
Haven: Snowden's New App Turns Your Phone into a Home Security System - tonyztan
https://www.wired.com/story/snowden-haven-app-turns-phone-into-home-security-system/
======
scribu
I love it!

From a hobbyist perspective, making something equivalent using a Raspberry Pi
might be more fun, but just putting an old Android phone on a table and
starting the app is so much easier.

The fact that an app so “obvious” is only now available, after 10+ years since
we’ve had smartphones, makes me hopeful that there are still many cool things
to build for mobile, even for older hardware.

~~~
lloeki
I used to have such an app installed on an old first gen Nexus 7 tablet, whose
dock was an angled landscape one. The app could detect sound, light changes,
movement, and persist a record accordingly. At night it could switch to a high
gain mode and/or make use of the screen as a light source. Alternatively it
could livestream. And display a clock as camouflage. Can't remember the app
name.

Use case? Monitor the cat who had the habit of being ill when I was away.
Turns out neighbors made some strange noise that was too stressing to the poor
guy.

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irickt
Direct link:
[https://guardianproject.github.io/haven/](https://guardianproject.github.io/haven/)

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Fnoord
Back in the days my friend had a motion detector (which just compared with
previous input) on his webcam which would write the pictures which were served
over Apache. He'd use this to figure out who entered his room (attic), and
what they did there. Until one day his mother cleaned his room, the camera got
pointed upward to the top window, and it was weirdly cloudy with clear sky in
between. That day his harddisk got full.

Looking at the input devices for data:

    
    
        Accelerometer: phone’s motion and vibration
        Camera: motion in the phone’s visible surroundings from front or back camera
        Microphone: noises in the enviroment
        Light: change in light from ambient light sensor
        Power: detect device being unplugged or power loss
    

This is a bit more advanced. It can warn when it loses function, power, or is
unplugged. It can also be self-aware that its being moved or touched.

A Raspberry Pi can have a camera module and one can easily script the power
loss capacity. You can plug in a microphone on the USB. Light sensor is sortof
within the camera, just requires constant stream. Accelerometer is just a
bonus on top of camera. You'd see the device moved via camera as well.

I see a few problems running this in a hotel room: its gonna need 24/7
connection. WiFi captive portals (common in hotels) usually time out after a
while so you might prefer a SIM card, or either. Both would require something
like a VPN or SNT. The data shouldn't be that much. Problem is, what if these
networks aren't available? The power is essentially paid for, and not that
much, but running this 24/7 is going to have impact on the battery life of
your phone.

For me, this would be useful for another reason: cause we got a paid cat
caretaker when we're not around.

~~~
RandomCSGeek
They do mention that you'd essentially need a spare phone, and that you'd most
likely have to have it plugged in 24/7

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geokon
I saw it can give you notifications over Signal. Does anyone have any info
about how it sends messages without a phone number? I thought you need a
phonenumber to have an account.

If I can send messages without a number then I'd like to try to add some
feature to my VPS so that it sends me status updates :) Can you imagine
getting a notifications when a build was done or sometching like that? It'd be
really handy

~~~
Crontab
I was just reading this last night:

[https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/signal-tutorial-
second-p...](https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/signal-tutorial-second-phone-
number/)

------
detaro
based on
[https://github.com/mziccard/secureit](https://github.com/mziccard/secureit)
by the way, which they fail to mention completely.

------
emerged
I'm very confused. The biggest opponent of spying technology has built a
closed source monitoring app and wants us all to use it?

Please correct me and tell me it's completely open source.

~~~
skrebbel
> * Please correct me and tell me it's completely open source.*

Ok:
[https://guardianproject.github.io/haven/](https://guardianproject.github.io/haven/)

~~~
eadmund
It is, but without reproducible builds one doesn't know for certain that the
available source is the running source.

I trust the Guardian Project not to insert backdoors, though. And I'm sure
that the binary will be disassembled by some dedicated folks, for just this
reason. Trust, but verify.

~~~
skrebbel
Yeah, but there's an enormous difference between closed source and "the very
first public beta doesn't have a reproducible build system". Intent matters,
you know.

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RandomCSGeek
Nice. But I'm sure there must be at least 4-5 such apps that were made, but
never got much traction. I have seen apps that monitor surroundings using the
camera, but someone must have combined all sensor data before as well.

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nreece
I couldn't figure out on a quick read if it can be made to work on Raspberry
Pi running a Linux variant. It would've been a great holiday project.

~~~
Sylos
You don't really have a whole lot of sensors on a Raspberry Pi, so I doubt it
would function, if you can make it run in the first place...

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slivanes
It could be a solution to the stolen lunches problem I continually read about.
Or to catch the person who fails to clean/replace the coffee machine.

~~~
akerro
Or easy and cheap home protector when you're on holiday. Most people have old
Android 2/3/4 phones in their drawers.

~~~
nofilter
As a digital nomad who's always on the road, I also have a backup Android
phone in my backpack at all times in case I lose my primary phone. Can never
be too careful these days.

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aluhut
Did anyone find a way to delete entries from the log?

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totemizer
*with free support in russian :)

