Erik Prince wants to sell you a “secure” smartphone that’s too good to be true
Prince told investors the UP Phone is built by “engineers with deep experience in lawful interception, surveillance, and spoofing capabilities.”
While taking various privacy and security enhancements from open source projects, Unplugged president Ryan Paterson told MIT Technology Review via email, Unplugged’s proprietary operating system developed their own “enhancements” including “based on knowledge not available to the public (zero-days) and others.” A zero-day vulnerability is an unknown security weakness that can be attacked via exploit that can sell for millions of dollars.
Unplugged’s day-to-day technology operations are run by Eran Karpen, a former employee of CommuniTake, the Israeli startup that