NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and hardware hacker Andrew "Bunnie" Huang have designed a so-called “introspection engine” to protect smartphone users in high-risk situations from unauthorized transmissions, reports CIO Today. The device, still in the conceptual stage, is aimed at alerting activists and journalists to their phone sending out signals and betraying their location despite being in airplane mode.

"Because of the precedent set by the U.S.'s 'third-party doctrine,' which holds that metadata on such signals enjoys no meaningful legal protection, governments and powerful political institutions are gaining access to comprehensive records of phone emissions unwittingly broadcast by device owners," said Snowden and Huang in their paper presented at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab.

Snowden, who lives in exile in Russia, and Huang plan to create a prototype this coming year and if a success, Freedom of the Press Foundation may develop it commercially.

Read the full story at CIO Today.