- General
- December 19, 2020
- 4 minutes read
Zoom Under Probe From US Regulators
The video-conferencing software company Zoom is under investigation by US regulators and has received subpoenas from the Department of Justice’s U.S.…
The video-conferencing software company Zoom is under investigation by US regulators and has received subpoenas from the Department of Justice’s U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York (EDNY), U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California (NDCA), and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the company has revealed.
The investigations are being conducted on a mix of issues, with US Attorneys in New York focused on Zoom’s interactions with foreign governments and foreign political parties, most notably the Chinese government, while the SEC and US Attorneys in California are more focused on security and privacy matters.
Zoom says it’s cooperating with the investigations and has been conducting its own concurrent internal investigations as well. Notably, it comes just as a former Zoom employee in China was indicted by the US Justice Department for disrupting video meetings commemorating the infamous 1989 Tiananmen Square protests that took place in China.
The former employee of concern was a Zoom executive who was appointed to serve as the company’s government contact in China, a job that included responding to the country’s request for account terminations, meeting terminations, and user data.
Zoom says it terminated the employee for violating its policies and after he took actions resulting in the termination of several meetings in remembrance of Tiananmen Square and meetings involving religious and political activities, some of which were hosted by users based out of China.
Even after termination, the ex-employee’s action has brought about an investigation from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, which has requested information regarding the actions Zoom took after it found out the employee’s doings and additional information pertaining to the storage of and access to user data as well as the development and implementation of Zoom’s privacy policies.
Having seen explosive growth this year as a Covid-19 pandemic swept through and largely boosted the demand and need for video meetings, Zoom has seen its share of issues which include security mishaps and previous probes from regulators regarding those mishaps. The fresh set of investigations of US regulators is now adding to that, coming at the tail end of this year.
