For all the patriots who volunteered to help out the American Redoubt Darknet (AmRD) project may want to take a hard look at technology that may be useful to Patriots and partisans before a complete grid-down situation and if you can afford the $650 price tag, I would encourage you to get the phone and do a review which we can share.  This is a lot of money for most of us, but if it actually does half of what it claims it may be worth it for … especially for people in what I call “nexus” positions.  I am going to buy this device as I am an “early adopter” of many things related to the computer industry.  However for most of you I would wait for a minute.

Black-phone is a joint venture between Silent Circle and Spanish start up Geek Speak.  Silent Circle is a very expensive but perhaps pretty well respected company that offers things like secure text, secure VOIP, etc.  We have a degree of trust in this company for two reasons.  One is that Phil Zimmerman, one of the most legendary Internet pioneers are involved.  Phil Z created PGP which most of used and was nearly run out of the country by the NSA back in the day.  The other reason we have a degree of confidence is that Silent Circle was one of the companies that burned down their email portion of their company before they could receive a National Security Letter.  In their own CEO’s statement, they had built that system holding too much “meta-data” and thus it was suspect-able to being forced to disclose meta-data information or go to jail.  To prevent being put into that position, he just burn down the servers.  I do not know about Geekspeak at all.  Some techno-babble for those of you who care to listen to it.

BTW, there is nothing that is “NSA proof.”  All you can do is raise the bar required to unconstitutionally seize your private records.

The hardware is being built by Geeksphone, and the current specs are a 2GHz quad-core SoC, a 4.7-inch “HD” IPS screen, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, 8MP rear and 1.3MP front cameras, and HSPA+ and LTE connectivit.  Geeksphone has also listed some specs and features for the device. The Blackphone will offer a 4.7-inch HD IPS display, 2GHz quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, 8-megapixel camera 802.11n, and 4G LTE support.  It will feature an NVIDIA Tegra 4i mobile processor. The Tegra 4i processor is amongst the most powerful mobile processors available, running 60 custom GPU cores and a quad-core CPU. It clocks in at a top speed of 2.3 GHz, with 2 GB of RAM. The device has a fifth core for battery saving.

Blackphone is is a Linux based phone operating system developed by Google called Andriod.  This is suspecsious as we know Google is the private corporate arm of the NSA.  However the Blackphone runs PrivatOS, SGP’s own custom operating system based on on Goggle’s KitKat version of Android. Users are provided with 16 GB of internal memory and have the option of using additional microSD storage. It features an 8 MP camera on the rear and a 5 MP front-facing camera. It also has a 4.7 in HD display with a resolution of 1280 x 720.

One of the other things is the re-occuring cost.  The Blackphone will give you one year of Silent Circle.  This is encrypted voice, text and email.  But it only works when you are calling another Blackphone.  Now, I have no doubt that “…global adversaries of privacy…” can break this encryption.  However as many things we do with the AmRD the “treat” model is to help you against bulk, dragnet surveillance.  Since this is basically putting all of your voice under PGP, then you would need to be targeted and most likely the “…global adverseries of priacy…” will need to expend more processing power to listen to your phone call.

Here is one significant question I have for Blackphone and I have not heard others ask.  Does it allow you to disable e911? Enhanced 911 is suppose to “…make us safer…”  as is the normal war cry of the authoritarians, that or “…it is for the children.”  Any way, the FCC mandates that all phones sold in the U.S. are compliant with the Enhanced 911 (e911) service.  One of the things this system demand is “…Wireless network operators must provide the latitude and longitude of callers within 300 meters, within six minutes of a request by a PSAP.^[5] Accuracy rates must meet FCC standards on average within any given participating PSAP service area by September 11, 2012 (deferred from September 11, 2008).^[6]  From Wikipedia. 

Thus every phone sold in the U.S. has the ability to be remotely turned on and tracked to 300 meters.  Obviously the Fed.Gov never does this unless it is an actual emergency.  Thus I want to know how Blackphone deals with the e911 global tracking requirement.

Stand by for a review once I get my hands on it.  If you are an AmRD guy, and can afford it, this is a great thing to help out the other patriots.  Get the phone, put it on a carrier and write a review and I will share.