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NEW YORK: US prosecutors on Friday (December 18) accused a China-based Zoom executive of being involved in a plan to disrupt video conferences marking the 31st anniversary of China’s Tiananmen Square crackdown.
Xinjiang Jin, the company’s main liaison with Chinese intelligence and police services, conspired since January 2019 to use his company’s systems to censor speech at the direction of the Chinese government, the US Department of Justice said. .
Prosecutors said Jin helped finish at least four meetings in May and June, including some involving dissidents who survived the 1989 protests, and fabricated violations of Zoom’s terms of service to justify his actions to his superiors.
They also said that Jin’s accomplices created fake email accounts and Zoom accounts, including in the name of dissidents, to make it appear that meeting participants supported terrorism, violence or the distribution of child pornography.
Zoom was not named in court documents filed in federal court in Brooklyn, but his identity was confirmed by a person close to the matter. Newspapers say Jin’s employer is based in San Jose, California, which is where Zoom is based.
A Zoom spokesperson said the company is reviewing the complaint. Jin is not in United States custody and an attorney could not be immediately identified for him.
“Jin willingly committed crimes and tried to mislead others in the company, to help the (Chinese) authorities censor and punish the fundamental political speech of American users simply for exercising their rights to free expression,” said the federal prosecutor Acting Seth DuCharme in Brooklyn in a statement. statement.
