How Cryptophone Could Have Prevented a Political Crisis

While doing some research on the 'net about my upcoming phone (which I will be getting next week), I saw the website of Cryptophone. While reading its specs, I can't help but think how all the political turmoil the Philippines is experiencing right now could have been prevented if only Pres. Arroyo have used one of these.

According to its website, the Cryptophone has these following impressive features:

• Secures your voice's privacy
• Strongest and most secure algorithms available today
• AES256 and Twofish
• 4096 bit Diffie-Hellman key exchange with SHA256 hash function
• Readout-hash based key authentication
• 256 bit effective key length
• Encryption key is destroyed immediately after the call ends
• Source code available online for independent security assessments
• Also supports unencrypted calls, unencrypted SMS, address book, calendar etc.
• Works in any 900/1800/1900 GSM network that provides data call facilities
• Standby: 150 hours
• Talk time: Secure up to 3 hours 30 minutes / Unsecured up to 4 hours

The Cryptophone looks a lot like one of those PDA/Phones but instead of sporting PDA functions, it encrypts all communications that passes through it with secure security algorithms. Its rather disconcerting to see how lax the security of the president was during the time of the alleged wiretapping incident because I bet that at least 90% of her conversations should be considered a matter of national security and as such, those communications should have been properly secured.

technorati tags: security, phones, politik