Citing privacy concerns, the Swiss military has banned the use of meta-proprietary WhatsApp Among other popular messaging services by Army personnel. According to the report of www.swissinfo, the army personnel have been asked to use the encrypted Swiss messaging app ‘Threema’. Apart from WhatsApp, the Swiss army has also banned the use of Signal And Wire, According to reports, the primary concern appears to be “the ability of authorities in Washington to access data stored by companies that fall under US jurisdiction, as described in the US Cloud Act”.
As per reports, “The Cloud Act obliges service providers under US jurisdiction to comply with search warrants, regardless of where the servers are located.” Since Threema is based in Switzerland, it will not be obliged to respond to such search warrants. Threema also works in compliance with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) of the European Union. A report in the Tamedia newspaper quoted an army spokesman as saying that data protection was one of the reasons for the change in policy.
WhatsApp is the most popular messenger application among 16- to 64-year-olds in Switzerland, according to local surveys. Similar concerns have also been raised in India over the use of foreign mobile applications by army officers as they may compromise security. After the Center banned several Chinese mobile apps over security concerns in 2020, the Indian Army has asked its personnel to remove 89 apps including several dating apps as well as Facebook, PUBG, Zoom, Instagram, Snapchat and Tik Tok etc. asked for
Indian Army has now launched a contemporary messaging application named ‘ASIGMA’ (Army Secure Indigenous Messaging Application). The application can be used on mobile phones using the internal army network. According to the Defense Ministry, “the application is being deployed on the internal network of the Army as a replacement for the Army Wide Area Network (AWAN) messaging application, which has been in service for the last 15 years.”
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