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by plg 4666 days ago
"I have in my pocket a cryptographic telephone"

Anyone know what he is referring to? I'd like one of those.

4 comments

Andy Mueller-Maguhn is a long time member of the Chaos Computer Club in Germany, and a former spokesman. He is a specialist on surveillance, working in a journalistic capacity on the surveillance industry with his project wiki, buggedplanet.info. Andy works in cryptographic communications, and runs a company called Cryptophone, which markets secure voice communication devices to commercial clients.

http://www.cryptophone.de/en/company/

If you can't get one of those, you can try Moxie's RedPhone for Android:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcri...

I think the part of the speech quoted by the parent commenter was indeed referring to exactly this software, and to the other things that the speech mentions:

"I have in my pocket a cryptographic telephone [...] This phone, short of breaking into it when I make a phone call, no one here, short of a mathematical breakthrough, is going to be able to intercept it. I have a couple different encrypted text messaging services. I have the TOR project, Orbot, Progra, Cryptophone, Redphone, TextSecure."

In context, the "cryptographic telephone" is a smartphone running all of this software. "Progra" is a mistranscription; I just listened to the original and he says "the Tor Project's Orbot program".

I would be shocked if Appelbaum is still using a standard cell-phone at this point. There's just too much reason to worry about remote compromise of the device.
I remember the German government paying some companies to develop telephones that communicate fully encrypted (and putting the required infrastructure to use them in place).

I think the outcome was 1000€ phones for use by Government officials, the chancellor, etc., who can choose between Blackberry and Android.

http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article119980213/Frankreichs-M...

nb: Thales is also known for supplying tools the other end too...

Simple, GSM and 3G are encrypted between the telephone and the mast.