Create an unused smartphone into a versatile security system

You’ve got an unused Android smartphone swing? With the app, ‘Port’ you can give your device a new life as a security system. The app was developed by whistleblower Edward Snowden and is in the first place meant to protect people against governments with bad intentions.

Edward Snowden was in 2013 the world’s most famous whistleblower after he, as a NSA employee, a booklet had opened the secret spionagepraktijken of the intelligence service. The main target group of his application are people who have an increased risk to be spied on to be activists and dissidents in totalitarian regimes. But also the ordinary mortal, there can be an advantage.

All the sensors on sharp

The idea is that you Port: Keep Watch install on a second Android phone, which you then leave on the location that you want to monitor (your home, hotel room or car for example). Once enabled, use the app, all possible sensors of your smartphone to the environment to keep an eye on: Port detects suspicious movement, sounds, vibrations and even changes in brightness, for example, when someone’s lighting center. ‘Intruders will now need to take into account that every smartphone is a potential witness,’ says Snowden.

When possible mischief sends Port: Keep Watch, of course, immediately a notification to your primary smartphone. The other device keeps track of in the meantime an extensive log book in which every activity is carefully documented. Privacy is of paramount importance. So Port is no use of cloud services, but all the registered information is encrypted, transmitted via Signal (a messenger service with encryption) or a so-called Tor connection. Tor stands for The Onion Router is an open network for anonymous communication. Snowden used, at the time, itself to the classified NSA documents to the public.

Port: Keep Watch is currently in a testing phase and may therefore have some flaws. The app is free to download and suitable for any smartphone with Android version 4.1 or later.