Silent Circle buys out Blackphone and will debut new models next week in Spain

The Blackphone is the ultimate paranoiac’s phone. It doesn’t come with a foil helmet, but it is designed from the ground up to protect the user from government phone tapping and other security threats.

A Swiss company called Silent Circle partnered with hardware maker Geeksphone to make the device, which made its debut at last year’s Mobile World Congress.

“After a series of high profile cyber attacks over the last 12 months, global business is slowly waking up to the fact privacy and security is a business critical issue,” a Silent Circle rep wrote in an email to VentureBeat.

Now Silent Circle said it’s buying out Geeksphone to take full ownership of the product. It also said it plans to roll out some new devices, software, and services next week at the 2015 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

The Blackphone isn’t the most user-friendly phone in the world, but it is secure. It runs on a specialized version of Android called PrivatOS.

We will be on hand in Barcelona to give you a look at the new Blackphones.