What Is Covenant Eyes? Porn-Monitoring Platform Used by Mike Johnson

After he was elected as the new House speaker, a resurfaced clip of Mike Johnson received renewed attention in which he explained he and his son monitor each other’s online activity through “accountability software.”

The evangelical Christian Republican spoke in 2022 about how the platform would record the activity on his devices and send reports to his son, Jack, and “if anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice.”

The monitoring service Johnson was referring to has also since received fresh notice. Covenant Eyes, which was established around two decades ago, markets itself as a tool for users to stop engaging with online pornography.

“Shame is the feeling that we are flawed and unworthy of love,” its website reads. “Using porn creates shame, which isolates us, and we return to porn to cope. We call this the shame cycle.”

Since Johnson’s ascension to the speaker’s chair, questions have been raised of the platform’s religious background, as well as whether it poses a potential privacy or security risk to those who use it—including the man third in line to the presidency.

“Certainly, I would hope their cybersecurity is top-notch if I were a subscriber,” a senior source within the cybersecurity industry told Newsweek. “It would be a heck of a hack. And very embarrassing no doubt.”

What Is Covenant Eyes?

Based in Owosso, Michigan, Covenant Eyes professes to be a pioneer in “screen accountability,” with over 100 million reports produced about its users for their accountability partners.

It was founded by Ron DeHaas, who studied at Ohio State University and the University of Michigan, and who lost his family in a car accident in 1992, but remarried in 1993 and now has five children and 10 grandchildren, according to the company website.

Before becoming CEO of Covenant Eyes, he had many careers an oil and gas geologist, a mail carrier and an asbestos removal trainer, according to the website of an evangelical Presbyterian institution where he is currently listed as a ruling elder.

The Community Church in Owosso website also says that he has also been running a retreat and counseling center for members of the clergy since 1995, which is financed through the church and Covenant Eyes.

The company’s website notes that its name derives from a biblical quote from the Book of Job, and provides resources to churches and ministries, but does not explicitly say it is a religious organization.

Newsweek approached Covenant Eyes via email for comment about its background on Monday, but has yet to receive a response.

How Does It Work?

According to the company’s website, the Covenant Eyes app tracks device screen activity using artificial intelligence and also provides “protection” by blocking what it deems to be explicit content.

A user nominates a trusted friend or partner who has the company’s Victory app, which allows them to see a “scrollable, filterable feed of device activity,” which is blurred “to protect user privacy and ally integrity.”

This also provides activity alerts if explicit content is accessed on a device being monitored. The app monitors the whole screen on both Android and desktop computers, while for iOS it is limited to Safari.

Is It a Risk?

Covenant Eyes touts its security, saying information sent to accountability partners has AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) 256-bit encryption. Its user agreement says accountability data is stored in its database for 30 days before being “permanently and irretrievably deleted.”

It also states: “Information which will be retained securely and indefinitely by Covenant Eyes includes names, usernames, passwords, billing information (including credit card), demographics (including IP addresses), and other account information.”

While the platform blurs screen activity for accountability partners, some may feel uncomfortable with the idea of their passwords or bank account logins being monitored. Though a database’s vulnerability is dependent on the quality of its threat protections, when it came to accountability partners, the cybersecurity source, who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the field, said: “If you trust your nominated second with your porn habits, why wouldn’t you trust them with your bank account details?”

As for the standard of encryption used by Covenant Eyes, Marijus Briedis, chief technical officer at NordVPN, told Newsweek: “If everything is configured accordingly, even if cybercriminals intercept the data, at current technological capabilities it would nearly be impossible to decrypt it and see screenshots of users’ devices.”

But he added: “Personally, I would not like any app to take screenshots of my activities every single minute, allow artificial intelligence to analyze it and look for explicit content, because as a user I could never be totally sure how [the] app itself or artificial intelligence algorithms work.”

The only potential vulnerability Breidis saw was for individual Apple users, for whom “instead of taking screenshots of your apps, they monitor all your domains (web traffic) with a VPN-like background process.

“This prevents people from using other VPN services while using Covenant Eyes and therefore might increase their cybersecurity risks,” he said. Some contest security claims made by VPN providers, as modern browsers and websites with a padlock logo next to their URL now use encrypted tunnels for access as well, meaning an internet service provider can usually only see the domains users are visiting.

Newsweek also approached Covenant Eyes with questions about its security precautions on Monday.