- US Chief Administrative Officer confirms Congress-wide WhatsApp ban
- Data transparency and encryption are among the key concerns
- Meta says it disagrees “in the strongest possible terms”
The US House’s Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) has banned WhatsApp from all government devices used by congressional staffers amid growing security concerns.
A Axios report claims the warning cited a lack of transparency surrounding data protection as a key motivation behind the ban, while also noting the absence of stored data encryption, raising 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
Staffers with WhatsApp on House-managed devices will be contacted to remove the app, according to the report.
Although tech bans are nothing new to US government workers, most have been related to ongoing geopolitical tensions – DeepSeek and ByteDance are two Chinese platforms that have been banned. However, workers have also been restricted from using Microsoft Copilot, and only certain paid versions of ChatGPT may be used.
“The Office of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high-risk to users due to the lack of transparency in how it protects user data, absence of stored data encryption, and potential security risks involved with its use,” the CAO explained to Axios.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone challenged the Congressional ban of WhatsApp, wroting on X, “We know members and their staffs regularly use WhatsApp and we look forward to ensuring members of the House can join their Senate counterparts in doing so officially.”
“We disagree with the House Chief Administrative Officer’s characterization in the strongest possible terms.”
Stone also noted that WhatsApp messages are end-to-end encrypted by default, which is more than can be said about a number of other CAO-approved apps.
Although one communication platform has been banned, the 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 preferring certain enterprise messaging apps), but that move relates to the deletion of messages by workers, as highlighted in the Covid enquiry.
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