Haven: Keep Watch | Hacker News Reader

Haven: Keep Watch

guardianproject.github.io

113 pointsrunesoerensen16 comments

This is a really interesting development from the Guardian Project!

I've been looking for a home security system and, for my price range, have only found Chinese-made webcam with disturbing privacy implications. To be able to use old Android phones and some free software that I can run myself for file collection and serving would be an optimal solution for me!

Good luck, team!

Ah, alright, so it monitors the sensors and sends a notification either over SMS or Signal. Got that.

What I don't really get is the "event logs and captured media can be remotely accessed through a Tor Onion Service". Whose Tor Onion Service? Wow, my phone runs an Onion service? Did not see that coming.

I'm assuming the phone needs to be charged 24 hours a day because something like this will kill phone batteries within a few hours.

> Whose Tor Onion Service? Wow, my phone runs an Onion service?

Seems like it https://github.com/guardianproject/haven/blob/0fd6f690ef6303...

I guess battery life is less of a concern for the suggested use case (e.g. turning a cheap, extra commodity device into a primarily stationary, plugged-in security system).

Maybe more appropriate: "Wow, my phone can _optionally_ run an onion service!"

https://github.com/guardianproject/haven/blob/0fd6f690ef6303...

Too bad Android basically ties my persona to the phone, making it difficult and awkward to use this on more than one device. Is there a RPi version?

I don't know of anything that has SMS or signal messaging built-in, but the motion project¹ would probably be a good place to start.

(I forgot the footnote and don't have enough points to edit)

¹:https://motion-project.github.io/

Motion + signal-cli[0] has been working well for me.

[0] https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli

It looks like this app can be installed from F-Droid or directly from an apk. Signal can also be installed from an apk. It seems like you could install lineageos or something on a phone, then install those from apks.

Even with Google stuff installed, I've got myself logged into a number of devices. So I guess I'm missing how it makes it difficult/awkward to use it on more than one.

You still need a SIM card with an active phone contract; something my burner phone doesn't have. Perhaps if they had a way of accessing a site like pastebin or whatever anonymously which you could monitor from your non burner phone (via tor if you liked).

If someone is worried so much about their privacy, why would they be sending any data such as a video of themselves over their phone's service?

As long as the traffic goes via the tor network, I don’t see any issue with this. All the provider sees is encrypted blurb.

Crashes immediately after the tutorial.

So it is either trivially defeated by commodity cellphone/wifi jammers, or has a huge risk of false positives.

So you want me to install surveillance software on my phone to stop other people from accessing my phone?

I really like the Guardian Project[0]. Their stuff is some of the first stuff I install on any new phone; it's part of what makes Android such a great OS for the privacy-conscious. It's also great to see that — contrary to what Wired reported — this is not just a product of Mr. Snowden's team. He's not trustworthy, but the Guardian Project are.

[0] https://guardianproject.info/

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