New House Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-LA) use of pornography-combating software has raised fears that his privacy and cybersecurity could be at risk.
Questions about the possibility of Johnson being compromised arose this week after a social media user posted clips from a 2022 event in which Johnson spoke in detail about his use of Covenant Eyes, software that he uses in partnership with his 17-year-old son to avoid viewing pornography. The software records users' web activities and tracks whether or not they are viewing pornography.
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Some on social media suggested that the use of the third-party software constitutes a cybersecurity threat that could allow malicious parties to spy on Johnson.
"[Covenant Eyes] keeps track of all the web browsing that happens on the device," Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the Washington Examiner.
The software takes random screenshots of a user's web browsing and scans them for adult material with artificial intelligence. These screenshots are blurred before they are scanned, Galperin said, but it is possible that hackers could unblur the images.
Covenant Eyes also records all of the URLs that the user has visited, which can "still give away a lot of very revealing information about who you are and what you are doing and what you're concerned about," Galperin said.
The software could also be used to determine what unsecured websites are visited. If Johnson were to join a Wi-Fi network set up by a hacker and visited an unsecured website, the hacker could install malware onto his device, Galperin said. A similar method was recently used in Egypt to install spyware onto iPhones, according to the Citizen Lab, an academic organization that studies how the internet affects human rights.
COMPROMISE ALERT: Speaker Mike Johnson uses software Covenant Eyes (learned about at a Promise Keepers retreat) that scans all his electronic devices & gives a weekly report an "accountability partner" his 17 yr old son (so basically don't watch porn or your son/dad will know????) pic.twitter.com/SSWpB9IIDB
— Receipt Maven (@receiptmaven) October 31, 2023
"Porn harms people," Covenant Eyes spokesman Dan Armstrong told the Washington Examiner in response to a request for comment. "We help anyone who commits to staying clear of it."
When asked about how the company stores user data, Armstrong pointed to the company's privacy policy, which says it transmits all information from Covenant Eyes users to its servers with professional-grade 256-bit encryption.
“The Speaker only discusses classified information in an appropriate venue consistent with House security procedures,” Raj Shah, Johnson's deputy chief of staff for communications, told the Washington Examiner.
Johnson has been using the software for several years. He described Covenant Eyes as "a great way for all of us parents to help guard the hearts of our teenagers" on his Facebook page in 2020.
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Covenant Eyes came under scrutiny in 2022 when Wired published a report alleging that the software was used to spy on church staff to ensure they did not view adult material. The report caused Google to temporarily remove the app from the Google Play Store, although it has since returned.
"Our usage policy explicitly prohibits using Covenant Eyes to monitor someone without their authorization," Armstrong told the Christian Post. "We do not allow spouses to use Covenant Eyes to spy on one another or employers to secretly monitor employees."