National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden continued his crusade against government surveillance on Thursday, revealing the design for an iPhone case that would safeguard the user’s location.
The device would alert the phone owner when its radio signals, which can broadcast location, were turned on. Snowden said that even when such features are supposedly disabled while turned to “airplane mode,” the government can use radio signals to track the phone.
“Turning off radios by entering airplane mode is no defense; for example, on iPhones since iOS 8.2, GPS is active in airplane mode,” Snowden wrote in a coauthored paper on the proposal. “Malware packages, peddled by hackers at a price accessible by private individuals, can activate radios without any indication from the user interface; 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.”