11 ms·

Fedware: Government apps that spy harder than the apps they ban

683 points by speckx 8mo ago

ethagnawl 8mo ago
The names of the offending apps on the cards need much more emphasis.
pickleglitch 8mo ago
I'm old enough to remember when people actually took the Hatch Act seriously.
fhdkweig 8mo ago
Why is every part of this website animated, and part of the text is backwards? Am I the only one who sees it this way?
- explodes 8mo ago
  If the webmaster notices this, the squares aren't great on mobile.
  - DoingFedTime 7mo ago
    Thank you for the feedback. I'll try working on them!
- nancyminusone 8mo ago
  I think they are supposed to be like cards that flip over and you see what's on the back.
john_strinlai 8mo ago
>This thing also has a "Text the President" button that auto-fills your message with "Greatest President Ever!" and then collects your name and phone number. 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")
- malfist 8mo ago
  It's ming boggling just how....cringe... these billionaires that want to run the world are. Makes you wonder if the personas that seek billions are correlated strongly with mental illnesses.
  - bigyabai 8mo ago
    They are perfectly aware of their own optics and do it because you can't escape it. See Elon with his cringeworthy Twitter takeover that still hasn't collapsed, Larry Ellison buying up the media or Tim Cook gifting the gold trophy to Trump. Nobody has the guts to boycott them anymore. Billionaires know that you depend on them for news, social media and smartphones too.
    - malfist 8mo ago
      > still hasn't collapsed Which is why he's playing a shell game with xAI "buying" twitter and then SpaceX "buying" xAI
      - bigyabai 8mo ago
        Well... it worked. The shareholders were made whole, Elon got his vanity project, and the only people who got the short end of the stick were the loss-leader Twitter addicts. From a game-theory perspective that's a pretty impressive political polemic to achieve with purely private capital. 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.
    - yoyohello13 8mo ago
      I think that's what bothers me the most about the last couple years. These ultra rich people are just brazenly being scumbags and there is nothing anybody can really do about it. I imagine this is what people felt like in the middle ages when their King was going senile.
joshstrange 8mo ago
Do these posts just get upvoted due to the graphics/animations? I find this site incredibly difficult to read with things re-playing as you scroll up and down and the articles I've read from here are often light on details. The graphics seem very AI-generated (overlapping text and other little issues) which makes me think the whole thing is from an LLM. 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.
- fhdkweig 8mo ago
  I can't read any of it, but the other comment's descriptions sound like the new mandatory Russian Max app, so it isn't without precedent.
- beejiu 8mo ago
  I didn't even realise it was an article. I thought the grid thing at the top was just an index page linking out to other pages.
- EA-3167 8mo ago
  Speaking for myself unless I know the site and like how they do things, my default these days is a reader view. It helps a lot! In this case it helped me lose interest in the article within about 20 seconds.
- tolerance 8mo ago
  > Do these posts just get upvoted due to the graphics/animations? 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.
  - hn_throwaway_99 8mo ago
    That may be true in some cases, but I disagree about that in this case. TFA links to numerous sources for it's data (e.g. https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/723186/ https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/723186/ for the White House app, and AFAICT exodus privacy is a legit service), and 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. 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.
drnick1 8mo ago
You could not pay me to use any of these apps. All of my own devices run some form of Linux (Debian for servers, Arch for desktop/laptop, GrapheneOS on phone). I generally refuse to use non-free software, the main exception being Steam on a dedicated gaming rig. 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.
- graemep 8mo ago
  Apps can gather data, and there are lots of things that requires apps now. Edit: I meant apps can gather data.
  - drnick1 8mo ago
    Apps obviously gather data. In fact, on common phone operating systems, they tend to have access to an insane amount of information, including what other apps are used, hardware identifiers, information related to Google/Apple accounts and more. 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.
    - graemep 8mo ago
      Oops. I meant apps can gather (more) data. 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.
      - drnick1 8mo ago
saadn92 8mo ago
The closing point is the one that should get more attention — every single one of these apps could be replaced by a web page. And from a product standpoint, there's really only one reason to ship a native app when your content is just press releases and weather alerts: you want access to APIs the browser won't give you. Background location, biometrics, device identity, boot triggers — none of that is available through a browser, and that's by, unfortunately, design.
- alephnerd 8mo ago
  > Background location, biometrics, device identity, boot triggers — none of that is available through a browser 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/ https://pwascore.com/
  - nickburns 8mo ago
    Fingerprint? Yeah. Deanonymize? No. There's a considerable difference. And doing whatever one can to mitigate the former shouldn't be discouraged by falsely equivocating the latter.
    - alephnerd 8mo ago
      Nope. Actual deanonymization. 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.
- graemep 8mo ago
  Exactly what big businesses do, and governments think what businesses do is good practice. Fore everyone to use an app. 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?
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
bluepeter 8mo ago
Relatedly, I just registered for PACER to download court documents. It's pretty shocking that to get public legal documents the US Federal Court system requires full name, birthdate, address, phone, email, credit card info... and I THINK (it's past the initial registration page so can't confirm 100%) also mother's maiden name and 2 common security questions. Just a treasure-trove of PII if it ever falls into the wrong hands. (What's esp frustrating is even after going through this, I had to call a number and wait on hold for 1 hour to activate the account.)
- morpheuskafka 8mo ago
  It requires SSN or EIN -- almost all situations where you pay the government or they pay you require that as part of a law about enforcing federal debt collection.
lucasay 8mo ago
[dead]
shevy-java 8mo ago
There is currently an attempt going on by several governments to crack down harder against the people. While before it was "only", say, California and their age-sniffing laws infiltrating and tainting Linux - thus declaring war against the people, as revealed by Meta acting as primary lobbyist here - today I read that now that age-sniffing was also approved in some european countries (in one EU country the parents are required to install a sniffing app and thus verify the age of the kids; I think it was in Greece. I'd never help any government act as fascist sniffing proxy trying to control and monitor by kids, that is an act of betrayal of such a government), their next line of attack is against VPN. Suddenly the picture shifts, because if VPNs are targeted, how does finding an excuse such as "but but but think about the kids", make any sense? That is very clearly governments becoming increasingly fascist. Add a few lobbyists here and there who benefit financially from this and now we suddenly understand how democracies are undermined. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_corruption_scandal_at_the_European_Parliament 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.
- kmeisthax 8mo ago
  The recent spate of state-level age verification laws, while stupid, are primarily designed to insulate Facebook from lawsuits and not actually crack down on people. You can comply with them by just having a date field and an API to get bucketed age ranges out of them. The reason why they seem like a concerted crackdown is that Facebook can pay people to go to literally every legislature and bug them up and down[0] until they pass a law to make OS vendors provide age buckets. 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.
maest 8mo ago
FYI, regardless of election outcome, the next government is highly unlikely to roll this back
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
  > regardless of election outcome, the next government is highly unlikely to roll this back 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.
  - fhdkweig 8mo ago
    As long as it isn't mandatory like the Russian Max app, I wouldn't worry. The only reason to dislike it (other than privacy issues) is the money spent to develop it (which has already been spent). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_(app) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_(app)
    - JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
      > only reason to dislike it (other than privacy issues) is the money spent to develop it (which has already been spent) 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.
CobrastanJorji 8mo ago
Most of this is bad, but I think it's reasonable for the FEMA app, whose purpose is to help you get to the nearest shelters, to have access to your location.
- baggachipz 8mo ago
  Browsers can get access to your location too.
  - fhdkweig 8mo ago
    The best solution is to have a text box that asks for a ZIP code, and every important site has one. It covers all the above cases but also includes the ability to help others in a disaster zone. 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.
luxuryballs 8mo ago
These devices don’t actually give access to biometric fingerprint data do they??
- david_allison 8mo ago
  https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.permission#USE_BIOMETRIC https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.per... https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.permission#USE_FINGERPRINT https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.per... Fear-mongering. Not even dangerous permissions. Granted on install
cdrnsf 8mo ago
Don't install these apps unless you absolutely have to. If you absolutely have to install them, uninstall them as soon as you're done using them.
- aitchnyu 8mo ago
  I put most of my apps into freezer (Realme phone) so they run only in foreground. Apparently my mobile operator uses their app to prevent sharing my mobile into a Wifi hotspot, my food delivery app pretended to be Amazon having an issue with a package etc.
Daunk 8mo ago
Heh. American funny
thebeardredis 8mo ago
[flagged]
- platevoltage 8mo ago
  -5 Karma. Impressive.
mmethodz 8mo ago
Which government?
thomastjeffery 8mo ago
Title is missing the number 13, which makes it much harder to parse. Should be "Fedware: 13 Government Apps That Spy Harder Than the Apps They Ban"
h4kunamata 8mo ago
Ahhhh the USA, we can do anything, but others cannot! 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!!!!
nickvec 8mo ago
Sheesh... I should not have downloaded the White House app yesterday just to see how ludicrous it was. I just deleted it, though I'm sure a lot of my data has already been exfiltrated. Doesn't excessive tracking like this violate the App Store + Google Play's ToS?
- allthetime 8mo ago
  Apple and Google’s App Stores? The companies whose CEOs were both standing at attention, present during Trump’s inauguration? Rules for thee…
jrmg 8mo ago
I’m surprised to see no comments on this yet: [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.
- e40 8mo ago
  Incompetence is the forte of this administration.
  - N_Lens 8mo ago
    Followed closely by malice
    - Terr_ 8mo ago
      Recycling an old post: > 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. [0] https://xkcd.com/356/ https://xkcd.com/356/
    - bregma 8mo ago
      Malicious incompetence. The inbred kissing cousin of malicious compliance.
      - gpderetta 8mo ago
rsync 8mo ago
The article mentions “exodus privacy” as a source for android app permissions auditing, etc. What is the ios equivalent?
cuuupid 8mo ago
I can usually defend what appears to be federal incompetence with nuance and vice versa but even I can't say anything about this. Whoever fulfilled this contract gets a stop work order for gross incompetence and the CORs/COs should be terminated immediately
aboardRat4 8mo ago
I don't really understand. Do you have anything to hide from you government?
- chromehearts 8mo ago
  It's 2026 & we still have people saying this ..
  - MarchApril 8mo ago
    Poe's Law is in effect when the thread is a hair away from getting political. I thought it was obvious that the commenter is joking based on the oblivious tone, and because this is HN.
    - chromehearts 8mo ago
      I'm probably way too new here then.. whatever
- herbst 8mo ago
  I have a lot to hide from your government if that was the question
  - aboardRat4 8mo ago
    You don't have to install my government's software.
HackerThemAll 8mo ago
So no, thank you USA. I'm not going to visit you. I have all I need in this our European "socialism" as many Americans like to call it. I'm not assumed to be a criminal, and governments aren't building databases of all my steps and activities, and I have a great healthcare.
anilakar 8mo ago
Complaining about Smartlink is a bit hypocritical as it's the smartphone equivalent of an ankle tracker. The opportunity cost for the user is incarceration.
iririririr 8mo ago
they hire one day shell companies that give them a huge chunk of the money back illegally, then turn around and hire a cheap ad agency specialized in churning hotsites and conference apps. it's literary the same playbook of any developing country when some obviously corrupt group is elected promising to cut government spending
nektro 8mo ago
from this admin? obviously

683 points by speckx 8mo ago

ethagnawl 8mo ago

The names of the offending apps on the cards need much more emphasis.

pickleglitch 8mo ago

I'm old enough to remember when people actually took the Hatch Act seriously.

fhdkweig 8mo ago

Why is every part of this website animated, and part of the text is backwards? Am I the only one who sees it this way?

explodes 8mo ago
If the webmaster notices this, the squares aren't great on mobile.
- DoingFedTime 7mo ago
  Thank you for the feedback. I'll try working on them!
nancyminusone 8mo ago
I think they are supposed to be like cards that flip over and you see what's on the back.

john_strinlai 8mo ago

>This thing also has a "Text the President" button that auto-fills your message with "Greatest President Ever!" and then collects your name and phone number. 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")

malfist 8mo ago
It's ming boggling just how....cringe... these billionaires that want to run the world are. Makes you wonder if the personas that seek billions are correlated strongly with mental illnesses.
- bigyabai 8mo ago
  They are perfectly aware of their own optics and do it because you can't escape it. See Elon with his cringeworthy Twitter takeover that still hasn't collapsed, Larry Ellison buying up the media or Tim Cook gifting the gold trophy to Trump. Nobody has the guts to boycott them anymore. Billionaires know that you depend on them for news, social media and smartphones too.
  - malfist 8mo ago
    > still hasn't collapsed Which is why he's playing a shell game with xAI "buying" twitter and then SpaceX "buying" xAI
    - bigyabai 8mo ago
      Well... it worked. The shareholders were made whole, Elon got his vanity project, and the only people who got the short end of the stick were the loss-leader Twitter addicts. From a game-theory perspective that's a pretty impressive political polemic to achieve with purely private capital. 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.
  - yoyohello13 8mo ago
    I think that's what bothers me the most about the last couple years. These ultra rich people are just brazenly being scumbags and there is nothing anybody can really do about it. I imagine this is what people felt like in the middle ages when their King was going senile.

joshstrange 8mo ago

Do these posts just get upvoted due to the graphics/animations? I find this site incredibly difficult to read with things re-playing as you scroll up and down and the articles I've read from here are often light on details. The graphics seem very AI-generated (overlapping text and other little issues) which makes me think the whole thing is from an LLM. 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.

fhdkweig 8mo ago
I can't read any of it, but the other comment's descriptions sound like the new mandatory Russian Max app, so it isn't without precedent.
beejiu 8mo ago
I didn't even realise it was an article. I thought the grid thing at the top was just an index page linking out to other pages.
EA-3167 8mo ago
Speaking for myself unless I know the site and like how they do things, my default these days is a reader view. It helps a lot! In this case it helped me lose interest in the article within about 20 seconds.
tolerance 8mo ago
> Do these posts just get upvoted due to the graphics/animations? 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.
- hn_throwaway_99 8mo ago
  That may be true in some cases, but I disagree about that in this case. TFA links to numerous sources for it's data (e.g. https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/723186/ https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/723186/ for the White House app, and AFAICT exodus privacy is a legit service), and 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. 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.

drnick1 8mo ago

You could not pay me to use any of these apps. All of my own devices run some form of Linux (Debian for servers, Arch for desktop/laptop, GrapheneOS on phone). I generally refuse to use non-free software, the main exception being Steam on a dedicated gaming rig. 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.

graemep 8mo ago
Apps can gather data, and there are lots of things that requires apps now. Edit: I meant apps can gather data.
- drnick1 8mo ago
  Apps obviously gather data. In fact, on common phone operating systems, they tend to have access to an insane amount of information, including what other apps are used, hardware identifiers, information related to Google/Apple accounts and more. 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.
  - graemep 8mo ago
    Oops. I meant apps can gather (more) data. 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.
    - drnick1 8mo ago

saadn92 8mo ago

The closing point is the one that should get more attention — every single one of these apps could be replaced by a web page. And from a product standpoint, there's really only one reason to ship a native app when your content is just press releases and weather alerts: you want access to APIs the browser won't give you. Background location, biometrics, device identity, boot triggers — none of that is available through a browser, and that's by, unfortunately, design.

alephnerd 8mo ago
> Background location, biometrics, device identity, boot triggers — none of that is available through a browser 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/ https://pwascore.com/
- nickburns 8mo ago
  Fingerprint? Yeah. Deanonymize? No. There's a considerable difference. And doing whatever one can to mitigate the former shouldn't be discouraged by falsely equivocating the latter.
  - alephnerd 8mo ago
    Nope. Actual deanonymization. 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.
graemep 8mo ago
Exactly what big businesses do, and governments think what businesses do is good practice. Fore everyone to use an app. 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?

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

bluepeter 8mo ago

Relatedly, I just registered for PACER to download court documents. It's pretty shocking that to get public legal documents the US Federal Court system requires full name, birthdate, address, phone, email, credit card info... and I THINK (it's past the initial registration page so can't confirm 100%) also mother's maiden name and 2 common security questions. Just a treasure-trove of PII if it ever falls into the wrong hands. (What's esp frustrating is even after going through this, I had to call a number and wait on hold for 1 hour to activate the account.)

morpheuskafka 8mo ago
It requires SSN or EIN -- almost all situations where you pay the government or they pay you require that as part of a law about enforcing federal debt collection.

lucasay 8mo ago

[dead]

shevy-java 8mo ago

There is currently an attempt going on by several governments to crack down harder against the people. While before it was "only", say, California and their age-sniffing laws infiltrating and tainting Linux - thus declaring war against the people, as revealed by Meta acting as primary lobbyist here - today I read that now that age-sniffing was also approved in some european countries (in one EU country the parents are required to install a sniffing app and thus verify the age of the kids; I think it was in Greece. I'd never help any government act as fascist sniffing proxy trying to control and monitor by kids, that is an act of betrayal of such a government), their next line of attack is against VPN. Suddenly the picture shifts, because if VPNs are targeted, how does finding an excuse such as "but but but think about the kids", make any sense? That is very clearly governments becoming increasingly fascist. Add a few lobbyists here and there who benefit financially from this and now we suddenly understand how democracies are undermined. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_corruption_scandal_at_the_European_Parliament 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.

kmeisthax 8mo ago
The recent spate of state-level age verification laws, while stupid, are primarily designed to insulate Facebook from lawsuits and not actually crack down on people. You can comply with them by just having a date field and an API to get bucketed age ranges out of them. The reason why they seem like a concerted crackdown is that Facebook can pay people to go to literally every legislature and bug them up and down[0] until they pass a law to make OS vendors provide age buckets. 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.

maest 8mo ago

FYI, regardless of election outcome, the next government is highly unlikely to roll this back

JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
> regardless of election outcome, the next government is highly unlikely to roll this back 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.
- fhdkweig 8mo ago
  As long as it isn't mandatory like the Russian Max app, I wouldn't worry. The only reason to dislike it (other than privacy issues) is the money spent to develop it (which has already been spent). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_(app) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_(app)
  - JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
    > only reason to dislike it (other than privacy issues) is the money spent to develop it (which has already been spent) 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.

CobrastanJorji 8mo ago

Most of this is bad, but I think it's reasonable for the FEMA app, whose purpose is to help you get to the nearest shelters, to have access to your location.

baggachipz 8mo ago
Browsers can get access to your location too.
- fhdkweig 8mo ago
  The best solution is to have a text box that asks for a ZIP code, and every important site has one. It covers all the above cases but also includes the ability to help others in a disaster zone. 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.

luxuryballs 8mo ago

These devices don’t actually give access to biometric fingerprint data do they??

david_allison 8mo ago
https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.permission#USE_BIOMETRIC https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.per... https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.permission#USE_FINGERPRINT https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.per... Fear-mongering. Not even dangerous permissions. Granted on install

cdrnsf 8mo ago

Don't install these apps unless you absolutely have to. If you absolutely have to install them, uninstall them as soon as you're done using them.

aitchnyu 8mo ago
I put most of my apps into freezer (Realme phone) so they run only in foreground. Apparently my mobile operator uses their app to prevent sharing my mobile into a Wifi hotspot, my food delivery app pretended to be Amazon having an issue with a package etc.

Daunk 8mo ago

Heh. American funny

thebeardredis 8mo ago

[flagged]

platevoltage 8mo ago
-5 Karma. Impressive.

mmethodz 8mo ago

Which government?

thomastjeffery 8mo ago

Title is missing the number 13, which makes it much harder to parse. Should be "Fedware: 13 Government Apps That Spy Harder Than the Apps They Ban"

h4kunamata 8mo ago

Ahhhh the USA, we can do anything, but others cannot! 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!!!!

nickvec 8mo ago

Sheesh... I should not have downloaded the White House app yesterday just to see how ludicrous it was. I just deleted it, though I'm sure a lot of my data has already been exfiltrated. Doesn't excessive tracking like this violate the App Store + Google Play's ToS?

allthetime 8mo ago
Apple and Google’s App Stores? The companies whose CEOs were both standing at attention, present during Trump’s inauguration? Rules for thee…

jrmg 8mo ago

I’m surprised to see no comments on this yet: [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.

e40 8mo ago
Incompetence is the forte of this administration.
- N_Lens 8mo ago
  Followed closely by malice
  - Terr_ 8mo ago
    Recycling an old post: > 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. [0] https://xkcd.com/356/ https://xkcd.com/356/
  - bregma 8mo ago
    Malicious incompetence. The inbred kissing cousin of malicious compliance.
    - gpderetta 8mo ago

rsync 8mo ago

The article mentions “exodus privacy” as a source for android app permissions auditing, etc. What is the ios equivalent?

cuuupid 8mo ago

I can usually defend what appears to be federal incompetence with nuance and vice versa but even I can't say anything about this. Whoever fulfilled this contract gets a stop work order for gross incompetence and the CORs/COs should be terminated immediately

aboardRat4 8mo ago

I don't really understand. Do you have anything to hide from you government?

chromehearts 8mo ago
It's 2026 & we still have people saying this ..
- MarchApril 8mo ago
  Poe's Law is in effect when the thread is a hair away from getting political. I thought it was obvious that the commenter is joking based on the oblivious tone, and because this is HN.
  - chromehearts 8mo ago
    I'm probably way too new here then.. whatever
herbst 8mo ago
I have a lot to hide from your government if that was the question
- aboardRat4 8mo ago
  You don't have to install my government's software.

HackerThemAll 8mo ago

So no, thank you USA. I'm not going to visit you. I have all I need in this our European "socialism" as many Americans like to call it. I'm not assumed to be a criminal, and governments aren't building databases of all my steps and activities, and I have a great healthcare.

anilakar 8mo ago

Complaining about Smartlink is a bit hypocritical as it's the smartphone equivalent of an ankle tracker. The opportunity cost for the user is incarceration.

iririririr 8mo ago

they hire one day shell companies that give them a huge chunk of the money back illegally, then turn around and hire a cheap ad agency specialized in churning hotsites and conference apps. it's literary the same playbook of any developing country when some obviously corrupt group is elected promising to cut government spending

nektro 8mo ago

from this admin? obviously