Download snowdens app haven

It integrates the encrypted messaging app Signal, so that every alert, photo, and audio clip it sends to the user is end-to-end encrypted. As another safeguard, users can also configure Haven to work with the Android app Orbot, which has an option to turn your phone into a so-called Tor Onion Service —essentially, a server on the darknet.

That means the Haven phone's event log can be accessed remotely from your desktop or another phone, but only over Tor's near-untraceable connection. In theory, that means no eavesdropper can break in to access those audio and photo snapshots of your sensitive spaces. He notes that despite his personal avoidance of carrying a smartphone, even he has used Haven in hotel rooms while traveling and at home, albeit only with some additional precautions that he declined to fully detail. In WIRED's initial tests of Haven's beta version, the app successfully detected and alerted us to any attempts to approach a laptop on an office desk, reliably sending photos of would-be evil maids over Signal.

If anything, the app was too sensitive to saboteurs; it picked up and alerted us to every stray office noise. The app's accelerometer detection was so hair-triggered that even leaving the phone on top of a computer with a moving fan inside created hundreds of alerts. You can set thresholds for the audio, but it was tricky choosing a level that wouldn't trigger false positives.

Freitas says the developers are still working on fine-tuning those controls, but that users may have to experiment. Snowden acknowledges that Haven can't stop an intruder bent on physically harming someone. Called Haven, the app uses the sensors on your Android device to track various metrics. It uses the accelerometer to track the movement of the device and surrounding vibrations, camera to track movements of objects in view, microphones to track noises in the environment, ambient light sensors to track changes in the lights and power to check if the phone was unplugged or the power cut.

The way this is supposed to work is that you should ideally install this app on a burner phone with a SIM card. The app is then configured to log all the information and send notifications to a number, ideally your personal number, over a secure channel like Signal or Tor with end-to-end encryption. If the app picks up any data from the sensors, such as someone entering your room or accessing your belongings let's say, your laptop then it will immediately send notifications to your main number.

Alternatively, it can be installed on your main phone and have the notifications be sent to a trusted number, alerting them in case you come in physical danger. The Intercept's Micah Lee helped develop the app, and described how it could be used to deal with so-called "evil maid" attacks, in which an attacker attempts to physically tamper with a machine in order to compromise 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. Haven won't necessarily protect such attacks from being carried out, but the app can be configured to send notifications and recordings via text message and Signal for end-to-end encryption when the phone's sensors detect something out of the ordinary.

And even in cases where the phone itself doesn't have network access and can't fire off those warnings -- say, if the phone doesn't have a SIM card or isn't connected to WiFi -- every event that triggers an alert is logged locally on the phone. That way, the machine's owner will still be able to tell that an unauthorized actor may have had access to it.

Of course, Haven could — and should — see use outside of those very specific scenarios. Guardian Project founder Nate Freitas calls Haven "the most powerful, secure and private baby monitor system ever," and it's not hard to imagine leaving a spare room in a room with a child to relay every anguished crying jag to parents. None of the data captured by Haven is relayed to third-party servers, so parents and paranoiacs can rest easier knowing they're in full control of this highly personal data.