"Edward Snowden’s New App ["Haven"] Uses Your Smartphone to Physically Guard Your Laptop... The NSA whistleblower and a team of collaborators have been working on a new open source Android app called Haven that you install on a spare smartphone, turning the device into a sort of sentry to watch over your laptop [or any other physical object or room]. Haven uses the smartphone’s many sensors — microphone, motion detector, light detector, and cameras — to monitor the room for changes, and it logs everything it notices. The first public beta version of Haven has officially been released; it’s available in the Play Store and on F-Droid, an open source app store for Android..." https://theintercept.com/2017/12/22...r-smartphone-to-physically-guard-your-laptop/ Haven Video: https://r2---sn-p5qlsnz6.googlevideo.com/videoplayback?key=yt6&mime=video/webm&pl=19&itag=43&mn=sn-p5qlsnz6&mm=31&ip=68.100.41.114&gir=yes&id=o-ADjwbDmk0fK9SmmvinI_pfh5_CNdgRfBFDXyKJ-5l2_3&ms=au&mv=m&mt=1513976347&ipbits=0&lmt=1513960318545285&sparams=clen,dur,ei,gir,id,initcwndbps,ip,ipbits,itag,lmt,mime,mm,mn,ms,mv,pl,ratebypass,requiressl,source,expire&expire=1513998039&requiressl=yes&ei=d3I9WrrkCIuMhgb_9JeICQ&initcwndbps=1177500&source=youtube&dur=0.000&clen=18076430&ratebypass=yes&signature=2103CFBAE58603D9FE8F0EAC80C2FCE7A61089EA.B624D26B99C07F5E99F54E63FC8DC8410051B2EA
There is another app on fdroid that uses an old smartphone as a password manager. When you connect it to a PC, it thinks the smartphone is a USB keyboard, it sends your password to the PC as keystrokes.
It's an interesting idea. For someone (like Snowden) who is notorious and lives in a hostile environment, maintaining physical security of hardware is essential. Evil maids are everywhere. And using your laptop as a pillow gets old eventually.
I don't think its designed to prevent theft, it sounds more like a portable, simple intrusion detector, which could have its uses, especially when the intruder did not want you to know the intrusion had occurred.
Well, the other day I looked up the app on fdroid. The description doesn't say it is specifically about guarding a computer. It is more about alerting you that someone has intruded into your space and it might gather enough information for you to figure out what they did too. It might detect for example, someone planting a bug in the room, or someone planted a hardware device in a PC, things of that nature.
Very intriguing app. I will have to test run it out of pure dumb curiosity in hopes I find it useful enough.
