- The administrative director of the United States confirms the prohibition of WhatsApp throughout the Congress
- Transparency of data and encryption are among the key concerns
- Goal says that “as possible terms”
The administrative director of the House of Representatives (CAO) of the House of Representatives of the United States.
TO Axios The report states that the warning cited a lack of transparency around data protection as a key motivation behind the prohibition, while indicating the absence of stored data encryption, which increases potential safety risks associated with the use of WhatsApp.
The ban will affect all WhatsApp versions, including mobile application, desktop application and web browser versions.
The United States Congress workers asked to eliminate WhatsApp
According to the report, employees will be contacted with WhatsApp on devices managed by the house to eliminate the application.
Although technological prohibitions are nothing new to US government workers. Most have been linked to continuous geopolitical tensions: Deepseek and Bytedance are two Chinese platforms that have been prohibited. However, the workers have also restricted the use of Microsoft Co -cilot, and only certain paygpt versions can be used.
“The cybersecurity office has considered that WhatsApp is a high risk for users due to the lack of transparency in how it protects the user data, the absence of stored data encryption and potential safety risks involved with its use,” said the CAO Axios.
The Meta spokesman Andy Stone challenged the prohibition of the WhatsApp Congress, in X in X: “We know that members and their staff regularly use WhatsApp and we hope to ensure that the members of the Chamber can join their counterparts of the Senate by officially doing so.”
“We do not agree with the characterization of the administrative director of the Chamber in the strongest possible terms.”
Stone also pointed out that WhatsApp messages are encrypted from end to end by default, which is more than can be said about a series of other applications approved by CAO.
Although a communication platform has been banned, the CAO explained that other alternatives remain viable, including Microsoft, Wickr, Signal, Imassage and Facetime teams.
The news occurs shortly after the Scottish government also prohibited WhatsApp (instead, preferred certain business messaging applications), but that movement is related to the elimination of messages by workers, as highlighted in Covid research.
