Resurfaced comments in which new House Speaker Mike Johnson talked about how he and his son monitor each other’s online activity using “accountability software” have raised questions about national security.
Johnson, a Republican who was first elected to Congress in 2016, spoke in 2022 about how he installed software called Covenant Eyes on his devices during a panel called “War on Technology” at Cypress Baptist Church in Benton, Louisiana, Rolling Stone reported.
According to a clip first posted on X, formerly Twitter, by a user called Receipt Maven, Johnson spoke about how the subscription-based service helps people abstain from internet porn and “objectionable” websites.
I thought this was overblown at first glance but reading into it…
From Wikipedia:
So like even if the Speaker is on a VPN securely viewing classified material, if it’s on his phone or laptop, Covenant Eyes now has screenshots of it. That is very much a breech of national security if that is happening.
Holy balls, it costs almost as much as Netflix ($204/year) and all it does is spy on you?! I’m not an evil man but these idiots ask for this service. I wish I’d thought of it.
LMAO what?! My god, it could not be more obvious that every single anti-porn crusader out there has serious issues with self-control and project it onto the rest of society. And let’s not even get into the fact that they have a ridiculously unhealthy understanding of human sexuality.
Casually browses fetish porn knowing that I’m not the only one while knowing I’m not in the majority.
I would argue that they don’t understand human sexuality. Point blank.
This, they have been indoctrinated into “original sin” where everything is bad (especially most all sexuality outside of a male and female in a government-issued wedlock) and must be controlled, even if purely natural given by their “God”.
I’m in the wrong business.
Sorry, $204/yr is not enough for me to keep tabs on someone else’s festishes. Especially not those of a Republican congressman.
Don’t forget all the wonderful hush payments for not leaking certain screen shots and user information.
Sure, but MDM software is easy enough to make into a product that does this service on autopilot. And it sounds like the people moderating the content are the users themselves. Genius!
Go to a church and ask for volunteers to help–no, to fulfill their duty!–with this holy war against digital sin.
If it’s high enough classification, he would not have access on his personal phone though.
The risk does not stop at the line of classification. Comms for example, anyone he texts or is texted to those screens are taken and stored off.
It is a risk to national security, period. It’s a fuckin social engineering jackpot for fucks sake.
If he is following proper protocols and procedures: Yes
If he were following proper protocol, he wouldn’t willingly install spyware in the first place.
And unless he is VERY strictly separating his work and his personal devices, there is inevitable leakage. Even something as simple as getting too close to the line on “So I need to fly out to Nevada to check out these weather balloon things and make sure everything is fine” and so forth.
But also? All of this is publicly available information. At a high level, there are two kinds of classified material. Stuff that is classified by specific rules and are generally based on science and technology. And the other is “national security” and is more or less anything a bureaucrat thinks is important.
So the POTUS liking two shots of soy milk in his coffee is not classified because soy milk and coffee are not classified. But if it is decided that “terrorists” might attack the soy milk supply chain? Suddenly there is an argument that that information is sensitive.
And there are a LOT of arguments to be made regarding the Speaker of the House’s personal ties and vulnerabilities becoming “sensitive”.
And then you have people like trump who just give zero shits and are likely to take a picture of a document so they can show it to other people later.
Right, even if he had access to classified information in an unsecured space, the classified system would have its own encryption device and its own systems separate from the unclassified network.
That’s only part of it though. Another component is that anyone having access to his personal devices --let alone his porn habits-- potentially has compromising information on him. Once he’s compromised, he’s a national security threat, full stop.
What if he’s having an affair and there’s evidence of it on his phone? What if he’s doing other shady shit that involves not having a bank account? You better believe the Russians and/or the CCP would love to have compromat on the Speaker.
Sure, but there’s probably already plenty of ways to compromise these idiots.