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> The article does not claim the app requests the location. It claims it can do it with a single JS call.

so can ... any other code anywhere on a mobile device? That is how API work...


You need to state the permissions you *may* request/use in AndroidManifest.xml. This data can then be displayed to users pre-installation.

From the (limited) article, it doesn't seem they do this: https://thereallo.dev/blog/decompiling-the-white-house-app#p...

----

EDIT: I'm mistaken. From the Play Store[0] it has access to

* approximate location (network-based)

* precise location (GPS and network-based)

[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gov.whitehouse...

This seems to disagree with:

> The location permissions aren't declared in the AndroidManifest but requested at runtime

*shrug*, someone should dig deeper. It looks like the article may not match reality.


What version do you see? 47.0.1 doesn't have that for me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47557033

Very unusual: 47.0.1 is showing these permissions when on my MacBook viewing the store entry.

The Play Store doesn't show these permissions when viewed on my Pixel 9 Pro, and the APK doesn't have these permissions when downloaded/extracted.


No apple product REQUIRES an iCloud account. I have an iphone without one and a mac without one

> No apple product REQUIRES an iCloud account

Except an iPhone and iPad,to install apps people want and need. The number of people who use an iPhone without apps can be rounded down to 0


Detecting properly-written malicious code is undecidable. No amount of snake oil fixes that

Yes. news.ycomhinator.com

In the US, not disclosing a password is explicitly protected (5th amndmnt), SCOTUS has been clear. not so for biometrics, but so for PIN/passwd

> In the US, not disclosing a password is explicitly protected (5th amndmnt),

That's great but of exactly zero help if you're trying to travel to the US and CBP (or ICE) are staring you down. Even if they don't gulag you, they can always just reject entry for any non-citizen (and these days even some citizens it seems.)


Any country can reject non-citizen entry, for any reason or no reason at all. In fact, part of a definition of a country is ability to practice control over its territory and who is and is not there. This necessarily includes border controls, which any country can decide to make as onerous as they please. No non-citizen of a country has any right to be present in it, except as permitted by its government, so any country if free to make it as hard as they wish to enter for non-citizens. This may not be a good idea, but control over a territory is literally part of the definition.

> Any country can reject non-citizen entry, for any reason or no reason at all. […] This necessarily includes border controls, which any country can decide to make as onerous as they please.

Or, a country could set rules that specify what they will and won't do as part of their entry controls. Just because it's a kind of an "absolute" power doesn't mean you can't still self-impose rules. The benefit being attracting more leisure and business travellers.


Which i acknowledged with "This may not be a good idea,"

They have? What was the relevant case? It was my understanding that some lower courts have ruled one way, others the opposite. There are also many nuances in particular cases (e.g., the police wanting a broad search of a device for something that may or may not be there versus them knowing for a fact a device has certain information they want).

The 5th amendment only protects citizens, and we are only talking about visiting (as far as I can tell).

Ah yes, the US government still respects the 5th amendment... like they respect the other amendments as well as the constitution.

The constitution doesn't say shooting citizens is illegal, right?


Federal agents couldn't possibly have been aware that executing people on the streets is a violation of those people's rights, so they are covered by QI.

Haha, here's some random AI generated content:

    At least 225 judges have ruled in more than 700 cases that the administration's mandatory immigration detention policy likely violates the right to due process[1] The Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause generally requires those having federal funds cut off to receive notice and an opportunity for a hearing, which was not provided in many of DOGE's spending freezes[2]
(there's more but what's the point)

1. https://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-litigation-legal...

2. https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/many-trump-admi...


Wait till you hear about most of europe...

Roleplaying a parallel reallity where "Europe" is an oppressive totalitarian regime will never not be funny.

> Roleplaying a parallel reallity where "Europe" is an oppressive totalitarian regime will never not be funny.

Roleplaying inability to read will never not be funny

UK: https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/news/law-requiring-dis...

France: https://www.fairtrials.org/articles/news/french-court-rules-...

Ireland: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57468750


UK: Police can search phones to counteract human traffickers.

China: Police can search phones of dissidents, and jail them for life for criticising the Party.

You: Europe is worse than China (or will be really soon I promise).

Disingenuous.


Nobody claimed Europe was worse than China, only that if you wouldn't visit China for this reason then you shouldn't visit Europe (or the US) for the same reason.

Speaking of being disingenuous, when you say "Police can search phones to counteract human traffickers", did you think critically about that at all before writing it? Given one of the stated justifications is "preventing terrorism", and the UK has been illegally arresting Palestine Action supporters as terrorists for over a year, this seems a little naive at least.


> Nobody claimed Europe was worse than China, only that if you wouldn't visit China for this reason then you shouldn't visit Europe (or the US) for the same reason.

That would be nonsensical. If you have anti-Xi propaganda on your phone (which could be the reasons you mention), you have nothing to fear in Europe or in the US and a lot to fear in China.

The US is actually worse than both China and Europe because it's 18th century amendments protect human traffickers. Although they do what they can to not have to adhere to those, especially in border control.

> What about Palestine Action...

I'll limit myself to the LARP about "oppressive Europe invigilating your phone".


Indeed anti-Xi posts are unsafe in China, and safe in UK. Equally, anti-UK posts are safe in China and not so in the UK... (eg https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/118565/documents/...). The naïveté in the claim that these are significantly different reminded me of an old joke from the USSR:

American: In America, we have freedom of speech.

USSRian: What's that?

American: I can stand in front of the White House and yell "Reagan is a moron!" and nothing will happen to me.

USSRian: Well, we have that in USSR too.

American: Really?

USSRian: Yes, of course! I go stand in the center of the Red Square and yell "Reagan is a moron" and nothing will happen to me.


I'm sorry, but you're not coherent.

You're saying anti-uk posts, you're linking some heavily editorialized article from a highly ideological media outlet about an arrest "allegedly over criticising anti-trans activists". So not anti-UK posts.

The arrest doesn't seem to have lead to any conviction. So not years of jail and reeducation camps like you get in China for dissent.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. You put this things together and you claim they're the same. They're not even close. This makes you seem funny, unserious.


arrest == arrest

You are most welcome to google "UK arrest for criticizing" and find articles you consider less biased. There are so many to choose from


I did that. There are no arrests for criticizing on the first page of Google.

Judging by your previous reactions, you're going to say that your Google is different, and link some news story about an arrest that isn't for criticizing and instead for supporting terrorism.

Hate to break to you that not every arrest is the same. Some include beating, and lead to jail time. Some include questioning and they lead to the arrested walking free within the day.

So you're hyperfocusing on the UK's online posting, which has nothing to do with the original subject of phone passwords, and doesn't even happen in other European countries, because UK has more proactive monitoring of online spaces by police.

And this is your proof that Europe is a tyrranical dictatorship.


You're trying to convince a flat-earther with logic or physics. Western democracies are evil. Worse than China and worse than North Korea. The answer is Marxism.

EDIT: This reminds me of a Russian person I used to work with. He truly believed that elections in all western democracies were fake and rigged. That is you go and vote but the vote is predetermined. This was a long time ago but I think it was some story told in Russia about the west (basically how the west is not really free) that stuck as an unshakeable belief when he left Russia and moved to the west. This was about 40 years ago give or take. People can hold weird beliefs and conspiracy theories (like people that believe the earth is flat) and those beliefs can not be assailed with logic or facts.

The reality is(?) that western democracies with all their flaws are better than authoritarian regimes but a person can not grasp the entirety of reality. One can always find examples where people are treated unjustly or unfairly in western democracies and ofcourse one can find examples of people being "ok" in authoritarian regimes. The key is to apply the scientific method to the question vs. relying on anecdotes but the human mind is not really wired for that.


Increasingly, people in the US get convinced that Europe is pretty much like China (they usually focus on the policing of online spaces in the UK as proof of that).

There was apparently a recent push in their media to introduce and reinforce this narrative. Can’t see what good would that do, except the current leadership wanting to worsen relations with everyone.


Nobody cares about your phone in China, if you are tourist, you are less likely have your phone searched than when visiting US. Nobody is going to ask you for your social media profiles when visiting China, unlike when visiting US. So who is here the free country?

I've spent this summer 3 weeks in China, used 2 VPNs, both of them worked fine (1 cost less than dollar, the other 4-5 dollars), so did my wife, mother and her husband, guess how many times someone cared about checking our phone.

The biggest issue was when we travelled into Beijing province where there are mo strict border checks and police found out we didn't register our accommodation (at wife's family), the scary horrible policemen then locked us for weeks and deport us from country... No, seriously, that would more likely happen in US than in China, in China they just told us to register after the weekend at local police station and let us continue into province to check Great wall, policemen in police station could not care less and be more laid back about it.

Maybe visit some other countries to have actual experiences instead spreading everywhere your feelings about other countries based on some propaganda.


> if you are tourist

It's not the tourists, it's the local dissidents that have something to fear. Or maybe try going there as a tourist, and putting up anti-party posters.


parent said clearly he is not visiting there because if these reasons, he is clearly not a local

> Laptops are increasingly just clients for someone else's compute

Are you kidding? Apple's mobile chips are now delivering perf that AMD & intel desktop never could or did.


> Apple's mobile chips are now delivering perf that AMD & intel desktop never could or did.

Most applications don't make aggressive use of the SIMD instructions that modern x86 chips offer, thus you get this impression. :-(


Users do not care why the perf they get is what they get. What good is AVX2048 if nobody uses it?

*AIR*craft are craft that need & use air. Rockets not only do not need air, they prefer a lack of air. So they are not aircraft. They are spacecraft (they are designed for and prefer space)

To clarify they use air to generate lift and hence the ability to travel in the Z-axis, not that they need air to make the propulsion system work.

Edit: if you strapped a Raptor engine to a 747 it would still be an aircraft.


You outpedanted me, nicely done, sir.


> Khelif was born female and has competed exclusively in women's events, including those overseen by the IOC.[2][4][5] She is not transgender.[6][7][8]

"confirms that she has the SRY gene" - that's the one present only on the Y chromosome

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/sports/article/2026/02/05/boxer-im...


Imane she's not a trans for god sake, she's Algerian from a Muslim family do you really think a nation 99% Muslims will let trans women be part of their national team?? jeez guys.

We need a double-jeopardy-like constitutional amendment for legislation. Legislation once-tried and failed cannot be tried again.

That would be antithetical to democracy. The people must be allowed to introduce any legislation they want, as often as they want.

Otherwise it would be trivial for a government to intentionally fail to pass anything they disagree with, and thus act as a de facto dictatorship.


The current institution where the parliament is not able to choose which laws it votes is already not democratic. Such limitation would at least avoid the blatant gaming of the system.

Not to mention how would one even define "the same legislation"?

When have "the people" been last consulted on this? Do you really think Chat Control has high public support? Given how most "democracies" work in our world today (which is to say with no consultation of the people), i think limiting their ability to do further harm might be worth it.

This wouldn't limit the ability of governments to do harm, it would limit the ability of the people to mitigate that harm by giving them only one chance to ever do so.

I don't think "democracy is flawed therefore we need less of it" is a good idea.


The MEPs represent the people. They've just been consulted. They said no.

Looking at what each of my MEPs voted they seemed to pretty accurately represent their own party lines, the right and far right voted for, left and center left voted against. I'm shocked! Shocked! Well not that shocked.


> Do you really think Chat Control has high public support?

Yes, I can absolutely see a majority in certain countries (e.g. Hungary) believing this is a fair compromise between security and privacy.


Hungary is small and an outlier in the EU.

Based on EU's public consultation it is not even true (but the number of responses is very small)

https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-sa...


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