As Big Tech companies continue to expand their control over Americans’ cellphone data, one businessman has stepped up, providing an alternative and delivering a powerful message: enough!

This was the sentiment of Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, former NAVY Seal and owner of the Unplugged tech startup, during an exclusive interview on MRC UnCensored with host and MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider.

In the interview, Prince touted his one-of-a-kind Unplugged Smartphone, which he said is designed to combat Big Tech’s censorship and what he described as the “pervasive surveillance of Big Brother."

Referring to the “enormous power” of Big Tech companies, Prince mentioned that Americans have become the “product” of Big Tech, as these companies control “everything you do digitally, every call you make, everywhere you go, what you browse, what you buy [and] who you interact with.”

He recounted witnessing the rampant censorship conducted by Big Tech during the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, when censors “were canceling certain voices that they didn't like that were opposed to their big government narrative.”

But Prince had enough, he told Schneider, recalling the launch of UP Phone, which, unlike any other device, does not rely on Google software.

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Taking matters into his own hands, Prince explained, “I basically had an angry phone call with a couple of friends of mine saying, ‘What the hell are we going to do? We're not going to change Big Tech by b****ing about it. We're only going to change it by competing.’”

Prince suggested that the smartphone, launched in 2022, is even more relevant nowadays after Congress re-authorized controversial portions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s (FISA) Section 702.

“With Congress just a couple weeks ago passing not just a FISA extension, but a massive FISA enlargement, because what the federal government has been doing is have a very cozy relationship with Big Tech, all too cozy,” he said.

The infamous spying tool allows the federal government to collect a massive trove of emails from U.S. persons to foreign countries of interest without a warrant. 

“It basically allows the federal government, any agency can go to Big Tech and demand they turn over that data,” he continued. “Any messages, photos, anything they have without a warrant and without probable cause.”

Expanding on his remarks, Prince added, “Just one federal investigator … with a bone to pick wants to go on a fishing expedition to dig into your life. They have carte blanche to do it. This is the only thing that protects that kind of digital sovereignty.”

Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.