Sovereign Phone Disclosure

The phone protects your data from anyone who does not have your passphrase. It cannot protect it from you. If you are tricked, forced, watched while it is unlocked, or legally required to unlock it, the protection is gone. In the UK a notice to unlock is served on you, not on us, and refusing can be a criminal offence. We cannot answer it for you, and we do not hold your passphrase.

The modem runs the chipset maker's closed firmware, outside the verified boot chain. We integrate it; we do not control it. Separately, the mobile network, not the phone, records when and where the phone connected, and those records can be obtained from the network under UK law. Encryption protects what you say, not the fact that the phone was there.

We do not make the hardware. Attestation proves the software, not the silicon. We cannot prove a device was untouched before it reached us.

DatSov is a trading name of ProSolve Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales and subject to UK law. We can be served with UK warrants and notices, and some of them would forbid us from telling you, even if you asked. We do not run a warrant canary, so our silence tells you nothing either way.

The contract wording these summarise follows, unchanged: clauses A.2.2, A.2.3, A.3 and A.5 of the DatSov Sovereign Phone Annex. In it, "ProSolve" means us.

A.2.2 The only capability claim ProSolve makes about the device is this: it is verifiably the hardest target in its price class, with two named residuals. Those two residuals are named in clause A.3. The claim is comparative, it is bounded by price class, and it is made together with its own limits — that combination is what makes it a claim ProSolve is willing to stand behind.

A.2.3 ProSolve does not claim, and no person may claim on its behalf, that the device or any service supplied with it is proof against all attack, that it removes rather than reduces risk, that it places its user beyond the reach of lawful process, or that any particular adversary is unable to compromise it. Security is a matter of cost, time and capability on the attacker's side, and every one of those can change.

A.3 The two named residuals

These are disclosed before sale, deliberately and in the contract, because a security product sold without its limits stated is sold on a false basis. The Customer, and any end user, must read them.

A.3.1 Residual one — the authorised user, including lawful compulsion of that user

A.3.1.1 The device protects data against a person who does not hold the passphrase or the keys. It cannot protect that data against the person who does. A user who is deceived, who is coerced, who is observed while the device is unlocked, or who hands over a passphrase, defeats the protection entirely, and no configuration of the device changes that.

A.3.1.2 This residual has a specific legal form in the United Kingdom. Under section 49 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, a person with appropriate permission may serve a notice on the user requiring disclosure of a key or of protected information in an intelligible form. Failure to comply is a criminal offence under section 53 of that Act. Similar powers exist under Schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act 2000 and Schedule 3 to the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 at a port or border.

A.3.1.3 A section 49 notice is served on the user, not on ProSolve. ProSolve cannot answer it on the user's behalf, cannot prevent it, and does not hold the user's passphrase. The device's design means ProSolve is unable to recover a user's data — which protects the user against ProSolve being compelled, and equally means ProSolve cannot help a user who has lost access.

A.3.1.4 The practical consequence: the device raises the cost of a technical attack. It does not change the law that applies to the person holding it.

A.3.2 Residual two — the cellular baseband, and metadata created by the network

A.3.2.1 The device contains a cellular modem (baseband) running proprietary firmware supplied by the chipset vendor. That firmware sits outside the verified boot chain, is not open to inspection by ProSolve, and is not something ProSolve builds, audits or can fully constrain. It is a component ProSolve integrates rather than one it controls. This is true of every mobile device on the market that uses a commercial cellular modem, and ProSolve states it rather than leaving it to be discovered. The same is true of the hardware as a whole: ProSolve does not manufacture it, and attestation verifies the software, not the silicon.

A.3.2.2 Separately, the fact of a communication is created by the mobile network operator and not by the handset. Which cell site the device attached to, at what time, for how long, and the numbers involved, exist in the operator's records regardless of how strongly the content is encrypted on the device. On-device encryption protects content; it does not conceal that a communication took place, or from where.

A.3.2.3 That communications data is obtainable from the operator under Part 3 of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, and may be retained under a notice given under Part 4. ProSolve is not a party to that and cannot prevent it.

A.3.2.4 The practical consequence: a user whose threat model includes an adversary with access to operator records, or with the ability to reach the baseband, should understand that the device does not address either, and should take that into account in how the device is used.

A.5 Lawful process, and the Investigatory Powers Act 2016

ProSolve states its exposure to UK lawful process rather than leaving a customer to assume it has none.

A.5.1 ProSolve Ltd is a company incorporated in England and Wales. It is subject to the law of the United Kingdom, including the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, and it does not claim otherwise. Any statement that the device or its supplier is beyond the reach of UK legal process would be untrue, and no Partner may make one.

A.5.2 ProSolve may be served with, among other things: a targeted interception warrant under Part 2 of that Act; an authorisation or notice for communications data under Part 3; a retention notice under Part 4; a targeted or bulk equipment interference warrant under Part 5 or Part 6; a national security notice under section 252; or a technical capability notice under section 253.

A.5.3 Some of those instruments carry a statutory duty of secrecy. It is an offence under section 57 of that Act to disclose the existence or content of a warrant, and section 255 imposes a comparable duty in relation to a technical capability notice. Where ProSolve is served with such an instrument it may be legally prohibited from telling the Customer, the end user, or a Partner anything about it — including that it exists, and including in answer to a direct question. The Customer should proceed on the basis that ProSolve's silence on this subject carries no information either way.

A.5.4 ProSolve does not operate a warrant canary, and no Partner may present the absence of a disclosure as evidence that no instrument has been served. A canary is not a substitute for the disclosure in A.5.3, and ProSolve regards presenting one as misleading.

A.5.5 ProSolve's operating position, so far as the law allows it to have one, is: it requires a request to be lawfully made and properly authorised before it acts on it; it provides only what the instrument requires and no more; it challenges an instrument where there is a proper basis to do so; and where it is lawfully permitted to notify the Customer, it does so.

A.5.6 ProSolve makes no representation about whether it has or has not received any instrument of the kinds described in A.5.2, in either direction.

A.5.7 A notice under section 49 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 is addressed to the user (clause A.3.1). ProSolve is not able to comply with such a notice on the user's behalf, and the device's design means it does not hold what would be required to do so.

A.5.8 Nothing in this clause is legal advice to the Customer or to any user. A person who expects to be the subject of UK legal process should take their own legal advice, and should not treat this Annex as a substitute for it.

This is version datsov-disclosure-2026-10-29.