"I bet Microsoft is behind this" I thought, and sure enough - found the obligatory Teams push in there.
As a New Yorker who voiced support for this, no, Microsoft is not “behind” it.
New York City bans Zoom in schools, citing security concerns
11–20 of 61 posts
Re: New York City bans Zoom in schools, citing security concerns
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're talking about videos of children in their homes, in many cases probably their bedrooms. If they have to use it for school, they may also use it with their friends other than for school work as they will have it set up and know how to use it. I think the risks of illicit access to that material are pretty clear, and there are several serious vulnerabilities in Zoom that can grant direct access to video chats and…
So why target Zoom specifically? You're asking a broader question of children's safety. 100% it's a valid concern, but video tele-learning should be under fire then.
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Re: New York City bans Zoom in schools, citing security concerns
#13I recently discovered there's a Chrome app:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/zoom/hmbjbjdpkobdj...
Gives you most of the featureset of the Mac app (unlike Zoom's crappy web app), but has a much narrower permission set which should mitigate most abuse.
Re: New York City bans Zoom in schools, citing security concerns
#14As the previous discussion already noted it seems disingenuous. Spacex has real security concerns with national security secrets and trade assets. Schools primary goal should be accessibility when it comes to teaching and Zoom arguably with its better video/audio has the best even with glaring security flaws (that do not necessarily seem decidedly worse than Hangouts). Banning Zoom seems to be getting on the negative…
How on earth is it acceptable to force students (who have pretty much no position to argue) to install what is effectively malware?
What would you instead?
Re: New York City bans Zoom in schools, citing security concerns
#15As the previous discussion already noted it seems disingenuous. Spacex has real security concerns with national security secrets and trade assets. Schools primary goal should be accessibility when it comes to teaching and Zoom arguably with its better video/audio has the best even with glaring security flaws (that do not necessarily seem decidedly worse than Hangouts). Banning Zoom seems to be getting on the negative…
Zoom sent data to Chinese data centers during the surge. Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/zoom-ceo-i-really-messed-up-on-...
Re: New York City bans Zoom in schools, citing security concerns
#16As the previous discussion already noted it seems disingenuous. Spacex has real security concerns with national security secrets and trade assets. Schools primary goal should be accessibility when it comes to teaching and Zoom arguably with its better video/audio has the best even with glaring security flaws (that do not necessarily seem decidedly worse than Hangouts). Banning Zoom seems to be getting on the negative…
We're talking about videos of children in their homes, in many cases probably their bedrooms. If they have to use it for school, they may also use it with their friends other than for school work as they will have it set up and know how to use it. I think the risks of illicit access to that material are pretty clear, and there are several serious vulnerabilities in Zoom that can grant direct access to video chats and…
None of that, while distasteful seems to signal any national security or personal security risk. This seems pretty hyperbolic. Why on earth would the Chinese government want access to videos of children in bedrooms? Ridiculous.
Re: New York City bans Zoom in schools, citing security concerns
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
How on earth is it acceptable to force students (who have pretty much no position to argue) to install what is effectively malware?
What would you instead?
NYC could set up a jitsi instance.
Re: New York City bans Zoom in schools, citing security concerns
#18After trying out a few solutions, I found https://bigbluebutton.org/ by far the best for classroom settings or even for general meetings. Being able to upload a presentation as a collaborative white board is much better than simple screen sharing (which is also possible). Video quality is not the best, but audio is rock solid and we had zero connection problems with tens of people in a conference. Getting started is simpler than Zoom, since no installation is required and both Firefox and Chrome are fully supported. It is also pretty easy to self-host and there is even a load balancer for large installations: https://github.com/ICTO/BBB-Load-Balancer
Re: New York City bans Zoom in schools, citing security concerns
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're talking about videos of children in their homes, in many cases probably their bedrooms. If they have to use it for school, they may also use it with their friends other than for school work as they will have it set up and know how to use it. I think the risks of illicit access to that material are pretty clear, and there are several serious vulnerabilities in Zoom that can grant direct access to video chats and…
None of that, while distasteful seems to signal any national security or personal security risk. This seems pretty hyperbolic. Why on earth would the Chinese government want access to videos of children in bedrooms? Ridiculous.
There are two vulnerabilities in particular that can grant access to videos to hostiles. One is that Zoom video chat IDs are short enough and low enough entropy to be guessable. Also saved videos have a standard naming scheme that makes their file names guessable and therefore accessible publicly. However, any vulnerability, especially intentional ones knowingly trading convenience for security or implemented deceptively, is not acceptable especially when we're dealing with the privacy of children.
Re: New York City bans Zoom in schools, citing security concerns
#20As the previous discussion already noted it seems disingenuous. Spacex has real security concerns with national security secrets and trade assets. Schools primary goal should be accessibility when it comes to teaching and Zoom arguably with its better video/audio has the best even with glaring security flaws (that do not necessarily seem decidedly worse than Hangouts). Banning Zoom seems to be getting on the negative…
"negative news train", disregarding importance of security for schools? What are you talking about? The negative news train is just the negative series of revelations about Zoom. There is no media conspiracy here.