The “accountability software” app being promoted by House Speaker Mike Johnson has been used by law-enforcement agencies across the country to imprison those on parole, court documents show.
Covenant Eyes has been cited in at least two judge orders reviewed by Newsweek that detail how probation offices in Ohio and Washington have required parolees to download the app as part of the conditions of their release. The software, which is designed to promote internet accountability, monitors the access of explicit materials on a device and sends that information directly to the phone of a chosen ally.
Johnson, the Louisiana Republican who was elected to the gavel less than two weeks ago, has previously spoken out about his use of the subscription-based service, saying last year that he and his then 17-year-old son were accountability partners on the app.
Newsweek reached out to Johnson’s office and Covenant Eyes via email for comment.
While Johnson’s use of Covenant Eyes has raised privacy concerns about how the Speaker’s security, and in turn national security, could be compromised by a third-party software that is allowed full access to his devices, similar fears have also been raised about the use of the app by law enforcement.
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“Covenant Eyes is software utilized by the Butler County Probation Department to monitor the usage of electronic devices by individuals on community control,” a 2022 court document involving the parole of a sex offender in Ohio reads. The order states that certain defendants may receive a modification to their internet-access bans so long as they agree to install the Covenant Eyes software on their devices.
The use of the app was also mentioned in an appeals decision last year, whereby an appeals court in Washington modified parole conditions that allowed probation officers to make random searches of any device accessed by a defendant to monitor their compliance with the software. Ruling that the restrictions were not tailored enough, the court determined the conditions to be unconstitutionally vague and ordered they be amended so that officers accessed only the monitoring software rather than “every instance of desire internet access.”
The documented use of Covenant Eyes by law enforcement comes at odds with the app’s terms of service, which doesn’t permit its software to be used in a “premeditated legal setting.”
A support page on Covenant Eyes’ website explicitly states: “People should not use Covenant Eyes in the parole officer-and-parolee context.”
“Covenant Eyes does not permit or endorse our software for forced surveillance. It is a clear violation of our End User License Agreement to use the Covenant Eyes software for premeditated legal purposes,” the page reads. It adds that the company stresses the doubtful constitutionality of this misuse.
Technology magazine WIRED published an article in June about a man from Monroe County, Indiana. He was sent back to jail after a court used the software to monitor him and his family, allowing probation officers to act as “accountability partners” and to be fed screenshots of all internet access by the family in near real time.
The wife of the man told the publication that she was called by her husband’s probation officer less than a week after they downloaded Covenant Eyes. They told her that the software detected a visit to Pornhub, a visit that led the court to revoke her husband’s bond. But the wife, who was identified by her nickname Hannah, said her husband never used her phone and no one had accessed the website.
Instead, Hannah said that the software flags background activity, so that if a site like Pornhub was visited enough to be listed as a frequent tab on an internet browser, Covenant Eyes would flag it as a visit to the page, even if a user does not access it. The company addressed this problem, which WIRED reported to be a known issue for the software, saying on its support page that, “iOS devices can connect, access, and generate mature websites without the user’s knowledge.”
“This limitation in Covenant Eyes means it’s possible Hannah’s husband did not violate the terms of his bond,” WIRED‘s Dhruv Mehrotra wrote. “Moreover, the terms of her husband’s bond don’t prohibit Hannah from looking at pornography, and it would be impossible for probation officers to know who was using the device from Covenant Eyes reports alone. Yet, in the motion to revoke Hannah’s husband’s bond, the only evidence prosecutors presented was information from the Covenant Eyes report.”
Newsweek reached out to Monroe County’s Chief Public Defender Michael Hunt via email for comment.
In a statement to the Christian Post, Covenant Eyes said it shares many concerns being raised about spying on people and said such use would undermine the purpose of the technology.
“This creates safer relationships where shame has less of a grip and real growth can take place,” Covenant Eyes spokesperson Dan Armstrong said. “With a power imbalance in the relationship, shame tends to increase, and a person who might want to overcome a problem is instead pushed to hide it further.”
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.