The struggle for security in a world of high technology manifests itself in a battle for technological supremacy between technology users? and those who seek their valuable data thieves, intelligence agencies, and the like. Recently a new tool, the Blackphone SGP Technologies, was released to a public increasingly concerned with the privacy to a great financial success, selling its initial stroke.
But is the new expensive phone truly the bastion of safety as its boosters would claim? And can take it in the general market, or will they prove to be a fancy toy for security-minded? Read on to know if Blackphone is really the future of mobile security.
Hardware for a Shadowy World
First, let's discuss the phone itself. The Blackphone is a powerful hardware with a Quad Core 2 GHz processor and 1 GB of onboard RAM. Of course, brute force hardware is not the main selling point of Blackphone, especially considering its landmarks in tests by Ars Technica against other leading smartphones. Instead, the buyer is likely to Blackphone prospective interested in more esoteric features of the device, rooted in its extensive software package.
The brains behind the safety
The Blackphone trickles a heavily modded version of the Android Open Source 4.4.2, known PrivatOS. This operating system is not deeply interconnected Google applications that define the Android platform. The fact Blackphone rather use the software co-designer Silent Circle, including applications to make calls, send texts, and managing e-mail, all with a high level of anonymity.
Users can set the level of privacy they need at any given time, although the highest security levels limit the phone to get in touch with other Silent Circle enabled devices. Buying a Blackphone comes with a two year subscription after Silent Circle and three one-year "friends and family" software service pass.
Skepticism
SGP Not everyone has adopted this new product. ExtremeTech expressed extreme skepticism of Blackphone in a recent article. Author Ryan Whitwam stresses that the phone, although sold at least in involvement as a method of struggle against the Intelligence spy agency, is not really able to do this. Moreover, big selling point of the phone, the application suite for privacy enabled, could easily be transplanted to other more powerful phones. Accordingly, quite expensive Blackphone can be considered a high-end showcase for useful software attached to a mediocre phone.
Celebration Prudent
An article in Fast Company presents another view. Through interviews with GSP CEO Toby Weir-Jones and a number of security experts, author Luke Dormehl establishes a laudatory tone. Weir-Jones described his company's product call encryption technology and nearly unbreakable, with a restricted encryption and a lack of centralized storage of information on the part of the company acting as bulwarks against the interference of intelligence.
A roll Die
a thread that emerges in the interviews in the article by Dormehl is a belief by Weir-Jones and his ilk that their products represent a future that that the public willingly embrace. This is the real challenge of Blackphone; a cellular device unable to call someone safely using only its encryption service conscious owner privacy is, by its nature, depends on its own widespread adoption. Three free accounts "family and friend" does offer a thin solution to the need for users to contact potentially anyone else in the world.
Life or Convenience
This is one of the weaknesses of the Weir-Jones point. It explicitly states in his interview that he believes the general population, one day, come to understand the loss of privacy inherent in "free" (but intensive data mining) services such as those provided by Google, and therefore migrate to programs like the company of those Weir-Jones has developed.
Unfortunately, this can not be the case. As Whitwam suggests glancingly, current mobile users benefit from features such as the Google Play Store and GPS-heavy location based services and it is far from clear that the general public will never decide to put aside these amenities , privacy or not.
Go where the data come from?
Ultimately, what is done with all the data collected? This question talks about the problems often neglected nesting at the heart of all debates in applicable privacy. While the United States, and the world was shaken by the revelations of Edward Snowden about the depth and pervasiveness of surveillance of the NSA, nobody seems to blink an eye passing over large amounts of personal data for legal persons.
we can say that the extent to which the occasional use of hands salable data to Google smartphones is occluded behind the arcane licensing systems hiding clauses mining information with the boilerplate language. However, the success of social media sites that monetize entirely around their ability to openly gather information about their user base, confuses the issue. It seems that much of the world's population is quite willing to let a remote entity know what they like and with whom they associate, as long as they are able to play games and upload photos while doing.
Roadblocks
the biggest problem facing the defenders of privacy (and companies like GSP, they form) may be this: Is that enough care public? Without a critical mass of users installed to make Silent Circle services worth the Blackphone be condemned to sink into a kind of private pro-life dark, the choice of communication tool for too small a community security-conscious. Insofar Whitwam is correct on the interchangeability of the package, SGP may be vulnerable here too; Blackphone future releases will be hampered if the tech-savvy consumer of the unit decided to give up the material and stick with useful programs on a device of their choice.
Overall, it seems that the Blackphone package tries to hit an uneasy balance between a market for security-conscious, which probably prefer the phone software solutions installed on flat Platforms more powerful, and more casual consumer base who appreciate the simplicity of the whole Blackphone all-in-one privacy, except for their indifference to security issues. Although initial sales Blackphone can be strong, its viability as a long-term platform remains very questionable. Hopefully Silent Circle will be wise enough not to link its fate too closely to a gambit questionable material at the expense of their customers software.
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