Turn your old mobile into a complete surveillance system with Edward Snowden's Haven App

Turn your old mobile into a complete surveillance system with Edward Snowden's Haven App

Edward Snowden, the former NSA employee who in 2013 released confidential agency documents related to spying and domestic surveillance programs, has just launched his new app: his name is Haven and he turns an old Android into a home surveillance system.

Haven was developed by The Guardian Project , a joint project with the Freedom Press Foundation . Basically, the app allows you to turn an Android mobile into an intrusion detection system to protect your office, your computer or whatever else you want to protect, taking advantage of the mobile's light and motion sensors.

The application is open source, everyone can access the project's GitHub repository , where Haven's code is hosted. In addition, from Haven it is indicated that not only the app is open source, but that all the libraries used for its development are also open source.

This is Haven, the surveillance app

Haven the surveillance app

When activating the tool, the device makes use of the mobile sensors to detect possible intruders and threats.

For this, Haven makes use of the accelerometer to enable the movement and vibration of the mobile, the camera (both the front and the rear), which captures if there are moving objects, the microphone, which captures if there is ambient noise, the brightness sensor by if there are changes in the ambient light and also the current sensor that reveals if the mobile has been disconnected or is losing battery.

Haven application for surveillance

In the configuration of the tool we can establish which sensors we want to use and with what sensitivity. In addition, we can configure a phone number so that notifications and alerts are sent to that number by mobile line, or we can configure the Signal secure messaging client to use it in conjunction with our mobile and send notifications through that tool.

"Haven only saves images and sound when activated by motion or volume, and stores everything locally on the device. You can position the device's camera to capture visible movement, or set your phone to listen for noise" - The Guardian