Edward Snowden’s new mobile app ‘Haven’ lets you spy on spies

Haven is an open-source tool designed for human rights activists and other people at risk and it uses an Android phone’s sensors to detect changes in a room.

Edward Snowden helps develop an app aimed at catching hackers.(AP Photo)

Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, who exposed the US government surveillance programmes by disclosing classified material in 2013 has launched a new app, called Haven. The application aims to protect your devices from physical tampering.

Snowden says it’s an open-source tool designed for human rights activists and other people at risk and it uses an Android phone’s sensors to detect changes in a room.

The software was developed with the Freedom of Press Foundation and the Guardian Project. It has been greeted with mixed social media reactions, with some people celebrating its security capabilities and others saying they don’t trust Snowden.

Snowden has lived in Russia since 2013, when the country gave him asylum, resisting US Pressure to extradite him.

“We designed ‘Haven’ for investigative journalists, human rights defenders, and people at risk of forced disappearance to create a new kind of herd immunity,” The Guardian Project wrote on its website on Friday.

“Haven,” currently available in public beta version, is an Android application that leverages on-device sensors to provide monitoring and protection of physical spaces.

The app turns any Android phone into a motion, sound, vibration and light detector, watching for unexpected guests and unwanted intruders.

Unlike most surveillance applications that usually make use of the users’ phone camera and microphone, “Haven” taps into all of its on-device sensors so that it can detect motion, sound, light and even vibrations to check for intrusions.

“Haven” combines these sensors while leveraging the likes of “Signal” and “Tor” communication apps to keep everything as secure as possible, according to Android Central.

The Guardian Project is a global collective of software developers, designers, advocates, activists and trainers who develop open-source mobile security software and operating system enhancements.