WhatsApp's New Policy Has...

Sat Jan 9 19:08:40 UTC 2021

On Fri, Jan 08, 2021 at 01:31:56PM -0600, Dave Phelps wrote:
> Keybase was purchased by Zoom (
> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/07/zoom-buys-keybase-in-first-deal-as-part-of-plan-to-fix-security.html).
> >From what I've gathered, Zoom is too tight with, owned by, or run by China,
> so I believe there was a similar mass exodus from Keybase for lack of trust.

I've been maintaining a page of relevant links concerning Zoom since
late winter 2020.  It's here:

	Zoom
	http://www.firemountain.net/zoom.html

I need to add a link there concerning the complaint filed in the EDNY,
USA v. Xinjiang Jin (JIN).  As pointed out by File411, there are repeated
references in that complaint to "under 1 minute", as in:

	Employee-1 explained that "The current requirement" -- apparently
	referring to Company-1's internal restrictions -- "is that domestic
	engineers cannot access the data of us clusters" -- indicating
	that PRC-based software engineers were not permitted to access user
	data stored on U.S.-based servers.  JIN responded "Net Security's
	requirement is that [the employer] must have the authority to
	directly handle it, and it must be handled within one minute.
	For example, including U.S. users, if the issue of June 4th is
	being discussed in a meeting, it must be handled within one minute
	of [the meeting being reported], otherwise will be [rate] as
	security non-compliant."

("June 4th" refers to Tiananmen Square - June 4, 1989.)

It's unclear yet exactly what this means/implies, but my working assumption
for the moment is that everything passing through Zoom is being made
available in real or close-to-real time to the PRC.

Also in the complaint:

	JIN wrote in an electronic messages to other individuals who are
	Company-1 employees stating that, even if other U.S. social media
	and search companies had no business in the PRC, they still terminated
	accounts and posted at the request of the "CN zf".  Based on open
	source information and my training and experience, the "CN" in "CN zf"
	refers to "China" (the PRC) and "zf" is shorthand for zhengfu,
	a Chinese word for government.

---rsk