Edward Snowden Designed IPHONE case to Detect and Block Wireless Snooping

We just cannot imagine our lives without smartphones, even for a short while, and NSA whistleblowerEdward Snowden had not owned a smartphone since 2013 when he began leaking NSA documents that exposed the government's global surveillance program.

Snowden fears that cellular signals of the smartphone could be used to locate him, but now, to combat this, he has designed an iPhone case that would detect and fight against government snooping.

With help from renowned hardware hacker Andrew "Bunnie" Huang, Snowden has devised the design, which they refer to as an "Introspection Engine," that would keep journalists, activists, and human rights workers from being tracked by their own devices leaking their location details.

"This work aims to give journalists the tools to know when their smartphones are tracking or disclosing their location when the devices are supposed to be in airplane mode," Huang and Snowden wrote in a blog post published Thursday. "We propose to accomplish this via direct introspection of signals controlling the phone’s radio hardware."

For now, the design is aimed only at iPhone 6 models, but the duo hopes to create specifications for a large number of devices.

Snowden, together with Huang, presented on Thursday at the MIT Media Lab the design for a case-like add-on device that could modify an iPhone, allowing you to monitor various radio signals inside the phone to confirm they're not transmitting data when they’re meant to be off.

Here’s How the Introspection Engine Works:

Once built, the hardware case will be a separate minicomputer - work independent from your phone - made up entirely of open source hardware, containing its own battery and a small mono-color screen to provide a real-time status of your phone.

The case will have tiny probe wires to attach to a modified iPhone that physically wires into the phone’s antennas used by its radios, including cellular connectivity, GPS, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi, through the SIM card slot.

The Introspection Engine will then be able to monitor radio transmissions and alert users to any unauthorized output signals it isn't supposed to.

In addition to alerting users, the case will even be able to shut down all radio signals on a phone to prevent governments as well as hackers from finding your location.

Since this case is designed to be independent of your phone, it would prevent your device from malware that activates radios without your knowledge.

"Malware packages, peddled by hackers at a price accessible to private individuals, can activate radios without any indication from the user interface," the duo wrote. "Trusting a phone that has been hacked to go into airplane mode is like trusting a drunk person to judge if they are sober enough to drive."

Instead, Snowden and Huang suggest the beauty of using external hardware as a shield is that it would not be affected if malware has infected your phone. "The core principle is simple: if the reporter expects radios to be off, alert the user when they are turned on," they added.

The Introspection Engine’s mission is to warn users when malware or technical glitches are causing your phone to rat out your location.

However, the hardware case is still nothing more than a design for now.

Supported by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, Snowden and Huang are hoping to build a real-world prototype device over the next year in the hopes of making the case available to journalists as soon as possible.

Facebook Launches OpenCellular - An open source Wireless Access Platform

Big technology companies are in the race of bringing Internet connectivity to unconnected parts of the world through flying drones, high-altitude balloons, and laser beams, but Facebook has announced a far less expensive method to provide connectivity to rural areas.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Wednesday the creation of a new open-source wireless communication platform called OpenCellular that can be easily deployed in remote locations by anyone.

OpenCellular is a doorbell-sized hardware device that could be attached to a pole or tree at a range of heights from where it can deliver a wireless network, from 2G cell-phone networks to higher speed LTE, and Wi-Fi networks like those inside your home, or local coffee shop.

The device is designed to work in rural locations in conditions, including high winds, extreme temperatures, and harsh climates.

But, wait! This doesn't mean that Facebook is rolling out its own broadband services.

Facebook to Open-Source the Designs and Software of OpenCellular

The social networking plans to open source the designs for this device so that service providers, researchers, and others can use its designs and control software for free to build their own boxes that are cheap to purchase and maintain.

"We designed OpenCellular as an open system so anyone—from telecom operators to researchers to entrepreneurs—can build and operate wireless networks in remote places," Zuck said. "It's about the size of a shoe box and can support up to 1,500 people from as far as 10 kilometers away."

Facebook has tested the new system at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California and, so far, it has been able to successfully use the device to send and receive text messages, make voice calls and access relatively slow 2G data connections.

OpenCellular is Zuckerberg's latest attempt to push its goal of worldwide Internet access, aiming to connect the next 4 Billion people across the world without Internet access and nearly 700 million people without cellular service.

Facebook's Free Basics -- an initiative to provide free access to certain Internet websites, including Facebook -- was banned in India from earlier this year due to the violation of Net Neutrality principles, while Egypt followed suit in April.

Besides OpenCellular, Facebook's other global connectivity initiatives include its high-bandwidth Internet laser beams, solar-powered aircraft Aquila and unmanned solar-powered Internet-distributing plane.

The initial version of OpenCellular's platform will be available this summer, but meanwhile, Facebook is testing out the devices at its headquarters and planning outdoor tests with its initial OEMs and Telecom Infra Project (TIP) partners.

This Tiny Computer Runs on Radio Waves Powered wirelessly & hasn't battery

No matter how smart and fast your devices would be, the biggest issue is always with the battery technology.

Whenever you go to buy any electronic gadget — smartphone, laptop, or any wearable — the most important specification isn’t its processor speed or its camera quality but its Battery Backup, which is not getting better any time soon.

What if you could eliminate the very thing entirely?

Well, that's exactly what the electrical engineers from the University of Washington has developed.

A team of researchers from the University of Washington’s Sensor Lab and the Delft University of Technology has developed a new gadget that doesn’t need a battery or any external power source to keep it powered; rather it works on radio waves.

So, this means you have to turn on your radio every time to keep this device charged. Right?

No, you don’t need to do this at all, because the device sucks radio waves out of the air and then converts them into electricity.

Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform

Dubbed Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform (WISP), the device is a combination sensor and computing chip that uses a standard off-the-shelf RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) reader to suck in radio waves and convert them into electricity.

Though the WISP is not designed to compete with the chips in your computer or even your smartphone, it has as much processing power as the Fitbit, which is enough to run sensors and transmit data.

The discovery could highly transform the Internet of Things (IoT) world as the WISP is even more low maintenance compared to Bluetooth Low Energy sensor chips being used today.

The next step in making the WISP usability even more convenient and easy is to create Wisent that would allow for wireless programming of the WISP. For this, the team has recently collaborated with the Delft University of Technology.

With the help of Wisent, the WISP can be programmed wirelessly and uses the very same radio waves to communicate.

"So far WISP required cables to reprogramme it, nullifying the advantage of battery-less-ness. Therefore, we present Wisent, a protocol that allows WISP to be reprogrammed wirelessly," said Przemysław Pawełczak, assistant professor at the TU Delft’s Embedded Software group.

"Our vision is to have truly wirelessly reprogrammable software-defined battery-less computers wherever and whenever we want."

For more details, you can head on to the research paper [PDF].

Though the ultimate aim of WISP is in fully realizing the Internet of Things and giving "dumb" objects some smartness, it might even find its way into smartphones as a sort of emergency backup calling module that works even when your phone’s battery is dead.

However, there is no detail on when the WISP will be made available for purchase, or how much it will cost.

Earin Earbuds Review: Genuinely Wireless

In 2014, Earin launched its Kickstarter campaign to bring truly wireless earbuds to the market, not ones boasting Bluetooth but with a cable strung between them.

Not only were these to be properly wireless, they were to be the world's smallest of their kind (a title that may soon be taken by the Dot earbuds). So, big ambitions then. And thanks to this as well as some nice industrial design on the mock-ups, the effort pulled in over 8,000 backers pledging just shy of £1m.

The promised delivery date was back in January, but better late than never WIRED has got its own pair to play with, and we've been doing just that for a couple of weeks now.

What first strikes you about the Earins is that the company has clearly put some of that impressive investment into some quality packaging. The unboxing is a nice experience. A solid, heavy cardboard box with inlaid magnets yields satisfyingly when pulled apart to reveal the cylindrical aluminium charging capsule holding the buds within, nestled in its own snug recess.

As companies such as Apple know, this sort of attention to detail with packaging is so important and starts the consumer experience on exactly the right note, as opposed to hacking away at impenetrable vacuum-formed plastic casings with scissors in an attempt to free some tech encased inside.

Assembling the earphones is simple, remove the earbuds form the capsule (also nicely magnetically sealed), thus waking them up, attach the Comply foam tips to each of the wireless buds, go to your Bluetooth settings on your phone/tablet and select Earin L -- this is because your device links with the left bud then this syncs with the right one over a secure connection.

To charge the buds you place them back in the metal casing which holds a 600mAh li-on battery, which on a full charge can refuel your earbuds with their 60mAh batteries three times before the power runs dry. The case charges via a standard Micro USB, and takes 75mins to do so.

You get just under three hours of play time with each charge of the buds in stereo, and this can be boosted to up to 11 hours if you go mono, but WIRED didn't try this as you only wear one bud and can end if looking like Star Trek's Lieutenant Uhura. You get an audible warning a few minutes before the buds run out of charge. To turn off the buds just put them back in the capsule.

Unlike other Bluetooth earphones, which have been heavy to wear, the Earins are a joy to put in your lug holes -- snug, thanks to those foam tips, and light -- just 3.5g each. Rubber winged stabilisers come supplied however if your pair doesn't feel secure. Once you have them in though they are hard to spot and are subtle on the user. Yet, once seen they are interesting enough for WIRED to be asked about them on a couple of occasions on the daily commute.

Vigorous exercise with the Earins cannot be recommended, as once they fall out they are hard to spot on dark floors or pavements, but for walking and the usual jostling of train and tube travel they coped just fine.

The audio produced by the Earins is not earth-shattering, but perfectly good. However, WIRED did experience quite a few drop outs of sound despite our phone being located just in the back pocket (thought it should be noted we are getting the same issue with Bose's wireless SoundLink 2 headphones). Also there were more than a few occasions where the sound dropped to just the left channel before re-establishing contact with the right one again -- which was not terrible but unwelcome and certainly distracting.

An accompanying app is basic but clear, and it allows you to tweak balance, check battery status on each bud or boost the bass, should you desire -- but not much else.

In conclusion, despite the sound issues, WIRED likes this first attempt from Earin. The industrial design is superb and the quality of construction matches it. The sound reproduction is nice, too -- but there are intermittent problems with the stability of the sound, sadly. Still, the idea of using the metal case to both top up earbud charge on the go as well as protect the Earins is a fine one. And they are indeed very small, comfortable and discreet to wear.