- US CHIEF Administrative Officer confirms Congress-Outly WhatsApp Ban
- Data transparency and encryption are among the main concerns
- Meta says it disagrees “on the strongest possible terms”
US House’s Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) has banned whatsapp from all government units used by congress staff in the midst of growing security concerns.
ONE Axios Report claims that the warning cited a lack of transparency about data protection as an important motivation behind the ban while noticing the absence of stored data encryption, increasing potential security risks associated with WhatsApp use.
The ban will affect all versions of WhatsApp, including the mobile app, desktop app and web browser versions.
US Congress Workers asked to remove WhatsApp
Employees with WhatsApp on house -lined devices will be contacted to remove the app, according to the report.
Although technological ban is nothing new to US government workers, most people have been related to ongoing geopolitical tensions – Deepseek and Bytedance are two Chinese platforms that are banned. However, workers have also been limited to using Microsoft Copilot, and only certain paid versions of chatgpt can be used.
“The Cyber Security Office has considered WhatsApp as a high risk of users due to the lack of transparency in how it protects user data, absence of stored data heck and potential security risks associated with its use,” explained Cao for Axios.
Meta speaker Andy Stone challenged the Congress Prohibition of WhatsApp, which curled on X, “We know that members and their staff regularly use WhatsApp, and we look forward to ensuring that members of parliament can join their Senate colleagues by making it officially.”
“We disagree with House Chief Administrative Officer’s characterization on the strongest possible terms.”
Stone also noted that WhatsApp messages are an end-to-end encrypted by default, which is more than it can be said about a number of other CAO-approved apps.
Although a communication platform has been banned, CAO explained that other alternatives remain viable, including Microsoft Teams, Wickr, Signal, iMessage and Facetime.
The news comes shortly after the Scottish government also banned WhatsApp (instead of preferring certain company announcement apps), but this movement relates to deletion of messages from workers as highlighted in the Covid survey.
