If you work for the Department of Homeland Security, an app is about to be auto-loaded onto your work phone, sort of like that U2 album that auto-loaded on everyone’s iPhone in 2014, except instead of delivering “Songs of Innocence,” the app claims to deliver “unfiltered, real-time updates straight from the source”—the source being Donald Trump.
I’m sure you downloaded the app from the App Store or Google Play back in March, when it was released, but if you didn’t and, again, you work for DHS, you received an email Tuesday that was seen by Politico, who reported this news. That email calls the app, “a convenient way to access official White House communications, including announcements, executive actions, speeches, livestreams, videos and other updates.”
In the press release about the app on the White House site, the first item on the list of features is “breaking news alerts on major announcements, executive actions, and other key priorities.” With that in mind, you might think that photo I picked for the header of this article—the one with a post that says “That Wednesday night Trump dance🕺🇺🇸”—was chosen to make fun of it, but that’s simply the image the White House provided as an illustration.
Apparently the other features are:
- Video streaming
- A “library” of what sound like archived Trump sound bites
- The ability to “stay connected” with new policies
- An option to send feedback, including by voice
Some of the app’s other attributes, according to Notus.org, include sharing the user’s data including time zone, IP address, and more, with third-parties. According to Notus, the White House app “doesn’t disclose its data sharing the way most others do.”
Last month, according to the publication Government Executive, the Trump Administration told federal agencies to start installing it on phones, and “at least one agency”—the FAA—was already slated to receive the app on its phones as an auto-download.
A former IT executive for the government’s General Services Administration named Sonny Hashmi told Government Executive, auto-installs of the app are “cause for alarm,” and that “Any app that is installed on government issued devices can potentially create backdoor access to government networks behind the firewall.”
It’s worth noting that an earlier White House app was released in 2010 when Barack Obama was president. That app also doesn’t look like it was all that great, but in Obama’s defense, 2010 was squarely in the middle of the “there’s an app for that” bubble from the early days of smartphones.
Read the full article here
