Boeing Preparing an Ultra-Secure Smartphone

bobwrit writes in with a story about Boeing's new secure government phones project. "Earlier this week, it was revealed that aerospace firm Boeing was working on a high security mobile device for the various intelligence departments. This device will most likely be released later this year, and at a lower price point than other mobile phones targeted at the same communities. Typically, phones in this range cost about 15,000-20,000 per phone, and use custom hardware and software to get the job done. This phone will most likely use Android as it's main operating system of choice, which lowers the cost per phone, since Boeing's developers don't have to write their own operating system from scratch."

Comments

Re:GPL Apply here?

[Skapare]

They could do the same with it as they did with SELinux. If it's truly secure, it can be fully open. Just don't leave the keys in it.

A bit hypocritical isn't it?

[dryriver]

So the people who feel entitled to intercept everybody else's emails, text messages, instant messaging, social media usage, phonecalls, internet browsing, credit card usage, GPS driving data and much more, preferably without any legal warrants of any sort being required, feel entitled to having "highly secure means of communicating" when it comes to themselves? Doesn't this create a strange division in society, where a small, select group of individuals enjoys complete communication privacy/security in their day to day dealings, while everybody else's supposedly "private" data is one easy keypress or mouseclick away from being fully searchable/viewable? How can there be any "accountability", "fairness" or "balance of power" in a society where a few select people enjoy "total communication privacy" and are completely "untransparent" and "invisible" as a result, while Joe Ordinary, who pays for all of this to happen with his taxes, has his own right to "personal privacy" completely annulled, and is forced to become completely "fully transparent" to the system at press of a key? I don't see how this kind of starkly assymetric "privacy rights inequality" can be good for a society, and least of all for a supposed "free & fair" Western democracy where people are - in theory - supposed to enjoy equal rights, as well as "basic rights", like the simple right to personal privacy.

Re:I wonder if this is an effective use of resourc

[ClickOnThis]

No, the Russians used to get most aerospace intelligence from the magazine 'Aviation Week and Space Technology' (usually referred to as 'Aviation Leak').

And there reporters weren't even remotely good looking.

Well, Aviation Week leaked at both ends: the west got intel on the Soviets with it too.

I heard a funny story once (perhaps apocryphal?) about someone working on photographs taken during the Mayday Parade of all the military hardware the Soviets were showing off. He was trying to figure out basic dimensions and capabilities, etc., by examining the hardware and comparing it to the size of other things in the photographs. Someone came up to him, looked over his shoulder, and said, "Oh hey, the Mayday Parade." The guy with the photographs covered them up along with his work, turned to his visitor, and hissed "You shouldn't be looking at this!" The other fellow sad, "whaddya mean, it's all here in Aviation Week." He opened the magazine to the exact same photograph, with an article containing all of the data the fellow was trying to gather.