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For Immediate Release
April, 03 2020, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Email:,press@fightforthefuture.org
New Campaign Calls for Zoom to (Actually) Implement End to End Encryption to Keep People Safe
Digital rights group
WASHINGTON
Digital rights group Fight for the Future, known for organizing massive online protests for net neutrality and Internet privacy, has launched a new campaign calling for video conferencing service Zoom to implement default end-to-end encryption on all video, audio, and chat content.
See the campaign here.
Zoom has come under fire in recent weeks for numerous privacy and security issues, laid bare by the platform's explosion in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, as people rely on video conferencing for everything from business meetings to school to therapy.
The company responded to criticism this week by updating its privacy policy and implementing a number of important changes that Fight for the Future and other advocates had previously called for, including: committing to issue a transparency report, fixing its malware-like install process, and eliminating the creepy "attention tracking" feature that enabled companies to monitor employees in invasive ways.
It's great that Zoom is starting to clean up its act. But the company has yet to commit to the single most important thing it could do to keep people safe right now: implementing default end-to-end encryption on all its video conference calls. Zoom misleadingly claimed for years that it was using end-to-end encryption. In fact, Fight for the Future stopped using the app in 2017 when we looked into it and discovered that this wasn't true. Zoom has now admitted as much, and apologized for the "confusion." Without end-to-end encryption, Zoom meetings will never truly be safe. And now that the service has exploded in popularity, law enforcement agencies, hackers, and harassers will be eager to exploit any vulnerability they can find.
"We don't need Zoom's apologies. We need them to actually implement the type of security measures needed to keep people safe," said Evan Greer (she/her), Deputy Director of Fight for the Future, "They've said that they are pivoting to focus on user privacy and security, and I want to believe them. It's time for them to take their previously misleading claims and make them true. Zoom implementing end-to-end encryption by default is perhaps the single biggest thing that any company could do right now to protect people's online safety during the COVID-19 crisis. I hope the engineers who work there realize the power that they have and the importance of the decisions they make over the next several weeks. Strong encryption saves lives. It's needed now more than ever. Zoom has a chance to lead the way. I hope, for the sake of the children using this for school, the therapists using this to treat patients, the health officials using this to share confidential information, that they do the right thing."
Fight for the Future is a group of artists, engineers, activists, and technologists who have been behind the largest online protests in human history, channeling Internet outrage into political power to win public interest victories previously thought to be impossible. We fight for a future where technology liberates -- not oppresses -- us.
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The country's largest Muslim civil rights group on Thursday called for added protections for U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar after Florida state Sen. Randy Fine issued an apparent threat against the two Muslim lawmakers.
Fine, who has the endorsement of President-elect Donald Trump in his candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives, called himself the "Hebrew Hammer" in a post on X on Tuesday and suggested Reps. Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Omar (D-Minn.) should leave office for their own safety.
"Bombs away," he added.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has spoken out previously about anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim statements by Fine (R-19), called the lawmaker an "unhinged anti-Muslim bigot."
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Despite rainy conditions, the United American Indians of New England held its 55th annual National Day of Mourning at Cole's Hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Kisha James, who is an enrolled member of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) and also Oglala Lakota, shared how her grandfather founded the event in 1970 and pledged to continue to "tear down the Thanksgiving mythology."
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arrested 21 pro-Palestinian protesters who blocked the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade route.
According toABC 7:
For the second year in a row, the group ran in front of the Ronald McDonald float to briefly stop the parade.
This year, they jumped the barricades at West 55th Street just after 9:30 am.
Many sat on the ground, locking arms and chanting "Free, free Palestine!"
Others held a banner behind them, reading "Don't celebrate genocide! Arms embargo now."
Video footage shared on social media shows members of the New York Police Department grabbing protesters and their banner, and throwing at least one person face-first into the road.
Multiple Indigenous groups circulated messages about Thanksgiving on social media Thursday.
NDN Collective said that "as Indigenous peoples, we reject colonial holidays rooted in the genocidal erasure of our existence. We demand #LANDBACK to reclaim sovereignty, repair ties with Mother Earth, and protect Indigenous ways of life—honoring them for generations to come."
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highlighted that "'Thanksgiving' is a white-washed holiday designed to conceal its true origins of violence, genocide, land theft, and forced assimilation."
"We must re-evaluate what we've been taught about the history of this land and recognize that genocide, extraction, and exploitation of our lands and communities continue today," the group argued.
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"Our history books mark 'the first Thanksgiving' in 1621 when at least 90 Wampanoag men, led by Massasoit, walked in on a Puritan harvest feast," Beyal detailed. "Approximately 150 years later, all 13 colonies celebrated a day of solemn Thanksgiving to celebrate the win of the Battle of Saratoga in December of 1777. [U.S. President] George Washington called for a day of thanksgiving and prayer in 1789 to give gratitude for the end of the Revolutionary War."
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Israel imposed a last-minute curfew on Wednesday night, prohibiting Lebanese citizens from crossing into the south overnight.
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