If you aren't familiar with Edward Joseph Snowden, his name is synonymous with whistleblower when it comes to government secrets. Naturally, there is a lot of controversy about this figure, and he has a new invention of a smartphone case made to stop the possibility of surveillance. In addition to this new invention developing, there is a new movie about the controversial figure coming soon, and here is the release date and news.
Snowden stepped into the world of smartphone accessories by announcing a concept for a new phone case that is able to detect when an iPhone's radio is transmitting. According to Mashable, the case wires the iPhone's interior workings via the SIM slot to monitor electrical signals to its internal antennas. Snowden introduced the smartphone case at the MIT Media Lab's Forbidden Research event, along with a hardware hacker Andrew "Bunnie" Huang.
This new smartphone case is reportedly made for front-line journalists who want to conceal their location, so perhaps I should get one of these if I ever want to report in some risky countries. Oh, if I am concerned about the surveillance of smartphones, this case can help me with that as well. This case lets the user known when the phone are tracking or disclosing their location when they are supposed to be in airplane mode.
Snowden has a vested interest in his own product, as he has told Wired that he has not used a smartphone since 2013, for fear of being tracked, describing them as "like kryptonite".
Speaking of Edward Snowden, his biopic of Snowden, directed by the one and only Oliver Stone, is coming soon, and a new trailer has just dropped at San Diego Comic Con (SDCC), according to The Verge. The trailer shows the title character, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, in that Hong Kong hotel room where he brought journalists much classified NSA information.
If you are wondering who plays Snowden's girlfriend in the trailer, it is none other than Shailene Woodley from the Divergent films. Tom Wilkinson plays Glenn Greenwald, Zachary Quinto plays Ewen MacAskill, and Melissa Leo plays Laura Poitras, who are the reporters from The Guardian that met with Snowden in that infamous location. Poitras won an Academy Award for her 2014 documentary Citizenfour, about Edward Snowden.
The trailer goes so far to call Edward Snowden a "hero", but there are a lot of people who might disagree with that. Oliver Stone is certainly known for his controversial works, with one his most truth disputed film being JFK, as it dealt with the subject of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. There was also a lot of controversy with his biopic on Nixon, so we will see how well he does Snowden when it premiers in theaters on September 16.
