Zoom executive in China accused of disrupting Tiananmen monuments

The complaint, which was accompanied by an arrest warrant, accuses Xinjiang Jin of acting under the direction of Chinese police and intelligence agents to interrupt four Tiananmen commemorations earlier this year. Court documents identify Mr. Jin as an employee of a U.S.-based telecommunications company. According to people who know the subject, the company is Zoom.

Zoom said later Friday in a statement that he fully cooperated with U.S. authorities, conducted an internal review and fired the employee (without naming him) for violating company policies. ‘company. Other employees have been put on administrative leave, he said, while the investigation continues.

Prosecutors said Jin is not under arrest. Jin, who according to court documents, also says “Julien Jin,” did not respond to an email sent to a Zoom company address with that name. No other contact was found for him.

The interruption of several commemorative video conferences on the Tiananmen crackdown held on the Zoom platform was made public in June. Zoom’s accounts were blocked by two prominent Chinese dissidents living in exile and a Hong Kong politician.

At the time Zoom said he had done so to comply with a demand from the Chinese government because such commemorations are illegal in China. The company said it “fell short” in not limiting its compliance to avoid affecting users in Hong Kong and other places outside of China where such commemorations were allowed.

Friday’s denunciation identifies Mr. Jin as an essential instrument of this blockade.

Prosecutors said Mr. Jin was Zoom’s “technical security leader” and worked to close at least four video meetings on the platform commemorating the June 4, 1989 Chinese military assault on protesters in Beijing that kill at least hundreds. The commemorations were mostly organized and were attended by participants from the United States, according to the complaint.

Jin coordinated with Chinese government officials, including police and internal security agents, to identify participants in the meeting and disrupt meetings on U.S. servers, prosecutors said. He worked with other people to create fake email accounts to falsify evidence that meeting participants supported terrorism and distributed child pornography. He used this to convince Zoom executives to end the meetings and suspend the accounts of the meeting hosts, according to the complaint.

Chinese authorities used the information provided by Jin to detain at least one person who was scheduled to speak at a meeting, according to prosecutors.

Jin, 39, is charged with conspiracy to commit interstate harassment and illegal conspiracy to transfer a means of identification. He has up to ten years in prison.

Beyond Mr. Jin, U.S. officials said the case points to a stumbling block for U.S. Internet companies trying to operate in China.

“It really stands out what it means, when a lot of tech companies will say‘ we have to follow local laws, ’” said John Demers, head of the Justice Department’s national security division. “It simply came to our notice then [China] crushing political discourse around the world, ”he said.

U.S. titans on social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, are effectively banned in China, where the communist government examines all Internet traffic on content considered politically subversive and otherwise unpleasant.

Zoom, founded in 2011, became an almost global success during the pandemic as people flocked to its free service to keep in touch with family and friends.

The massive appeal has made content management on its platform a much bigger and unforeseen problem for the company that began to focus on serving corporate customers.

The Chinese government blocked the use of Zoom in China in September 2019 and Zoom executives worked to pave the way for a renewed permit to operate in the country, according to the complaint.

To do so, Zoom agreed to migrate the data storage of one million Chinese users from the United States to China, according to the document.

In his statement, Zoom said his CEO and company staff met with government authorities in 2019 on measures he could take to resolve the blockade. The plan, Zoom said, included having identifying information and storing data in the country for Chinese users to comply with regulations.

Zoom said the company did not take steps to develop technology to analyze the content of meetings held in China, report illegal activities and close meetings.

Yuan is a citizen of the United States who was born in China. Historically, a large proportion of Zoom engineers have been established in China. Navigating the two countries has proven to be a challenge.

In April, security investigators discovered that under certain circumstances the company stored encryption keys (long strings of numbers and characters that can be used to access encrypted communications) on servers based in China. The company said this was a mistake and took steps to ensure it did not happen again.

The company is “dedicated to the free and open exchange of ideas” and was working to “act aggressively to anticipate and combat evolving data security challenges,” the Zoom statement said.

—Corinne Ramey contributed to this article.

Write to Aruna Viswanatha to [email protected] and Aaron Tilley to [email protected]