14 DAY TRIAL // The Swiss army has decided to ban the use of the world’s most famous messaging applications, telling the staff to switch to a locally-developed alternative due to data protection concerns.
More specifically, the new rules came into effect in December, with a report from RT revealing that everybody in the army must stop using WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram.
The reason is as simple as it could be: the country officials are afraid that some conversations could be accessed without authorization by other parties.
According to the said source, soldiers are now being told to install Threema, a mobile messenger that was developed by a Swiss company.
Domestic solution
The army explains that, unlike foreign applications, Threema is subject to Swiss regulations, and therefore no other authority can request access to conversations.
In the case of WhatsApp and Signal, for example, both applications need to comply with the US CLOUD Act, which means the American government can obtain access to certain data even if it’s not stored on servers within the borders of the United States.
The Swiss government is thus trying to make sure nobody reads what the army is talking about on the messaging platform, and by enforcing the use of a domestic solution, any potential data sharing is closely controlled.
At this point, WhatsApp is the world’s number one mobile messaging app. The Facebook-owned platform, however, has been involved in several controversial disputes, and last year, a privacy policy update pushed millions of users to alternative solutions, including Signal and Telegram.
On the other hand, Telegram tried to entice users with enhanced privacy controls. Features like secret chats allow users to automatically remove the messages they send in a conversation after a specific amount of time, with Telegram guaranteeing the chats aren’t stored anyway to be accessed at a later time.