On Friday, the Freedom of the Press Foundation and its president, well-known NSA leaker Edward Snowden, launched Haven, a new app designed to keep your digital security safe. The world’s most sensitive users of technology, like dissidents, activists, or journalists in repressive regimes, live in constant fear of hacking and online surveillance, but also in fear that the police, intelligence agents or other intruders will just steal their devices. Haven transforms any Android phone into a sensor for detecting intrusions. It uses the phone’s cameras, microphones and even accelerometers to monitor for any motion, sound or disturbance of the phone. If you leave the app running while you are gone, and it will record audio and capture photos of anyone who enters while you’re out. The app is meant for a burner phone, because the app will then send pictures and audio to your primary phone. It also tracks light, so an alert is triggered if the room goes dark or there is an unexpected flash. Snowden said it is like a guard dog, but one that records everything that happens around it. Since Snowden founded Freedom of the Press Foundation in early 2016, he has led a small team of programmers and technologists working on security tolls.
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