Edward Snowden has co-designed a smartphone case he calls the “introspection engine”, which, he claims, can help people elude surveillance.
From his home in Russia, Snowden said that hackers and intelligence agencies can access any phone with software that makes them easy to track.
But the former National Security Agency contractor presented, via a live stream video event at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, a plan he wrote with hacker Andrew “Bunnie” Huang.
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The technical write-up for the #iPhone snitch @bunniestudios and I presented today @MIT: https://t.co/NfjOqVzY8X pic.twitter.com/Fg0WcFsGqF
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) July 21, 2016
The piece showed a case connected to a phone showing its owner if the phone is giving out information, or when a cellular, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection is being used to share or receive data.
The case would alert the user whenever the smartphone’s radio signals are being sent, something that can happen even if your phone is in “airplane mode.”
The Guardian mantioned that most smartphones disable Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and cellular transmission when in airplane mode, but Snowden and Huang say that can’t be trusted.
The device would attach like a battery case that wires into the SIM card slot and catches radio transmissions, and can possible include a kill switch that shuts off the phone’s power.
UPI reports that Snowden said he hopes to have a prototype ready in the coming months and he intends to make the case’s design an open source so that it can be utilized for other phone models.
