22 ms·

Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square

685 points by imraj96 6y ago

afrojack123 6y ago
Not a surprise. The entire engineering team is in China. This is a disaster waiting to happen. China knows how to work the American system better than Americans.
peteretep 6y ago
Jesus, if true this has gotta be a mortal wound to Zoom
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  I highly doubt the behavior of a single rogue employee will present any significant difficulty to Zoom, to say nothing of being a mortal wound.
  - derision 6y ago
    An executive is not quite a "single rogue employee"
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
      If it's a single executive, and the executive is a rogue, then it is exactly a single rogue employee. Also, although it's beside the point from the perspective of whether what I said is true, I read the complaint. It's not clear if this guy was an executive executive, or an account "executive" (i.e. a low-level administrator). I'm inclined to believe the latter based on the actions he is alleged to have taken.
      - vatueil 6y ago
        According to the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/18/zoom-helped-china-surveillance/?itid=hp-more-top-stories https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/18/zoom-he... > Prosecutors said the China-based executive, Xinjiang Jin, worked as Zoom’s primary liaison with Chinese law enforcement and intelligence services, sharing user information and terminating video calls at the Chinese government’s request.
        asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
        This role does not sound like an "executive" in the sense I think of it. It sounds like an individual contributor role, and not one that sets company policy either.
        vatueil 6y ago
        Whatever definition of "executive" floats your boat, I guess.
        em500 6y ago
        People answering the phone in call centers often have the official job title "Customer Service Executive" in companies (just search google for jobs). Just saying.
        true_religion 6y ago
        Primary liaison with police and the CCP does not sound like a low wage job especially for a Chinese firm.
  - jariel 6y ago
    It's highly doubtful that this are just the actions of a single rogue actor. The CCP requires that all eventually companies have CCP members embedded in the company as an instrument of control. Irrespective of the Zoom executives disposition/views - they're going to be under immense pressure for a host of related things. "The party’s efforts to place itself inside private companies have been, according to its own figures, very successful. One recent survey by the Central Organisation Department, the party’s personnel body, found that 68% of China’s private companies had party bodies by 2016, and 70% of foreign enterprises. Although these figures sound high, they don’t match the targets the party has set for itself. In Xi’s old stamping ground of Zhejiang, for example, officials set a target in August 2018 to have cells inside 95% of private businesses. There was a need, the survey said, to retain the revolutionary spirit inside the companies as their ownership was handed on to the next generation." [1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/china-business-xi-jinping-communist-party-state-private-enterprise-huawei https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/china-business...
  - pstrateman 6y ago
    I think it's unlikely to be an isolated incident, 20 years from now we'll be reading stories about the CCP listening to every zoom call in the world for years. (Just the same as the CIA did with Crypto AG[1]) They were routing all calls such that the CCP could listen to them. [2] They lied about calls being End-To-End encrypted. [3] Zoom was founded by a Chinese national and all of their development is done in China. [4] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG [2] https://citizenlab.ca/2020/04/move-fast-roll-your-own-crypto-a-quick-look-at-the-confidentiality-of-zoom-meetings/ https://citizenlab.ca/2020/04/move-fast-roll-your-own-crypto... [3] https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-zoom-plans-to-better-secure-meetings-with-end-to-end-encryption/ https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-zoom-plans-to-bette... [4] https://technode.com/2020/04/13/is-zoom-crazy-to-count-on-chinese-rd/ https://technode.com/2020/04/13/is-zoom-crazy-to-count-on-ch...
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
      I'm willing to bet that the events described here will not be a mortal blow to Zoom, whether the event is isolated or only semi-isolated. To make it concrete, their market cap will still be above $10B on Jan 1 2022. I'll put up to $20 on it, to a non-religious charity of your choice. If you want to take the other side of that bet let me know.
      - pstrateman 6y ago
        You're completely avoiding the question of whether this is an isolated incident or not. I have no doubt people are stupid enough to continue using 'Video Conferencing by the CCP'(tm pending). That just means they're dumb.
        asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
        The question I'm most interested in is the one where the individual at the top of the thread suggested this would be a mortal blow to Zoom. It won't. Nit picking about exactly how isolated this is does not change how few of Zoom's customers are or will ever be affected.
  - jtdev 6y ago
    This isn’t some “rogue employee” incident; This is like the 5th time Zoom has been caught doing the CCPs bidding... on American soil.
  - peteretep 6y ago
    Bullshit, the headline is the CCP can and do make calls about the content of your legal Zoom calls.
elliekelly 6y ago
I’ve never even heard of either of the things they’ve charged. I wonder why they went with conspiracy to commit interstate harassment and conspiracy to transfer means of identification rather than with CFAA or wiretapping charges.
- xxpor 6y ago
  Wiretapping probably requires zoom to be a public utility. CFAA I don't know enough about.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
vyrotek 6y ago
What other platforms compete with Zoom with comparable API integrations? We need features including: OAuth, Meeting scheduling, meeting link generation (without requiring user accounts), managing recordings, meeting status webhooks, etc. https://marketplace.zoom.us/docs/api-reference/zoom-api https://marketplace.zoom.us/docs/api-reference/zoom-api
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- brian_herman 6y ago
  https://jitsi.org/ https://jitsi.org/ Opensource version of zoom https://meet.google.com/ https://meet.google.com/ Google Meet(recording is with the enterprise version) integrates with google calendar https://www.gotomeeting.com/ https://www.gotomeeting.com/ https://www.skype.com/en/free-conference-call/ https://www.skype.com/en/free-conference-call/ https://www.bluejeans.com/ https://www.bluejeans.com/
  - ignoramous 6y ago
    Nit: Jitsi's open source alternative* to Zoom Amazon Chime: https://chime.aws https://chime.aws Kosmi: https://kosmi.io https://kosmi.io Jami: https://jami.net https://jami.net Screen: https://screen.so https://screen.so Signal: https://signal.org https://signal.org Whereby: https://whereby.com https://whereby.com Airtime: https://airtime.com https://airtime.com Microsoft Teams: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-teams/group-chat-software https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-team... Rally: https://rally.video https://rally.video
  - jeroenhd 6y ago
    To add to this: https://kopano.com/products/meet/ https://kopano.com/products/meet/ A subscription or self-hosted, e2e encrypted video call tool
- Hnrobert42 6y ago
  I am not sure about some of the requirements, but we’ve had a lot of success with Uberconference. Google Meet is also decent if your are I the Google Workspace ecosystem.
whodidntante 6y ago
Wow. I thought only the CEO's of FB and Twitter were allowed to do things like this.
- derision 6y ago
  They are, that's why he's getting charged and they're not
sergiotapia 6y ago
I will speak with other leaders at my company to move us away from Zoom for conferencing. If you're a leader how can you read this and not only tolerate it, but pay for it? This is it.
- pishpash 6y ago
  What is "it"? This is an allegation. Under an administration with a highly motivated agenda. Could be true, or could be completely fabricated/exaggerated like all the national security allegations this administration has thrown about.
  - smt88 6y ago
    The DOJ does not share the agenda of the administration. Do you think the US should not have an administration that is highly motivated to root out CCP operatives?
  - peteretep 6y ago
    > This is an allegation I feel dismissing a case that the DOJ is briefing for and that the FBI has added the perpetrator to Most Wanted for as “an allegation” is true in a strict legal sense, but the burden of proof for a commercial decision has been unequivocally reached here
- jcytong 6y ago
  I moved away early this year due to its poor track record on security: 2019 - Report of the Zoom app's malware like behaviour-using a hidden web server to enable Zoom much more capabilities than simply launching a zoom call like re-installing the Zoom software[1] 2020-Tricking its users during installation pretending the OS is requiring password[2] In general, playing fast and loose with its users' data-sending a conference en(de)cryption key between two users in Canada/US to an ip address in Beijing.[3] [1]https://medium.com/bugbountywriteup/zoom-zero-day-4-million-webcams-maybe-an-rce-just-get-them-to-visit-your-website-ac75c83f4ef5 https://medium.com/bugbountywriteup/zoom-zero-day-4-million-... [2]https://twitter.com/c1truz_/status/1244737672930824193 https://twitter.com/c1truz_/status/1244737672930824193 [3]https://citizenlab.ca/2020/04/move-fast-roll-your-own-crypto-a-quick-look-at-the-confidentiality-of-zoom-meetings/ https://citizenlab.ca/2020/04/move-fast-roll-your-own-crypto...
jariel 6y ago
The real issue is how such a fundamentally important thing - video communications - isn't rock solid and a commodity by now such that any of FAANG, Verizon/AT&T and a host of others don't provide it as easy as anything else. Imagine if you thought CCP were reading your emails? Would your company/school/government use that service? I don't think so. Having supply chain problems for ASICS is one thing. But 'video conferencing' ... my gosh we should be embarrassed as an industry that this wasn't nailed down a decade ago.
- spoonjim 6y ago
  First of all, video conferencing is one of the most challenging software products to deliver, at the latencies that people expect and the price they're typically willing to pay. It's not a CRUD app. Second, F, A, A, G, and M do provide rock solid video conferencing. Apple being the most rock solid of all of them, but limited to Apple devices.
  - jariel 6y ago
    If there were great alternatives by the big players, then Zoom would not 'be a thing' and would not have taken off during the pandemic. Why would teachers etc. be turning to Zoom if Hangouts etc. was at their fingertips and worked well. We moved to Zoom before the pandemic because Skype (Microsoft) was unreliable to the point of useless whereas Zoom was solid. People use Zoom because it's better, and there's really no excuse for Hangouts, Skype etc. to be of inferior quality. Those companies have the best Engineers and all the money in the world. It's a lack of product focus.
    - verst 6y ago
      Most school districts either use GSuite or Office 365 from what I can tell. As part of those you'd have Google Meet or Microsoft Teams. Why do you use (presumably the consumer version of) Skype when the Microsoft product that superseded Skype for Business is Teams?
  - fma 6y ago
    > video conferencing is one of the most challenging software products to deliver The smartest software engineers are in FAAGM, or so I've been told? > Second, F, A, A, G, and M do provide rock solid video conferencing. If they have solid products, then how did a no name company beat them? FWIW I'll have to disagree with you on 'solid products'. My wife runs a learning center that went virtual. I evaluated very product that came up on Google search. It was a tight choice between Zoom and Skype, but chose Skype because I felt a big name would have better service. Microsoft kept locking our accounts and doing other shenanigans. Bit the bullet, paid for Zoom and no problems.
gruez 6y ago
Is this likely to go anywhere? The press release says an arrest warrant was issued, but the person charged isn't in custody. I doubt china is going to send him over, nor is he going to be on a plane headed to the US anytime soon, so nothing's going to happen to him unless he decides to enter the US?
- cwwc 6y ago
  True - unless he visits a country (like Huawei’s CFO did in Canada) where he is snagged at request of the US
  - hef19898 6y ago
    Which itself is kind of troubling. ut than again, international arrest warrants have been abused for decades.
- viraptor 6y ago
  I guess it ensures he isn't on that plane in the future. Or on a plane to cooperating countries. (Which for an executive may be a serious problem)
- ipnon 6y ago
  It's newsworthy that PRC is recruiting Chinese citizens in executive positions of American companies to pursue the intelligence interests of the CCP by disenfranchising Americans of their constitutional rights and in willful violation of American law.
  - Waterluvian 6y ago
    Yeah. Some of these people need to be made an example of. China's been using their consumer market allure as an aegis behind which to advance their interests and project censorship abroad.
    - abacadaba 6y ago
      You think anyone of similar position/circumstances is gonna tell the CCP to shove it because of this example? They have no intention of playing by our rules. Sucks, but we need to accept it for what it is and act accordingly.
rosywoozlechan 6y ago
There's even an FBI wanted poster for this executive: https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/counterintelligence/xinjiang-jin/@@download.pdf https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/counterintelligence/xinjiang-jin/...
- sathoro 6y ago
  Not a good look
- joachim4 6y ago
  What would a qualify someone to be a Bond villain? I don't have enough experience or knowledge about what qualify your for being a Bond villain, but this guy might be quite high is you account disruption / scale / chaos / get money-power out of it....
- astura 6y ago
  Where did they get these pictures? They look like mugshots but he's not in custody.
  - mikeyouse 6y ago
    Potentially passport photos? He was in the US after all.
  - Darkphibre 6y ago
    Passport, maybe? You have to present a photo that's extremely similar for facial detection algorithms to train identifying you in the future.
  - darkhorn 6y ago
    Turkey takes photos of everyone who enters or leaves the country. May be it is practiced in USA too.
    - Symbiote 6y ago
      Yes, the USA does this too. So does the EU, although the USA goes further as even transit passengers are fingerprinted.
ipnon 6y ago
As alleged, the defendant was an active agent of the CCP and PRC intelligence[a] working inside an American company to deny the rights of freedom of speech and religion to residents of America.[b] The PRC is willfully breaking American law to disenfranchise Americans of their constitutional rights. [a] “The allegations in the complaint lay bare the Faustian bargain that the PRC government demands of U.S. technology companies doing business within the PRC’s borders, and the insider threat that those companies face from their own employees in the PRC,” said Acting United States Attorney Seth D. DuCharme. “As alleged, Jin worked closely with the PRC government and members of PRC intelligence services to help the PRC government silence the political and religious speech of users of the platform of a U.S. technology company. Jin willingly committed crimes, and sought to mislead others at the company, to help PRC authorities censor and punish U.S. users’ core political speech merely for exercising their rights to free expression." [b] "As this complaint alleges, that freedom was directly infringed upon by the pernicious activities of Communist China’s Intelligence Services, in support of a regime that neither reflects nor upholds our democratic values,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray. “Americans should understand that the Chinese Government will not hesitate to exploit companies operating in China to further their international agenda, including repression of free speech.”
- pstrateman 6y ago
  Zoom is materially a Chinese company. CEO is Chinese, staff are mostly Chinese.
  - cwwc 6y ago
    Interestingly, the number of CCP members employed is way over the baseline quota demanded by Beijing (where usually companies like Jet.com and alibaba will struggle to retain and meet this quota, Zoom has never seemed to has this issue...)
    - largbae 6y ago
      How would one validate the number of CCP members employed at one of these companies, or the quota?
dehrmann 6y ago
> Jin’s co-conspirators created fake email accounts and Company-1 accounts in the names of others, including PRC political dissidents, to fabricate evidence that the hosts of and participants in the meetings to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre were supporting terrorist organizations, inciting violence or distributing child pornography. The fabricated evidence falsely asserted that the meetings included discussions of child abuse or exploitation, terrorism, racism or incitements to violence, and sometimes included screenshots of the purported participants’ user profiles featuring, for example, a masked person holding a flag resembling that of the Islamic State terrorist group. Ah. So it's not quite disrupting meetings, it's framing people as pedophiles an terrorists.
- generalizations 6y ago
  I think it's been mentioned on hn before, but it sure seems like we should look twice at anyone who gets charged with child pornography - could be someone getting framed.
  - sneak 6y ago
    Forget the charge - we should strive to presume the innocence of anyone charged with anything. Bringing charges is not evidence.
    - Fluid_Mechanics 6y ago
      Humans are quite dimwitted unfortunately.
      - billsnow 6y ago
        yeah that's not the lesson from this
    - rayiner 6y ago
      Charges are based on evidence shown to a grand jury. The law presumes people are innocent until proven guilty, and we should give people the benefit of the doubt, but it’s totally reasonable to talk about the charges in a news context. Charges being filed means some meaningful threshold has been passed.
detaro 6y ago
also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25471274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25471274
spoonjim 6y ago
All of this CCP poison inside Zoom must be a huge gift to Microsoft Teams.
- ipnon 6y ago
  The popularity of apps like Zoom and TikTok suggests that American national security is an afterthought for consumers.
  - spoonjim 6y ago
    National security cannot be delegated to individual action. It's basically the first and foremost purpose of government.
- goatinaboat 6y ago
  All of this CCP poison inside Zoom must be a huge gift to Microsoft Teams. Teams has its own bizarre self-inflicted limitations. For example a limit of only 9 people on screen at once whose positions constantly and randomly change. Having used all of them if you have decent sized screens e.g. 28" or better and are presenting to a group or 20-30 people and want to be able to gauge feedback from faces as you would do in a real meeting or classroom, Zoom just offers a much, much better experience for the presenter, who is probably also the meeting organiser. And it's not just aesthetic, if you are on all day Zoom is actually much less fatiguing than Teams. Where Teams wins is if you are using it for corporate chat anyway (because you have O365 anyway) and just want to make the occasional 1:1 call.
  - xaqfox 6y ago
    I don't know how new it is, but Teams has a lecture-hall view option that displays more than 9 people.
  - nonfamous 6y ago
    Teams now supports 49 people onscreen.
    - 6y ago
cwwc 6y ago
The most BA conspiracy would be if the CCP thought about releasing a virus and said to themselves “hey, what will everyone need in a pandemic? Videoconference!” They funded Zoom, then released the virus and boom - they suddenly have access to every company and academic discussion out there. If I plotting things, that’s how I’d do it at least. But alas reality isn’t a Bond film.
- wil421 6y ago
  Why would you fund a “tech” company when you could corner the market on PPE? According to my local news a company told the federal government the US lack N95 manufacturing.
  - cwwc 6y ago
    Good point
  - tenpies 6y ago
    Why not both? And in some cases you don't even need to corner the market - just abuse your adversaries' psychology. For example, Canada, was sending tons of PPE to China in February. [1] This turned out to be an awful decision and Canada was caught in a terrible shortage weeks later. China gladly sold PPE to Canada though. [1] https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2020/02/canada-supports-chinas-ongoing-response-to-novel-coronavirus-outbreak.html https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2020/02/canada-...
    - Aeolun 6y ago
      > Why not both? It’s a win-win-win situation. But yeah, the fact that the entire world is dependent on China for cheap manufacturing is probably a bad thing.
  - viraptor 6y ago
    PPE is just PPE. Zoom is tech which will continue to be more established even when we don't strictly require it. It gives the possibility of silently monitoring corporate/government calls for years. And some stock market gains as a cherry on top.
neartheplain 6y ago
The executive fabricated illegal user activity on Zoom, to include distribution of child pornography, falsely attributed to opponents of China’s Communist Party: >Jin’s co-conspirators created fake email accounts and Company-1 accounts in the names of others, including PRC political dissidents, to fabricate evidence that the hosts of and participants in the meetings to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre were supporting terrorist organizations, inciting violence or distributing child pornography. Imagine if it had been you. Imagine if you logged into a Tiananmen Square Massacre commemoration from your couch in Sunnyvale, and days or weeks later, American police knocked down your door and arrested you in front of your family for distribution of child pornography. Imagine going to trial against a prosecutor armed with “authentic” Zoom logs of your criminal activity. The potential for this type of attack does not only exist within Zoom.
- cwwc 6y ago
  Apropos. And welcome to China for the past few years.
marketgod 6y ago
LOL ignore all this crap. The government courts are using Zoom. Just buy their stock.
hiidrew 6y ago
Seems like an early Christmas gift to Microsoft Teams
- derwiki 6y ago
  I want to think that.. but at the time I’m posting this, ZM is up after hours.
jtdev 6y ago
I’m shocked that Zoom is still operating in the United States... it’s obvious after the countless incidents that Zoom is a tool of the CCP. Americans should boycott Zoom.
fossuser 6y ago
So much for “Zoom is committed to supporting the open exchange of ideas and conversations” - it was clear this was nonsense when they said it, but the stuff alleged here is way worse than even I would have predicted. These people are awful - Zoom should be avoided (along probably with any company operating primarily out of China, under influence of the CCP). https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html
- tehjoker 6y ago
  If you think companies operating under the influence of the USG are better you've got another thing coming. EDIT: I like that whenever I post something negative about the USG in an anti-China thread, I go to -4 then bounce up later. It could be people are really that nationalistic. Who knows.
  - chance_state 6y ago
    > America Bad And in less than an hour. Record time!
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    I think we can consistently predict they’ll go after what’s financially best for them, but they won’t collaborate with nation states in quite this way.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    It’s not nationalism - it’s rejecting knee-jerk false equivalence. It’s downvoted because it usually comes up immediately and just isn’t true. I say this as someone who would have made similar knee-jerk comments when I was 18 so I have some understanding of where they come from. Believing the behavior of all governments is equivalently bad makes you a mark for bad governments (which want you to believe that). The USG isn’t without fault, but it’s a far cry from the actions of the CCP. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24888552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24888552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24887606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24887606
  - 6y ago
runawaybottle 6y ago
What are the chances these orders to co-opt people in China to do this is coming straight from the top of the CCP? There is a school of thought that provides a lot of analysis and evidence that the acceleration of the Holocaust was a bottom-up phenomenon (not a master plan made by Hitler years before). Hitler might have laid out details to exile the Jews, but there was no evidence he gave a direct order to begin full scale extermination via extermination camps (different from forced labor camps). The evidence suggests the underlying Nazi ideologies gave ample flexibility to middle management Nazis to begin competing and escalating into a full blown Holocaust. With that said, I wonder if the top CCP leaders gave the order ‘get a Zoom executive to troll the Tiananmen Square meetings’, or ‘Specifically do X and X to the Uighurs’. It could very well be possible that there is no directive, just a general ideology that is now being executed in creative ways, completely independent of leadership (but ultimately co-signed by leadership as it fits the ideology). Once the Nazi sub leadership began their mass shootings of the Jews, they couldn’t stop. They found out it was too much to do at scale, so they escalated to gas chambers. CCP sub leadership may not be able to stop what they have started.
- selimthegrim 6y ago
  Really? Given Goebbels' Freudian slip here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sportpalast_speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sportpalast_speech) and the Wannsee conference?
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    So, the acceleration of the Holocaust occurred earlier around 1940-1941 when they were in Poland. By 1943, they had already done close to half the total killings (the number 6 million we agree on). Check out the numbers in 1942 (this is just from one death camp, in 1941 they were doing the mass shootings pre-gas chambers): https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/5/1/eaau7292/F3.large.jpg https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/5/1/eaau729... By the time they were done, I guess they said ‘Yeah, this is the plan’. Goebbels also has a history of instigating and letting things ‘play out’, Kristallnacht being the prime example. Even so, this wouldn’t be the guy up top that would deliver a clear plan on extermination. Similarly, they found no proof that even Hitler delivered clear plans on extermination (his end goal was exile initially). You pretty much have to find the shitbags in the sub leadership in Poland that took it to a new level (Himmler). So, yeah, I wouldn’t call it a Freudian slip if it happened in 1943, it was just shitbags latching on to a plan that was well into motion by then (not absolving anyone here on any level, Hitler/Goebbels set fertile ground for things to escalate organically). If anything, the death camps were planned to be closed (and were closed by 1944 by Nazis themselves) and erased from history to cover up. Anyway, back to the point. I think China said ‘we need to do something about Muslim extremist, and anti nationalists’, and how that gets carried out is up to a lot of imagination, whether it be re-education camps, Hong Kong crackdown, or Zoom bombing. This is a country that will also work very hard to cover up all this bullshit when it’s all said and done. I’m aware that this sounds like over-fitting, but I can’t help it, the pattern just fits in my eyes.
random5634 6y ago
Is there anyone close to competitive in terms of user mindshare? We are on zoom. I'd love to get off. Google Meet? - others on gsuite domains blocked from joining, rules around having accounts etc? We need background replacement or blur. I tried before and couldn't really make it a success (and so confusing with hangouts, chat, talk, duo, allo etc). Background replacement not as good as zoom. Uberconference - audio latency is worse - we've dialed down our use for conference calls. Jitasa - I don't see background replace on this?
- jrochkind1 6y ago
  The issue isn't "user mindshare", it's technical quality, as you say. Nothing I have tried either matches zoom.
- kettro 6y ago
  (I'm a Google SWE, though in firmware) I've had good experiences with Meet, both internally and externally. At least internally/gsuite, the background blur is really quite good. The public/free version doesn't itself have either background replacements, though.
- octoberfranklin 6y ago
  > We need background replacement or blur. Why?
  - ezrast 6y ago
    It's a privacy and professionalism issue. Sales folks and others who need to maintain a businesslike facade are uncomfortable meeting potential customers in their makeshift home offices, disarrayed by homeschooled kids and other pandemic chaos.
    - octoberfranklin 6y ago
      Huh... is it really so hard to set up your desk so your back is to a blank wall? Or put one of those accordion-folding partitions (which look like cubicle walls) behind you? I dunno, I'm sure background blur is a cute trick, but given how easy the low-tech alternatives are I'm surprised it would rise to the level of "must-have" feature.
_cs2017_ 6y ago
How is it that Zoom became so popular despite numerous large tech firms offering competing products?
- rtx 6y ago
  It all new, Zoom actually is one of the pioneers.
  - dash2 6y ago
    What was new?
    - samcheng 6y ago
      The aggressive sales team focused on a video calling product; all of the other major solutions are afterthoughts owned by companies focusing on other products. Oh, and that "Brady Bunch" view that Google quickly copied, after refusing to update Google Meet for years before that.
    - rtx 6y ago
      Time to to WOW. Using zoom for the first time, launching an instance on Digital Ocean. It's common now but at the time it was unheard of.
  - nradov 6y ago
    WebEx (acquired by Cisco) had all of the core functionality before Zoom.
    - ulfw 6y ago
      The zoom founder even worked at WebEx. So yes.
    - throwaway201103 6y ago
      Yes but getting 10 people together on a WebEx call involved 15 minutes of tech support at the start of each meeting. It just wasn't as smooth.
duxup 6y ago
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” ― Martin Luther King Jr. This seems more hauntingly true than ever, and with the internet and people's social lives and communication tied to products from 'everywhere', seemingly injustice anywhere seems to be inching closer and closer to home. It's not 'well some other place' anymore...
- dash2 6y ago
  This sounds noble but it leads to the idea that one country can impose its vision of justice globally. The CCP could then argue that is just what it itself is doing. A better argument is that this guy allegedly committed crimes that took place on US soil.
  - duxup 6y ago
    If someone uses it or doesn't use it to justify anything doesn't change that it is true.
jrochkind1 6y ago
"unlawful conspiracy to transfer a means of identification." I don't think I've ever heard that phrase before. It's a federal crime? What does it mean?
- kemitchell 6y ago
  Not even the United States federal government has a list of all the crimes under federal law. There's a funny Twitter account that was tweeting a new federal crime every day for a while. In case you'd like to know how to research your question when you see a government announcement on a criminal case: 1. Scroll the bottom of the page. If it's the website of the government agency that brought the case, they'll almost always link to a "complaint", which is almost always a PDF. 2. In a criminal complaint, each crime charged is usually called a "count". Search the PDF to find the "count" that matches up with the crime you're interested in. In this case, the means-of-identification charge is count two. 3. Look for a "citation", a reference to a section or other numbered subdivision of a law within that count, in the part that spells out which law they're being charged under. Here: "Title 18, United States Code, Section 1028(a)(7) and 1028(f)". 4. Go to the official website of the government that law comes from. In this case, it's the US federal government. Their info portal is https://www.govinfo.gov/ https://www.govinfo.gov/. 5. Search for the citation and find the law and its text. The portal will usually provide some notes after the text of the law about which bills introduced or changed that particular subdivision, and when. Sometimes they'll even provide commentary or citations to cases decided under it. I'll leave that part to you if you're interested. 6. For extra background, try searching for the name of the bill that introduced the law on Wikipedia, or even on Google. You can often get a sense of what was going on at the time, who proposed the bill and how the vote for it panned out, and so on.
- tyingq 6y ago
  It's from this US Federal law around identity theft: 18 U.S. Code § 1028 - Fraud and related activity in connection with identification documents, authentication features, and information https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1028 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1028 See subsections 7 and 8.
- tonyztan 6y ago
samcheng 6y ago
We already knew Zoom was ethically-challenged from the auto-install shenanigans, though, right? https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/07/09/zoom-vulnerabilities/ https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/07/09/zoom-vulnerabilities/
cherylskylar 6y ago
Unclear how Zoom evades the public eye while other companies like Huawei get so much flack for efforts that are in favor of/support the CCP.
- mrtesthah 6y ago
  One of these companies builds critical infrastructure. The other sells a software service with many equivalent replacements with which it can be swapped out at a moment's notice.
- rtx 6y ago
  It takes time for the narrative to build.
- vineyardmike 6y ago
  Zoom is partial an American company, and WAY smaller.
camdenlock 6y ago
Are these sorts of investigations and revelations going to disappear now that the Democratic Party has been elected to power?
- octoberfranklin 6y ago
  It's not a left vs right thing. If Mitch McConnell were Attorney General he would drop the case too. Basically most of our politicians (on both sides) have sold out to China and a very few haven't.
  - camdenlock 6y ago
    Well that sounds terrifying. Got any sources?
    - redis_mlc 6y ago
      If you want to learn how the CCP works, watch the NTD/Epoch Times channels on Youtube. The CCP has had an undeclared war against the US since the 1950's, starting with Mao. A short summary of CCP "elite capture" is: - Mitch McConnell's wife is high-level CCP royalty - the CCP spy Fang Fang "dated" several US politicians - Hunter Biden is thoroughly compromised by the CCP - it appears the CCP owns Dominion, the voting machine used in 29 states. - the Thousand Talents program has signed up over 7,000 foreign professors and researchers. They agree to license patents to China, and not to criticize the CCP.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - peteretep 6y ago
    Bullshit. China bashing is a bipartisan vote winner. Two weeks ago a law that brought Chinese firms that want to be listed in the US under US accounting jurisdiction passed the senate 100-0 https://www.economist.com/business/2020/12/03/congress-wants-to-boot-chinese-firms-from-american-exchanges https://www.economist.com/business/2020/12/03/congress-wants...
hyperrail 6y ago
Here's Zoom's own public statement on the matter: https://blog.zoom.us/our-perspective-on-the-doj-complaint/ https://blog.zoom.us/our-perspective-on-the-doj-complaint/ The statement also says that Zoom itself is under separate US federal investigations for its dealings with Chinese and other foreign governments, as well as its security and privacy practices more generally.
- unityByFreedom 6y ago
  In the bit about the "now-former employee", it sounds like they admit they banned accounts hosting meetings about Tiananmen Square. > During the time this individual was employed by Zoom, he took actions resulting in the termination of several meetings in remembrance of Tiananmen Square and meetings involving religious and/or political activities, some of which were hosted by non-China-based users. We terminated the host accounts associated with certain of these meetings. And about sharing information on dissidents with the government, > While the complaint alleges that the former employee obtained Zoom account and user IDs associated with the Xinjiang region of China, our investigation shows that this data was anonymized, and at this time we do not have reason to believe that it was shared with the Chinese government. This is hard to believe given how difficult it is to operate any company in China without very close ties with the CCP.
  - dx87 6y ago
    IIRC, the banning accounts part isn't new info. They were called out for it and I think their reasoning was that at the time they didn't have a way to just block certain regions from a meeting, so they banned the meetings altogether because people from China were joining them, and they wanted to stay on the CCPs good side.
    - wbl 6y ago
      This indictment shows that was a pack of lies. This wasn't corporate policy working through regular channels.
      - 6y ago
yogue 6y ago
The litmus test, IMHO, should be if any other American competitors of Zoom - viz. Google Meet, FaceTime, Teams, fb Messenger rooms etc. - are getting charged for similar activities? If not, then it may be worth questioning if Zoom is really as “American” or “non-Chinese” as it claims to be!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
archibaldJ 6y ago
I’m working on a ZOOM-alternative for online events and gatherings that uses twilio: https://lo.fish https://lo.fish It is built on eilixir & will be open-sourced soon. (The next step I’m looking to make it E2E.) There are also existing ZOOM-alternatives like https://gather.town https://gather.town
- archibaldJ 6y ago
  I’m also writing an introductory programming book on making your own video-conferncing app with React + Elixir (Targeting Gen Z mostly) I’m looking for publishers at the moment. Will appreciate any tips on that. I can be reached at a at castella.art. Thanks!
- treepunch 6y ago
  >post an invite-only service >leave no information on how to get an invite
  - archibaldJ 6y ago
    my apologies it's still in private beta (& I'm a bit occupied with my full-time at the moment) you can follow lo.fish's twitter page if you're interested! The free-trial give-away starts in jan https://twitter.com/l0f1sh https://twitter.com/l0f1sh
- sebmellen 6y ago
  Are you using the React-95 library for this?
  - archibaldJ 6y ago
    yup there is a link to it & its creator at the about page
mrtweetyhack 6y ago
Zoom is owned by China
rognjen 6y ago
Any time news like this comes out about a company effectively run by the CCP I'm utterly and completely shocked! Shocked I tell you! \s
i_am_proteus 6y ago
>Part of Jin’s duties included providing information to the PRC government about Company-1’s users and meetings, and in some cases he provided information – such as Internet Protocol addresses, names and email addresses – of users located outside of the PRC. Jin was also responsible for proactively monitoring Company-1’s video communications platform for what the PRC government considers to be “illegal” meetings to discuss political and religious subjects unacceptable to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the PRC government. So if I am readings this right, PRC authorities are using Zoom employees to monitor the activity of Zoom users both inside and outside the PRC.
- pirisek453 6y ago
  More like the case of the Zoom employees are members of the Communism Party and decided to interfere to raise their profiles in the party. The alternative would be not taking action and be considered "enabling" the Tienanmen Square memorial to take place and obviously face punishment.
staz 6y ago
Remember that Zoom falsify claimed to have E2E encryption that would have prevented it's employee to snoop in on such conversation...
Proven 6y ago
He was only following orders

685 points by imraj96 6y ago

Not a surprise. The entire engineering team is in China. This is a disaster waiting to happen. China knows how to work the American system better than Americans.

peteretep 6y ago

Jesus, if true this has gotta be a mortal wound to Zoom

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
I highly doubt the behavior of a single rogue employee will present any significant difficulty to Zoom, to say nothing of being a mortal wound.
- derision 6y ago
  An executive is not quite a "single rogue employee"
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    If it's a single executive, and the executive is a rogue, then it is exactly a single rogue employee. Also, although it's beside the point from the perspective of whether what I said is true, I read the complaint. It's not clear if this guy was an executive executive, or an account "executive" (i.e. a low-level administrator). I'm inclined to believe the latter based on the actions he is alleged to have taken.
    - vatueil 6y ago
      According to the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/18/zoom-helped-china-surveillance/?itid=hp-more-top-stories https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/18/zoom-he... > Prosecutors said the China-based executive, Xinjiang Jin, worked as Zoom’s primary liaison with Chinese law enforcement and intelligence services, sharing user information and terminating video calls at the Chinese government’s request.
      - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
        This role does not sound like an "executive" in the sense I think of it. It sounds like an individual contributor role, and not one that sets company policy either.
        vatueil 6y ago
        Whatever definition of "executive" floats your boat, I guess.
        em500 6y ago
        People answering the phone in call centers often have the official job title "Customer Service Executive" in companies (just search google for jobs). Just saying.
        true_religion 6y ago
        Primary liaison with police and the CCP does not sound like a low wage job especially for a Chinese firm.
- jariel 6y ago
  It's highly doubtful that this are just the actions of a single rogue actor. The CCP requires that all eventually companies have CCP members embedded in the company as an instrument of control. Irrespective of the Zoom executives disposition/views - they're going to be under immense pressure for a host of related things. "The party’s efforts to place itself inside private companies have been, according to its own figures, very successful. One recent survey by the Central Organisation Department, the party’s personnel body, found that 68% of China’s private companies had party bodies by 2016, and 70% of foreign enterprises. Although these figures sound high, they don’t match the targets the party has set for itself. In Xi’s old stamping ground of Zhejiang, for example, officials set a target in August 2018 to have cells inside 95% of private businesses. There was a need, the survey said, to retain the revolutionary spirit inside the companies as their ownership was handed on to the next generation." [1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/china-business-xi-jinping-communist-party-state-private-enterprise-huawei https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/china-business...
- pstrateman 6y ago
  I think it's unlikely to be an isolated incident, 20 years from now we'll be reading stories about the CCP listening to every zoom call in the world for years. (Just the same as the CIA did with Crypto AG[1]) They were routing all calls such that the CCP could listen to them. [2] They lied about calls being End-To-End encrypted. [3] Zoom was founded by a Chinese national and all of their development is done in China. [4] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG [2] https://citizenlab.ca/2020/04/move-fast-roll-your-own-crypto-a-quick-look-at-the-confidentiality-of-zoom-meetings/ https://citizenlab.ca/2020/04/move-fast-roll-your-own-crypto... [3] https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-zoom-plans-to-better-secure-meetings-with-end-to-end-encryption/ https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-zoom-plans-to-bette... [4] https://technode.com/2020/04/13/is-zoom-crazy-to-count-on-chinese-rd/ https://technode.com/2020/04/13/is-zoom-crazy-to-count-on-ch...
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    I'm willing to bet that the events described here will not be a mortal blow to Zoom, whether the event is isolated or only semi-isolated. To make it concrete, their market cap will still be above $10B on Jan 1 2022. I'll put up to $20 on it, to a non-religious charity of your choice. If you want to take the other side of that bet let me know.
    - pstrateman 6y ago
      You're completely avoiding the question of whether this is an isolated incident or not. I have no doubt people are stupid enough to continue using 'Video Conferencing by the CCP'(tm pending). That just means they're dumb.
      - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
        The question I'm most interested in is the one where the individual at the top of the thread suggested this would be a mortal blow to Zoom. It won't. Nit picking about exactly how isolated this is does not change how few of Zoom's customers are or will ever be affected.
- jtdev 6y ago
  This isn’t some “rogue employee” incident; This is like the 5th time Zoom has been caught doing the CCPs bidding... on American soil.
- peteretep 6y ago
  Bullshit, the headline is the CCP can and do make calls about the content of your legal Zoom calls.

elliekelly 6y ago

I’ve never even heard of either of the things they’ve charged. I wonder why they went with conspiracy to commit interstate harassment and conspiracy to transfer means of identification rather than with CFAA or wiretapping charges.

xxpor 6y ago
Wiretapping probably requires zoom to be a public utility. CFAA I don't know enough about.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

vyrotek 6y ago

What other platforms compete with Zoom with comparable API integrations? We need features including: OAuth, Meeting scheduling, meeting link generation (without requiring user accounts), managing recordings, meeting status webhooks, etc. https://marketplace.zoom.us/docs/api-reference/zoom-api https://marketplace.zoom.us/docs/api-reference/zoom-api

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
brian_herman 6y ago
https://jitsi.org/ https://jitsi.org/ Opensource version of zoom https://meet.google.com/ https://meet.google.com/ Google Meet(recording is with the enterprise version) integrates with google calendar https://www.gotomeeting.com/ https://www.gotomeeting.com/ https://www.skype.com/en/free-conference-call/ https://www.skype.com/en/free-conference-call/ https://www.bluejeans.com/ https://www.bluejeans.com/
- ignoramous 6y ago
  Nit: Jitsi's open source alternative* to Zoom Amazon Chime: https://chime.aws https://chime.aws Kosmi: https://kosmi.io https://kosmi.io Jami: https://jami.net https://jami.net Screen: https://screen.so https://screen.so Signal: https://signal.org https://signal.org Whereby: https://whereby.com https://whereby.com Airtime: https://airtime.com https://airtime.com Microsoft Teams: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-teams/group-chat-software https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-team... Rally: https://rally.video https://rally.video
- jeroenhd 6y ago
  To add to this: https://kopano.com/products/meet/ https://kopano.com/products/meet/ A subscription or self-hosted, e2e encrypted video call tool
Hnrobert42 6y ago
I am not sure about some of the requirements, but we’ve had a lot of success with Uberconference. Google Meet is also decent if your are I the Google Workspace ecosystem.

whodidntante 6y ago

Wow. I thought only the CEO's of FB and Twitter were allowed to do things like this.

derision 6y ago
They are, that's why he's getting charged and they're not

sergiotapia 6y ago

I will speak with other leaders at my company to move us away from Zoom for conferencing. If you're a leader how can you read this and not only tolerate it, but pay for it? This is it.

pishpash 6y ago
What is "it"? This is an allegation. Under an administration with a highly motivated agenda. Could be true, or could be completely fabricated/exaggerated like all the national security allegations this administration has thrown about.
- smt88 6y ago
  The DOJ does not share the agenda of the administration. Do you think the US should not have an administration that is highly motivated to root out CCP operatives?
- peteretep 6y ago
  > This is an allegation I feel dismissing a case that the DOJ is briefing for and that the FBI has added the perpetrator to Most Wanted for as “an allegation” is true in a strict legal sense, but the burden of proof for a commercial decision has been unequivocally reached here
jcytong 6y ago
I moved away early this year due to its poor track record on security: 2019 - Report of the Zoom app's malware like behaviour-using a hidden web server to enable Zoom much more capabilities than simply launching a zoom call like re-installing the Zoom software[1] 2020-Tricking its users during installation pretending the OS is requiring password[2] In general, playing fast and loose with its users' data-sending a conference en(de)cryption key between two users in Canada/US to an ip address in Beijing.[3] [1]https://medium.com/bugbountywriteup/zoom-zero-day-4-million-webcams-maybe-an-rce-just-get-them-to-visit-your-website-ac75c83f4ef5 https://medium.com/bugbountywriteup/zoom-zero-day-4-million-... [2]https://twitter.com/c1truz_/status/1244737672930824193 https://twitter.com/c1truz_/status/1244737672930824193 [3]https://citizenlab.ca/2020/04/move-fast-roll-your-own-crypto-a-quick-look-at-the-confidentiality-of-zoom-meetings/ https://citizenlab.ca/2020/04/move-fast-roll-your-own-crypto...

jariel 6y ago

The real issue is how such a fundamentally important thing - video communications - isn't rock solid and a commodity by now such that any of FAANG, Verizon/AT&T and a host of others don't provide it as easy as anything else. Imagine if you thought CCP were reading your emails? Would your company/school/government use that service? I don't think so. Having supply chain problems for ASICS is one thing. But 'video conferencing' ... my gosh we should be embarrassed as an industry that this wasn't nailed down a decade ago.

spoonjim 6y ago
First of all, video conferencing is one of the most challenging software products to deliver, at the latencies that people expect and the price they're typically willing to pay. It's not a CRUD app. Second, F, A, A, G, and M do provide rock solid video conferencing. Apple being the most rock solid of all of them, but limited to Apple devices.
- jariel 6y ago
  If there were great alternatives by the big players, then Zoom would not 'be a thing' and would not have taken off during the pandemic. Why would teachers etc. be turning to Zoom if Hangouts etc. was at their fingertips and worked well. We moved to Zoom before the pandemic because Skype (Microsoft) was unreliable to the point of useless whereas Zoom was solid. People use Zoom because it's better, and there's really no excuse for Hangouts, Skype etc. to be of inferior quality. Those companies have the best Engineers and all the money in the world. It's a lack of product focus.
  - verst 6y ago
    Most school districts either use GSuite or Office 365 from what I can tell. As part of those you'd have Google Meet or Microsoft Teams. Why do you use (presumably the consumer version of) Skype when the Microsoft product that superseded Skype for Business is Teams?
- fma 6y ago
  > video conferencing is one of the most challenging software products to deliver The smartest software engineers are in FAAGM, or so I've been told? > Second, F, A, A, G, and M do provide rock solid video conferencing. If they have solid products, then how did a no name company beat them? FWIW I'll have to disagree with you on 'solid products'. My wife runs a learning center that went virtual. I evaluated very product that came up on Google search. It was a tight choice between Zoom and Skype, but chose Skype because I felt a big name would have better service. Microsoft kept locking our accounts and doing other shenanigans. Bit the bullet, paid for Zoom and no problems.

gruez 6y ago

Is this likely to go anywhere? The press release says an arrest warrant was issued, but the person charged isn't in custody. I doubt china is going to send him over, nor is he going to be on a plane headed to the US anytime soon, so nothing's going to happen to him unless he decides to enter the US?

cwwc 6y ago
True - unless he visits a country (like Huawei’s CFO did in Canada) where he is snagged at request of the US
- hef19898 6y ago
  Which itself is kind of troubling. ut than again, international arrest warrants have been abused for decades.
viraptor 6y ago
I guess it ensures he isn't on that plane in the future. Or on a plane to cooperating countries. (Which for an executive may be a serious problem)
ipnon 6y ago
It's newsworthy that PRC is recruiting Chinese citizens in executive positions of American companies to pursue the intelligence interests of the CCP by disenfranchising Americans of their constitutional rights and in willful violation of American law.
- Waterluvian 6y ago
  Yeah. Some of these people need to be made an example of. China's been using their consumer market allure as an aegis behind which to advance their interests and project censorship abroad.
  - abacadaba 6y ago
    You think anyone of similar position/circumstances is gonna tell the CCP to shove it because of this example? They have no intention of playing by our rules. Sucks, but we need to accept it for what it is and act accordingly.

rosywoozlechan 6y ago

There's even an FBI wanted poster for this executive: https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/counterintelligence/xinjiang-jin/@@download.pdf https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/counterintelligence/xinjiang-jin/...

sathoro 6y ago
Not a good look
joachim4 6y ago
What would a qualify someone to be a Bond villain? I don't have enough experience or knowledge about what qualify your for being a Bond villain, but this guy might be quite high is you account disruption / scale / chaos / get money-power out of it....
astura 6y ago
Where did they get these pictures? They look like mugshots but he's not in custody.
- mikeyouse 6y ago
  Potentially passport photos? He was in the US after all.
- Darkphibre 6y ago
  Passport, maybe? You have to present a photo that's extremely similar for facial detection algorithms to train identifying you in the future.
- darkhorn 6y ago
  Turkey takes photos of everyone who enters or leaves the country. May be it is practiced in USA too.
  - Symbiote 6y ago
    Yes, the USA does this too. So does the EU, although the USA goes further as even transit passengers are fingerprinted.

ipnon 6y ago

As alleged, the defendant was an active agent of the CCP and PRC intelligence[a] working inside an American company to deny the rights of freedom of speech and religion to residents of America.[b] The PRC is willfully breaking American law to disenfranchise Americans of their constitutional rights. [a] “The allegations in the complaint lay bare the Faustian bargain that the PRC government demands of U.S. technology companies doing business within the PRC’s borders, and the insider threat that those companies face from their own employees in the PRC,” said Acting United States Attorney Seth D. DuCharme. “As alleged, Jin worked closely with the PRC government and members of PRC intelligence services to help the PRC government silence the political and religious speech of users of the platform of a U.S. technology company. Jin willingly committed crimes, and sought to mislead others at the company, to help PRC authorities censor and punish U.S. users’ core political speech merely for exercising their rights to free expression." [b] "As this complaint alleges, that freedom was directly infringed upon by the pernicious activities of Communist China’s Intelligence Services, in support of a regime that neither reflects nor upholds our democratic values,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray. “Americans should understand that the Chinese Government will not hesitate to exploit companies operating in China to further their international agenda, including repression of free speech.”

pstrateman 6y ago
Zoom is materially a Chinese company. CEO is Chinese, staff are mostly Chinese.
- cwwc 6y ago
  Interestingly, the number of CCP members employed is way over the baseline quota demanded by Beijing (where usually companies like Jet.com and alibaba will struggle to retain and meet this quota, Zoom has never seemed to has this issue...)
  - largbae 6y ago
    How would one validate the number of CCP members employed at one of these companies, or the quota?

dehrmann 6y ago

> Jin’s co-conspirators created fake email accounts and Company-1 accounts in the names of others, including PRC political dissidents, to fabricate evidence that the hosts of and participants in the meetings to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre were supporting terrorist organizations, inciting violence or distributing child pornography. The fabricated evidence falsely asserted that the meetings included discussions of child abuse or exploitation, terrorism, racism or incitements to violence, and sometimes included screenshots of the purported participants’ user profiles featuring, for example, a masked person holding a flag resembling that of the Islamic State terrorist group. Ah. So it's not quite disrupting meetings, it's framing people as pedophiles an terrorists.

generalizations 6y ago
I think it's been mentioned on hn before, but it sure seems like we should look twice at anyone who gets charged with child pornography - could be someone getting framed.
- sneak 6y ago
  Forget the charge - we should strive to presume the innocence of anyone charged with anything. Bringing charges is not evidence.
  - Fluid_Mechanics 6y ago
    Humans are quite dimwitted unfortunately.
    - billsnow 6y ago
      yeah that's not the lesson from this
  - rayiner 6y ago
    Charges are based on evidence shown to a grand jury. The law presumes people are innocent until proven guilty, and we should give people the benefit of the doubt, but it’s totally reasonable to talk about the charges in a news context. Charges being filed means some meaningful threshold has been passed.

detaro 6y ago

also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25471274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25471274

spoonjim 6y ago

All of this CCP poison inside Zoom must be a huge gift to Microsoft Teams.

ipnon 6y ago
The popularity of apps like Zoom and TikTok suggests that American national security is an afterthought for consumers.
- spoonjim 6y ago
  National security cannot be delegated to individual action. It's basically the first and foremost purpose of government.
goatinaboat 6y ago
All of this CCP poison inside Zoom must be a huge gift to Microsoft Teams. Teams has its own bizarre self-inflicted limitations. For example a limit of only 9 people on screen at once whose positions constantly and randomly change. Having used all of them if you have decent sized screens e.g. 28" or better and are presenting to a group or 20-30 people and want to be able to gauge feedback from faces as you would do in a real meeting or classroom, Zoom just offers a much, much better experience for the presenter, who is probably also the meeting organiser. And it's not just aesthetic, if you are on all day Zoom is actually much less fatiguing than Teams. Where Teams wins is if you are using it for corporate chat anyway (because you have O365 anyway) and just want to make the occasional 1:1 call.
- xaqfox 6y ago
  I don't know how new it is, but Teams has a lecture-hall view option that displays more than 9 people.
- nonfamous 6y ago
  Teams now supports 49 people onscreen.
  - 6y ago

cwwc 6y ago

The most BA conspiracy would be if the CCP thought about releasing a virus and said to themselves “hey, what will everyone need in a pandemic? Videoconference!” They funded Zoom, then released the virus and boom - they suddenly have access to every company and academic discussion out there. If I plotting things, that’s how I’d do it at least. But alas reality isn’t a Bond film.

wil421 6y ago
Why would you fund a “tech” company when you could corner the market on PPE? According to my local news a company told the federal government the US lack N95 manufacturing.
- cwwc 6y ago
  Good point
- tenpies 6y ago
  Why not both? And in some cases you don't even need to corner the market - just abuse your adversaries' psychology. For example, Canada, was sending tons of PPE to China in February. [1] This turned out to be an awful decision and Canada was caught in a terrible shortage weeks later. China gladly sold PPE to Canada though. [1] https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2020/02/canada-supports-chinas-ongoing-response-to-novel-coronavirus-outbreak.html https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2020/02/canada-...
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    > Why not both? It’s a win-win-win situation. But yeah, the fact that the entire world is dependent on China for cheap manufacturing is probably a bad thing.
- viraptor 6y ago
  PPE is just PPE. Zoom is tech which will continue to be more established even when we don't strictly require it. It gives the possibility of silently monitoring corporate/government calls for years. And some stock market gains as a cherry on top.

neartheplain 6y ago

The executive fabricated illegal user activity on Zoom, to include distribution of child pornography, falsely attributed to opponents of China’s Communist Party: >Jin’s co-conspirators created fake email accounts and Company-1 accounts in the names of others, including PRC political dissidents, to fabricate evidence that the hosts of and participants in the meetings to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre were supporting terrorist organizations, inciting violence or distributing child pornography. Imagine if it had been you. Imagine if you logged into a Tiananmen Square Massacre commemoration from your couch in Sunnyvale, and days or weeks later, American police knocked down your door and arrested you in front of your family for distribution of child pornography. Imagine going to trial against a prosecutor armed with “authentic” Zoom logs of your criminal activity. The potential for this type of attack does not only exist within Zoom.

cwwc 6y ago
Apropos. And welcome to China for the past few years.

marketgod 6y ago

LOL ignore all this crap. The government courts are using Zoom. Just buy their stock.

hiidrew 6y ago

Seems like an early Christmas gift to Microsoft Teams

derwiki 6y ago
I want to think that.. but at the time I’m posting this, ZM is up after hours.

jtdev 6y ago

I’m shocked that Zoom is still operating in the United States... it’s obvious after the countless incidents that Zoom is a tool of the CCP. Americans should boycott Zoom.

fossuser 6y ago

So much for “Zoom is committed to supporting the open exchange of ideas and conversations” - it was clear this was nonsense when they said it, but the stuff alleged here is way worse than even I would have predicted. These people are awful - Zoom should be avoided (along probably with any company operating primarily out of China, under influence of the CCP). https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html

tehjoker 6y ago
If you think companies operating under the influence of the USG are better you've got another thing coming. EDIT: I like that whenever I post something negative about the USG in an anti-China thread, I go to -4 then bounce up later. It could be people are really that nationalistic. Who knows.
- chance_state 6y ago
  > America Bad And in less than an hour. Record time!
- Aeolun 6y ago
  I think we can consistently predict they’ll go after what’s financially best for them, but they won’t collaborate with nation states in quite this way.
- fossuser 6y ago
  It’s not nationalism - it’s rejecting knee-jerk false equivalence. It’s downvoted because it usually comes up immediately and just isn’t true. I say this as someone who would have made similar knee-jerk comments when I was 18 so I have some understanding of where they come from. Believing the behavior of all governments is equivalently bad makes you a mark for bad governments (which want you to believe that). The USG isn’t without fault, but it’s a far cry from the actions of the CCP. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24888552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24888552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24887606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24887606
- 6y ago

runawaybottle 6y ago

What are the chances these orders to co-opt people in China to do this is coming straight from the top of the CCP? There is a school of thought that provides a lot of analysis and evidence that the acceleration of the Holocaust was a bottom-up phenomenon (not a master plan made by Hitler years before). Hitler might have laid out details to exile the Jews, but there was no evidence he gave a direct order to begin full scale extermination via extermination camps (different from forced labor camps). The evidence suggests the underlying Nazi ideologies gave ample flexibility to middle management Nazis to begin competing and escalating into a full blown Holocaust. With that said, I wonder if the top CCP leaders gave the order ‘get a Zoom executive to troll the Tiananmen Square meetings’, or ‘Specifically do X and X to the Uighurs’. It could very well be possible that there is no directive, just a general ideology that is now being executed in creative ways, completely independent of leadership (but ultimately co-signed by leadership as it fits the ideology). Once the Nazi sub leadership began their mass shootings of the Jews, they couldn’t stop. They found out it was too much to do at scale, so they escalated to gas chambers. CCP sub leadership may not be able to stop what they have started.

selimthegrim 6y ago
Really? Given Goebbels' Freudian slip here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sportpalast_speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sportpalast_speech) and the Wannsee conference?
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  So, the acceleration of the Holocaust occurred earlier around 1940-1941 when they were in Poland. By 1943, they had already done close to half the total killings (the number 6 million we agree on). Check out the numbers in 1942 (this is just from one death camp, in 1941 they were doing the mass shootings pre-gas chambers): https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/5/1/eaau7292/F3.large.jpg https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/5/1/eaau729... By the time they were done, I guess they said ‘Yeah, this is the plan’. Goebbels also has a history of instigating and letting things ‘play out’, Kristallnacht being the prime example. Even so, this wouldn’t be the guy up top that would deliver a clear plan on extermination. Similarly, they found no proof that even Hitler delivered clear plans on extermination (his end goal was exile initially). You pretty much have to find the shitbags in the sub leadership in Poland that took it to a new level (Himmler). So, yeah, I wouldn’t call it a Freudian slip if it happened in 1943, it was just shitbags latching on to a plan that was well into motion by then (not absolving anyone here on any level, Hitler/Goebbels set fertile ground for things to escalate organically). If anything, the death camps were planned to be closed (and were closed by 1944 by Nazis themselves) and erased from history to cover up. Anyway, back to the point. I think China said ‘we need to do something about Muslim extremist, and anti nationalists’, and how that gets carried out is up to a lot of imagination, whether it be re-education camps, Hong Kong crackdown, or Zoom bombing. This is a country that will also work very hard to cover up all this bullshit when it’s all said and done. I’m aware that this sounds like over-fitting, but I can’t help it, the pattern just fits in my eyes.

random5634 6y ago

Is there anyone close to competitive in terms of user mindshare? We are on zoom. I'd love to get off. Google Meet? - others on gsuite domains blocked from joining, rules around having accounts etc? We need background replacement or blur. I tried before and couldn't really make it a success (and so confusing with hangouts, chat, talk, duo, allo etc). Background replacement not as good as zoom. Uberconference - audio latency is worse - we've dialed down our use for conference calls. Jitasa - I don't see background replace on this?

jrochkind1 6y ago
The issue isn't "user mindshare", it's technical quality, as you say. Nothing I have tried either matches zoom.
kettro 6y ago
(I'm a Google SWE, though in firmware) I've had good experiences with Meet, both internally and externally. At least internally/gsuite, the background blur is really quite good. The public/free version doesn't itself have either background replacements, though.
octoberfranklin 6y ago
> We need background replacement or blur. Why?
- ezrast 6y ago
  It's a privacy and professionalism issue. Sales folks and others who need to maintain a businesslike facade are uncomfortable meeting potential customers in their makeshift home offices, disarrayed by homeschooled kids and other pandemic chaos.
  - octoberfranklin 6y ago
    Huh... is it really so hard to set up your desk so your back is to a blank wall? Or put one of those accordion-folding partitions (which look like cubicle walls) behind you? I dunno, I'm sure background blur is a cute trick, but given how easy the low-tech alternatives are I'm surprised it would rise to the level of "must-have" feature.

_cs2017_ 6y ago

How is it that Zoom became so popular despite numerous large tech firms offering competing products?

rtx 6y ago
It all new, Zoom actually is one of the pioneers.
- dash2 6y ago
  What was new?
  - samcheng 6y ago
    The aggressive sales team focused on a video calling product; all of the other major solutions are afterthoughts owned by companies focusing on other products. Oh, and that "Brady Bunch" view that Google quickly copied, after refusing to update Google Meet for years before that.
  - rtx 6y ago
    Time to to WOW. Using zoom for the first time, launching an instance on Digital Ocean. It's common now but at the time it was unheard of.
- nradov 6y ago
  WebEx (acquired by Cisco) had all of the core functionality before Zoom.
  - ulfw 6y ago
    The zoom founder even worked at WebEx. So yes.
  - throwaway201103 6y ago
    Yes but getting 10 people together on a WebEx call involved 15 minutes of tech support at the start of each meeting. It just wasn't as smooth.

duxup 6y ago

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” ― Martin Luther King Jr. This seems more hauntingly true than ever, and with the internet and people's social lives and communication tied to products from 'everywhere', seemingly injustice anywhere seems to be inching closer and closer to home. It's not 'well some other place' anymore...

dash2 6y ago
This sounds noble but it leads to the idea that one country can impose its vision of justice globally. The CCP could then argue that is just what it itself is doing. A better argument is that this guy allegedly committed crimes that took place on US soil.
- duxup 6y ago
  If someone uses it or doesn't use it to justify anything doesn't change that it is true.

jrochkind1 6y ago

"unlawful conspiracy to transfer a means of identification." I don't think I've ever heard that phrase before. It's a federal crime? What does it mean?

kemitchell 6y ago
Not even the United States federal government has a list of all the crimes under federal law. There's a funny Twitter account that was tweeting a new federal crime every day for a while. In case you'd like to know how to research your question when you see a government announcement on a criminal case: 1. Scroll the bottom of the page. If it's the website of the government agency that brought the case, they'll almost always link to a "complaint", which is almost always a PDF. 2. In a criminal complaint, each crime charged is usually called a "count". Search the PDF to find the "count" that matches up with the crime you're interested in. In this case, the means-of-identification charge is count two. 3. Look for a "citation", a reference to a section or other numbered subdivision of a law within that count, in the part that spells out which law they're being charged under. Here: "Title 18, United States Code, Section 1028(a)(7) and 1028(f)". 4. Go to the official website of the government that law comes from. In this case, it's the US federal government. Their info portal is https://www.govinfo.gov/ https://www.govinfo.gov/. 5. Search for the citation and find the law and its text. The portal will usually provide some notes after the text of the law about which bills introduced or changed that particular subdivision, and when. Sometimes they'll even provide commentary or citations to cases decided under it. I'll leave that part to you if you're interested. 6. For extra background, try searching for the name of the bill that introduced the law on Wikipedia, or even on Google. You can often get a sense of what was going on at the time, who proposed the bill and how the vote for it panned out, and so on.
tyingq 6y ago
It's from this US Federal law around identity theft: 18 U.S. Code § 1028 - Fraud and related activity in connection with identification documents, authentication features, and information https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1028 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1028 See subsections 7 and 8.
tonyztan 6y ago

samcheng 6y ago

We already knew Zoom was ethically-challenged from the auto-install shenanigans, though, right? https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/07/09/zoom-vulnerabilities/ https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/07/09/zoom-vulnerabilities/

cherylskylar 6y ago

Unclear how Zoom evades the public eye while other companies like Huawei get so much flack for efforts that are in favor of/support the CCP.

mrtesthah 6y ago
One of these companies builds critical infrastructure. The other sells a software service with many equivalent replacements with which it can be swapped out at a moment's notice.
rtx 6y ago
It takes time for the narrative to build.
vineyardmike 6y ago
Zoom is partial an American company, and WAY smaller.

camdenlock 6y ago

Are these sorts of investigations and revelations going to disappear now that the Democratic Party has been elected to power?

octoberfranklin 6y ago
It's not a left vs right thing. If Mitch McConnell were Attorney General he would drop the case too. Basically most of our politicians (on both sides) have sold out to China and a very few haven't.
- camdenlock 6y ago
  Well that sounds terrifying. Got any sources?
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    If you want to learn how the CCP works, watch the NTD/Epoch Times channels on Youtube. The CCP has had an undeclared war against the US since the 1950's, starting with Mao. A short summary of CCP "elite capture" is: - Mitch McConnell's wife is high-level CCP royalty - the CCP spy Fang Fang "dated" several US politicians - Hunter Biden is thoroughly compromised by the CCP - it appears the CCP owns Dominion, the voting machine used in 29 states. - the Thousand Talents program has signed up over 7,000 foreign professors and researchers. They agree to license patents to China, and not to criticize the CCP.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- peteretep 6y ago
  Bullshit. China bashing is a bipartisan vote winner. Two weeks ago a law that brought Chinese firms that want to be listed in the US under US accounting jurisdiction passed the senate 100-0 https://www.economist.com/business/2020/12/03/congress-wants-to-boot-chinese-firms-from-american-exchanges https://www.economist.com/business/2020/12/03/congress-wants...

hyperrail 6y ago

Here's Zoom's own public statement on the matter: https://blog.zoom.us/our-perspective-on-the-doj-complaint/ https://blog.zoom.us/our-perspective-on-the-doj-complaint/ The statement also says that Zoom itself is under separate US federal investigations for its dealings with Chinese and other foreign governments, as well as its security and privacy practices more generally.

unityByFreedom 6y ago
In the bit about the "now-former employee", it sounds like they admit they banned accounts hosting meetings about Tiananmen Square. > During the time this individual was employed by Zoom, he took actions resulting in the termination of several meetings in remembrance of Tiananmen Square and meetings involving religious and/or political activities, some of which were hosted by non-China-based users. We terminated the host accounts associated with certain of these meetings. And about sharing information on dissidents with the government, > While the complaint alleges that the former employee obtained Zoom account and user IDs associated with the Xinjiang region of China, our investigation shows that this data was anonymized, and at this time we do not have reason to believe that it was shared with the Chinese government. This is hard to believe given how difficult it is to operate any company in China without very close ties with the CCP.
- dx87 6y ago
  IIRC, the banning accounts part isn't new info. They were called out for it and I think their reasoning was that at the time they didn't have a way to just block certain regions from a meeting, so they banned the meetings altogether because people from China were joining them, and they wanted to stay on the CCPs good side.
  - wbl 6y ago
    This indictment shows that was a pack of lies. This wasn't corporate policy working through regular channels.
    - 6y ago

yogue 6y ago

The litmus test, IMHO, should be if any other American competitors of Zoom - viz. Google Meet, FaceTime, Teams, fb Messenger rooms etc. - are getting charged for similar activities? If not, then it may be worth questioning if Zoom is really as “American” or “non-Chinese” as it claims to be!

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

archibaldJ 6y ago

I’m working on a ZOOM-alternative for online events and gatherings that uses twilio: https://lo.fish https://lo.fish It is built on eilixir & will be open-sourced soon. (The next step I’m looking to make it E2E.) There are also existing ZOOM-alternatives like https://gather.town https://gather.town

archibaldJ 6y ago
I’m also writing an introductory programming book on making your own video-conferncing app with React + Elixir (Targeting Gen Z mostly) I’m looking for publishers at the moment. Will appreciate any tips on that. I can be reached at a at castella.art. Thanks!
treepunch 6y ago
>post an invite-only service >leave no information on how to get an invite
- archibaldJ 6y ago
  my apologies it's still in private beta (& I'm a bit occupied with my full-time at the moment) you can follow lo.fish's twitter page if you're interested! The free-trial give-away starts in jan https://twitter.com/l0f1sh https://twitter.com/l0f1sh
sebmellen 6y ago
Are you using the React-95 library for this?
- archibaldJ 6y ago
  yup there is a link to it & its creator at the about page

mrtweetyhack 6y ago

Zoom is owned by China

rognjen 6y ago

Any time news like this comes out about a company effectively run by the CCP I'm utterly and completely shocked! Shocked I tell you! \s

i_am_proteus 6y ago

>Part of Jin’s duties included providing information to the PRC government about Company-1’s users and meetings, and in some cases he provided information – such as Internet Protocol addresses, names and email addresses – of users located outside of the PRC. Jin was also responsible for proactively monitoring Company-1’s video communications platform for what the PRC government considers to be “illegal” meetings to discuss political and religious subjects unacceptable to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the PRC government. So if I am readings this right, PRC authorities are using Zoom employees to monitor the activity of Zoom users both inside and outside the PRC.

pirisek453 6y ago
More like the case of the Zoom employees are members of the Communism Party and decided to interfere to raise their profiles in the party. The alternative would be not taking action and be considered "enabling" the Tienanmen Square memorial to take place and obviously face punishment.

staz 6y ago

Remember that Zoom falsify claimed to have E2E encryption that would have prevented it's employee to snoop in on such conversation...

Proven 6y ago

He was only following orders