Everybody has a cryptographic telephone in their pocket. The problems are the cryptography is weak, the endpoints are insecure and people underestimate the value of traffic analysis.<p>Even if the cryptography were perfect the endpoints could still be listened in on and the latter would still be a huge problem.<p>Mobile phone encryption only works for the phone-to-tower part. Obviously what Appelbaum is referring to is a phone that does end-to-end encryption (still leaking some info but at least the contents of your conversation should be mostly safe), but people that are not capable of making this distinction will be wary of radio intercepts rather than wholesale line tapping.<p>It would be a funny thing if you needed a key-signing party before you could start to call people on the phone but it may come to that yet.