Twitter’s just made a notable acquisition, taking in security provider Whisper Systems as its latest deal.  So what would a social networking/microblogging site do with a company known for making Android devices more secured for business use?  Some would say that this is Twitter’s way of making their services more secure, while others would say that this might be a talent buy.

Twitter acquired Whisper Systems, a company that provides security and management solutions for Android devices to make them enterprise-ready.

“The Whisper Systems team is joining Twitter starting today.  As part of our fast-growing engineering team, they will be bringing their technology and security expertise to Twitter’s products and services. We’re happy to have Moxie Marlinspike and Stuart Anderson onboard,” announced Twitter.

Whisper Systems announced the transition on their site and stated the following on their post:

“Now that we’re joining Twitter, we’re looking forward to bringing our technology and our expertise into Twitter’s products and services.”

But in the transition, some of Whisper Systems’ services will be temporarily put on hold.  The RedPhone service, which provides end-to-end encryption for calls, will be interrupted immediately.  FlashBack, which stores encrypted backups in the cloud, will also go offline, though users will have a month to pull off any of their backup data.

The service interruption has already caused problems for users in Egypt, many of which rely on Twitter’s phone-in capabilities to circumvent service blocks and firewalls.  Twitter has become a symbol of free speech for the country’s emerging politico, and on the day of their first elections since the regime overthrow, the timing of Whisper Systems’ integration couldn’t be worse for Egyptians.

The timing is atrocious,” said Chris Sogohian, a privacy researcher with the Open Society Foundations. “Today is Egypt’s first election after it threw out its old regime, and the only encrypted voice communication tool for Android goes dark. This couldn’t have happened at a worse time for people in Egypt.”

As for the talent buy part, Marlinspike is the current CTO of Whisper Systems and known as a security researcher and expert as he discovered several high-profile computer-related security problems.  Anderson is currently a PhD student at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute studying agility in humanoid bipeds.  Marlinspike and Anderson both co-founded Whisper Systems in 2010.

Quite a weird combination: a social media platform, a security expert and a roboticist.  Is Twitter planning on making a robotic smartphone?  Just a thought.