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Zoom to bring end-to-end encryption to all users, including non-paying

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421–430 of 557 posts

Re: Zoom to bring end-to-end encryption to all users, including non-paying

#421
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a bunch. https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/01/31/china-families-interpol-...

Summary: Chinese government harass the relatives of the fugitive corruption suspects to force these suspects to return voluntarily. That's definitely one area the Chinese system is vastly behind the international standard. But this has not been conscious to me. When I was a child, we had horror stories of people sentenced to death penalty and were executed on superficial charges that sexual misconduct. And my parents…

I'll be honest, I'm not sure what your point is. Your response reads a bit like a defence of the practice, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt (since there's an obvious language issue).

I will say... it's curious to me that you seem to be well aware of such practices but still challenged the parent to provide examples (the implication being, that they were misinformed).

Why did you ask the parent to provide examples if you knew of some already? What's your motivation?

Re: Zoom to bring end-to-end encryption to all users, including non-paying

#422
post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the process for verifying that FaceTime isn't leaking the encryption keys to Apple's servers?

I don’t know, but as a black box it’s been extensively looked at. But nothing is unhackable even E2E.

How would one know that this black box works the same for every user? What would stop Apple from distributing a compromised update to everyone or to selected users?

Re: Zoom to bring end-to-end encryption to all users, including non-paying

#423
post #374
post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also sounds like you're saying that it's ok to avoid doing business with someone based on national origin, which I also find problematic. Sure, it can be problematic. I've seen articles about how Russian people in the software industry are having a very hard time because of what Putin's regime does. It's not fair for the people who have nothing to do with Putin and no exposure to him. But what is the alternative? P…

The alternative is to not discriminate based on national origin? Which is a protected class by the way. Nationality is also very different from national origin. Eric is an American citizen as far as I aware. You can point to the requirement to be bore in the US to run for presidency, but 1) that’s an edge case and 2) where is the line? Is it ok to discriminate again foreign born Americans but not against native born?…

> The alternative is to not discriminate based on national origin?

It absolutely is not a protected class. There are no protected classes when I am deciding whom I trust with my personal data. I can discriminate for any reason, including national origin.

> I mean overall you really don’t find it an issue to blankedly judge an entire class of people based on what some people within that population does or could do?

I would find that an issue if anyone (including me) were proposing it. We are not. You're attacking a straw man.

Here are the facts, regardless of Yuan's citizenship, race, etc:

1. Yuan grew up in China. He still has Zoom employees and family there.

2. China is controlled by a regime that has no qualms about using physical threats and violence to maintain control.

That's it. That's all I need to decide that I don't trust Zoom, if all of their extreme dishonesty and malware installations weren't enough. They haven't shown good judgment, and even if they did, it would be easy for CCP to put pressure on Yuan (or any other employee living in mainland China).

If Yuan had no family in China, no employees, and enough bravery to speak against CCP, I would not feel this way. I am not judging an "entire class" of people.

By the way, every firm that requires security clearance does judge entire classes of people as security risks. The question I asked, which you didn't answer, is whether you think that's also inappropriate.

Re: Zoom to bring end-to-end encryption to all users, including non-paying

#424
post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agreed. It's almost exclusively used as an ad hominem by people who lack that particular virtue to dismiss people who espouse a caring viewpoint. If you want to argue that your target does less to further that particular cause than you do, fine. If you want to argue the cause is misguided, fine. But using the term is just lazy.

It’s like “PC” or “fake news”, it was originally meaningful but got co-opted by people who use it in bad faith.

Just curious: Fake news was coined by Trump, so you're agreeing it was a meaningful usage?

Re: Zoom to bring end-to-end encryption to all users, including non-paying

#426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like many Americans do now. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23424245

That’s a drop in the bucket. A spike of a couple thousand downloads is a rounding error to the big platforms. Downloading of Signal doesn’t signify privacy concerns. I have Signal because others do. Not because I care about signal’s privacy.

It's still a noticeable increase, though. Taking into account that this was triggered by mass protests, it's very likely many of these people are concerned about government snooping.

Re: Zoom to bring end-to-end encryption to all users, including non-paying

#427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s like “PC” or “fake news”, it was originally meaningful but got co-opted by people who use it in bad faith.

Just curious: Fake news was coined by Trump, so you're agreeing it was a meaningful usage?

Ironically, it was not coined by Trump.

https://twitter.com/CraigSilverman/status/522179364767924224 and https://www.theverge.com/2014/10/22/7028983/fake-news-sites-... are good examples of its use pre-Trump. By the time Trump started applying it to actual news outlets, it was already in relatively common use.

Re: Zoom to bring end-to-end encryption to all users, including non-paying

#428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious - what other product that works better do you recommend? Webex, Skype, Hangouts/Meet, Teams all pale in comparison when it comes to quality and ease-of-use.

jitsi works wonderfully. I've also have been using Discord for voice almost daily for a little over a year and it just works 99% of the time. Unfortunately, it suffers from "gamer" branding that makes it awkward suggesting for work. They should try offering a "business skin" that interops with discord.

It bothers me a bit that such branding/skin influences the situations in which people use good products. I tried to get my friends to switch from Facebook Messenger to Slack, and plenty of them use Slack at work (as do I), and a large amount of pushback was along the lines of "I don't want to feel like I'm working."

It's just a means of communicating, people. Maybe a few Discord features aren't useful outside of gaming and a few Slack features aren't useful outside of the workplace. I find that to be a stupid reason not to generalize the use of these products. Skinning (and filtering away those specific features) just might be the ticket.

Re: Zoom to bring end-to-end encryption to all users, including non-paying

#429
I've read several articles about this, from US, UK and French sources, and none of them mention alternatives like Jitsi. Is it just a lack of knowledge?

I've tried Zoom once, it was a disaster. I've tried Jitsi, it was much better. Moreover, Jitsi doesn't require any installation on the client side, and you can host your instance or join an existing one (you trust).

Re: Zoom to bring end-to-end encryption to all users, including non-paying

#430
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BlueJeans and RingCentral might as well be clones of Zoom. Amazon Chime and Microsoft Teams are fine for me too, but I'm not picky.

Ring Central uses Zoom for the backend. I know they just announced their own "Ring central video" But im weary of that for the time being.

You say backend, but the frontend also has tons of overlap. The first time I saw RingCentral was after much Zoom experience, and I was thoroughly confused (based on nothing but the frontend) by the similarity until reading up about it. As a one-time invitee rather than a frequent user, RC was absurdly identical to Zoom other than the title bar and icon.
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