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Snowden's New App Haven Uses Your Smartphone To Physically Guard Your Laptop (theintercept.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The NSA whistleblower and a team of collaborators have been working on a new open source Android app called Haven that you install on a spare smartphone, turning the device into a sort of sentry to watch over your laptop. Haven uses the smartphone's many sensors -- microphone, motion detector, light detector, and cameras -- to monitor the room for changes, and it logs everything it notices. The first public beta version of Haven has officially been released; it's available in the Play Store and on F-Droid, an open source app store for Android.
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Everyday reality/Haiku writer Christopher Dale Reimer was found alone in his San Jose apartment this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community doesn't remember him - you never heard of his work, because it's awful. Truly a delusional fool.
the "bad guys" have to steal your phone AND your laptop now to get away with their cunning plan?
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
not sure what to think... security or full on spying by to know WHEN you're out of the room or not so they can jack any secrets you may hold
Snowden is nothing but a glorified sysadmin that stole a bunch of documents - who wrote this for him, FSB?
Very interesting use case and development, but this is somewhat amusing to see that Snowden is posting his privacy apps to Google Play (in addition to F-droid)... It's not a good message sent to people in my opinion.
I think it's time that we get something alternative to Google and Apple, like project eelo.io seems to be starting.
Do not even google it! Anything linking to Snowden and associates will severely and permanently damage your career prospects and impact your chances to otherwise obtain emplyment. Your ability to travel may also be harmed!
Who are these collaborators, and where are they located? If they are from Snowden's new digs I would be concerned about giving their program access to my phone's sensors. In a perfect world, the open source community will drag a fine tooth comb through the code and we could be sure there was nothing malicious, but I don't believe in that world yet.
I'm sure that after requiring full access to all your phone's sensors, the app would never share that data with Russian hackers.
KGB Phone!
Any other bright ideas?
Good job linking to the play store but not f-droid.
Do the security services really need to enter your room and the open safe?
They know the room the interesting person is in due to the hotel, CC, ID used.
Everything networked in the room can be set to collect it all during your stay.
Sooner or later that secure laptop on average under the cell phone is going to be online again.
Having a need to use such software just makes the security services more sure the person is worth collecting on.
Once the security service know a person has such software their hotel room not be entered.
All surrounding hardware and networks will be used to try and access the persons laptop.
Physical access to the laptop can be done at any airport during a "random" request to look at the laptop.
Domestically once a person is in and out of their hotel room security services can just use a smart tv or other networks in a room to collect on the person of interest.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Here, have another one!
And he's a fat retard.
Snowden's da man for standing up to these American thugs who spy on everybody around the world. Hopefully Snowden continues to expose the corrupt American government and perseveres in the end.
or just wait for the battery to die
He is a Russian agent. Fuck him, he should be tried as a traitor and executed when found guilty because he admitted to the crim.
So Snowden releases a 'spy app' on the same day the scope of Fancy Bear operations against journalism are exposed.
Um, no connection here, nothing to see, move on.
If that's the case, you're not doing "encrypted" properly.
im seeing a lot of suspicious attempts at character assassination in the comments and theyre fairly easy to debunk, so here goes.
Even worse, I believe he was a sharepoint admin...
check wikipedia or the guardian project to figure out what this man actually did and who he worked for. He was a BAH contractor. Just because your employer is too daft to assign you anything but a menial job shoveling the sharepoint shit, doesnt mean you're too stupid to do real work.
I'm sure that after requiring full access to all your phone's sensors, the app would never share that data with Russian hackers.
except that Haven is open source you tit. It has 5 developers and currently 1 asshole from slashdot trying to torpedo it
https://github.com/guardianpro...
Good people go to bed earlier.
Someone forgot to check the post anon box XD
How very interesting!
Believe some of these guys were heroes. But when you find out they are sitting back with the Russian oligarchs and not saying shit about the US Nazi leadership the reality sets in. There are no heroes, just different kinds of opportunists.
Chris, people are now openly and proudly mocking you. You and your 6 YouTube subscribers.
this will enable to gather forensic data for a hack post mortem , but in no way will stop the hack in the first place , and if i know you are 30 min away , a hood and 15 minutes is all i need.
They should have just named this 'Comrade Phonehome'.
All of the things this app claims to do for 'privacy and security' are easily spoofed/altered by a state level adversary to cover their tracks, don't really do anything about the backdoors (potential or verified) in signed and required baseband/bootloader firmware, and can easily be spoofed/exploited on both the spare phone and the computer if aiming for a targetted attack.
Worse yet, this provides plenty of 'free' surveillance access simply by tapping the already running datastream, and unless the data isn't recorded at some point, doesn't really provide verifiable proof that can't be covered for later if the operator of the devices isn't paying constant attention (and if you are the target of either an automated attack, or state level passive surveillance, you are just giving them extra tools to get you with.)
Snowden is a burned asset. Much like OpenSSL, just because nobody has proven the security exploits this can allow, doesn't mean a malicious actor wasn't busy designing/injecting these into the codebase.
Bruce Schneier: China and Russia Almost Definitely Have the Snowden Docs
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Edward Snowden’s a Hero, All Right - to China and Russia
Sympathy meter now at absolute zero
By Charles Johnson
6/16/13 4:42:24 pm
Well now. I’m at a loss to understand how Edward Snowden’s latest disclosures could possibly have been inspired by his much-vaunted concerns about civil liberties, since he’s now revealing details about US espionage against Russia.
American spies based in the UK intercepted the top-secret communications of the then Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, during his visit to Britain for the G20 summit in London, leaked documents reveal.
The details of the intercept were set out in a briefing prepared by the National Security Agency (NSA), America’s biggest surveillance and eavesdropping organisation, and shared with high-ranking officials from Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
The document, leaked by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and seen by the Guardian, shows the agency believed it might have discovered “a change in the way Russian leadership signals have been normally transmitted”.
The most salient point: this is not news in any sense. You would have to be one of the most naïve people on Earth to not realize that the US spies on Russia, Russia spies on the US, and in general, heads of state from any freaking country spy on each other, friendly or not, all the time, forever and ever, amen.
But that doesn’t mean it’s insignificant when a US citizen reveals this kind of information to Russia, either. I had already lost any shred of sympathy for Mr. Snowden when he dumped secret documents to a pro-Beijing newspaper, but this demonstrates beyond a doubt that his sole purpose in leaking these secrets is to embarrass the US government.
It is entirely reasonable to have grave concerns about what Edward Snowden did. He not only released US documents, but had ones from Canada, UK, Australia, and probably many others too, including France, Germany, and Sweden.
I think this plays a part in why Snowden is so regarded:
Gangster, Al Capone Started One of the First Soup Kitchens During the Great Depression
Crime boss, gangster, and lawbreaker are the most common words used to describe Al Capone, one of the most notorious men of the 20th century. . . .
However, most people haven’t heard of the charitable support that Capone offered during a hard period for many Americans. In the 1930s, the Great Depression left a lot of citizens hungry and unemployed. Although he was a criminal to many, Capone was also respected community leader for a lot of people due to his charity. Some say that he did more for the citizens of Chicago, Illinois than the state itself did.
Al Capone’s Soup Kitchen . . . served over 120,000 meals to hungry people. The free soup kitchen kept regular working hours, serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner and fed thousands every day despi
So you need this app that pretty much spies on you for your own security.
This hasn't been tried before, it should pan out gg 10/10 absolutely no double standards anywhere
You really freaking don't get Snowden or why some of us appreciate him. There's not been any soup. I don't even know what you're comparing to the soup, and I actually don't think you do either. You couldn't even explain that payoff or gratifying factor.
It doesn't take much historical or political theory to see why what the NSA is doing fundamentally breaks the contract between the government and citizens that characterizes the USA. If you're an authoritarian and might makes right, well... you don't understand what the USA is supposed to be at least for the citizens it recognizes as such. But if you imagine yourself at all interested in the rule of law or the rights of people even against politically powerful entities, you're being dissonant and duped.
The USA's agencies make the East German Stasi look crude and, if you're outside the sphere of privilege, benign.
If you paid any attention to the expansion of war powers between Bush, Obama, and now Trump's administration and applied the same observation and concern to technology, you'd be clear on the danger and why Snowden did the world a huge favor.
he should make an app that detects activities that we like to keep private and alert the user whenever they are detected to make them more aware of the privacy implications of have a computer with so many sensors in your pocket all the time.
You really freaking don't get Snowden or why some of us appreciate him.
I appreciate him revealing several documents that outed that the NSA spying on US citizens.
I absolutely hate him for revealing the other million plus documents that had nothing to do with that but that exposed many other US secrets. So much so that I believe he was the primary turning point that eventually lead to the current situation of Russia's rise and boldness directly attacking US elections.
Before snowden we just thought we lived in a police state. After the snowden revelations we know we live in a police state.
All actions that were illegal are now legal, capture of the system is complete.
Rather than roll back unacceptable powers all the actors have doubled down. Nothing happened, voters care more about gay marriage and right to choose than fundamental liberties.
You referenced littlegreenfootballs? Really?
I know, they are living in a freedom loving country that offered asylum because of its long standing commitment to open culture, citizen privacy, and free speech, so they felt it was important to protect the noble whistleblower. A country that leads the world in its protection of open journalism and has for centuries, well decades anyway, led the struggle against state surveillance of citizens.
Apparently they were so impressed with Snowden's nobility of purpose that they awarded him a state pension immediately he arrived. Of course, his travel was sponsored by the British Guardian newspaper, itself a noble advocate of free speech and opposition to global warming, now enthusiastically promoting the noble Corbyn, having belatedly finally discovered his nobility when his takeover of the Labour Party was secured. A paper that has systematically revealed the iniquities of various US organizations, and has usefully countered the disgusting neo-liberal capitalist denigration by the evil Murdoch Press of the great contribution of the Soviet Revolution to human freedom and well being.
Maybe the Guardian gives them a stipend too?
Well anyway, these are my kind of guys and I will download and install their app right away. They are about the only people I would trust with accessing all my sensors on my mobile. I mean, anyone else, how do you know who is sponsoring them?
I hope they keep their app up to date. I am sure they will make the updates available immediately to everyone who has installed it.
... are easily separated.
The suspiciously large number of comments trashing this idea seem to indicate that some people have a vested interest in this *not* being used or popular. I wonder why?
A lot of the points made are totally bogus.
The idea is you use this on a *spare* phone - so it won't be able to gather any useful data and you would only need to have it turned on at all when you were (e.g.) leaving your laptop in a hotel room, so the only thing this device would know about *you* is where you are - when you are *already* in a 'well-known place'.
If people use it only as intended there would be virtually no point whatsoever of including spyware.
Also, because of its origins and purpose this code is going to get a *lot* more scrutiny than your average FOSS.
It would make it a lot more difficult to (say) install a physical keylogger on your laptop without you being aware. It might not protect you if you were prime target of a three letter agency with the resources to deal with such a device but it might well protect you from industrial espionage and more general spying.