Zoom’s CEO says he won’t encrypt free calls so Zoom can work more with law enforcement:

“Free users for sure we don’t want to give that because we also want to work together with FBI, with local law enforcement in case some people use Zoom for a bad purpose,” Yuan said.

Yeah, totally the only reason they want to cut costs.

Doesn't prevent a criminal gang from signing up for a premium account

I once used a free trial of skype to phone service to call up and rag out a scammer. It was a very satisfying experience. I had been scammed about a year previously. Still makes me angry thinking about it. Not sure that is what they are trying to crack down on though.

I mean, the reasoning is bollocks, but in fairness, why would he? Most people don't give a hoot. If it's a feature only a small percentage care about, there's a strong business case for making it premium.

I can see it to a certain extent since apparently Zoom like services have been used for child pornography, especially in today's climate, but that seems like suck an edge case.

@projektaquarius Nah... Running private chat server with e2e encryption and no persistent chat history takes just minutes (probably no more than one simple "docker run" command), and it can be used via TOR to further obscure participants' identities. Pretty sure anyone doing something seriously illegal would be smart enough to use that instead of closed-source commercial solutions.

@hitko you'd be surprised. I read on NPR that people are using a lot of these commercial solutions for such things. Not saying they don't also do what you're saying, but there are probably horrible people who are also luddites.

@projektaquarius nice autocorrect there

@hitko luckily terrorists are generally fucking retarded. Security measures at airports and such would be completely useless against someone with dedication and a bit of intelligence.

@eval https://forbes.com/sites/...

@eval What you see at the airport is about 1% of the actual measures in place. The part you see is security theater designed to make the passengers feel better. Also, terrorists are trained in terrorist schools/camps. Assuming they are stupid is a mistake. They are a dedicated, trained, and self righteous group of people. They are very patient as well. They also have nothing to lose.

@projektaquarius lol @ npr

@Root why is that?

@projektaquarius Retractions, spin, overall meh quality; not a fan. I don’t take them at their word anymore.

@Root I dunno I feel like they're still more reliable at general news reporting. At least their written stuff. I don't listen or watch the news anymore.