> Jin was responsible for "proactively monitoring" Zoom's platform for what Beijing considers to be "illegal” meetings[.]
This concerns me. There's only so many ways to monitor a platform, and most of the ones I can think of that could be considered "proactive" involve things like watching other peoples meetings - which doesn't seem unlikely given that this event occurred in China.
I'm confused exactly what he is being charged with? Is it a crime for Zoom to shut down meetings zoom doesn't like? Especially ones that are illegal in the jurisdiction of the participants? I don't support censorship, I'm just surprised that that is a crime under US law...
Also, while I support action on China, its sort of ironic for them to be trying to apply US law in China to punish Chinese law being applied to people in the US.
>conspiracy to commit interstate harassment and unlawful conspiracy to transfer a means of identification
>The meetings were conducted using a videoconferencing program provided by Company-1, and were organized and hosted by U.S-based individuals, including individuals residing in the Eastern District of New York.
Thanks. If the victims were in the US, that makes more sense. Though it still leaves a question mark over what happens when other countries do the same thing...
"Jin’s co-conspirators created fake email accounts and Company-1 accounts in the names of others, including PRC political dissidents, to fabricate evidence that the hosts of and participants in the meetings to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre were supporting terrorist organizations, inciting violence or distributing child pornography."
My opinion is that you've misinterpreted and misstated. The way you've framed it, the question does not use the word "jurisdiction" in a consistent manner with its definition or practice and does not address operative elements of the international legal system. The framing of the question also is also not on topic: the question about the legal basis of the challenge (all the way at the top of the thread) is a general one, and your framing here hyperfocuses on non-operative concepts ("juristiction") and a single country ("China"). Not only have you framed the wrong question in my opinion, but the question is rhetorical, and then you also bother to provide an answer.
In summary I'd say your comment is not relevant to discussion about legal basis of the challenge. It contributes to a different topic not being discussed: "What is your personal feeling about China?" to which you've contributed a thinly veiled "Boo China."
How can what I said be interpreted as a “Boo China”? You could try to apply local laws in any superpower and be ignored. Just because I didn’t needlessly maximize generalization at the cost of context doesn’t mean I’m singling out countries.
> Also, while I support action on China, its sort of ironic for them to be trying to apply US law in China to punish Chinese law being applied to people in the US.
It wasn't them applying US law in China. It was US law in the US.
> its sort of ironic for them to be trying to apply US law in China to punish Chinese law being applied to people in the US.
There's no irony.
This is some general information for HN readers to have some background context to unpack comments like the parent.
1) The entire Chinese legal system is beholden to the CCP, so you cannot compare Chinese and US legal systems or courts.
2) It's important to understand about the non-kinetic warfare doctrines of the CCP.
One of them is "lawfare" (law warfare), which is using a target country's laws against themselves. This is very effective against an open society like the US.
An example is that the CCP has funded US shell organizations to block the banning of Chinese apps in the US, in US courts.
Also, WeChat is used as a means for the CCP in mainland China to exercise control over diaspora, so it really needs to be banned outside China. One of the abuses was using WeChat to have American Chinese hoard PPE supplies this spring and mail them to China.
So when an open society tries to defend itself, you end up with what appears to be an "ironic" situation, but was actually choreographed by the CCP.
Not a surprise. The entire engineering team is in China. This is a disaster waiting to happen. China knows how to work the American system better than Americans.
If you're still asking this you must have missed all the previous scandals around zoom :)
Personally I particularly hated the backdoor they installed on my Mac and only removed after significant media pressure - their initial response was "works as designed". But there were so many others.
Many (ethnic) Chinese people take Western first names and go by them in the West and/or non-Chinese language environments, so yes, this is quite common. For example, Lee Kuan Yew was Harry Lee to many British acquaintances. (Note that the surname is first here—people vary in which order they put the names of Chinese people—and there are two non-family names, which is common for Chinese in Taiwan, SG, etc., but not in the Mainland.)
> Jin willingly committed crimes, and sought to mislead others at the company, to help PRC authorities censor and punish U.S. users’ core political speech merely for exercising their rights to free expression,"
Freedom of speech on a private platform? How is that even enforceable?
I thought only government could not restrict speech. But private entities did not have to promote speech and had say in which speech they promoted and which they didn’t.
He's not charged with breaking freedom of speech, he's being charged with various felonies relating to siphoning off identifying information for use by the Chinese government.
This concerns me. There's only so many ways to monitor a platform, and most of the ones I can think of that could be considered "proactive" involve things like watching other peoples meetings - which doesn't seem unlikely given that this event occurred in China.