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Comment by stephengillie | Hacker News Reader

What phone isn't? Is even cyanogenmod safe from the NSA?

I think so, since it's fully community made, and beyond the "official" CyanogenMod team, there are hundreds more developers making "unofficial" CM ROMs for other phones, and they get to see the code, too.

Plus, the CyanogenMod team is now working on encrypted end-to-end messaging that is built-in:

https://plus.google.com/+CyanogenMod/posts/23vfN2qdZTu

No, it's not, because everything useful that happens with your phone happens over a carrier network or the internet, both of which are available to the NSA.

End-to-end encrypted messaging is a good sign, but it doesn't matter how "community made" your endpoints are - the NSA has the network.

Yes, but if the communication is encrypted it doesn't really matter. So these text messages should be by and large safe.

I agree about the voice calling, though, which is why I'd like them to use RedPhone as the default dial app, too, so at least you can have encrypted voice conversations when connected to the Internet.

Perhaps, but voice calls, and SMS all go through the carrier. While russian carriers don't have to provide data to the NSA, the probably do to the FSB. Yes you can make apps the communicate via encrypted channels, but that requires the same app at both ends, and ultimately I suspect apps are secondary for most people. Voice and SMS are the primary function of phones still.

Well, if you don't use Google Apps with it, then yeah probably.

You still have the radio firmware, which is closed source and can't be changed. That's where I'd expect snooping back doors to be located.

Well most of the firmware is written by an Asian company, doesn't put it outside the realm of possibility.

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