Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked classified intelligence to reporters in 2013, taunted the Trump administration for taking over a year to obtain permanent security clearances for some of the presidents top advisers.

I got a security clearance faster than half of this White House, Mr. Snowden, 34, tweeted Monday.

Mr. Snowdens razzing came in response to recent news reports involving President Trumps administration and its inability so far to obtain permanent security clearances for dozens of White House officials and political appointees, including Jared Kushner, the presidents son-in-law and close adviser, and Rob Porter, the recently terminated White House staff secretary.

More than a year into the Trump administration, upwards of 40 people have relied on temporary security clearances granting them interim access to classified information pending the results of ongoing FBI-conducted background checks, Mr. Kushner and Mr. Porter included, The Washington Post and CNN both reported Friday.

The White House has defended the delayed turnaround in Mr. Kushners case as completely normal. Skeptics have pointed at past reports involving his previously undisclosed conversations with former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyack, however, as well as other incidents that could potentially complicate his ability to clear any hurdles keeping him from a permanent security clearance.

Mr. Snowden enlisted in the U.S. Army in May 2004, but he broke both of his legs during basic training and was discharged four months later. He took a job the following year as a security guard at a NSA facility, albeit after obtaining a high-level security clearance upon passing a polygraph examination and background check, Wired reported previously. He subsequently worked for the CIA and had been employed as a NSA contractor holding a top-secret security clearance when he began leaking classified intelligence in 2013, including documents exposing the extent of the U.S. intelligence communitys international surveillance operations.

Mr. Snowden was charged with espionage by the Obama administration in connection with leaking classified intelligence, but was granted asylum by Russia in 2013 and has avoided prosecution by residing there ever since.

Mr. Trump was highly critical of Mr. Snowden before taking office, and he previously called him a traitor, a disgrace, a coward, a piece of human garbage, a liar and a fraud and a spy who should be executed, among other unpleasantries.

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Edward Snowden awards is part of the reactions to global surveillance disclosures made by Edward Snowden. A subject of controversy, Snowden has been variously called a hero,[1][2][3] a whistleblower,[4][5][6][7] a dissident,[8] a patriot,[9][10][11] and a traitor.[12][13][14][15] He has been honored by publications and organizations based in Europe and the United States.

Edward Snowden was voted as The Guardian's person of the year 2013, garnering four times the number of votes than any other candidate.[16]

The 2013 list of leading Global Thinkers,[17] published annually by Foreign Policy placed Snowden in first place due to the impact of his revelations. FP's "Global Conversation visualization"[18] showed that Snowden "occupied a role in 2013's global news media coverage just slightly less important than President Barack Obama himself."[19]

Snowden headed TechRepublic's Ten Tech Heroes of 2013. Editor Jack Wallen noted that besides raising public awareness of surveillance and government secrecy, Snowden's leaks were significant for technology professionals.[20]

Snowden was named Times Person of the Year runner-up in 2013, behind Pope Francis.[21] Time was criticized for not placing him in the top spot.[22][23][24] In 2014, Snowden was named among Time's 100 Most Influential People in the world.[25]

In February 2014, Snowden joined the board of directors of the Freedom of the Press Foundation,[26] co-founded by Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg. Journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras also sit on the board.[27]

In July 2014, Freie Universitt Berlin announced that Snowden had accepted its offer of honorary membership in recognition of what the university called "his extraordinary achievements in defense of transparency, justice, and freedom." Apart from the honor, there are no rights, privileges or duties involved.[28]

Edward Snowden was awarded the biennial German Whistleblower Prize in August 2013, in absentia, with an accompanying award equal to 3,000. Established in 1999, the award is sponsored by the German branch of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms and by the Federation of German Scientists.[29] Organizers in Berlin said the prize was to acknowledge his "bold efforts to expose the massive and unsuspecting monitoring and storage of communication data, which cannot be accepted in democratic societies."[30]

In October 2013, the Sam Adams Award was presented to Snowden in Moscow by a group of four visiting American former intelligence officers and whistleblowers.[31] After two months as an asylee, Snowden made his first public appearance to accept the award, a candlestick holder meant to symbolize bringing light to dark corners.[32] During their visit, one of the presentersFBI whistleblower Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Projectbecame Snowden's lawyer.[33] A week later, Radack wrote in The Nation that Snowden exemplified Sam Adams's "courage, persistence and devotion to truthno matter what the consequences."[34]

Snowden was chosen to give Britain's 2013 "Alternative Christmas Message", Channel 4's non-establishment parallel to the Royal Christmas Message by Queen Elizabeth II. In a short piece filmed by Laura Poitras, Snowden spoke about government surveillance in terms of George Orwell's classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four arguing that modern surveillance capabilities far surpass those imagined for Big Brother.[35][36][37]

In February 2014, Snowden was elected Rector of the University of Glasgow, a ceremonial post of student body representative chosen by the students themselves. He won the historic office by a wide margin of votes, even though his nomination, like those of several other past Rectors, was a purely symbolic gesture. He served his three-year term in absentia.[38][39][40]

At the German Big Brother Awards gala on April 11, 2014, Edward Snowden was honored with the first-ever Julia and Winston Award (positive award), named after the two main rebellious characters in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. The award was endowed with one million stickers calling on the German government to grant asylum to Snowden. The award's organizers, Digitalcourage, made the stickers available free online for the public to distribute throughout Germany.[41]

In April 2014, Snowden and Laura Poitras were awarded the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize, given by The Nation Institute and The Fertel Foundation for transparency and whistleblowing.[42] Snowden and Poitras each appeared on video at the National Press Club to accept the award.[43] Snowden gave a speech and took questions from the audience, who accorded him several standing ovations.[44] During his speech, he questioned why he had been so swiftly charged with crimes whereas Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was not even reprimanded for his "famous lie" to Congress.[45]

In December 2014, Snowden shared a Joint Honorary Award with Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, from the Swedish Right Livelihood Award Foundation.[46]

Also in December 2014, Snowden shared the International League for Human Rights annual Carl von Ossietzky medal with journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras.[47]

In 2014, Snowden was nominated for the IQ Award by members of the non-profit organization Mensa Germany. Although the official IQ Award commission confirmed his nomination, the managing board of Mensa threatened the commission to subdue Snowden's nomination, and in doing so, they violated the Mensa bylaws.[48] The German Mensa board did this also in reaction to talks with Mensa International. Consequently, it was not possible for Mensa members to vote for Snowden. This caused big controversies among the Mensa members, leading to the effect that opposing Mensa members agreed to all vote in protest for actor Jonny Lee Miller as the most nonsensical nominee, who thus won the election.[49]

In 2016, the Norwegian chapter of PEN International awarded Snowden the Ossietzky Prize given "For outstanding achievements within the field of freedom of expression".[50] Snowden applied to Norway for safe passage to pick up the prize, but the courts said they were unable to legally rule on anything because Snowden was not in the country and they had not received a formal extradition request.[51]

Category:Rectors of the University of Glasgow

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Edward Snowden awards - Wikipedia

Edward Snowden is the latest to weigh in on U.S. Representative Devin Nunes push to release a formerly classified memo suggesting the F.B.I and Justice Department abused their authority to spy on former Trump campaign advisor Carter Paige. Snowdens rise to fame and perspective on the matter comes courtesy of his 2013 leaking of top-secret N.S.A. documents detailing a broad domestic and international spying program orchestrated by the U.S. Government.

#TBT: I required the journalists who broke the 2013 domestic spying stories (as a condition of access) to talk with gov in advance of publication as an extraordinary precaution to prevent any risk of harm. Turns out our standard of care was higher than the actual Intel committee. https://t.co/ATzLQGqkeo

And while Snowden says he took the precaution of making journalists who published information from his 1.5 million files talk to the members of the intelligence community to prevent harm, Nunes reportedly took no such measures.

Mr. Nunes has not read the warrant from which the memo is said to be drawn, wrote Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Matthew Rosenberg, in a New York Times report on Nunes. The Justice Department considers such warrants extremely sensitive and allowed only one Democrat and one Republican from the [Ways and Means] committee, plus staff, to view it. Rather than do so himself, Mr. Nunes designated Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina to be the Republican reader.

The memo, warrant and related investigation are all directly tied to F.B.I. reports of Russian meddling in the 2016 Presidential Election. In addition to serving as Trumps campaign advisor, Paige met with two men who were charged with working as agents for Russian intelligence in New York. Donald Trump, who won the election and has been accused of collusion with Russian operatives, signed off on releasing the memo. Trump granted the release against what the F.B.I. called grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memos accuracy.

Trump then took to Twitter to note (in the third person) that the memo he signed off on releasing totally vindicates him.

This memo totally vindicates Trump in probe. But the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on. Their was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead). This is an American disgrace!

Among other things, that led to Snowden calling out the very House Intelligence Committee he asked journalists to talk to in 2013.

Turns out our standard of care was higher than the actual Intel committee, Snowden tweeted, after it was all but confirmed Nunes push to publicize the memo would be successful.

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American whistleblower and former Central Intelligence Agency employee Edward Snowden has joined the campaign against Aadhaar, Indias 12-digit unique identification number programme that has been under fire for its security and privacy systems.

On Sunday, Jan. 21, Snowden backed KC Verma, former head of Indias external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), who had written about his experiences with Aadhaar. Snowden retweeted the article published in The Wire saying the act of organisations such as banks and telcos forcing individuals to produce their Aadhaar numbers should be criminalized.

Snowdens voice against the Aadhaar programme has been growing louder ever since he first made a reference to the scheme on Jan. 04 after tech journalist Zack Whittaker tweeted a Buzzfeed News piece on the alleged security breach of the Aadhaar database.

A couple of days later, he spoke up on Twitter against the state-run Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) filing a first information report (FIR) against a journalist with The Tribune newspaper who wrote about security breaches of the Aadhaar database. The journalist, Rachna Khaira, described in an article how she paid just Rs500 ($7.84) to buy Aadhaar data from an anonymous seller over WhatsApp.

Snowden, currently under temporary asylum in Russia, also retweeted a statement posted on Twitter by the editor-in-chief of The Tribune.

In addition to openly pointing out flaws in the Aadhaar system, Snowden has also spent time retweeting multiple complaints from Indians about their experiences with Aadhaar.

For months now, Aadhaar has been under attack due to privacy concerns and criticisms of the flawed implementation of the programme, forcing the UIDAI to step up its security processes by introducing new features such as a Virtual ID to authenticate and verify the Aadhaar numbers. Ever since 2015, there have been a number of purported data breaches, including duplication of cards and fraudulent bank transactions made using leaked biometric data.

Meanwhile, the implementation of the Aadhaar scheme is currently being evaluated by a five-member bench in the supreme court of India, led by chief justice Dipak Misra. The perusal follows multiple petitions filed in the courts over the security and privacy being maintained by the UIDAI. This includes a case filed by a womens rights activist claiming that linking Aadhaar data to mobile phone numbers violates privacy, and another filed by a group of bank employees stating they dont have the wherewithal to provide Aadhaar-related services.

The hearing comes four months after the supreme court ruled that privacy is a fundamental right of all Indians, which immediately put a cloud over the aggressive linking of Aadhaar with other schemes and programmes under the Narendra Modi government.

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Edward Snowden is campaigning against the worlds largest ...

Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden said the bill to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act would never have passed through both chambers of Congress if a memo Republicans claim has revelations about U.S. government surveillance abuses was released prior to the vote.

As such, Snowden called on President Trump to veto the legislation giving six more years of life to the key counterterrorism surveillance tool.

"Officials confirm there's a secret report showing abuses of spy law Congress voted to reauthorize this week. If this memo had been known prior to the vote, FISA reauth [sic] would have failed," Snowden tweeted early Friday. "These abuses must be made public, and @realDonaldTrump should send the bill back with a veto."

If Trump does not veto the bill and sent it back to Congress for "reform," Snowden said, "this is nothing but politics."

Trump, however, announced on Twitter Friday afternoon that he signed the bill.

Following the successful House vote, the Senate just barely advanced legislation on Tuesday to reauthorize Section 702 of FISA despite demands from Republicans and Democrats for more privacy protections for U.S. citizens a cause espoused by Snowden.

Last week, before the FISA reauthorization bill's passage in Congress, Trump claimed in a tweet the Obama administration used the controversial surveillance tool to justify the "unmasking" of members of his campaign who were caught up in the surveillance of foreign nationals. However, Trump backed off his critique of the surveillance law in a tweet later that morning, one that reflected his administration's support for the reauthorization of the measure.

The FISA memo was released internally to House members only on Thursday. Since it's release a number of Republican lawmakers have rallied for its release to the general public, in some cases using a "ReleaseTheMemo" hashtag on social media. The effort has gone viral on social media, and appears to has gotten a sizable boost from Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence efforts.

Snowden was asked if he was "planting his flag" for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, who last month was cleared by the ethics panel on allegations that he mishandled classified information by giving it to the Trump White House while accusing the Obama administration of "unmasking" the identities associates of Trump.

"Of course not," Snowden replied, adding, "but when the chairman of House Intel (HPSCI) claims there's documented evidence of serious surveillance abuses, it matters. If true, the citizens must see the proof. If false, it establishes HPSCI lies and has no credibility."

"Either outcome benefits the public," Snowden added.

Snowden was granted asylum in Russia back in 2013 after he leaked secret information from the National Security Agency's surveillance programs and has been there ever since.

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Edward Snowden calls for public release of FISA abuses memo ...

The House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday to renew US spy powers first revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013.

The US House of Representatives gave a boost to the government's surveillance powers.

Lawmakers voted 256-164on Thursday to extend NSA programs that collect communications over the internet for national security purposes.

The law that authorized the surveillance programs is set to expire on Jan. 19.

That law, Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, was passed in 2008. Under it, a court that hears secret national security matters decides whether to let the National Security Agency collect emails, documents and other internet communications in government surveillance programs known as Prism and Upstream.

The Prism program collects communications from internet services directly. The Upstream program collects data as it travels across the internet. The programs target people outside the US, but do collect the communications of Americans who communicate with the targets of spies overseas.

Details of those programs became public in 2013 when former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed them to journalists, who published stories in the Guardian and The Washington Post. After those disclosures, the government declassified information about the programs and began publishing annual transparency reports about the use of the surveillance tools.

The original deadline to renew the surveillance powers passed on Dec. 31 without a debate on the floor of either house on potential reforms. Congress voted to extend the programs temporarily until Jan. 19. The Senate must also now vote to renew the powers before the programs can be extended further.

US intelligence agencies have pressed lawmakers to preserve the programs. In a letter to Congress signed by US Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the heads of the NSA, FBI, Central Intelligence Agency, officials said losing the authority to run these surveillance programs would put the country's national security in danger. "Section 702 has been instrumental in preventing attacks on the homeland and removing terrorists from the battlefield," the letter said.

The biggest sticking point for privacy advocates, including the ACLU, has been a policy allowing the FBI to bypass getting a warrant before accessing emails and other communications of Americans collected by the NSA under these programs.

An amendment that would have required the FBI to obtain a warrant to access information in the NSA's database failed in the House on Thursday. The bill extending the surveillance programs does require the FBI to get a warrant by arguing they have probable cause to search the NSA's database in open investigations that don't involve national security or terrorism. That requirement doesn't extend to open FBI investigations of terrorism and national security cases.

Demand Progress, a civil-liberties focused advocacy group, condemned the House for voting down the amendment. "By failing to close the backdoor search loophole in this bill, which exposes millions of innocent Americans to warrantless government surveillance, members of Congress have ceded incredible domestic spying powers to the executive branch," the organization said in a statement.

In debate on the amendment, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, a Republican from Virginia, argued that putting in place the warrant requirement would hinder the FBI's efforts to prevent terrorism attacks in the US.

"This amendment, plain and simple, would disable 702, our most important national security tool," he said.

His arguments echoed concerns that requiring a warrant even in cases directly related to national security -- rather than other types of criminal investigations -- would put up dangerous barriers to communication between US intelligence agencies. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the intelligence community came under scrutiny for failing to share information with each other about the alleged perpetrators before the attacks.

In December, Snowden chimed in on what he and privacy advocates call a "back door" given to other intelligence agencies. He joined ACLU lawyers to answer questions on a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" forum and highlighted the issue of incidentally collected emails and other communications.

"These 'incidentally collected' communications of Americans can then be kept and searched at any time, without a warrant. Does that sound right to you?" Snowden said.

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NEW DELHI: Whistleblower Edward Snowden has become the latest to raise alarm about the vulnerability of the Aadhaar database, a day after the Tribune newspaper reported that an administrator login ID and password to gain access to the UID portal could be acquired for as little as Rs 500.

Retweeting CBS journalist Zack Whittaker's response on a BuzzFeed report on the breach of Aadhaar database in India, Snowden said, "It is the natural tendency of government to desire perfect records of private lives. History shows that no matter the laws, the result is abuse."

Whittaker had earlier said, "ICYMI. India has a national ID database with the private information of nearly 1.2 billion nationals. It has reportedly been breached. Admin accounts can be made and access can be sold to the database, reports BuzzFeed."

On Thursday, The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which administers the Aadhaar project, defended the system's security protocols and rejected a report about the ease with which the system can be infiltrated and demographic data accessed.

"Claims of bypassing or duping the Aadhaar enrolment system are totally unfounded," UIDAI said in a press release. "Aadhaar data is fully safe and secure and has robust uncompromised security. The UIDAI data centres are infrastructure of critical importance and is protected accordingly with high technology conforming to the best standards of security and also by legal provisions."

Snowden a former CIA contractor leaked classified government documents to expose the US National Security Agency's internet and phone surveillance in 2013. He has been since living in exile.

According to the Tribune report, whoever had administrator login ID and password would get access to demographic details of Aadhaar holders. The report also alleged there were around 100,000 illegal users and that the racket might have started six months ago. ET has not been able to verify the authenticity of the report.

The UIDAI said it had provided the search facility for the purpose of grievance redressal to designated personnel and state government officials to help Aadhaar holders by entering the ID or enrollment number, such as updating addresses.

"UIDAI maintains complete log and traceability of the facility and any misuse can be traced and appropriate action taken," it said. "The reported case appears to be instance of misuse of the grievance redressal search facility. As UIDAI maintains complete log and traceability of the facility, the legal action including lodging of FIR against the persons involved in the instant case is being done."

It also added that "mere display of demographic information cannot be misused without biometrics."

Experts said that even though biometric details may not have been accessed, leaking of demographic details was a substantial breach in itself and have called for a review of the security practices of Aadhaar.

(ANI contributed to this report.)

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India's Aadhaar open for abuse: Edward Snowden

This image released by Open Road Films shows, from left, Melissa Leo as Laura Poitras, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Edward Snowden, Tom Wilkinson as Ewen MacAskill and Zachary Quinto as Glenn Greenwald, in a scene from "Snowden." Jrgen Olczyk/AP hide caption

This image released by Open Road Films shows, from left, Melissa Leo as Laura Poitras, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Edward Snowden, Tom Wilkinson as Ewen MacAskill and Zachary Quinto as Glenn Greenwald, in a scene from "Snowden."

Two very different narratives on the former National Security Agency contractor unfolded this week. Both proved that the debate over whether Edward Snowden is a traitor or a patriot is in no danger of running out of steam.

First, on Thursday, the House Intelligence Committee wrapped up a two-year investigation of Snowden. An unclassified summary of the 36-page report pronounces him a "a serial exaggerator and fabricator" who "caused tremendous damage to national security."

The week's other narrative comes from Hollywood director Oliver Stone. The new movie Snowden opened nationwide this weekend and paints him as a hero.

Conspicuously absent from the debate is the NSA itself. The agency declined NPR's request for an interview reacting to the movie. But Chris Inglis, former deputy director, agreed to see it and share his thoughts.

Inglis says he and Snowden have never met, which is the first of many bones he has to pick with the film. In it, there's a scene where the NSA deputy director asks Snowden to go to Hawaii to lead an important project. The deputy director at the time, in real life, was Chris Inglis.

"It's preposterous on its face. For many reasons," says Inglis. "That a deputy director would reach down to a contractor who's performing an important but relatively low-level function and ask them to take on a Jason Bourne-like activity? It simply exceeds all propriety."

Chris Inglis allows that Snowden the movie will shape public perceptions about Snowden the man. It could shift public opinion on who's the hero and who's the villain, in the ongoing debate over the top-secret files Snowden leaked and what damage they may have caused.

The movie never claims to be a documentary. One of the opening shots announces it's a "dramatization of actual events."

Inglis is skeptical. "Dramatization to me means you add the occasional exclamation point. You bring in a musician to perhaps add some background music. But you don't tell a story that is fiction."

Asked what other aspects of the movie strike him as "fiction," Inglis says it portrays NSA staffers as cavalier about people's right to privacy, which he says is not true. Inglis also points to a scene involving an aptitude test. Snowden and his fellow recruits at the CIA yes, Snowden worked there, too are assigned to build a covert communications network. Average time to complete the test? Five hours. Not Snowden. He's done in 38 minutes.

Chris Inglis rolls his eyes.

"Clearly [he's] a clever person. But NSA makes a habit of hiring smart people. Extremely smart people. Also principled people. So he was clearly the former; turns out he wasn't the latter."

By now, you will have gathered where Inglis lands in the "Is-Snowden-a-patriot-or-a-traitor?" debate.

He served 28 years at the NSA, and he's the first to admit he is not impartial. This week NPR has interviewed both Snowden supporters and critics, airing their views both on the new movie, and on a new campaign for Snowden to be granted a presidential pardon. Snowden declined our request for an interview, and again, so did the current leaders of the NSA. Inglis, who retired in 2014, says he can't speak for the NSA anymore. But he says he personally is open to viewing Snowden and his motives as complicated.

"I do see him as a more nuanced character," Inglis says. "Somewhere, there was an attempt or perhaps an intent on his part to do something noble."

Inglis acknowledges that the NSA did not always strike the perfect balance between collective security and individual rights. He says the NSA should have been more transparent about its domestic surveillance activities since the Sept. 11 attacks.

"But broadly, when I stood back," he says, "the story that was told [in the movie] was a gross mischaracterization of what NSA's purposes are. And a gross exaggeration of Edward Snowden's own particular role in that. To the point where you could come away from looking at that movie, saying why are 50,000 people at the NSA dead wrong? And one is absolutely correct?"

When the trailer for the movie came out back in April, Snowden tweeted, "For two minutes and thirty nine seconds, everybody at NSA just stopped working." The suggestion being, the spy agency was busy watching.

"I don't think that's true," says Inglis. "I think Edward Snowden wants to be important. Who doesn't? Who doesn't want to matter? But we've listened to Edward Snowden. We've heard what he had to say. We took that moment to examine to be introspective about, what it is he might be talking about that we need to take heed of and do something about. And then, having considered all that, as we must we've moved on. And so NSA is looking forward."

In real life, Snowden remains in exile in Moscow. His visa to stay in Russia runs out next summer, and it's not clear what he'll do next. He communicates via Twitter and video link. This week Snowden weighed in, via video, saying he hopes the film will reach a new audience on, quote, "the issues that matter the most." He also said, "I love my country."

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A Former NSA Deputy Director Weighs In On 'Snowden' - NPR

Earlier this year, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden met with Jacqueline Moudeina, the first female lawyer in Chad and a legendary human rights advocate who has worked tirelessly to bring former dictator Hissne Habr to justice. Habr was convicted of human rights abuses ordering the killing of 40,000 people, sexual slavery, and rape by a Senegalese jury in 2016.

Snowden told Moudeina that he was working on an app that could turn a mobile device into a kind of motion sensor in order to notify you when your devices are being tampered with. The app could also tell you when someone had entered a room without you knowing, if someone had moved your things, or if someone had stormed into your friends house in the middle of the night. Snowden recounted that pivotal conversation in an interview with the Verge. She got very serious and told me, I need this. I need this now. Theres so many people around us who need this.

Haven, announced today, is an app that does just that. Installed on a cheap burner Android device, Haven sends notifications to your personal, main phone in the event that your laptop has been tampered with. If you leave your laptop at home or at an office or in a hotel room, you can place your Haven phone on top of the laptop, and when Haven detects motion, light, or movement essentially, anything that might be someone messing with your stuff it logs what happened. It takes photos, records sound, even takes down changes in light or acceleration, and then sends notifications to your main phone. None of this logging is stored in the cloud, and the notifications you receive on your main phone are end-to-end encrypted over Signal.

Snowden hasnt carried a mobile device since 2013, but in the last couple of years, much of his time has been taken up by prying apart smartphones and poking away at their circuit boards with the aid of fine tweezers and a microscope. In 2016, he collaborated with hardware hacker Andrew Bunnie Huang on Introspection Engine, a phone case that monitors iPhone outputs, alerting you to when your device is sending signals through its antenna.

Snowden is notoriously careful about the technology around him. In the documentary Citizenfour, Snowden is shown taking increasingly extravagant precautions against surveillance, going as far as to drape a pillowcase (his Magic Mantle of Power, he says, deadpan) over himself and his computer when he types in a password. Famously, he also asked journalists to place their phones in the hotel fridge, to prevent transmission of any surreptitious recording through their microphones or cameras.

Snowden at least has a pretty understandable reason to be paranoid and while he doesnt expect the rest of the world to adopt his somewhat inconvenient lifestyle, hes been trying to use his uniquely heightened threat model to improve other peoples lives. I havent carried a phone but I can increasingly use phones, he said. Tinkering with technology to make it acceptable to his own standards gives him insight into how to provide privacy to others.

Did you know most mobile phones these days have three microphones? he asked me. Later he rattled off a list of different kinds of sensors. It wasnt just audio, motion, and light, an iPhone can also detect acceleration and barometric pressure. He had become intimately familiar with the insides of smartphones while working with Bunnie Huang, and the experience had left him wondering if the powerful capabilities of these increasingly ubiquitous devices could be used to protect, rather than invade, peoples privacy sousveillance, rather than surveillance.

It was Micah Lee, a security engineer who also writes at the Intercept, who had the first spark of insight. For years, developers with access to signing keys particularly developers who deal with incredibly sensitive work like the Tor Project have become fairly paranoid about keeping their laptops in sight at all times. This has much to do with what security researcher Joanna Rutkowska dubbed the evil maid attack. Even if you encrypt your hard drive, a malicious actor with physical access to your computer (say, a hotel housekeeper of dubious morals) can compromise your machine. Afterwards, its nearly impossible to tell that youve been hacked.

Snowden and Lee, who both sit on the board of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, partnered with the Guardian Project, a collective of app developers who focus on privacy and encrypted communications, to create Haven over the last year. Snowden credited Nathan Freitas, the director of the Guardian Project, for writing the bulk of the code.

Though evil maid attacks are not a widespread concern were talking about people who cant go into the pool without their laptops, said Snowden, thats like nine people in the whole world Haven was conceptualized to benefit as many people as possible. Micah Lee points out in his article for The Intercept that victims of domestic abuse can also use Haven to see if their abuser is tampering with their devices. Snowden told me that they had thought very deliberately about intimate partner violence early on.

You shouldnt have to be saving the world to benefit from Haven, said Snowden, but acknowledged that the people most likely to be using Haven were paranoid developers and human rights activists in the global south. Andy Greenberg describes in WIRED how the Guardian Project worked with the Colombian activist group Movilizatario to run a trial of the software earlier this year. Sixty testers from Movilizatario used Haven to safeguard their devices and to provide some kind of record if they should be kidnapped in the middle of the night.

It was this case scenario that sprung to the mind of Jacqueline Moudeina when she spoke with Snowden earlier this year. In many places around the world, people are disappearing in the night, he said. For those dissidents, Haven was reassurance that if government agents break into their home and take them away, at least someone would know they were taken. In those cases, Haven can be installed on primary phones, and the app is set to send notifications to a friend.

I asked Snowden what it was like to collaborate on a software project while in exile in Russia. It wasnt that bad, he said. Since he became stranded in Russia in 2013, technology has progressed to the point where its much easier to talk to people all over the world in secure ways. The creators of Haven were scattered all over the globe. Exile is losing its teeth, he told me.

More than anything, Snowden is hoping that Haven an open source project that anyone can examine, contribute to, or adapt for their own purposes spins out into many different directions, addressing threat models of all kinds. There are so many different kinds of sensors in mobile phones that the possibilities were boundless. He wondered, for instance, if a barometer in a smartphone could possibly detect a door opening in a room.

Threat models dont have to involve authoritarian governments kidnapping and torturing activists. Lex Gill posted on Twitter that her partner had been testing Haven with a spare phone for a month, and she had begun to use it to send helpful reminders.

And when Nathan Freitas explained his most recent project to his young children, he discovered yet another use case. Were going to use it to catch Santa! they told him excitedly.

View original post here:
Edward Snowden made an app to protect your laptop - The Verge

Given the need for some journalists to protect their hard-won information, it's no surprise that Haven may see use as a means to keep shady interlopers from PCs and laptops containing sensitive data. The Intercept's Micah Lee helped develop the app, and described how it could be used to deal with so-called "evil maid" attacks, in which an attacker attempts to physically tamper with a machine in order to compromise it.

"Here's how Haven might work," he writes. "You lock your laptop in a hotel safe not a secure move on its own and place your Haven phone on top of it. If someone opens the safe while you're away, the phone's light meter might detect a change in lighting, its microphone might hear the safe open (and even the attacker speak), its accelerometer might detect motion if the attacker moves the laptop, and its camera might even capture a snapshot of the attacker's face."

Haven won't necessarily protect such attacks from being carried out, but the app can be configured to send notifications and recordings via text message and Signal (for end-to-end encryption) when the phone's sensors detect something out of the ordinary. And even in cases where the phone itself doesn't have network access and can't fire off those warnings -- say, if the phone doesn't have a SIM card or isn't connected to WiFi -- every event that triggers an alert is logged locally on the phone. That way, the machine's owner will still be able to tell that an unauthorized actor may have had access to it.

Of course, Haven could and should see use outside of those very specific scenarios. Guardian Project founder Nate Freitas calls Haven "the most powerful, secure and private baby monitor system ever," and it's not hard to imagine leaving a spare room in a room with a child to relay every anguished crying jag to parents. None of the data captured by Haven is relayed to third-party servers, so parents and paranoiacs can rest easier knowing they're in full control of this highly personal data. Meanwhile, Wired reports that Haven provided peace of mind to some 60 social activists in Colombia, a country that has seen more than 100 activists assassinated in the past year alone according to a recent UN report.

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Edward Snowden's Haven app uses your phone to detect intruders