Haven: Keep Watch (BETA)

Guardian Project: Apps You Can Trust

About this app

Haven is for people who need a way to protect their personal spaces and possessions without compromising their own privacy. It is an Android application that leverages on-device sensors to provide monitoring and protection of physical spaces. Haven turns any Android phone into a motion, sound, vibration and light detector, watching for unexpected guests and unwanted intruders. We designed Haven for investigative journalists, human rights defenders, and people at risk of forced disappearance to create a new kind of herd immunity. By combining the array of sensors found in any smartphone, with the world’s most secure communications technologies, like Signal and Tor, Haven prevents the worst kind of people from silencing citizens without getting caught in the act.

We are announcing Haven today, as an open-source project, along a public beta release of the app. We are looking for contributors who understand that physical security is as important as digital, and who have an understanding and compassion for the kind of threats faced by the users and communities we want to support. We also think it is really cool, cutting edge, and making use of encrypted messaging and onion routing in whole new ways. We believe Haven points the way to a more sophisticated approach to securing communication within networks of things and home automation system.

Project Team

Haven was developed through a collaboration between Freedom of the Press Foundation and Guardian Project.

Safety through Sensors

Haven only saves images and sound when triggered by motion or volume, and stores everything locally on the device. You can position the device’s camera to capture visible motion, or set your phone somewhere discreet to just listen for noises. Get secure notifications of intrusion events instantly and access the logs remotely or anytime later.

The follow sensors are monitored for a measurable change, and then recorded to an event log on the device:

* Accelerometer: phone’s motion and vibration
* Camera: motion in the phone’s visible surroundings from front or back camera
* Microphone: noises in the enviroment
* Light: change in light from ambient light sensor
* Power: detect device being unplugged or power loss

ATTRIBUTIONS

This project contains source code or library dependencies from the follow projects:

SecureIt project available at: https://github.com/mziccard/secureit Copyright (c) 2014 Marco Ziccardi (Modified BSD)
libsignal-service-java from Open Whisper Systems: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/libsignal-service-java (GPLv3)
signal-cli from AsamK: https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli (GPLv3)
Sugar ORM from chennaione: https://github.com/chennaione/sugar/ (MIT)
Square’s Picasso: https://github.com/square/picasso (Apache 2)
JayDeep’s AudioWife: https://github.com/jaydeepw/audio-wife (MIT)
AppIntro: https://github.com/apl-devs/AppIntro (Apache 2)
Guardian Project’s NetCipher: https://guardianproject.info/code/netcipher/ (Apache 2)
NanoHttpd: https://github.com/NanoHttpd/nanohttpd (BSD)
Milosmns’ Actual Number Picker: https://github.com/milosmns/actual-number-picker (GPLv3)
Fresco Image Viewer: https://github.com/stfalcon-studio/FrescoImageViewer (Apache 2)
Facebook Fresco Image Library: https://github.com/facebook/fresco (BSD)
Audio Waveform Viewer: https://github.com/derlio/audio-waveform (Apache 2)
FireZenk’s AudioWaves: https://github.com/FireZenk/AudioWaves (MIT)
MaxYou’s SimpleWaveform: https://github.com/maxyou/SimpleWaveform (MIT)

Ratings and reviews

All I wanted (and expected from the public hype on this app) is an app that can repurpose my old smartphone into a "security camera" that can send a live feed OVER WIFI to either another WiFi connected smartphone or PC. I did not expect the "old" phone to require an active phone company account to become a "security camera". Instead, Haven appears to require your repurposed phone STILL have an active phone account, and only sends data/images via messaging services. No continuous live video feed over WiFi is possible...unless I missed it. Also, the initial "configuration" protocol guides you through MANDATORY setups for movement, vibration, and sound, each of which display arbitrary "sensitivity" numbers at you expecting you to know what they mean.as you adjust them. The decibel number is somewhat obvious, but even then as an example of needless complexity...in a quiet room with an "average" decibel reading, according to the app, of about 30 (A or C weighting unknown), the adjustment numbers rapidly change from about 40 to over 90 without explaining why and how it relates to sensitivity. You have no control over the numbers as they appear to constantly and rapidly change randomly.

Pretty useless. Tested it by activating it then moving my hand in front of the camera. When I stopped collecting info and looked at the logs, there was nothing recorded. There's just a big arrow pointing to the "view logs" button, which if you click it returns you to the main menu. Not even an error message to let you know what's wrong. Can't recommend. Uninstalled as not fit for purpose.

Installed on a secondary device, a $30 Android phone. I use it when I need to leave any of my gear unattended, mostly in hotel rooms. It works well, and gives me piece of mind. It's worth noting, that you cannot capture recordings of anyone without their knowledge or consent, in most countries. A simple way around this, is to just leave a little sign saying Recording in Progress nearby. Most people won't think anything of that, but at least your covered.

What's new

WARNING: DUE TO CHANGES IN GOOGLE POLICY, HAVEN CAN NO LONGER SEND SMS TEXT MESSAGES. PLEASE USE SIGNAL NOTIFICATIONS INSTEAD.

Big thanks to @lukeswitz, @archie94 and @fattire for the excellent trudging and grinding!

- Removed SMS feature due to Google restrictions #364
- Improved usability and reliability of Signal number registration
- Improved power monitoring #371
- Custom heartbeat status #374

More at: https://github.com/guardianproject/haven/releases/tag/0.2.0-beta-5-signed