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Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square

justice.gov

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Re: Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square

#111

Post by spondyl »

_cs2017_ wrote: post #67

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

From what I remember, when remote working during the pandemic first started due to lockdowns, Zoom blew up because it was quite literally one click and you're in a call.

The initial installer would do some funky stuff in the ground I believe to bypass a lot of the usual install friction. Once it was discovered, Zoom's installation process became a little bit slower.

Next, calls were being "broken into" because there was no security so they changed the default behaviour to generate a password randomly. As a user, this meant having to go through the normal install process and then enter all this stuff in so it seemingly went from near-instant (10 seconds top from no install to in a call) through to perhaps like 5 minutes once you fiddle with macOS's permission model (that was bypassed I presume) and all that.

Personally, I hate it nowadays and it's banned on our company devices anyway but I think for plenty of users, they bought into it when it was frictionless and have no reason to change.

I think there was an element of shadow IT going on like marketing people for example using it for calls without necessarily getting sign off or oversight from IT teams, given it was "free". That's purely anecdotal mind you.

Re: Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square

#112

Post by abacadaba »

Waterluvian wrote: post #52
ipnon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square

#113

Post by Aeolun »

tehjoker wrote: post #101
gonehome wrote: post #58

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

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.

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.

Re: Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square

#114

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

sneak wrote: post #77
generalizations wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Forget the charge - we should strive to presume the innocence of anyone charged with anything. Bringing charges is not evidence.

But crimes of mere "possession" (e.g. child pornography, drugs) are especially susceptible to framing because the existence of the contraband in a person's personal effects are all that is needed to presume guilt. Child pornography, or really any digital asset, is doubly suspect because it is so much easier to "place" these digital assets on someone's computer or phone, whereas with drugs you'd need physical access to someone's home or personal effects.

Re: Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square

#115

Post by mrtesthah »

cherylskylar wrote: post #88

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.

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.

Re: Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square

#116

Post by kemitchell »

ipnon wrote: post #20

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 c…

Those are the allegations, or at least quotes from the press release announcing the charges. But nothing has been proved yet. Jin's innocent until proven otherwise, though they may yet prove otherwise.

I don't mean to pick on you. As someone who works in legal---albeit not in criminal law---citing a complaint as fact, when it's essentially one side's declaration of what they intend to prove, does bother me.

Re: Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square

#117

Post by Aeolun »

tenpies wrote: post #48
wil421 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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-...

> 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.

Re: Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square

#118

Post by unityByFreedom »

hyperrail wrote: post #105

Here's Zoom's own public statement on the matter: 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.

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.

Re: Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square

#119

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

ipnon wrote: post #29
gruez wrote: post #15

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?

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.

When are non-governmental parties bound by the bill of rights?

Re: Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square

#120

Post by selimthegrim »

runawaybottle wrote: post #63

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…

Really? Given Goebbels' Freudian slip here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sportpalast_speech) and the Wannsee conference?
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