Zoom, Still Shitting the Bed

Nico Grant, reporting for Bloomberg* on Zoom’s growth and CEO Eric Yuan’s plans for truly private encryption:

Corporate clients will get access to Zoom’s end-to-end encryption service now being developed, but Yuan said free users won’t enjoy that level of privacy, which makes it impossible for third parties to decipher communications.

“Free users for sure we don’t want to give that because we also want to work together with FBI, with local law enforcement in case some people use Zoom for a bad purpose,” Yuan said on the call.

It should go without saying that it’s bullshit that communication platforms should eschew end-to-end encryption to make snooping easier for law enforcement. So Zoom is already on the wrong side here. Also, not really a great week to come out on the side of either local or federal law enforcement. Read the room.

But it is genuinely nourishing to my soul to consider the premise that corporate clients are wholly separate from the “some people” who might “use Zoom for a bad purpose”. I mean that is truly delicious. Thank you, Eric Yuan, for providing a dose of levity in a dark week.

* There’s a lot going on but I haven’t forgotten about the colossal “Big Hack” fuck-up that continues to mar Bloomberg’s institutional journalistic integrity.

★ Saturday, 6 June 2020