Blackphone, the Smartphone from encryption and privacy firm Silent Circle is on show at the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum in London as part of their new exhibition ‘All Of This Belongs To You’.
The ‘All of This Belongs to You’ exhibition includes three specially curated displays, among which is ‘Ways to be Secret’, which examines “the contradiction between our concern for online privacy and our obsession with sharing via social media”. The Blackphone is featured in ‘Ways To Be Secret’ alongside other objects including the selfie stick, Onion Pi router and USB Condom. Notably, also on display, are the remains of Edward Snowden’s MacBook Air.
Speaking at the V&A last night, Phil Zimmerman, creator of PGP and Co-founder of Silent Circle said that Snowden’s laptop represents “the dead body of mayhem that motivates the premise” of his technology and that the issues that motivated PGP are becoming more prevalent today.
Zimmerman explained that whilst Snowden was a high-profile leaker, he is not the only one. By comparison to the zero leakers from Bletchley Park and those working for the NSA during the Cold War he explained this is because “today is morally troubling to today’s leakers.”
Zimmerman remarked that we are currently living under ‘pervasive surveillance’ and that we are being given ‘the boiled frog treatment and need to jump out the pot.’
The exhibition is free to visit and will be open until Wed 30 September 2015.
