Counter-surveillance: Edward Snowden's new Android app lets you spy on people spying on you

Freedom of the Press Foundation, headed by the exiled digital privacy activist Edward Snowden has come up with an app which is aimed at protecting your devices from physical tampering.

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

The app is designed to be installed on any burner or cheap android device which can be kept in a room for counter surveillance. The burner device can be kept anywhere, for example, a hotel room.  It notifies the primary phone if it suspects any unwanted activity, such as if someone enters the room to steal something or install spyware.

“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,” the project page of the app says.

The app saves images and sound when triggered by motion or volume, and stores everything locally on the device. For this, the app uses five primary sensors of the device — accelerometer, camera, microphone, light & power. The burner phone can be kept in a way that it is able to take pictures of the intruder.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation has developed this app in partnership with The Guardian Project who are known to build privacy-related applications.

The app is currently in its beta development phase and is available for download from the Google Play Store.