessarily stop malware or phishing
attacks, but if a user is concerned about insecure apps they're free to
revoke any permissions they choose. The idea is to neutralize the risk
of, for example, an app secretly transmitting data or calling premium
numbers.
The Security Center, which offers granular control over app permissions.
In addition to the Security
Center, there's also a Wi-Fi manager that keeps Wi-Fi switched off when
you're out of the house or office to stop Wi-Fi-based tracking. There's
also a separate tool that sits on the network stack of the phone and
blocks a list of known trackers used by companies that target ads at
you. It won't block ads from being displayed or cut off a developer's
source of revenue, but it will prevent your information from being
tracked and sold to advertisers. Silent Circle will obviously need to
update this list periodically, but it's confident it will be blocking
the vast majority at launch.
Silent Circle wants to "force a rethink of the economics of monetizing personal data in exchange for free services."
There are some apps that will
not run when refused certain permissions, Weir-Jones explains, There the
user has a choice: give the app full permissions and use it knowing the
risks, find an alternative, or reach out to developers and implore them
to change their ways. "Longer term that's the hope that we have, that
this is going to force a rethink of the economics of monetizing personal
data in exchange for free services."
That's a lot of what the
Blackphone is about: provoking change. Its makers aren't expecting to
outsell Apple or Samsung, or even smaller players like HTC or Huawei.
But they see an opportunity to sell a fairly large number of phones.
Silent Circle is targeting 10 million sales per year within three years.
And although the Blackphone might be "the world's first"
privacy-focused smartphone, it almost definitely won't be the last. The
company is planning "a whole family of devices" to follow up the
original Blackphone, and although neither Janke nor Weir-Jones would
confirm it, a tablet is very likely to be one of those devices.
Preorders start today at $629
For now, though, the focus is on the Blackphone launch. Today it's opening up preorders
that'll ship to users in June 2014. In the US, and indeed most of the
world, you'll only be able to buy the phone off-contract at $629. Silent
Circle believes that's a fair price — it's offering a phone that
"competes with the best out there" along with over $850 in services and
subscriptions for less than the price of an iPhone 5S. Only the Dutch
carrier KPN, which operates its own network in the Netherlands, Germany,
and Belgium, will offer Blackphone directly to customers. It's also
planning on offering KPN customers without Blackphones access to Silent
Circle subscriptions as part of their contracts.
The Blackphone's success isn't
likely to hinge on price, specifications, or carrier deals (although
the latter certainly won't hurt). Its success is dependent on only one
factor: consumer interest. Will enough people be willing to buy a
high-end smartphone with the sole purpose of protecting their privacy?
Silent Circle thinks so, and so does KPN, but the rest of the world
needs convincing.
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