Technology

Zoom is used by a lot of institutions for official, sometimes sensitive work (ex. Healthcare, education, etc.)

How are those plans affected by this change?

This is not good. Thanks for highlighting this. I flagged this for my company’s enterprise risk management committee to consider and act upon.

I had to get security clearance for my job. I hope this finally convinces them to not use zoom anymore. Otherwise the security clearance thing is a joke.

For people who physically cannot go places or access important services (like healthcare, or their jobs) in person, this is a double violation, because it’s unavoidable. Increasingly, the only spaces available to us, our only avenues for accessing services or community, are becoming heavily surveilled in a way that in-person places are not (though in some places physical spaces are catching up). Everyone deserves well-enforced privacy laws and all these corporations should be regulated , but for people who are disabled or housbound or otherwise forced to rely on digital services that we know we can’t trust, it’s extra bad. Between this and the heavy push to sign up for digital medial record apps, I do not feel great about the future.

Went to look at the TOS. The service generated data (10.2) isn't actually the bad part. However, 10.4 is.

10.4 Customer License Grant. You agree to grant and hereby grant Zoom a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license and all other rights required or necessary to redistribute, publish, import, access, use, store, transmit, review, disclose, preserve, extract, modify, reproduce, share, use, display, copy, distribute, translate, transcribe, create derivative works, and process Customer Content and to perform all acts with respect to the Customer Content: (i) as may be necessary for Zoom to provide the Services to you, including to support the Services; (ii) for the purpose of product and service development, marketing, analytics, quality assurance, machine learning, artificial intelligence, training, testing, improvement of the Services, Software, or Zoom’s other products, services, and software, or any combination thereof; and (iii) for any other purpose relating to any use or other act permitted in accordance with Section 10.3. If you have any Proprietary Rights in or to Service Generated Data or Aggregated Anonymous Data, you hereby grant Zoom a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license and all other rights required or necessary to enable Zoom to exercise its rights pertaining to Service Generated Data and Aggregated Anonymous Data, as the case may be, in accordance with this Agreement.

Full Text
https://explore.zoom.us/en/terms/

A free, libre, opensource, and privacy focused alternative to Zoom is Jitsi, which can be used without an account.

If you want even more privacy, you could host your own video conferencing service. Some options are below.

• Jitsi
• Jami
• BigBlueButton

Can’t wait for the impending data breach and all of the sensitive AI training conversation data is leaked

Ahh yes they're going to harvest the infinite wisdom from our weekly conference calls. "Bob you're on mute". "Can you hear me now?" I hear echoes " " Bill is that a bong on your desk?"

Entire industries are bound by the terms of a single company. Time for some anti-trust enforcement.

Some privacy protection laws would also be good.

This sucks. A lot of people like me only use zoom because classes/webinars/meetings/interviews are hosted there and we can't really complain about something we have to attend for our own good, especially if everyone else is doing it. It sucks so bad, I hate how it's like this. I wish people in my country would care enough to find this AI shit a red flag, but sadly I don't think so.

User-generated data like recordings of all video and audio from meetings? Is that legal? And wouldn’t that be a lot of video to store?

So I guess Zoom will be banned in Europe?

Does that imply Zoom is not end to end encrypted?

Interesting. I wonder if anyone has a document comparison between the two versions.

Apparently they've gone back on this now: https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/08/zoom_ai_legalese_update/

Definition of Customer Content, from the terms:

10.1 Customer Content. You or your End Users may provide, upload, or originate data, content, files, documents, or other materials (collectively, “Customer Input”) in accessing or using the Services or Software, and Zoom may provide, create, or make available to you, in its sole discretion or as part of the Services, certain derivatives, transcripts, analytics, outputs, visual displays, or data sets resulting from the Customer Input (together with Customer Input, “Customer Content”); provided, however, that no Customer Content provided, created, or made available by Zoom results in any conveyance, assignment, or other transfer of Zoom’s Proprietary Rights contained or embodied in the Services, Software, or other technology used to provide, create, or make available any Customer Content in any way and Zoom retains all Proprietary Rights therein. You further acknowledge that any Customer Content provided, created, or made available to you by Zoom is for your or your End Users’ use solely in connection with use of the Services, and that you are solely responsible for Customer Content.

Oh no. I'm gonna have to switch to something else from the plethora of video call options for my yearly Christmas call with family. The horroooorrrrre