Among the multitudes of technological innovations, gadgets, and other high-profile launches at this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the encrypted Blackphone had it’s turn to create attention. Phil Zimmerman is not only one of the Blackphone’s creators, he is co-founder of Silent Circle; and he’ll come right out and say it, “we have a bit of of a problem with the press saying that the Blackphone will make you NSA-proof”. Zimmerman went even further and said “If someone [at the Blackphone booth] tells you that it’ll protect you from the NSA, I’ll fire them.”. Okay, so what else do we need to know about this thing? Well, it’s entirely built around security, with a customized Android operating system called PrivatOS. PrivatOS is entirely encrypted; aimed to prevent hackers, governments, and criminals from your your web browsing, voice calls, video calls, voicemail, text, and file transfer, to (drum roll please) smartphone apps.

As far as cryptography goes, Blackphone’s orientation of privacy are implemented by Silent Circle’s suite of apps, SpiderOak’s secure cloud storage; and anonymous search, private browsing, and VPN from Disconnect. This basically means it’s supported with an extra layer of security for most of everything you do on your smartphone. Most people don’t expect that playing Angry Birds could make their location data vulnerable. But it and other apps are constantly accessing users contact lists, phone and data usage, and location. Think that’s bad? This point can be shoved in your face even more. Jason Hong from Carnegie Mellon’s Human Computer Interaction Institute, has looked into the top Android and Google Play stores and found that in the top 100 apps, about 85 percent were collecting “some kind of sensitive information”. Even the (free) Brightest Flashlight app, which is incredibly popular with over 100 million downloads, has been accused (by the Federal Trade Commission) of selling user location information to advertisers.

The Blackphone addresses this issue by protecting all your messages and calls, WiFi, and radio signals from being logged into while you go about your daily life. If you're an owner, the phone will show you which apps want access to data, and the kind of data. From then, it’s up to you to handpick what apps can share what information. If it gets into the hands of a stranger, or government entity, “its as good as useless”; impossible to track. It even comes with a Smart WiFi Manager, as well as a powerful remote-wipe and device recovery tool.

So the point is made, we need a phone that encrypts our apps; all of our apps. Good timing for the Blackphone company, as society’s concerns and suspicions continue to grow we are needing more options. But is this idea merely an option, not a solution? App encryption is a good thing, and so is telling the truth by outright admitting the Blackphone isn’t anti-NSA. Never forget the benefits of such a device could work to a criminal’s desire in order to hide their very own activity. Finally, are the high levels of privacy control enough to drive users to spend the $629 on the device; with a total of $1,508 for all the individual services (including Silent Phone, Silent Text, and Silent Contacts) that come with it? Director of Big Brother Watch Nick Pickles stated, “Everyone from lawyers to people with sensitive illnesses are concerned about how safe their information is on their devices, so technology that enables both security and privacy will undoubtedly be popular”. Pre-orders are officially available, with expected delivery in the summertime.