- US Chief Administrative Officer confirms Congress-wide WhatsApp ban
- Knowledge transparency and encryption are among the many key issues
- Meta says it disagrees “within the strongest attainable phrases”
The US Home’s Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) has banned WhatsApp from all authorities gadgets utilized by congressional staffers amid rising safety issues.
A Axios report claims the warning cited a scarcity of transparency surrounding knowledge safety as a key motivation behind the ban, whereas additionally noting the absence of saved knowledge encryption, elevating potential safety dangers related to WhatsApp use.
The ban will have an effect on all variations of WhatsApp, together with the cellular app, desktop app and internet browser variations.
US Congress employees requested to take away WhatsApp
Staffers with WhatsApp on Home-managed gadgets will probably be contacted to take away the app, in response to the report.
Though tech bans are nothing new to US authorities employees, most have been associated to ongoing geopolitical tensions – DeepSeek and ByteDance are two Chinese language platforms which have been banned. Nevertheless, employees have additionally been restricted from utilizing Microsoft Copilot, and solely sure paid variations of ChatGPT could also be used.
“The Workplace of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high-risk to customers as a result of lack of transparency in the way it protects person knowledge, absence of saved knowledge encryption, and potential safety dangers concerned with its use,” the CAO defined to Axios.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone challenged the Congressional ban of WhatsApp, wroting on X, “We all know members and their staffs often use WhatsApp and we look ahead to making certain members of the Home can be a part of their Senate counterparts in doing so formally.”
“We disagree with the Home Chief Administrative Officer’s characterization within the strongest attainable phrases.”
Stone additionally famous that WhatsApp messages are end-to-end encrypted by default, which is greater than might be stated about quite a lot of different CAO-approved apps.
Though one communication platform has been banned, the CAO defined that different alternate options stay viable, together with Microsoft Groups, Wickr, Sign, iMessage and FaceTime.
The information comes shortly after the Scottish authorities additionally banned WhatsApp (as an alternative preferring sure enterprise messaging apps), however that transfer pertains to the deletion of messages by employees, as highlighted within the Covid enquiry.
