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Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square

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Re: Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies like Zoom are probably 5th column-like entities. Had someone told me something like this just a couple of years ago I would have called that person crazy or paranoid, but the latest moves from the CCP have cemented that belief for me. Again, I was almost totally against Tik Tok's de facto nationalisation ordered by the Trump administration, but seeing executives like this one acting on the orders of the CCP…

No way is the CCP not manipulating TikTok's black-box (cough cough "Machine Learning") algorithm to surface content that is better for them in some way. Should they be sold to America though or should they just be forced to die on the Chinese vine?

Yeah - this is the real risk with TikTok, not the data (or who hosts the data).

Moving the cloud hosted data to Oracle doesn't solve the underlying risk.

The real risk is CCP manipulating what's surfaced via the algorithm to sway public perception or to censor things they dislike. They've already done this explicitly with the protests in HK and Tiananmen Square, they'll do it in other ways that suit them.

The worst part is with TikTok the manipulation is more subtle, harder to see - are you seeing something because it's popular? or because the CCP is interested in you seeing it?

Are you not seeing something because it's not popular? or because the CCP has told Bytedance to kill it?

Moving the data to Oracle misses the point. The data is not important in this case, but the ability to control what the public sees is. Letting the CCP have control over that lever when they abuse it elsewhere: that's the risk.

This can be an issue anywhere, but the CCP has a terrible track record and no interest in a free press or free speech. What they're doing to the Uyghurs and what they've done to HK and how they treat people talking about Tiananmen Square. They don't take responsibility for any of it and they do what they can to suppress all of it.

It's a very machiavellian view and their soft influence on the US and western companies tied economically to China to self-censor or otherwise defer to the CCP's interests is alarming.

That recent article about Tim Cook killing an Apple TV show written by a couple ex-gawker editors doesn't bother me at all. Gawker was awful and we're better without it, shows glorifying it, or supporting the editors that worked there. This is Tim Cook deciding for himself he doesn't want to support those people, it's a principled position.

The other bit in that article about an Apple rep saying the two things Apple TV would never do are 'nudity and China' was a lot worse. The South Park 'band in china' episode was right. This is Tim Cook knowing what's expected of him to be able to operate in China - it's not a principled position, his hand is forced.

Re: Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square

#232
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not regular US corporate policy to operate at the behest of the Chinese government.

It is for US companies operating in China. In any case, it appears that the fabricated evidence was intended to suggest to the employee in charge of terminating accounts that the targeted users were violating US law in addition to Chinese law.

It is not normal for a US company to share data with a foreign government and hide that from the public.

Re: Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DOJ press release had a link right at the bottom to the 47 page indictment “showing the evidence.” https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1347146/downl...

I don't mean necessarily in this case, but I did mean in general. However, simply pointing out a section heading isn't enough (and I didn't see anything on page 47). What do you think of the evidence they presented? Additionally, grand juries are well known to simply be tools of the prosecution with >90% of grand jury presentations voting to indict, in part because the prosecutor can present whatever narrative they w…

I’m not pointing to page 47 I’m pointing out that there is 47 pages of the government describing the evidence it has. That’s typical for an indictment. The government doesn’t “in general” refuse to show the evidence. That’s just not how it works.

Grand juries aren’t “known to be tools of the prosecution.” That’s just something defense lawyers and public interest people say. A grand jury is just a group of ordinary people tasked with deciding whether there is enough evidence to even bring a case. The secrecy is there to protect the defendant as much as it’s there for the government. If the prosecutor’s case is weak, then the allegations don’t even become public. Grand juries do vote to indict at a very high rate. That’s because prosecutors only bring cases they know they can win (and indeed they have an ethical obligation not to bring cases they don’t think they can win).

There is a lot of misinformation about how the justice system works. I have seen it from the inside, working for a judge. These cases are buttoned up top to bottom. They’ll arrest a guy for robbing a store. They have him on security camera. They have tracking information from his cell phone. They have his text messages with the guy who he fenced the goods to. They searched his car and found stolen items.

Wrongful convictions are rare. The legal clinics that help wrongfully convicted people actually spend tremendous amounts of time screening cases to find ones that are meritorious. And a lot of those are from the era before DNA testing came into routine use. See: https://dc.law.utah.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1130&con...

> Based on a careful review of the available empirical literature, it is possible to assemble the component parts of a wrongful conviction rate calculation by looking at error rates at trial, the ratio of wrongful convictions obtained through trials versus plea bargains, and the percentage of cases resolved through pleas. Combining empirically based estimates for each of these three factors, a reasonable (and possibly overstated) calculation of the wrongful conviction rate appears, tentatively, to be somewhere in the range of 0.016%–0.062%

Re: Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Teams now supports 49 people onscreen.

Update: the latest version available for Mac doesn’t seem to do this. Νot tried on PC yet.

Re: Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square

#235
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is for US companies operating in China. In any case, it appears that the fabricated evidence was intended to suggest to the employee in charge of terminating accounts that the targeted users were violating US law in addition to Chinese law.

It is not normal for a US company to share data with a foreign government and hide that from the public.

I was inclined to agree with you, but then I remembered the case of Saudi Arabia's guys inside Twitter: https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-insiders-saudi-arabia-sp...

Re: Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square

#236
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not normal for a US company to share data with a foreign government and hide that from the public.

I was inclined to agree with you, but then I remembered the case of Saudi Arabia's guys inside Twitter: https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-insiders-saudi-arabia-sp...

Spies are not normal.

Re: Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well that sounds terrifying. Got any sources?

[deleted]

Re: Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square

#238
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need background replacement or blur. Why?

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.

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.

Re: Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square

#239
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wonder how it beat Google hangout/meet - That can be run all browsers without any install with one click also.

Ah yeah, one feature Zoom had was the multi-person grid view which Meet has nowadays but before, Meet would only show primarily the presented content or one speaker at a time

Re: Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> funky stuff in the ground to bypass a lot of the usual install friction. Once it was discovered, Zoom's installation process became a little bit slower. Why couldn't they keep it even after it was discovered?

I mean, they could have but it was in the press due to the installer operating as root to bypass the regular protections so it was damaging from a PR perspective

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3535789/weakness-in-zoom-f...

> Zoom uses the API to execute a bash script called runwithroot which is unpacked by the installer in a user-writable temporary directory. This means that any local application, including malware, could monitor the Zoom installation process, rewrite this script on the fly and add malicious code to it. This would allow it to take full control of the system.

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