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Would you trust 'spyproof' mobes made in Putin's Russia?

Android-based securomobe makes play against the West's Blackphone

A Russian firm is developing its own anti-surveillance enterprise smartphone prototype - the TaigaPhone.

The secure handset from Taiga Systems will bundle security software from sister security firm InfoWatch Group onto a hardened version of Android.

The smartphone is likely to be positioned against the Blackphone, which has been available since last July, and the recently launched Kaymera smartphone from Israel, which is built from the ground up with security in mind rather than with security apps added as an afterthought.

Taiga Systems is co-owned by Aleksey Nagorny and Natalya Kaspersky, owner of the InfoWatch group and ex-wife of anti-virus pioneer Eugene Kaspersky respectively. A spokesman confirmed that Taiga "is a member of the InfoWatch Group of companies."

“The device is entirely our own – the design, the schematics and circuitry. The phone will be manufactured in China,” Nagorny told Izvestia, as Russia Today reports.

Details are so far scant but the smartphone will feature the ability to disable or enable select parts such as the camera and location services. Settings can be turned right down so the only functionality on the phone that still works is the ability to make and receive phone calls or (in ultra-paranoid mode) only receive incoming calls. Settings can be easily changed with one or two button clicks.

The device comes with the added privacy of being able to switch off its microphone. NSA blabbermouth Edward Snowden was so concerned about smartphone microphones as a conduit for eavesdropping that he famously asked journalists and lawyers who visited him after he hot-footed it to Hong Kong to place their smartphones in hotel fridges.

Switching off phones does not disable built-in GPS functionality, a privacy shortcoming that Taiga Systems reportedly intends to address by partnering with Symantec. End-to-end encryption of voice and data ought to come as standard with secure smartphones worthy of the name but it's as yet unknown how Taiga Systems intends to approach this challenge.

The timing of the project, much less the price of TaigaPhones, remains unclear. El Reg approached InfoWatch to arrange an interview or get comment on the technology but a spokeswoman said that it was withholding both technical and commercial details about the project.

"The smartphone is now on a stage of a prototype, there are not any commercial samples," she said. "That is why we are now not commenting [sic] any technical details or commercial plans." ®

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