This is a bit Scary....

I read an article about the new Blackphone that can allegedly disguise your phone from surveillance while you use it.  If this is true and I don’t have any reason to doubt that it isn’t, what a fantastic device it will be.  According to the Blackphone manufacturers, its a“Silent Phone, Silent text and Silent contacts.” If you can use a phone on a cellular network without peering eyes or bent ears, that would be fantastic. Now with that said, I move to an article in the New Yorker by Joshua Kopstein (2014), titled A Phone for the age of Snowden.   He starts off by saying this…

“Around midnight on Tuesday of last week, people near the barricaded city square at the center of mass protests in Kiev, Ukraine, received an ominous text message: “Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.  The message was most likely sent by the Ukrainian government using what’s popularly known as an “I.M.S.I. catcher”—a controversial tool that disguises itself as a cell-phone tower so that nearby devices connect to it, revealing their locations and serial numbers and, sometimes, the contents of outgoing messages. It was a bleak reminder of how cell phones, one of the past decade’s most indispensable and ubiquitous pieces of technology, can silently leave their owners exposed to governments and high-tech criminals.”

I have heard of these devices (IMSI catchers) but only in theory.  I wasn’t as versed in their operability as I should be.  Imagine a government being able to track your every move or a criminal watching you because they have access to this technology.  I can see when used in the proper context, this could be a very useful tool.  Someone goes missing and police are able to find them, a child gets abducted etc.  What scares the hell out of me is that a government entity is willing to use it to track who you are and tell you to “Move along, nothing to see hear citizen”. The day of the Blackphone has arrived and should be heralded as a “Good” device but I’m sure that there will be some who think that these devices are foolish and that the government should…. here it comes…. “Regulate” its usage.  

The Blackphone uses an encryption scheme that allows the phone to scramble the calls and any SMS message so that only the receiving phone can unscramble it. This will allow users to make and receive secure phone and texts messages, video chat and even send and receive files.
  
But alas, no matter how secure a device is, you still have to contend with any third party apps that your phone uses.  Here is where vulnerabilities reside, your favorite app can tell on you and tell a lot about your habits while using the device. 

Parting Shots:

I love it when I hear people say, “If you have nothing to hide, then what is the difference?” The difference is we are supposedly protected by a little known, (almost obscure now) document that says that our government or others do not have a right to do these sorts of things.  The Constitution grants us these privileges and every time we allow someone or the government to do these sorts of things, the hope, the rights of a free society and the luster fades from the document a little more.

References:

Kopstein, Joshua. (2014). A Phone for the age of Snowden. New Yorker Magazine.  Found at

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/01/a-phone-for-the-age-of-snowden.html

Blackphone.  Found at https://www.blackphone.ch/

Murphy, Heather. (2014). Ominous Text Message Sent to Protesters in Kiev Sends Chills Around the Internet.  The Lede. Found at http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/22/ominous-text-message-sent-to-protesters-in-kiev-sends-chills-around-the-internet/?_php=true&_type=blogs&action=click&contentCollection=Europe&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article&_r=0