[guardian-dev] Blackphone

Hans-Christoph Steiner hans at guardianproject.info
Thu Jan 16 11:54:35 EST 2014


Many other countries also have the ability to issue secret orders to do stuff
like in the NSA leaks.  We all know about how it works in the US because of
the leaks, which is a good thing, because its much more opaque in most other
places.

For example, here are three analyses about hosting email in Germany[1][2] and
Switzerland[3], and they find that, even given what we know about the NSA and
FBI's NSLs, the US is probably still among the safest places from government
compelled intrusion

[1]
https://arstechnica.com/business/2013/08/crypto-experts-blast-german-e-mail-providers-secure-data-storage-claim/
[2]
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/europe-wont-save-you-why-e-mail-is-probably-safer-in-the-us/
[3]
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/switzerland-wont-save-you-either-why-e-mail-might-still-be-safer-in-us/

That is bad news since its quite obvious that the situation in the US is not
great.  But also remember the vast majority of the data the NSA is getting is
from its taps into the large companies insecure internal networks.  Those have
nothing to do with the government issuing secret orders that require those
companies to hand over the data.  They just physically went over to the cables
and installed taps.

.hc

On 01/16/2014 11:07 AM, Peter Villeneuve wrote:
> I agree that they'll likely continue to use Tivi and just rebrand it.
> They're very good at FUD marketing and not so good at releasing their
> complete source code.
> 
> More importantly, SilentCircle suffers from a major Achilles heel that will
> be difficult to overcome.
> Quite simply, they're an American company, and that means they're subject
> to National Security Letters just like Lavabit.
> Plus, the CEO is a former Navy SEAL, which in itself means nothing, but
> does hint at close ties to the "usual suspects..."
> Yes I know they have Zimmerman and Callas on board, and while I would trust
> them given their history, who's to tell me the company hasn't been
> infiltrated à la Bullrun?
> Who exactly is behind this company? Where did the millions in marketing
> come from?
> 
> Perhaps I'm being overly paranoid, but to me, nowadays, security/privacy
> and US company in the same sentence sounds like an oxymoron.
> 
> As usual, it all boils down to transparency and trust.
> What are other people's thoughts on this?
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 9:15 PM, ShootAKite at riseup.net <
> ShootAKite at riseup.net> wrote:
> 
>> I speculate Blackphone will be TiviPhone branded with Silent Circle
>> similar to the current Silent Circle mobile app.
>>
>> my source:
>> Existing Silent Circle app uses tiviengine
>>
>> https://github.com/SilentCircle/silent-phone-base/tree/master/silentphone/tiviengine
>> http://www.tivi.com/en/tech/voipsoftcrypt.php
>>
>> A
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