Best Handset For Freedom?

Father Thomas Dowd writes "The images we are seeing of Iran are being captured on cell phones and the text is being twittered over SMS. Still, the government has some control over the networks, and we are all familiar with fears of wiretap technologies to spy on users. If the cell phone is the new tool of freedom, what would the best 'freedom handset' contain? I'm thinking of a device with an open OS, where each phone could be a router for encrypted messages passed through Bluetooth/WiFi/whatever, thereby totally bypassing physical infrastructures when necessary. Of course, some sort of plausible deniability encryption a la Truecrypt would also be good, in case the secret police catch you with your phone. What else might we need?"

Comments

Re:Are you kidding?

[jonwil]

The whole mess in Iran started because the UK overthrew the democratically elected prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh just because he had the gumption to kick out the British owned oil company and replace it with Iranians.

why kdawson?

[superwiz]

Why do they keep this guy around? I mean, is he anything but a washed up philosopher? I don't mind a philosopher. But this is a techno site. Shouldn't he have some modicum of technical understanding? If cell phones act as routers, that means that have to constantly (or at least often) maintain a certain level of transmission. Which means they would have talk-time level of power consumption. For most phones that's too short. The passive mode on phones is so low on power consumption because they are mostly just receiving. Anyone with even a tiny bit of technical knowledge would understand this. How's is this guy kdawson a slashdot editor? C'mon.