- The Trump administration has an official app for the White House
- It is a required installation on most government-issued phones
- Federal employees find they are unable to remove it
Let’s move on to the White House, where many officials aren’t too happy to see the current administration’s official app forced onto their phones. There’s a lot of pro-Trump content here, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to get rid of the app.
As Wired reports, many federal employees are unhappy about having the app imposed on them: One said it contained “pure pure propaganda” from the Trump administration, while another said, “I deleted it as a test and it came back immediately.”
The app that now appears to be required on government-issued devices is apparently the same one that anyone can download on their Android or iOS devices. It features breaking news, social media feeds, photo galleries, and various feeds of presidential speeches and press conferences.
There would also be a button in the app to “text President Trump,” which then automatically fills a bubble reading “Greatest President Ever” — one of the app’s touches that nonpartisan officials object to.
Security and privacy concerns
Federal employees can’t remove the White House app from their phones thanks to r/technology
It seems like all the news and content on the app takes a pro-Republican, anti-Democratic stance, which is fine for political campaigns but less suitable for federal agency employees who stay on the job as administrations come and go.
According to Wired, some officials simply refuse to engage with the app or even use their government phones much. Some agencies appear to have managed to evade mandatory app installation — the General Services Administration is one mentioned by Wired, for example.
It appears the app’s privacy policies are also rather insignificant, while in May a security researcher discovered numerous issues regarding security and data privacy in the app – again, not ideal for devices issued to government personnel. The app tracks user locations every 4.5 minutes and interacts with non-governmental infrastructure.
Reactions on social media are varied, with some posters on Reddit saying the White House has the right to put whatever it wants on government phones, while others saying they are “fed up with the constant surveillance” and calling mandatory app installs “pathetic.”
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