Border Patrol’s use of Amazon’s Wickr messaging app draws scrutiny – By Ben Goggin and Louise Matsakis (NBC News) / April 3, 2022
A letter from the National Archives and Records Administration hints at growing unease with the use of some encrypted messaging apps by government officials.
In October, Laurence Brewer, the chief records officer of the National Archives and Records Administration, told officials at U.S. Customs and Border Protection he was worried about how the agency was using an app called Wickr. The Amazon-owned encrypted messaging platform is known for its ability to automatically delete messages.
Brewer, who is responsible for ensuring that government officials handle records correctly, wrote in a letter that he was “concerned about agencywide deployment of a messaging application that has this functionality without appropriate policies and procedures governing its use.”
Brewer addressed his letter to Eric Hysen, the chief information officer of the Department of Homeland Security. It was uploaded to the National Archives website, and its concerns had not been previously reported. The document offers a rare insight into Customs and Border Patrol’s use of Wickr, and highlights the broader worries that some officials and watchdogs have about the growing use of messaging apps at all levels of the U.S. government.
Wickr was bought by Amazon’s cloud-computing division last June and has contracts with a number of government agencies. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), which has been criticized by human rights activists and immigration lawyers over what they say are its secretive practices, has spent more than $1.6 million on Wickr since 2020, according to public procurement records.
