This is quite an interesting team!

This is quite an interesting team!  The new Blackphone is put together by a team with several members that I'm familiar with: Phil Zimmerman, Jon Callas, Mike Janke, and Mike Kershaw.  There are some strong personalities in that group, and a lot of technical expertise. 

I don't know a thing about the product itself (a mobile phone oriented toward privacy and security).  I like the idea in a very general sense, but I wonder how many people and companies have to be trusted to keep it secure – and, post-Snowden, I have to wonder how long it will take the NSA to weasel their way in.  Or do they have a collaborator on the team? 

Here's some paranoid thinking for you: if you were the NSA, and you were getting annoyed by the security features on commercial cellphones, wouldn't starting a company to make supposedly secure cellphones that you've built a backdoor into be the perfect ploy?  Mind you, I'm not suggesting that the NSA has done this with the Blackphone.  I'm just pointing out the kind of scenarios that you must consider when you know what the NSA has already done.

Another example: I read a completely unsubstantiated rumor in the comments of a post on a security-related blog, to the effect that John Chambers (long time CEO of Cisco) was an ex-NSA employee who had built Cisco as, effectively, a captive subsidiary of the NSA.  And I didn't completely dismiss it immediately.  Paranoia is becoming a frame of mind whenever I think of computer security...