- The Trump administration has an official White House app
- It is a mandatory installation on most government-issued phones
- Union workers find they are unable to remove it
Over to the White House, where many government employees aren’t too happy to have the current administration’s official app slapped on their phones. There is a lot of pro-Trump content in here and there doesn’t seem to be any way to get rid of the app.
As Wired reports, several federal workers are unhappy about having the app forced on them: one said it contains “pure unadulterated propaganda” from the Trump administration, while another said “I deleted it as a test and it came right back.”
The app that now appears to be mandatory on government-issued devices is apparently the same one that anyone can download to their Android or iOS devices. It features breaking news, social media feeds, photo galleries and various streams of presidential speeches and press conferences.
There’s also reportedly a button in the app to “text President Trump,” which then automatically fills in a speech bubble with “Greatest President Ever” — one of the touches in the app that the partisan officials object to.
Security and privacy concerns
Federal workers can’t get the White House app from their phones from r/technology
All news and content in the app appears to have a pro-Republican and anti-Democrat bent, which is fine for political campaigning, but less suitable for federal temps 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 at all. Some agencies seem to have been able to get away with having the app as a mandatory installation — the General Services Administration is one that Wired, for example. denominator.
The privacy policies for the app also appear to be pretty spotty, with a security researcher back in May finding numerous data security and privacy issues within 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 mixed, with some Reddit posters saying the White House is entitled to put whatever it wants on government phones, while others say they’re “tired of the constant surveillance” and calling the mandatory app installations “pathetic.”
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