- I’m surprised to see no comments on this yet:
[The White House app] ships with 3 embedded trackers including Huawei Mobile Services Core (yes, the Chinese company the US government sanctioned, shipping tracking infrastructure inside the sitting president's official app)
The executive branch has decided this company is so dangerous I can’t buy a monitor made by them - but it’s embedding its SDK in its official app?!
I realize the decision makers probably don’t even know it’s there - it was just added by whatever contractor built the app, but that’s arguably even worse.
And I have absolutely no doubt that if it was discovered in a political opponent’s app, and the administration wanted to harm them, there would be no compunction about using that fact against them.
by john_strinlai
7 subcomments
- >This thing also has a "Text the President" button that auto-fills your message with "Greatest President Ever!" and then collects your name and phone number.
when is the onion going to go bankrupt? it has to be soon, i imagine. no way it can compete with reality at this point.
(the rest of the article is a bit too depressing for me to comment on at the moment, other than saying "wow, gross")
- The closing point is the one that should get more attention — every single one of these apps could be replaced by a web page. And from a product standpoint, there's really only one reason to ship a native app when your content is just press releases and weather alerts: you want access to APIs
the browser won't give you. Background location, biometrics, device identity, boot triggers — none of that is available through a browser, and that's by, unfortunately, design.
by bluepeter
1 subcomments
- Relatedly, I just registered for PACER to download court documents. It's pretty shocking that to get public legal documents the US Federal Court system requires full name, birthdate, address, phone, email, credit card info... and I THINK (it's past the initial registration page so can't confirm 100%) also mother's maiden name and 2 common security questions. Just a treasure-trove of PII if it ever falls into the wrong hands. (What's esp frustrating is even after going through this, I had to call a number and wait on hold for 1 hour to activate the account.)
by joshstrange
9 subcomments
- Do these posts just get upvoted due to the graphics/animations? I find this site incredibly difficult to read with things re-playing as you scroll up and down and the articles I've read from here are often light on details. The graphics seem very AI-generated (overlapping text and other little issues) which makes me think the whole thing is from an LLM.
While this post does have some interesting information, I have to wade through distracting animations that seem "off" which makes me questions all of it.
by pickleglitch
0 subcomment
- I'm old enough to remember when people actually took the Hatch Act seriously.
- You could not pay me to use any of these apps. All of my own devices run some form of Linux (Debian for servers, Arch for desktop/laptop, GrapheneOS on phone). I generally refuse to use non-free software, the main exception being Steam on a dedicated gaming rig.
I really don't understand why everything has to be an "app." My phone only has a handful of apps, including two web browsers, through which other things are accessed. No app gets access to location, sensors, the camera, or the microphone.
by CobrastanJorji
1 subcomments
- Most of this is bad, but I think it's reasonable for the FEMA app, whose purpose is to help you get to the nearest shelters, to have access to your location.
- The names of the offending apps on the cards need much more emphasis.
by thomastjeffery
0 subcomment
- Title is missing the number 13, which makes it much harder to parse. Should be "Fedware: 13 Government Apps That Spy Harder Than the Apps They Ban"
- Don't install these apps unless you absolutely have to. If you absolutely have to install them, uninstall them as soon as you're done using them.
- The article mentions “exodus privacy” as a source for android app permissions auditing, etc.
What is the ios equivalent?
- Sheesh... I should not have downloaded the White House app yesterday just to see how ludicrous it was. I just deleted it, though I'm sure a lot of my data has already been exfiltrated. Doesn't excessive tracking like this violate the App Store + Google Play's ToS?
by h4kunamata
0 subcomment
- Ahhhh the USA, we can do anything, but others cannot!
The duality of the Statunitians politician.
Folks kept saying Apple protect your data and what not, now folks have their entire phone scanned by Apple unless they prove they are adults by sending personal documents which are being breached left and right.
Deserved!!!!
- I can usually defend what appears to be federal incompetence with nuance and vice versa but even I can't say anything about this.
Whoever fulfilled this contract gets a stop work order for gross incompetence and the CORs/COs should be terminated immediately
- Complaining about Smartlink is a bit hypocritical as it's the smartphone equivalent of an ankle tracker. The opportunity cost for the user is incarceration.
by luxuryballs
1 subcomments
- These devices don’t actually give access to biometric fingerprint data do they??
- Which government?
by HackerThemAll
0 subcomment
- So no, thank you USA. I'm not going to visit you. I have all I need in this our European "socialism" as many Americans like to call it. I'm not assumed to be a criminal, and governments aren't building databases of all my steps and activities, and I have a great healthcare.
- FYI, regardless of election outcome, the next government is highly unlikely to roll this back
- Why is every part of this website animated, and part of the text is backwards? Am I the only one who sees it this way?
- from this admin? obviously
by iririririr
0 subcomment
- they hire one day shell companies that give them a huge chunk of the money back illegally, then turn around and hire a cheap ad agency specialized in churning hotsites and conference apps.
it's literary the same playbook of any developing country when some obviously corrupt group is elected promising to cut government spending
by shevy-java
1 subcomments
- There is currently an attempt going on by several governments to crack down harder against the people. While before it was "only", say, California and their age-sniffing laws infiltrating and tainting Linux - thus declaring war against the people, as revealed by Meta acting as primary lobbyist here - today I read that now that age-sniffing was also approved in some european countries (in one EU country the parents are required to install a sniffing app and thus verify the age of the kids; I think it was in Greece. I'd never help any government act as fascist sniffing proxy trying to control and monitor by kids, that is an act of betrayal of such a government), their next line of attack is against VPN. Suddenly the picture shifts, because if VPNs are targeted, how does finding an excuse such as "but but but think about the kids", make any sense? That is very clearly governments becoming increasingly fascist. Add a few lobbyists here and there who benefit financially from this and now we suddenly understand how democracies are undermined. See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_corruption_scandal_at_th...
Democracy needs to be adjusted - right now private interests can too easily sabotage and undermine it.
- Heh. American funny
- [dead]
by thebeardredis
1 subcomments
- [flagged]
by aboardRat4
2 subcomments
- I don't really understand. Do you have anything to hide from you government?
Hacker News