On June, 12,2020 Reclaim The Net revealed that Zoom was tweaking its app to enable it to restrict the participation of users from targeted geographic areas of the world. Zoom’s rationale for censorship of certain users is to ‘comply with requests from local authorities’. As it turns out, that “local authority” is China. Zoom has its encryption keys stored in Chinese servers.
With this move, Zoom joins other Big Tech companies that follow the “request” of the Chinese government and censor users at the behest of that government.
The article also describes how Zoom monitors the metadata of Zoom users. Based on this metadata, especially the IP address, Zoom can terminate conversations involving participants from restricted countries. [It is not clear if the IP address is still visible despite the use of virtual private networks (VPNs).]
EDITOR’S NOTE: Earlier we wrote about “The Pandemic of Censorship” here. So Zoom has joined the party of censors. With a deficit in its moral fiber, eroded by obvious commercial interests, can Zoom users continue to trust a member of Big Brother? Time to look for an alternative video conferencing app. We are looking and we will let you know if we find one.
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