Back in September 2022, I took a stab at an idea I curated over the pandemic. After working in the software engineering industry for 7 years, I decided to try pursuing higher education again. I saw a desperate need for individuals, experts in technical fields, to advise both politicians and the general public on their field of specialty. This was borne partially from a personal desire in feeling that I wanted to have a larger societal impact in my work, as well as living through the COVID-19 pandemic and witnessing the role of experts engaging with the public.
A recent issue around tech literacy cropped up, and prompted me to want to actually write some on the topic. If the title is any indication, this is largely concerning the state of American government and its role in promoting tech literacy. A Wired article from 2022 resurfaced, along with a public statement concerning a House Representative’s mitigation strategy for pornography viewing inside of his family, involving an app downloaded to his personal device. I argue that while the national security risk that Speaker Johnson’s phone poses is not insignificant, in the long run, the threat posed by continuing to ignore basic tech literacy principles is, at least domestically, worse.
The Speaker has previously claimed in 2022 to be using the software, “Covenant Eyes,” choosing his then 17-year-old son as a mutual accountability partner1. It is a piece of software sometimes labeled as “shameware,” but while this illustrates the typical social purpose of the software quite well, I view it dramatically undersells the security risk. I will generally bucket it as “consensual spyware” for the rest of this article.
It is consensual spyware in the sense that a user willingly downloads a piece of software that can arbitrarily upload your activity. This fulfills the title of spyware, although the main distinction from traditional spyware is that the user is aware of its presence. Several issues arise as a result of this in general, but the results magnify for a high-level civil servant.
The software product is as effective as they are transparent and auditable. Spyware is implicitly dangerous. This places the bar for establishing trust considerably higher. To establish trust, a good start to this is clearly defining the responsibility of the company with your data, as well as disclosing the nature of algorithms used in processing that data (the most straightforward path to this is open source). Covenant Eyes does not disclose algorithms (only methodology, algorithms are likely considered proprietary), and does not define responsibility clearly. Covenant Eyes has already been removed from the Google Play Store for violating Terms of Use concerning accessibility features (although a management-only version of the app has been reinstated since).
Even in the case that the company is above board, they transmit and store phone screenshot data. The processing to evaluate whether or not what the user’s phone is viewing is “risky” content does not happen on the user’s phone. This info gets uploaded to the company's server. This data transfer process creates a separate potential attack vector, even if the encryption method is secure.
The two prior points still hold true in the event that the Speaker does not conduct work on their personal device. Even if there is zero chance that potential state secrets would be uploaded to the cloud, there still exists the possibility that personal info leaks. Bad actors would love to get their hands on health or financial information concerning such a high-ranking US civil servant.
I want to be clear that while I take personal moral issue with this practice on the grounds of respecting individual privacy and the burden of consent, that is not the basis of the argument of this post. General tech literacy is desperately needed across all levels of society, and it falls to leaders to reinforce healthy habits while society adjusts to change. These same leaders need to take strong stances that are not simply moral for society to continue its path of progress.
I sit now in my student dorm in Canada, knowing that the United States does not lack for experts willing to engage in public discourse. I have experienced no shortage of brilliant people in my current foray into the academic world, and America has no shortage of those. My hypothesis has shifted. While I believe there is still certainly room for experts to discuss critical issues, these discussions will ultimately go nowhere if discourse is not had. And America is critically short on discourse. Specifically, the ability to actually listen to others’ words and internalize them. My greatest fear for America is that we have run out of patience to listen.
Listen to experts, and set a healthy precedent. While this request is directly for the Speaker, the same public interest applies across public servants. Moreso than the moral signaling of sticking to one’s guns and doubling down on consensual spyware, civil leaders have tremendous opportunity to actually create meaningful change in reinforcing healthy habits. This sort of software is unnecessary and creates a national security risk, even if the underlying company would be perfectly trustworthy. Upon taking the role of a prominent civil servant, one takes on a social responsibility that is more important than one’s personal, parental responsibility. The Speaker is accountable to and for Congress, and sets the bar for conversation. America needs that bar to be high. Listen to experts, and ditch the consensual spyware.
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