A former Zoom executive based in China has been accused by the Justice Department of disrupting video meetings commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Zoom confirmed on Friday.
Why does it matter: This case could shake the foundations of US technological cooperation with China. Researchers and US government officials have warned of the possibility of the Chinese government asking Chinese employees to hand over the data to the private company in Beijing. This accusation indicates that those fears are, in fact, a reality.
Details: Xinjiang Jin, also known as Julien Jin, served as Zoom’s “main link” with China’s law enforcement and intelligence services, regularly responding to Beijing’s requests for “information and video meetings.” Hosted on the company’s video platform, according to the complaint.
- Jin allegedly provided the Chinese government with information, including IP addresses, names and e-mail addresses of users outside China.
- The complaint also claims that Jin was responsible for “proactively monitoring” the Zoom platform for what Beijing considers to be “illegal” meetings, which discuss “unacceptable political and religious issues for the Chinese Communist Party.”
Between the lines: The indictment does not reveal the company’s name, but Zoom confirmed in a blog post that he “fully cooperated with the Justice Department” and launched his own internal investigation. In an incident this summer – first reported by Axios – Zoom closed the account of a group of prominent Chinese activists in the US after organizing an event commemorating the massacre.
- Zoom, which faced control over security concerns and its ties to China as its growth accelerated massively during the pandemic, acknowledged after the Axios report that it had received a request from the Chinese government.
- The company claimed that it took action only because the Chinese government informed the company that “this activity is illegal in China”. and the meeting’s metadata showed “a significant number of participants in mainland China.” The free discussion of the Tiananmen pro-democracy movement of 1989 is banned in China.
What are they saying: “The charges in the complaint revealed the Faustian affair that [People’s Republic of China] the demands of the government of US technology companies doing business within the PRC borders and the internal threat faced by those companies from their own PRC employees, ”said Seth DuCharme, a Brooklyn-based lawyer, in a statement.
- “Jin voluntarily committed crimes and tried to mislead others within the company, to help the PRC authorities censor and punish the basic political discourse of US users only for exercising their rights to free speech,” he said. continued DuCharme.
- “The fees announced today clearly show that employees working in the PRC for US technology companies make those companies – and their users – vulnerable to the malicious influence of the PRC government.”
Read Zoom’s full statement responding to accusations.