White House app auto-downloads to government phones, can't be uninstalled | Hacker News Reader

White House app auto-downloads to government phones, can't be uninstalled

wired.com

41 pointspseudolus36 comments

This just feels like the weirdest part to me:

> A button within the app allows users to “text President Trump,” which autofills a text bubble reading “Greatest President Ever.”

It feels like something you might see from the government in a banana republic/authoritarian dictatorship.

Titillating, and cringey, and par for the course. But the concerns run more like this:

> An investigation by NOTUS found that the app incorporated widgets created by a Russia-based company called Elfsight, which exposed the personal information of White House officials. Elfsight did not respond to a request for comment. At the time of this reporting, the White House said Elfsight had been made aware of this vulnerability.

That's because the Trump administration IS a banana republic/authoritarian dictatorship, at least in spirit.

Like, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, puts people in prison for a 100 years for going to a protest like a duck, it might be a duck!

Reminds me of the story of a parliament full of apparatchiks clapping their dictator, with no one daring to stop, because it would mean a lack of loyalty, for which they'd be dragged out and shot...

> This just feels like the weirdest part to me:

>> A button within the app allows users to “text President Trump,” which autofills a text bubble reading “Greatest President Ever.”

Have you ever watched any part of any of his cabinet meetings? They are just 3 hours of people telling him how great he is in the most cringiest ways possible, each person trying to one-up the last with the ass kissing. So this autofill doesn't seem weird at all to me.

(I'm not saying its normal, I'm saying its expected).

> It feels like something you might see from the government in a banana republic/authoritarian dictatorship.

Well.. I mean, yeah. That's about where we are.

It's not even the authoritarian dictatorship that scares me as much as it is how many regular people with nothing to gain and everything to lose happily and fully support it.

People are only now concerned because they see the control that was always there, Now being exerted over their government work issued phones.

People are concerned because they know that Donald Trump is an aspiring dictator. He doesn't want to install this app because he thinks it will serve some useful purpose, he wants to install it because he thinks the country and everyone in it is his property.

If he's allowed to get away with this, at some point before he's overthrown, he's going to force you, personally, to install this app. When you object that this is crazy, his remaining true believers will make up some nonsense reason why we shouldn't be worried.

It's a work phone, I don't see the issue.

> I don't see the issue.

What is your goal in telling us this? Are you proud of sticking your head in the sand, or something?

It's not sticking your head in the sand to state that the entity which owns a device is free to install the software they want. The person operating that device does not own it and thus does not have the right to decide what software it runs.

Ignoring the long-standing norm of company-owned and provided devices using preinstalled software that the user has no control over for some sort of "gubmint bad" sentiment is really juvenile. This is how work-owned devices are and have been for decades.

Whether the white house app itself is good or bad, or the administration is good or bad is an entirely disjoint argument. Businesses which own the device and provide them to employees have the right to manage the software on the device they own. Do you really want to argue that the person who owns a device does not have the right to manage its software? Because I don't think that's the argument you want to make here.

> It's not sticking your head in the sand to state that the entity which owns a device is free to install the software they want

Actually, yes it is when you're hanging your hat on that one simplistic point to the exclusion of all others. That's called ignorance.

> company-owned ... businesses ... the person who owns a device

These are not company-owned or business-owned devices, rather they are government-owned devices. You are playing extremely fast and loose with the major distinctions between government, companies, businesses, and people.

> for some sort of "gubmint bad" sentiment is really juvenile

I'd say it's quite juvenile to categorize discussions of Constitutional rights and the autocratization of our government as some strawman of "gubmint bad".

I don't agree with the premise that Donald Trump is the owner of all government employee phones. We, the citizens of the United States, own those phones. Trump is just a guy we've temporarily hired to direct the activities of the government, and his mistaken impression that the US President owns the government is exactly my concern.

Is it a work phone because Trump has a principled belief that only work phones should have to install this app? Or is it a work phone because Trump hasn't yet subverted the required executives to get Apple to agree to roll it out on everyone's phone?

"get them to agree" is one way to put it. If they want this our government can just show up with guns and force it to happen. The government already collects data from corporations (including apple according to snowden's leaks), sometimes taking over parts of a company's offices, installing hardware on the company's network, and filling those rooms with government employees in order to do it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

It's a work phone because it's not a personal phone.

Sure, it's a work phone. And that job is with the US government, famously "of and for the people", meaning that citizens are owners of thar workplace. As an owner, I am not okay with this, and I will make my voice heard

To be clear, it's not having a government controlled app, it's the fact that this app exists to perpetuate the cult of Donald Trump. It's a tool for spreading fascism.

Feds use profile management? Is that news?

The weirdness of the WH app is notable enough but standard organization practices aren't.

It’s a purely political app, not an official US government.

So yes, it’s weird and illegal for the republicans to force all government employees to have a propaganda app on their work phones.

Do you want to make the argument that a business/person/entity does not have the right to manage software on devices they own?

Think carefully about that.

Depends on the software, this is not a hard thing to understand or debate.

But since when Trump or Republicans own them? The whole idea behind modern democracies is the exact thing that they don’t, and these kind of influences shouldn’t exist.

any android now can get pseudo-root via Shizuku

and I am betting Shizuku can disable that

however I am sure that will trigger firing so probably not worth it

1000 days, hang in there, this is nothing, imagine what's going down winter holidays 2028

Android devices have started installing hidden app that scans your images (mastodon.sdf.org)

Misleading. Scanning is related to a setting called "Sensitive Content Warnings" and it's disabled by default on most devices.

This setting name is indeed misleading.

another data heist brewing.

The usual long period between elections and inauguration is going to create a massive window for data exfiltration and the only people empowered to police it and any evidence that it occurrred are the people most likely to be stealing the data.

"Google app auto-downloads to Google phones, can't be uninstalled" has been the norm since day 1 and before.

What is newsworthy here? The fact that yet one more third-party (the White House) does it too?

Long-time de-Googled Pixel user here: while it's not for most of the people I know, for whom the barrier to install LineageOS / GrapheneOS / etc on their Android pocket computer is as yet too high, advertisement-company Google's nonsense can be uninstalled. It helps that I use my less-smart phone much less than back when these things were a novelty. Nice to be able to call and text, snap photos, take notes, visit some websites with JavaScript turned off, set alarms, and learn stuff with Anki, all with one high-tech slab that fits in my pocket. I also appreciate F-Droid and the contributions of so many people making useful software. Still, I'd trade computers and all the pollution from the underlying infrastructure for lower population density and the ability to regularly eat fish from local waterways without getting poisoned.

This is about work phones. You're not going to [be able or permitted to] install LineageOS, GrapheneOS, or anything like that on it. And you shouldn't.

What you should do is turn the thing off and put it in a shielding bag when you're not working. Or leave it in your desk, locker, or whatever. Or even refuse getting one to begin with.

4th amendment probably

The 4th amendment doesn't apply to property of your employer. They can do pretty much whatever they want in terms of configuration, tracking, and auto-loading software on it.

It does when your employer is the US Government. Decades of overt corporate authoritarianism seems to have made some people forget about the very idea of individual rights.

No, it doesn't. The government has the right to manage software on devices they own just like any other business.

You can just say you think trump is an authoritarian sack of assholes, you don't need to invent bullshit legal fairy tales. That's not how this works.

> government has the right to manage software on devices they own just like any other business

The government is not a business.

> you don't need to invent bullshit legal fairy tales

Constitutional rights that are meant to explicitly restrain the government are not "bullshit legal fairy tales".

Isn't there a court case with a different legal standard here? Like pagers or something

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