Most probably wouldn’t have anticipated a smartphone case being high on Edward Snowden’s to-do list, but an on-going collaboration with Andrew “Bunnie” Huang detailed today during an event at MIT Media Lab certainly comports with some of the NSA’s whistle blower’s chief concerns.
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Snowden’s solution is created to detect any errant phone signals when the handset is switched into airplane mode. The case will warn users if the phone tries to transmit something that it’s not supposed to, like Global Positioning System location even when it has been explicitly turned off by the user.
Smartphones, while incredibly useful, are also the “perfect tracking device”, Snowden wrote in a co-authored paper that covers his research.
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The new gadget looks like a standard battery case with a secondary black-and-white display in back, but it’s hiding some interesting capabilities under the surface. Huang and Snowden describe their invention for the iPhone as an “introspection engine”, the case has tiny probe wires that access the iPhone’s internals through the SIM card slot and attach to test points on the iPhone’s circuit board. The phone has two antennas that give off electrical signals and they’re used by its radios, including Global Positioning System and Bluetooth. It could monitor electrical signals sent by the phone’s GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and cellular antennas, warning you if it detects any unauthorized activity with a notification and a loud alarm. A lawsuit alleges that the Syrian government assassinated her by tracking Colvin’s satellite phone communications to find her location. The technology will be open source and is meant to easily be applied to other phone models.
