Fedware: Government apps that spy harder than the apps they ban
sambent.com
sambent.com
[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.
> We had the first 4+ years to learn that "malice or incompetence" is not the right question. There's been more than enough pathological input to show it becomes a denial-of-service attack on observers.
> The correct answer is both, until and unless the perpetrators wish to come forward and defend themselves as just malicious or just incompetent.
One might also view it as a kind politically-flavored nerd-sniping. [0] Sometimes the only winning move is not to play.
In all fairness, that narrative has been helped quite a bit by the current administration!
The bottom has to be somewhere...
If it turns out a secret was exposed in production, or we're exposing PII in logs, or storing CCs or passwords in plain text, there's a certain time frame in which the blame shifts from my coworker for introducing it, to me for not catching it.
That time frame is a lot less than one year.
Is there a double standard? Yes. This administration earned it through their, willful or not, incompetence and malice.
This pretty much insinuates Biden (and Trump v1, and Obama, and Bush) didn't fix it.
And the commenter aren't wrong when they blame the administration. They wouldn't be wrong to blame previous administrations either. But the previous administrations aren't in power right now.
They are wrong. The current administration did not make a call to widen the permissions or make it intentionally overly broad.
> This pretty much insinuates Biden (and Trump v1, and Obama, and Bush) didn't fix it.
Why do you believe the president is responsible? Could be just a lazy contractor.
Maybe not. But are they not responsible for an app that literally markets itself as the official federal govt app? If Meta sold FB to me am I not responsible for the algorithms that I now own, that perpetuates misinformation?
> Why do you believe the president is responsible? Could be just a lazy contractor.
Obviously the president is not deploying code. But doesn't mean the president gets a free pass. If I did shitty work for my employer and deployed a rootkit to production, I get fired but my employer is still responsible. If they want to be absolved of responsibility, they can always unpublish it while they get stuff fixed and acknowledge the issue.
It’s easy to verify this by looking at the App Store listing for the app. And reading news coverage.
An America that didn't like fascism would have never even let this man win the primary.
The rise of right-wing propaganda mass media has been simmering brains for 3 decades in a populist, grievance and resentment stew and positioned things perfectly for right-wing propaganda to explode in the internet age - once social media came around, it was a renaissance for the paranoid-style radical right-wing demagogues, and they exploded in numbers and reach. In turn, that tilled the soil for a Trump figure to come along to disrupt things.
Trump basically took all the recurring themes of grievance from right-wing media to the extreme to turbo-charge the anxiety and fear of the right, including most things that were generally considered wrong for politicians to say/do.
It's almost hard to remember the before-times, but Trump was the first modern presidential ticket that outright attacks the media (calling them the enemy of the people, fake news, etc) to de-legitimize them - it used to be a point of pride in this country that politicians didn't do stuff like this, because it's a feature of authoritarian regimes, not democracies. Right-wing audiences were very used to hearing that sort of thing though, because it was a common feature of the right-wing propaganda media they had been boiling in for years.
I can look past some of the stupid shit he says. He gets freedom of speech too, even if it is stupid speech. But attacking the press is insane.
That just means it’s legally permissible, not reasonable, respectable, or conscionable. Do not look past the things he says.
It was reinforced with Ronald Reagan. Remember how he spun the Iranian revolution and the bad economy on his opposition? Remember how he rode the Moral Majority wave?
It was taken up a notch by G. W. Bush and his band of trigger-happy self-serving country club elitists.
No one in between those points tried to roll back the progress. They're just as guilty. It's been a monotonic increasing function towards the current apex (nadir?).
Fear what comes next. If there is a next.
One could argue that the courts or congress/senate may not have been favorable during their time, but that wasn't true during the entire combined 20 years they had.
(siddnote - I think "nadir" was the answer to a crossword clue I was stumped on. I'd never heard it before that. And I thought I'd never hear it again. Interesting coincidence!)
Even when it's the same thing! (e.g. "canceling" someone)
Assuming incompetence gives the administration a cover to get away with anything. I'm not quite sure they're as stupid as they all act. Someone is surely using the facade of incompetence to rot things from the inside out.
“Y'all are mad about the dog whistle but you forgot about the dog”
Huawei was sanctioned because they did business with a sanctioned country
…but it also doesn’t really matter here. Either they were sanctioned for a good reason and the Executive Branch is doing business with them anyway, or they were sanctioned for a bad reason and I’m not allowed to do business with them even though the Executive Branch does.
It’s the hypocrisy I’m pointing out.
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")
Nobody has the guts to boycott them anymore. Billionaires know that you depend on them for news, social media and smartphones too.
Which is why he's playing a shell game with xAI "buying" twitter and then SpaceX "buying" xAI
When the dust settles the only person to blame is Jack Dorsey, who spent his halcyon years on Twitter pumping Bitcoin and looking even more coked-out than Elon. If people can't move on to better platforms then yes, they are doomed to eternal monetization by warring moron techbro tribes.
I think the calculation is very easy, actually. Risk vs Reward. You could even use polymarket to crowdsource funds for the activity!
Money does not make you a good or bad person. It just makes you more of who you are already.
Do we have any actual evidence of this? I know plenty of exorbitantly wealthy people who aren’t hoarding anything, they just didn’t sell their piece of the closely-held business they started, and they spend their time skiing, reading, travelling and taking care of their friends and family.
to be fair, the original comment by malfist started with "makes you wonder", so i dont think they are asserting this as fact.
>I know plenty of exorbitantly wealthy people who aren’t hoarding anything,
some people would see this sentence as contradictory, and they would suggest that the thing those exorbitantly wealthy people are hoarding is money.
And I’d say they’re literally wrong. They may be hoarding capital. And yes, some wealthy people do hoard money per se. But outside the Epstein class there are lots of people we just don’t hear about because they aren’t on social media talking about how rich they are. Because while it’s fun to postulate that the rich have mental illnesses, it’s documented that social-media addiction causes them.
while this distinction may be important to you, i dont think it really changes anything about malfists question/point.
>Because while it’s fun to postulate that the rich have mental illnesses, it’s documented that social-media addiction causes them.
and cigarettes cause cancer. not sure what this has to do with the conversation, but yeah, social media is bad (smoking, too).
(please note: i am not arguing for or against what you or malfist have said, just thought there was a little something lost in translation re: you asking for evidence after a conversation that started with "makes you wonder")
Of course it does. Turning capital into spendable or transferable wealth takes work. Plenty of rich people are just enjoying their lives in the same way retirees do.
> not sure what this has to do with the conversation, but yeah, social media is bad
I’m saying the folks we tend to get upset about being rich at are also the rich who are prominently on social media. The problem isn’t that they’re rich. It’s that they’re on social media so much. I think there is a genuine argument to be made that even Elon Musk would have been a better-liked person, maybe even a better person, if he never got on Twitter.
> thought there was a little something lost in translation re: "makes you wonder"
Perhaps. And appreciate your clarifying for them. In 2026 I’m just sceptical of the “just asking questions” bit, particularly when it comes to cultural tropes. (And for what it’s worth, my query for a source was genuine. I’m always down to change my mind on a loosely-held belief.)
The difference between a person who has a million dollars and a person who has a billion dollars is about a billion dollars.
Yeah, I'm saying the ones worth hundreds of millions to low billions who aren't on social media are, in my personal experience, often fine people. The ones I don't like are the ones on social media, but that's also true of the folks worth a few thousand dollars.
Plenty of billionaires are assholes. The world's GDP is over $100 trillion. That's going to produce diversity among the rich.
I'm not absolving anyone. I'm saying I know good people who are also billiionaires who most people have never heard of. The billionaires I've heard of I tend to dislike. But I think the correlate is the fame, not the wealth.
> guilt they might have earned hoarding enough wealth to reach that level?
This is where the hoarding metaphor breaks down. If you build a company, is it hoarding to not sell your stake off to a private equity firm?
Because practically speaking, those are their choices. Hold it, manage it and live off the income. (They all donate most of their incomes, but that's neither here nor there. You can be a good person even if not philanthropic.) Or sell it to a private equity firm and then have a pot of money to stare at.
Jeff Bezos's net worth is mostly in the form of server racks and amazon inventory.
Elon's net worth is mostly in the form of share certificates that are marked to market and contingent on delusional investors swallowing Elons own promises.
This is the peg that society is constantly snagging on. The billionaire class doesn't actually have much "hoarded" wealth. If we want to go after wealth that more classically fits the idea of "hoarded", i.e. cash and cash equivalents, then the middle/upper middle class is the golden goose (most people are surprised to learn they have almost twice the wealth billionaires have too, not a very clickable headline though...)
The idea that everyone gets a suburban house and premium healthcare if we can only pass legislation that taxes billionaires, is a delusion on par with Jesus coming down to battle the transsexuals.
The actual strain in the economy is between the upper middle class and the lower class. The senior developers and the shipping room clerks.
This is just human nature.
People who are at wealth level x tend to say, "I can't believe that people at wealth level x+1 aren't more generous!" all the while ignoring their own lack of desire to give generously to people at wealth levels x-1 and below.
As a college student and young adult I had always envied his fame, his intelligence, his money (post-Reddit acquisition), and the strength of his convictions. And yet, in that moment in early 2013, he was dead, and I was working a good job at Google (and this was 2013 Google, when it was still a nice place to work doing things that I could generally approve of). And he'd died doing the stuff that I wanted to do but had been too chickenshit to actually carry out.
I think that this illustrates why the world is the way it is. All the true altruists are dead, killed for their altruism. It is adaptive, in a survival sense, to think of yourself and your own survival and not worry too much about other people. Ironically, this is what my therapist was trying to get me to realize.
But I think this also goes back to the GP's point. When people at wealth level x give to people at level x-1, it doesn't raise the people at x-1 up to x. It brings the person at x down to x-1. There are more people at x-1 than x, after all; you could give everything you had away and mathematically, it would lower your net worth significantly more than it would raise theirs. And of course, it doesn't do a damn thing about the people at x+1. Why can't they donate instead, where their wealth would do an order of magnitude more good?
There actually do exist people who are like that: they would rather spread their wealth around the people at wealth level x-1, joining them at that level, than raise themselves up to x+1. I've met some; most poor people are far more generous than rich people are. That is why they are poor. But then, it doesn't solve the problem of inequality, they just disappear into the masses of people at level x-1.
So thats essentially communism right? Is human nature incompatible with communism or is capitalism incompatible with human nature?
In the American golden age of capitalism from ~1950-1970, the top marginal tax rate was 90%, and so you didn't have CEOs get paid more than about 3x the median worker, because the government would get it all. Instead, they got perks. Private jets. Positions at the company for their kids. Debaucherous holiday parties. Casual sexual harassment of secretaries.
In Soviet communism, all production was centrally planned by government bureau run by party members. It was not uncommon for these bureaus to make mistakes, leading to severe shortages for the population. Nevertheless, these shortages never seemed to really hit the party members responsible for making the plans. Power has its perks.
And that's also why reforms attempting to reduce economic inequality need to focus on power rather than money. There have been a number of policies that do meaningfully raise standards of living for the poor: they're things like the 13th amendment to the (US) Constitution, the 1st amendment, the jury trial system, free markets, anti-monopoly statutes, bans on non-competes, etc. What they all have in common is that they preserve economic freedom and the power to make your own living against people who would seek to restrict that freedom and otherwise keep you in bondage.
No, I'm talking about wealth level X*100. For them, the difference between $100M and $1B is basically no difference in the quality of life to that family. They'd have 1 fewer megayachts. They could give away $900M, and eliminate hunger forever in a large city or a small state. $100B is 100x that again, they could give away $99.9B, still have $100M, and solve poverty in most _countries_.
Or, if they don't want to, we institute a 90% wealth tax on everything over $10M, and solve it ourselves.
> For them, the difference between $100M and $1B is basically no difference in the quality of life to that family.
I think money at that level is not about family quality of life. It's usually about buying companies, launching product lines, etc.
> They could give away $900M, and eliminate hunger forever in a large city or a small state. $100B is 100x that again, they could give away $99.9B, still have $100M, and solve poverty in most _countries_.
Ehhh...
Most people who have $X billion don't really have that. They just have controlling shares in a company that's worth a lot, and media companies like Forbes enjoy making headlines by pretending that's cash. Actually turning that into cash would be impossible.
Of course, they can still turn meaningful percentages of it into cash and give it away, that's true. And I think more billionaires should.
But also, many problems aren't money problems. For example, simply flooding a state or a small city with money isn't going to "solve hunger forever." Hunger and poverty are more often an issue around distribution and logistics, infrastructure, politics, culture and conflict, and things like that. Huge cash giveaways famously tend to disappear and accomplish very little.
The single biggest force that reduces suffering and poverty in an enduring way, imo, is the creation and proliferation of technology. Vaccines that are cheaper to produce. Water filtration systems that are easier to maintain. Seeds and crops that are heartier and more durable. Healthcare that's more affordable and available. Etc. Advances like this have reduced more suffering and ended more poverty and counteracted more famine and saved more lives than any amount of charity ever has or could.
What I would like to see more of is billionaires and even super-talented non-billionaires starting more organizations that are a force for good. Or using money from profitable enterprises to fund unprofitable-yet-charitable enterprises.
Good news is that you would sleep fine at night. No matter how destructive your existence was, and how much of a net negative you were to the world, you would still think very highly of yourself.
He had the kind of money that can hire expensive projects on trust that payment in full will be rendered, but only kept his money by often not paying out.
As with all things Trump, even up to the new ballroom not having a front door despite the massive staircase, his wealth is more in appearance, and less in actual assets…or was. Of course, someday maybe we will know the true extent or shortfall of his bank accounts
He may not have been that successful as a businessman, but his whole clan are monetising the Whitehouse.
It also isn't an economically isolated enterprise: Ukrainian grain shipments traversing into Europe via Polish roads and not heading to Africa via their ports caused a bunch of price crashes which became political flashpoints.
I bet no-one has ever thought of that before. You should present that idea at the UN.
And yes that includes the controversial poor population hotspots of africa that have grown super rapidly beyond multiples of what the land can provide
But also just the same places like arizona with comparatively rich folk growing the urban desert sprawl
You could turn up reliably and distribute quite a lot of food, and yet at the end of the day find there's still a famine.
But then again, Musk is going to turn out to be one of the great mass killers of world history with his destruction of USAID. Why would he spoil that by helping some folks?
> But then again, Musk is going to turn out to be one of the great mass killers of world history with his destruction of USAID. Why would he spoil that by helping some folks?
If you consider turning off an program that a group of people aren't particularly entitled to as equivalent to mass murderers who pulled the trigger on people like Stalin and Mao, maybe you need to take a long hard look at yourself. Suppose yanking USAID prompts the creation of a more efficient, more local solution that feeds more people. Will you give Musk the credit of saving people's lives?
Well before someone comes out with a ludicrous bad faith hypothetical.
> Suppose someone had [ludicrous bad faith hypothetical]
Whoops.
> Solve the fucking problem, don't put a very expensive bandage on it.
That only works for the most trivial of problems. Anything complex will need expensive bandages until a complex solution can be worked out and, more importantly, implemented correctly.
> maybe you need to take a long hard look at yourself.
I have, many times, and that's how I turned from a bad faith edge lord posting this kind of hypothetical drivel defending the indefensible for years into a slightly less problematic member of society. And I will continue to take long hard looks at myself to try and improve further.
> Suppose yanking USAID prompts the creation of a more efficient, more local solution that feeds more people.
Again a bad faith hypothetical but let's assume this does happen - great! That would be grand. It still won't take away from Musk being responsible for one of the biggest mass murders in history.
i dint particularly like musk. i would say he is shitty. your moral compass is fucked up.
This is not too disimilar from the case of the billionaire.
[1] Excepting some Galaxy Brain philosophies like Effective Altruism
This second effect happens in all kinds of places where you have to jumps througha lot of hoops to just get to get there. Every hoop discards candidates, and promotes different things. Sometimes in ways that make sure that nobody capable of attaining the job is fit to actually do it well. You can see the issue all over the place, once you track people's careers. Sometimes things that should be disqualifying for a role are actually requirements in practice.
> - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Wish I could remember the name/author.
Using just these three filters alone, you encompass more than 99% of all billionaires in existence. The amount of billionaires who do not fit into these categories can barely occupy a family sized vehicle.
The criteria here suggesting that there is a specific sociopathic personality requirement to being a billionaire as each category can be argued as harmful to societies.
Scalable - Many customers
|
Short-term/ Ponzi Scheme | Monopoly Long-term/
Transactional -------------------------------------- Relational
Contracting / | Consulting /
Retail etc | Therapy etc
|
Non-scalable - Few customers
Remember that Trump is not a first-generation member of the upper class; as a nepo baby, he was born out of touch and has spent his whole life falling deeper into bizarre social bubbles and media silos that were tailored by his ancestors and peers to reassure them that they're doing the right thing. In theory plutarchs should be receiving world-class education from private tutors, but being arch-Conservatives by definition, these teachers are invariably out of date on mental health, and would be forbidden from teaching it even if they had modern material.
Because of this isolation the ultra-wealthy often have certain very uneducated traits around self-esteem—which can paradoxically seem like the result of poverty. They do not have access to DARE or Sesame Street to give them the confidence not to take drugs when pressured, they've never seen Mister Rogers, their biological parents were always off running a business empire, and they have no surrogate figures because their nannies probably get fired at the drop of a hat, even for defending the child's interests.
Ironically, American republicanism makes this worse; in a planned aristocracy, parents internalize the belief that their children deserve "the best" because they are meant to be "the best", but without that noble lie, there is no pressure to create a positive environment for the next generation of tyrant. To make matters worse, these families never start off with healthy values to begin with—which produces a founder effect of regressive masculinity that magnifies everything else I've just mentioned.
The drive to achieve that level of success often comes from weaponized poor self esteem.
Well adjusted individuals just chill out after a few million and work on whatever is fun/important for them.
Only rarely does this also happen to be something that can take you from 10M to 1B. (and if it can it would take a lot of work you can't be bothered to do unless it's some core value like helping the poor beat malaria)
“I hate guys that are very, very successful, and you have to listen to their success stories. I like people who like to listen to my success,” he added.
(I have nothing useful to add, I'm just boggling).
Gates just doesn't want to be remembered for Windows. Much like Nobel didn't want to be remembered only for dynamite.
This sounds like all of the cope I continue to hear about successful people. Very successful people MUST have something wrong with them...
Jazz9k just drank too much coolaid from billionare owned and election meddling twitter, i guess.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy_in_the_workplace
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/401368611_Psychopat...
(Assuming that) It’s a bit astonishing that we discuss things like that, go huh, and then go about our day. Effectively acquiescing to rule-by-personality disordered.
> The wealthiest people in the world have:
- A very big goal
- Insecurity: Massive fear of never being enough
- Impulse control to stay on goal
This excellent list, I expand with my Daddy Issues Billionaire Archetype, which we see in basically all "ultra successful" people. (I haven't found any counter-examples yet, but I'm eagerly awaiting the first! It would be extremely valuable information.)
But crucially, in the face of Unrelenting Standards, what's the difference between total collapse and astronomical success? The belief that you can do it.[0] It's not just "you need to be better than you are." It's "and I know you can."
[0] Incidentally, I posted on this exact subject this morning!
https://nekolucifer.substack.com/p/you-can-do-anything-if-yo...
Conversely, it'd be bugging me until I got to $50M because even in my wildest fantasies, I'd find it hard to spend even $50M in the years I have left.
(Obvs. the calculus would be different for someone in their 20s / with kids.)
https://theonion.com/breaking-all-of-world-s-problems-solved...
"Sources went on to report that, due a minor oversight that also occurred as you slumbered, your student loans must still be repaid in full and are now subject to a highly predatory ballooning interest rate."
I don't wonder anymore.
The fake fainting might be an easy get out of having to cheer and bounce for ages.
Hell, some will even pay extra for access to the highest levels of ass kissing.
Wow such integrity, much win.
They are all horrible. If there is ever a reckoning, I hope this entire class of spineless shits get destroyed.
How fast we'd fix this shit?
It boggles. It truly does.
You may have missed propaganda because you missed the propaganda.
Almost all countries in the world will have heavy handed propaganda that their way of organizing things are the best and most fair that could ever exist.
And miss me with the inevitable both sides response.
The Russian says he works for the Kremlin and he's on his way to go learn American propaganda techniques.
"What American propaganda techniques?" asks the American.
"Exactly," the Russian replies.
idk how a person can be forced to pledge allegiance to the flag every morning and not think that's some North Korean style shit.
Being 5, I didn't know the difference between ethnicity and nationality (I'm Asian but I was born here and didn't know any life outside of America). So I was afraid that my teacher would not let me be American anymore if I didn't say the pledge. So I said it and never refused to say it in school again.
It wasn't til I was well into my adulthood that I realize how absurd that situation sounds.
Still highly unethical of that teacher
What they think they see is actually a short snapshot of North Korean life with a red circle, a red arrow and a red caption text that says "North Korean propaganda here!!! -->", carefully drawn by their local propaganda.
Sanity check: I present you a country X, whose language you don't speak, and whose news you don't read day to day. I show you their politician saying something. Can you tell if that was propaganda? Substitute X from "North Korea" to a country you know nothing about and see how the answer changes.
Most browsers do in fact offer that level of granularity, especially for PWA usecases [0].
And from an indicators perspective, having certain capabilities turned off can make it easier to identify and de-anonymize individuals.
[0] - https://pwascore.com/
There's a considerable difference. And doing whatever one can to mitigate the former shouldn't be discouraged by falsely equivocating the latter.
You will of course need a couple additional threat intel feeds because what is provided via the browser itself isn't enough, but third party data vendors along with threat intel vendors are fairly cost effective.
I've seen a couple actual live demos of deanonymization a couple years ago - it's a capability that has existed in the Offensive Security space for a couple years now. And the company I'm alluding to is already live in Japan and Israel.
The UK's Companies House (required for anyone who is a director or has a shareholding of more than 15% etc.) requires a Onegov ID now. They offer a web version with a scan of a photo ID (passport or driving license). I tried it. I thought one of those would work. Apparently the web version needs to ask security questions (reasonable, as the app used NFC to read your passport) but despite the vast amount of information the government has on me (to issue those IDs, to collect taxes, etc) it cannot do that, so i had to either use the app or go in person to a post office in a different town.
Similarly I got an email from Occado saying that if I used the app I could change orders without checking out again. If I do it on the website i have to checkout again. Why?
It's mostly static data. Just publish it under a URL that won't change. Then we could actually cache and archive it.
I have worked on several applications where the product managers wanted to make our web app something that could be installed through the app store, because that's how users expect to get apps.
I know people who don't even type search queries or URLs into a browser, they just tell the phone what they want to find and open whatever shows up in a search result.
I've tried pushing back against the native app argument and won once because customers actually reported liking that we had a website instead of an app, and other times because deploying an app through the stores was more work than anyone had time to take on. Otherwise, we would've been deploying through app stores for sure.
Marketing gets plenty of data from google analytics or whatever platform they're using anyway, so neither they nor product managers actually care about the data from native APIs.
I don't know exactly what you are talking about here, but if I wanted to find a restaurant that is local I definitely just type 'Miguels' into the browser and then it searches google for 'Miguels' automatically and it know's my location so the first result is going to be their website and phone number and I can load the website for the menu or just call if I know what my family wants.
However even then, I'd rather have an app for them where I can enter in the items I want to order. I've noticed apps tend to be more responsive. Maybe it's just the coding paradigm that the applications tend to load all of the content already and the actions I take in the app are just changing what is displayed, but on a website they make every 'action' trigger an API call that requires a response before it moves on to the next page? This makes a big difference when my connection isn't great.
I also find it easier to swap between active apps instead of between tabs of a browser. If I want to check on the status of the order or whatnot, it's easier to swap to the app and have that refresh then it is to click the 'tab' button of the browser and find the correct tab the order was placed in.
So you open safari first. I think that’s a step further than what’s being described.
Many people it’s just “hey siri, book a table at Miguel’s.” And then click whatever app, web result, or native OS feature pops up.
It’s a chaotic crapshoot that I have never been able to stomach personally. For others, that’s just called using their phone.
It's also why so many websites try to offer push notifications or, back when it seemed like Apple wouldn't cripple it, the "add to home screen" or whatever CTA was that would set the website as an icon. Anything that gives the user a fast path back to engaging without having to deal with interacting with the browser itself is what PMs and marketing want.
> However even then, I'd rather have an app for them where I can enter in the items I want to order.
Really? You want to download a different app for every restaurant you order from?
What I found was that none of these food trucks (and even some relatively nice restaurants) had operational web pages. One had a domain but, for some apparent reason, they posted the menu to <some-random-name>.azurewebsites.net. And that page just... Didn't work. The rest got even worse. Most had listings on Google Maps, but the hours and availability did not reflect reality. We went to a coffee food truck that wasn't there, even though the day before they had commented on a review. Then we had others that had a link to an Instagram page of which some claimed to house their "current" hours and location, yet we tried going to two of them and both weren't open.
It's 2026. If you have your business on Google Maps you should be able to update hours and availability quickly. But beyond that it costs almost nothing to host a simple availability page on a representative domain. And even if you don't want to deal with the responsibility of a domain, there are multitudes of other options. Now, I'm guessing that this isn't the norm for most of these vendors, at least I hope. But we weren't there during the worst of the rain, we hit the second low that went through in our timing. So while it was a significant amount of rain and some of the more treacherous switchback roads were closed - I'm talking about food trucks that were off of very accessible main roads & highways. My SO reached out via IG to about a half dozen vendors and only one responded 2 days later.
Clearly tech and simple services like availability and location that is easy to update is not accessible (or known) for these types of businesses. But it definitely does not require an app (nor should it). Having these simple "status" sites would have made the friction the weather caused significantly less than what we experienced. I don't want an app when I'm trying to find out if a restaurant is open. I, personally, don't find apps any more responsive. In many cases a lot of web sites are littered with far too many components that are not required. I've been doing a lot with Datastar and FastAPI recently and some of the tools I've thrown together (that handle hundreds of MB of data in-browser) load instantly and are blazing fast. So much so that I've been asked how I "did that". It's amazing how fast a web app can be when it's not pulling data from 27 different sources and loading who knows what for JS.
The flip side is there are (presumably) real people downloading these apps. Maybe it’s a kid interested in a career in the FBI, or the family of someone who works there. Idk. (I thought it would contain a secure tip line or something, but the app seems to be a social-media front end first.)
I am willing to entertain that there is a legitimate reason for an app to exist without conceding that it should be a pile of trash.
TSA used to have an API [0]. But, of course while the deprecation page still lives on the service does not.
Edit: Also looks like TSAWaitTimes.com [1] is an option, I'm sure their API works. o_O
[0] https://www.dhs.gov/archive/mytsa-api-documentation [1] https://www.tsawaittimes.com/
- No search competition, when you search on duckduckgo or google for the page a competitor can bid to show up, won't happen with an app.
- Notifications, this is a big one. We live in the attention economy and apps are more likely to slide into push notifications - with ads - than webpages.
- Some users have a mental model that more easily maps to "this app is my go to for this task" and struggle with webpages. That's a psychological and incentive issue. Apple support PWAs but just barely and don't like them because they don't partake in the 100 billion dollar revenue 30% payment processing extortion.
- More intrusive access and "better" targeted advertisement.
- Once an icon is on the home screen somewhere, chances are some users are going to use it because they notice the icon and would not have done so if it were just a tab inside the browser. The attention economy strikes again.
- Companies _love_ to build a relationship with customers. It's usually a very one sided and jealous relationship where getting the user to install an app is perceived as a step in that direction.
- Users are more willing to create accounts for apps than webpages (citation needed, this is just a gut feeling)
- On mainstream iOS and Android it's much harder to block ads in apps than it is in the browser.
I'm sure there are other reasons, but those alone explain why we see them so often.
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.
It helps a lot!
In this case it helped me lose interest in the article within about 20 seconds.
I don't think so. It's more likely that they're upvoted as a signal-boost; convene here to talk about bad government tech.
Some submissions are less about the subject matter than they are about providing a space to talk about only the subject in general. I've found this to be the case when the content is AI-generated.
Also, FWIW, while I found the layout of the top section of the article to be weird, the actual text body and linked sources were easy to read for me.
There are multiple cases of inconsistencies between certain claims and the sources that they linked to:
> The acting IRS Commissioner, Melanie Krause, resigned in protest.
No mention of that here: https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/08/politics/irs-dhs-sign-data-de....
The actual link should be https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/08/politics/melanie-krause-actin... (which is a "Related Article" in the former link).
> The Defense Department even purchased location data from prayer apps to monitor Muslim communities.
Nope: https://www.eff.org/issues/location-data-brokers
> ICE's contract gives them "unlimited rights to use, dispose of, or disclose" all data collected.
Quote doesn't appear here: https://themarkup.org/the-breakdown/2022/06/27/meet-smartlin...
> DHS's own internal documents admit Mobile Fortify can be used to amass biographical information of "individuals regardless of citizenship or immigration status", and CBP confirmed it will "retain all photographs" including those of U.S. citizens, for 15 years.
Both hyperlinks lead to the same page, neither quote appears: https://www.biometricupdate.com/202512/ices-use-of-cbp-biome...
> ICE Homeland Security Investigations signed a $9.2 million contract with Clearview AI in September 2025, giving agents access to over 50 billion facial images scraped from the internet.
THIS IS NOT ABOUT THAT!!! https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/rights-organizations-d...
> This one requests 14 permissions including 7 classified as "dangerous,"
Only 6 permissions are classified as dangerous: https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/gov.dhs.cbp...
If I really wanted to force the claim that the body text is AI-generated (or assisted) then I'd guess that the LLM (likely Claude) counted the "dangerous" icon from its appearance in "The icon [Red exclamation mark] indicates a 'Dangerous' or 'Special' level according to Google's protection levels."
> And the whole CBP ecosystem, from CBP One to CBP Home to Mobile Passport Control, feeds data into a network that retains your faceprints for up to 75 years and shares it across DHS, ICE, and the FBI.
This makes it appear that there are separate apps running concurrently, namely CBP One and CBP Home. They aren't. From the linked source, "CBP One is no longer available". It was replaced with CBP Home. The source does not mention Mobile Passport Control.: https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/fact-sheet/cbp-on...
> ...discussions around government applications that are loaded with surveillance tech (and in many cases it seems like the apps' primary, and sometimes only, purpose is data harvesting) seem very on-topic for HN.
Which is exactly why I said: "Some submissions are less about the subject matter than they are about providing a space to talk about only the subject in general."
The article in its entirety reads more like a desperate attempt at spinning the recent release of the "White House app" into a story about state surveillance. The problem is that it doesn't have a cogent conclusion or point to make except for a "Surveillance Data Pipeline" graphic that depicts ICE as the central destination for all of this data and the following:
> The federal government publishes content available through standard web protocols and RSS feeds, then wraps that content in applications that demand access to your location, biometrics, storage, contacts, and device identity. They embed advertising trackers in FBI apps. They sell the line that you need their app to receive their propaganda while the app quietly collects data that flows into the same surveillance pipeline feeding ICE raids and warrantless location tracking. Every single one of these apps could be replaced by a web page, and they know that. The app exists because a web page can't read your fingerprint, track your GPS in the background, or inventory the other accounts on your device. > > You don't need their app. You don't need their permission to access public information. You already have a browser, an RSS reader, and the ability to decide for yourself what runs on your own hardware. Use them.
What is the link between the two? Who is the "You" being addressed here? We have apps that are apparently used only by ICE, apps meant for foreign travelers into the US, apps only someone's conservative/veteran grandfather would be caught using—these are disparate demographics to me.
If my initial impression to all of this information was "So what?" how would this article convince me that it's actually meaningful? Submissions like this aren't about discussing anything novel or critical about the subject matter (with the exception of the Huawei thing which is a missed opportunity from an editorial point of view). They are signal boosts to talk about bad government and technology in general.
I've spent enough of my morning trying to make actual sense of this story, that's not to say that it's not informative (albeit unsurprising), but the quality of the writing irrespective of whether its "readable" makes me question if the submission was popular because of its substance or because it's supposed to be a proxy for r/politics.
You owe me a coffee.
You linked the wrong CNN article, found the right one in the sidebar, and called it a lie.
The IRS commissioner resigned. Huawei is in the app, etc.
For example, this post seems unhinged at best: https://www.sambent.com/the-engineer-who-tried-to-put-age-ve...
The White House app tracker list comes directly from Exodus Privacy's independent audit, verifiable by anyone. What the cards look like on mobile has nothing to do with it.
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.
Edit: I meant apps can gather data.
As for things "requiring" apps, I am happy to do without those. If I cannot access something through a website on a device under my control, I will not use it. No convenience is worth more than my freedom and privacy.
The inconvenience is considerable. In the last few days I had the choice of use the app or drive 20 mins each way plus park, walk and possibly queue. Required (UK) government ID verification. The issued my new passport without that!
It is often more costly to not use an app, not just inconvenient. My daughter had to use the bus company app to get (much cheaper) monthly ticker to get to school.
I use few apps, keep location turned off, do not use wallet, etc. but there is going to be more and more pressure to use apps.
It's rather shocking that this government service, whatever it may be, isn't accessible through a normal browser. Still, I would rather spend an hour driving somewhere than run spyware on my phone, at least if this is a one-time event. If I somehow faced an insurmountable inconvenience however, I would probably cave in and purchase a cheap Android phone only for these tasks.
Several years ago a hurricane passed through my elderly parent's hometown. There wasn't enough available cell availability to get internet access, but they could make SMS text messages. I was their lifeline getting them info on where the power outages were, which gas stations had gas, when restaurants and grocery stores reopened. If all that information was location-locked to where I was (thousands of miles away), it would have useless.
Rules for thee…
What is the ios equivalent?
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!!!!
Whoever fulfilled this contract gets a stop work order for gross incompetence and the CORs/COs should be terminated immediately
https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.per...
Fear-mongering. Not even dangerous permissions. Granted on install
Well yes, it’s not a high priority. I’m not going to bring it up with my electeds. Are you? If everyone who thinks this is a huge deal is too lazy and nihilistic to do anything about it, it won’t be prioritized.
There are plenty of reasons to dislike it. The money spent to develp it. The attention spent to maintain it. The abuse of users' goodwill. Dilution of the FBI's brand with a circa 2008. None of these are good. None of them are, frankly, issues I'm going to personally engage on.
it's literary the same playbook of any developing country when some obviously corrupt group is elected promising to cut government spending
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.
The real shit is happening parallel to the actual legislation. Companies that need to comply with, say, the extremely onerous UK Online Services Act, are forcing everyone to use data-heavy verification paths like facial recognition age estimation or ID scanning. Newgrounds just used your account age or a credit card.
A core property of fascism is that, unlike other forms of tyranny, it is specifically a public-private joint venture. The government uses corporations to bypass its own constitutional restrictions, and those corporations then agree to follow rules that don't actually exist, specifically so that those corporations can shut down all their competition and form para-governments that supercede the democratically responsive bits. This has actually been going on for a while, but it's only now that the people are actually noticing it.
[0] Inspired by Louis Rossmann's efforts to get R2R bills passed, I've started doing amateur lobbying for the Rio Grande Plan. It's surprisingly easy, but you will almost certainly have to take off from work or sacrifice many a lunch hour to be able to actually get to talk to people.