In this handout photo provided by The Guardian, Edward Snowden speaks during an interview in Hong Kong. (Photo : Getty Images/Handout)
Edward Snowden has recently revealed that he is assisting in the development of an iPhone case that detects government spying. Andrew Huang also revealed that the phone's radios might be off, but hey could actually still be at risk.
The former National Security Agency contractor said that he planned to help develop a modified version of Apple's iPhone, The New York Times quoted him as saying during the one-day conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab. This modified iPhone will be for journalists who are worried that they are targets of government spying.
Snowden talked through a video connection from Russia, where is now living in exile. He is currently working with the computer hacker Andrew Huang, who is also known as Bunnie. Huang, who studied electrical engineering at MIT, wanted to see if it was possible to modify a smartphone to alert anyone to electronic surveillance.
Snowden was worried that cellphones and smartphones might be bugged as tracking devices. These gadgets might automatically become electronic dossiers that could give detailed information to governments without their consent.
The ex-NSA contractor gave an example of the mortar attack in 2012 by the Syrian government that killed Marie Colvin. She was an American journalist who was reporting in Homs, Syria for The Sunday Times of London. He said that the Syrian Army intercepted the radio frequency emissions of her communications that she used to send the news reports.
Governments in the overseas, like Syria or Iraq, usually have exploits that cause the journalists' phones to do things they are not supposed to do, Huang told Wired in an interview. He added that radios of phones that are turned off are still at risk.
The hacker also said that the phone can still leak radio information, even if the user places it in a Faraday bag. He said that it only needs a clever malware to make the phone to appear switched off when it is not. They only want to allow the journalists to disable the phone's radio signals, while still using its other functions like taking notes and photographs.
Huang revealed that the project was still in its experimental stages. He hopes that it would help the journalists in the future and provide them with phones that come in a special case with a separate display. This would then alert them when the phone was active and sending data at suspicious times.
Check out Snowden's documentary video below:
