INVESTIGATINGGovernmentThe official White House app pings users' GPS location to an outside server every 4.5 minutes and requests fingerprint scanner and internal storage access. No transparency about who operates the third-party server.
“The official White House app pings users' GPS location to an outside server every 4.5 minutes and requests fingerprint scanner and internal storage access. No transparency about who operates the third-party server.”
Download the official White House app and it asks for three things: your precise location, your fingerprint scanner, and permission to modify your internal storage. Then it sends your GPS coordinates to a third-party server every 4.5 minutes. Nobody knows who runs that server.
The app doesn't check your location once. It pings your exact GPS coordinates every 270 seconds — roughly 320 times per day. That's enough data to build a complete picture of your daily routine: where you sleep, where you work, where you eat, what route you take, who you visit.
Your location data isn't going to whitehouse.gov. It's going to an undisclosed third-party server. Who operates it? What do they do with the data? Who has access? The White House hasn't disclosed any of this. A government app sending citizens' location data to unknown third parties is surveillance, not user experience.
The app requests access to your device's fingerprint scanner. There is no feature in the White House app that requires biometric authentication. The only reason to request fingerprint access is to collect biometric data — your unique, unchangeable biological identifier.
Why does the White House need to know where you are 320 times a day? Why does a government app need your fingerprint? And why is that data being sent to a server that nobody is willing to identify?
No one's said anything yet. Be the first to drop your take.
