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Mozilla Encryption Privacy

Mozilla, EFF, 19,000 Citizens Urge Zoom To Reverse End-to-End Encryption Decision 44

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
Mozilla, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and more than 19,000 internet users today urged Zoom CEO Eric Yuan to reverse his decision to deny end-to-end encryption to users of its free service end-to-end encryption, saying it puts activists and other marginalized groups at risk. Earlier this month, Zoom announced it will offer end-to-end encryption, but only to those who pay. From a statement: The pressure to reverse the decision comes as racial justice activists are using tools like Zoom to organize protests. Without end-to-end encryption, information shared in their online meetings could be intercepted -- a concern that has been legitimized by both recent actions by law enforcement and a long-term history of discriminatory policing. Mozilla and EFF today are presenting an open letter to Yuan, co-signed by 19,000 people, maintaining that privacy and best-in-class security should be the default, not something that only the wealthy or businesses can afford.
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Mozilla, EFF, 19,000 Citizens Urge Zoom To Reverse End-to-End Encryption Decision More

Mozilla, EFF, 19,000 Citizens Urge Zoom To Reverse End-to-End Encryption Decision

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  • Comment (Score:3)

    by WallyL ( 4154209 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @11:58AM (#60189526)
    A service provider can provide whatever level of service they want to whomever they want, especially for free! For the paying customers, more features are available. This issue is not a reason I dislike Zoom...

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Zoom bending over for the Chinese government and lack of principles that implies. That's the reason to dislike Zoom.

    • Re:Comment (Score:4, Insightful)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot&worf,net> on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @02:09PM (#60190040)

      Given Zoom's recent behavior, I suggest Mozilla would best be recommending other platforms and ignoring Zoom altogether.

      Just drop them for other providers. Don't bother giving them time of day or any advertising other than blowing up their US company facade.

      • Given Mozilla's capability, they can easily publish a WebRTC based meeting plugin with end to end encryption. Since Webrtc can be done as peer-2-peer, less server resources, except for handshake. That can achieve many things that is good for society: - Mozilla is more trusted, so community buyin would be good - Small municipal govts will trust Mozilla rather than a CEO that can give in to China, or who knows potentially enabling something else?! - One more economic espionage vector reduced. - People in
  • You cannot be lecturing others about privacy while making deals with Google, the worst privacy abuser on the planet.
  • They offer vpns (and selling it as "encryption") to paying users as well. Also they fucked over Reddit on the url bar issue. People only put up with Mozilla's abuse because Google is an even bigger abuser.

  • Heading: 19k Citizens.
    Body: 19k "internet users".

    Citizens of what? What does "internet users" even mean?

    I'll tell you what it means to me, the 19k "Citizens" is one guy names Steve really good at scripting form submissions.

  • So.. don't use zoom (Score:3)

    by LordWabbit2 ( 2440804 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @01:11PM (#60189808)
    It's not rocket surgery, if you have stuffs to hide and zoom doesn't want to hide it then don't use zoom.
    Use something else, there are plenty alternatives that do offer end to end encryption.

  • Not only Zoom has no obligation to provide you with anything but even less so if you are using a service that cost them money, for free.

    If Mozilla is not happy, they can provide the service themselves, or pay Zoom or any other company for it. In fact there are pretty compelling arguments for it. Zoom is a for-profit company, they are here to make money, unlike Mozilla, which is a charity that accepts donations. Furthermore, Mozilla has the skills and a significant market share with Firefox. I'd rather have

  • Stick a VPN on the end.
    Problem solved.

    • It's really not that simple. Videoconferencing apps tend to use TCP for control and signalling and RTP for video/audio streaming which is done over UDP. Most VPN protocols make you choose between TCP or UDP and split tunnel the rest, some other protocols don't but they're not nearly efficient at all for end-to-end, especially when conference calls get to be multiple endpoints.

  • If the application is Chinese all data must be stored in china including private encryption keys, which the gov probably already have a copy. In any case, since Zoom is not P2P all data goes to the Zoom servers and can be intercepted there. Activists should not use Zoom at all.

  • Dear Mozilla foundation,

    Instead of complaining about Zoom's proprietary policies, instead of changing the URL bar for a nth-time, instead of wasting time on Pocket, could you please instead fix your Firefox browser so that Jitsi Meet, a FLOSS E2EE-encrypted video conference software, works reliably on it, and also implement the missing WebRTC parts?

    I know, it's harder to work than to do "slacktivism".

    Thanks,

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