Last Updated on February 25, 2025
Edward Snowden, the popular whistle-blower for leaking several classified information has released a new app called Haven. The app turns any android smartphone into “safe room” that fits into your pocket. Smartphone app uses the sensors to identify attacks, intruders and send real time information to your other phone. If this works perfect, you don’t have to spent huge sum for putting a security system in your place.
Haven app leverages the power of the smartphone to make it an easy intruder alert or security system. It is an useful tool for investigative journalists, human right defenders, people at risks. He releases the app in open source beta form now. He also invites people to join for contribution whether in “codes or dollars”. The contribution will help to make the world not as safe but “free”.
Haven will make your phone a small monitoring system that detects motion, sound, light in the environment to tell for possible attacks or intruding. It can even send notifications to other phone with the sound recordings or live pictures if it is connected to cellular data or Wifi. If not connected, it can record those alerts locally to view later by the owner.
The app is created by Edward Snowdern in partnership from Freedom of the Press Foundation and The Guardian project. You can use your spare smartphone as the monitoring system and put the number of the phone that you use for getting notifications.
It says, “We designed Haven for investigative journalists, human rights defenders, and people at risk of forced disappearance to create a new kind of herd immunity. By combining the array of sensors found in any smartphone, with the world’s most secure communications technologies, like Signal and Tor, Haven prevents the worst kind of people from silencing citizens without getting caught in the act”.
Further they say. “We also think it is really cool, cutting edge, and making use of encrypted messaging and onion routing in whole new ways. We believe Haven points the way to a more sophisticated approach to securing communication within networks of things and home automation system”.
“Here’s how Haven might work,” he writes. “You lock your laptop in a hotel safe — not a secure move on its own — and place your Haven phone on top of it. If someone opens the safe while you’re away, the phone’s light meter might detect a change in lighting, its microphone might hear the safe open (and even the attacker speak), its accelerometer might detect motion if the attacker moves the laptop, and its camera might even capture a snapshot of the attacker’s face.”
Here is a video of what Snowden said for the app, while sitting somewhere in secret location.
What Haven app can do in detail?
Haven can monitor the following sensors for measurable change and records to an event log in the device.
- Accelerometer: phone’s motion and vibration
- Camera: motion in the phone’s visible surroundings from front or back camera
- Microphone: noises in the environment
- Light: change in light from ambient light sensor
- Power: detect device being unplugged or power loss
It can sent the photos or sound or videos with the secure instant notifications in case of intrusion. You can also access the logs remotely or anytime later for more details or offline processing.
As Snowden says, Haven does more than watching your back but it gives you “peace of mind”.
As this is just the beta form, they will develop more to make it perfect and add more features with contribution from more people. You can download the app from Google play store.
