Librem 5

The Most Security and Privacy Focused Phone

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Screenshots

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Hunter's comment

Even though security is a popular topic in these days (thanks to the big data hunter companies) we can not say that most people are aware of how their devices are compromised which they use everyday. We are also under mass surveillance. No matter which country or culture we belong. We experience a modern society disease. Freedom, privacy and security are all related terms and the importance of these concepts (rights) are getting bigger everyday.

Modern societies use technology like mobile phones. These devices became much more common than computers. Actually they are computers with communication ability. From the security perspective, mobile phones are much more vulnerable than computers today. When we need to talk about a secure device, we have to consider two main parts. Software and hardware. Most of the phones we use are all closed source devices in both hardware and software side. This means we dont have a control on our 'own' device and all our private or business life data we produce by our phones are open to third party organizations or individuals. The prying side can be a script kiddie, a big data hunter company (like google or microsoft) or state institutions. Briefly we need the data which we should 'own' to stay private. And this can only happen If we get more concious about the subject and behave according to this.

So we know the requirements to determine a secure device. But the situation isnt good. the hardware side is the worst part. The chips that are working on our computers and phones arent open source or open to auditing. What it means that our devices can be remotely accesible. They can watch (by the camera) us, listen us and read our messages without touching our devices. Any malicious activity can be done through the hardwares. The software side isnt innocent also. There are closed source mobile OS's (operating system) like Apple's ios and it means we trust that OS company more than our family member. The most popular OS right now in the market is Android, yes it is linux (open source operating system) based but almost all softwares (apps) run on Android is closed source and we cant be sure what they do exactly in our devices.

So is there a solution for all this desperation?

Yes. First of all we can be more secure by educating ourselves in cybersecurity and also specifically for mobile phones there is an upcoming product which brings hope for future.

Its called Librem 5 phone. A security and privacy focused phone. It will be produced by the company Purism which we already know from their security based Librem laptops they manufacture. Librem 5 finished its crowd funding campaign succesfully and will be ready at the beginning of 2019.

Librem 5 phone is focused on hardware and software security at the same time. All information gathering sensors (camera, microphone, wifi/bluetooth, baseband) will have physical switches which we dont see in regular phones. So that these modules can be turned off by the phone owner when needed. The most importantly the CPU of the device will be seperated from the baseband modem so that the scenarios (remote control of the device) we mentioned earlier wont be happening. Encryption is also very important in security and Purism have some special features about it. The phone will have E2E (end to end) encryption for communication and also for other use of the encryption, ''they are partnering with Nitrokey, maker of Free Software and Open Hardware USB OpenPGP security tokens and Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) to create Purekey, Purism’s own OpenPGP security token designed to integrate with its hardware and software.''

On the software side, also the OS will be very flexible which on the phone you will use it as a mobile OS display but also you will be able to dock the phone to an external display and use it in desktop interface. This feature we dont have with most of the phones. Librem 5 will have GNU/Linux based operating system, company already using PureOS (linux based) for their other devices so PureOS will also be an alternative. About the operating system FSF (Free Software Foundation) also supports Purism.

So in the end why we support them?

Cause we deserve better.

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Link

https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/

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Contributors

Hunter: @fako

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