A now-former Zoom director based in China has been accused by the Justice Department of disrupting video conferences commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Zoom confirmed Friday.
Why it matters: This case could shake the foundations of US technical cooperation with China. Investigators and US government officials have warned of the possibility that the Chinese government may require China-based employees to hand over data from private companies to Beijing. This charge indicates that those fears are in fact reality.
Details: Xinjiang Jin, also known as Julien Jin, served as Zoom’s “primary liaison” with China’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies, regularly responding to Beijing requests “for information and to end video meetings” hosted on the company’s video platform, said the complaint. .
- Jin is said to have provided the Chinese government with information, including IP addresses, names and email addresses of users outside of China.
- The complaint also alleges that Jin was responsible for “proactively monitoring” Zoom’s platform for what Beijing sees as “illegal” gatherings that “discuss political and religious topics unacceptable to the Chinese Communist Party”.
Between the lines: The charge does not reveal the name of the company, but Zoom confirmed in a blog post that it “cooperated fully with the Justice Department” and started its 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 they held an event to commemorate the massacre.
- Zoom, who has been critically scrutinized about security concerns and its ties to China as its growth accelerated dramatically during the pandemic, acknowledged after Axios’ report that it had received a request from the Chinese government.
- The company claimed it took action only because the Chinese government had informed the company that “this activity is illegal in China”. and that meeting metadata revealed “a significant number of participants in mainland China”. Free discussion of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement is prohibited in China.
What they say: The allegations in the complaint expose the Faustian bargain that the [People’s Republic of China] demands of the government of US technology companies doing business within the borders of the People’s Republic of China, and the insider threat those companies face from their own employees in the PRC, ”said US acting attorney in Brooklyn Seth DuCharme in a statement.
- “Jin voluntarily committed crimes and attempted to deceive others at the company to assist the PRC authorities in censoring and sanctioning key political speeches made by US users just for exercising their right to free speech,” continued DuCharme.
- “The charges announced today make it clear that workers in the PRC working for US technology companies are leaving those companies – and their users – vulnerable to the malicious influence of the government of the PRC.”
Read Zoom’s full statement respond to the allegations.