Edward Snowden has long been warning the world about what the government can do with data gleamed off an iPhone or mobile device. But now he is putting action to his word by rolling out an iPhone case that he alleges even a spy couldn’t breach.
Teaming up with well-known hacker Andrew “bunnie” Huang, the two designed the device, which is a piece of hardware that you put on your iPhone. It would alert the user anytime the handset revealed data about the location of the phone. Snowden unveiled the device via livestream during a Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab’s conference dubbed “Forbidden Research.”
Snowden argued during the livestream that the device would be particularly attractive to journalists who are reporting in foreign countries where their lives could be put in danger if their locations are discovered. He pointed to Marie Colvin, the reporter from The Sunday Times who the Syrian Army killed in an airstrike four years ago after reportedly locating her via her broadcasts.
Snowden said even if the iPhone is placed in airplane mode, intelligence agencies, hackers and the bad guys can use software code to make the phone look like it is safe when it really isn’t. According to Snowden and Huang, smartphones have a lot of radio transmitters and receivers built in used for GPS, SIM card, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The device they developed will detect signals from those radio transmitters and notify the user on a different display when they are active.
Huang, Snowden’s cohort in this project, was made famous by hacking the Xbox video console. Snowden is an American computer professional who as a contractor for the U.S. government leaked classified information from the National Security Agency, revealing to the world numerous surveillance programs run by the NSA with the help of telecommunication companies and governments in Europe.