House staffers can’t have WhatsApp on their devices

The House of Representatives has banned unit members from utilizing WhatsApp connected authorities devices, according to a study from Axios. In an email viewed by the outlet, the House’s main administrative serviceman (CAO) tells staffers that the Office of Cybersecurity “has deemed WhatsApp a high-risk” due to the fact that of a “lack of transparency successful however it protects idiosyncratic data, lack of stored information encryption, and imaginable information risks.”

The email says that legislature unit members can’t download oregon usage the mobile, desktop, oregon web browser mentation of WhatsApp connected immoderate authorities device. “If you person a WhatsApp exertion connected your House-managed device, you volition beryllium contacted to region it,” the email reads.

Meta communications manager Andy Stone pushed backmost against the determination in a station connected X, saying the institution disagrees with the CAO’s characterization of WhatsApp “in the strongest imaginable terms.” Stone adds that messages connected WhatsApp are end-to-end encrypted by default, meaning 3rd parties — not adjacent Meta, which owns the level — tin work them. “This is simply a higher level of information than astir of the apps connected the CAO’s approved database that bash not connection that protection,” Stone writes.

As noted by The Guardian, the CAO’s connection to unit recommended that they usage different apps for communications instead, specified arsenic Microsoft Teams, Signal, iMessage, FaceTime, oregon the Amazon-owned messaging work Wickr. The CAO didn’t instantly respond to The Verge’s petition for much information.

WhatsApp isn’t the lone app not allowed by the House. It has besides banned TikTok connected authorities devices and enactment restrictions connected the use of the escaped mentation of ChatGPT.