←back to thread

Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act

(blogs.harvard.edu)
1597 points seapunk | 1 comments | 27 Mar 20 14:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.366s | source
Show context
luminati ◴[27 Mar 20 22:35 UTC] No.22707528[source]▶
Honest question [not trying to act controversial], especially with all the US-China spat.

Zoom's engineering team is based in China - the product is primarily built out of there. [1]

What guarantee is there that the CCP is not intercepting/backdooring all video communications? Especially in current situations, where so much sensitive information is being discussed via Zoom?

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/26/zoom-key-profit-driver-ahead...

replies(5): >>22707715 #>>22707724 #>>22707911 #>>22708147 #>>22708479 #
systemvoltage ◴[27 Mar 20 23:09 UTC] No.22707715[source]▶
I've said this time and again only to get downvotes since there is no proof or substantiation about the CCP surveillance claims. But, it is an important to keep in mind. There are things that I cannot say due to our employment contract and NDA, but to say the least, we are looking into this matter.

Surveillance prospects, doesn't matter where they originate - US or China or Country X - need to be discussed and examined. But apparently, saying anything against China on HN is an automatic ban for creating a flame war. We've become too soft. Obviously personal attacks and racism is not tolerable. But, I would personally (some may disagree) say that we should also criticize bad parts of culture too...that's for another day or a different forum.

Can we just get past the my country your country bullshit on HN and talk about privacy implications especially from the world's largest surveillance network? It is one thing to be spied upon for advertisement tracking, an entirely another to be spied upon by a brutal authoritarian government. Fearlessly criticizing CCP or the NSA, or Israeli intelligence agency or whatever... should be one of the most important things to talk about on "Hacker" news forum.

I am gonna fire off some anon emails to WSJ/NYTimes/WaPo/Guardian to create some awareness and perhaps they can dig further into Chinese influence in using Zoom. I am deeply concerned. The entire world has given up video/audio/screen/application privacy in a snap... for the data might be stored in Tianjin datacenter, needless to say whose keys are in the hands of CCP - I guarantee that but cannot provide proof.

Edit: past comments that were downvoted (and flagged): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22657794

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22684767

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22663295

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22705960

replies(3): >>22707797 #>>22707925 #>>22707928 #
1. lsh ◴[27 Mar 20 23:47 UTC] No.22707925[source]▶
I have noticed there has been a lot more downvoting here recently, really innocuous and innocent things as well. It might just be more traffic or a different type of traffic to the site while everybody is staying home.

And while I agree with your sentiment regarding the CCP, the comments you link lack the meat of the one you just posted. I'm not surprised they got a kicking.

> I am gonna fire off some anon emails to WSJ/NYTimes/WaPo/Guardian to create some awareness

Well done.