Former Zoom employee accused of censoring Tiananmen Square video meetings on behalf of Chinese government

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Xinjiang’s “Julian” Jin and his co-conspirators have reportedly ended at least four video meetings commemorating the thirty-first anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in June. Most of the meetings were organized and attended by American participants, some of whom were dissidents who had participated in and survived the protests of 1989, according to court documents.

Zoom is not named in the complaint, but sources familiar with the investigation identified the company as Zoom. The company confirmed that Jin was a former employee based in China.

“We learned during our investigation that the former China-based employee charged today violated Zoom policies by attempting, among other things, to bypass certain internal access controls,” Zoom said in a statement. “We also learned that this former employee took actions that resulted in the termination of several meetings and accounts, and shared or directed the sharing of a limited amount of individual user data with Chinese authorities.”

Zoom said he “fired” the employee for violating company policies and “placed other employees on administrative leave pending completion of our investigation.”

Jin, 39, is charged with conspiracy to commit interstate harassment and unlawful conspiracy to transfer means of identification, according to a complaint filed with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York .

Jin has proactively monitored video conferences covering political and religious topics unacceptable to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese government since January 2019, the complaint says.

He also used fake IDs and filed bogus complaints against platform users to justify termination of meetings and user accounts, according to the complaint.

Jin allegedly fabricated reports to company superiors that users who spoke against the Chinese government supported terrorist organizations, incited violence and distributed child pornography, the complaint said.

The Chinese government used Jin’s information to fight back and intimidate users and their family members who lived in the country, according to the complaint.

“Jin willfully committed crimes and sought to mislead others within the company, to help the PRC authorities censor and punish the main political speeches of American users simply for exercising their rights to freedom of speech. The charges announced today make it clear that employees working in the PRC for US tech companies make these companies – and their users – vulnerable to malignant influence from the PRC government, ”Acting US Prosecutor Seth DuCharme said in A press release.

Jin is known to be in Zhejiang Province of China and is not being held in the United States according to the United States Attorney’s Office.

A federal arrest warrant was issued for Jin on November 19, 2020.

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