Zoom reaches agreement with NY AG over security concerns; Zoom agrees to maintain security protocols, including protections for students, admits no wrongdoing
- Zoom reached an agreement with the New York Attorney General Letitia James' office Thursday, closing the state's inquiry …
The agreement matters because it sets the terms of Zoom's rehabilitation with public-sector buyers — no admission of wrongdoing, but binding commitments to maintain protocols including student protections. It also precedes federal scrutiny: months later Zoom would sign a similar proposed FTC settlement over encryption claims.
First-order effects
Zoom keeps New York as a market without litigation, trading a commitment to maintain security protocols — explicitly including protections for students — for closure of the state inquiry.
Letitia James' office extracts enforceable security commitments from a company at peak pandemic scale without needing a lawsuit, establishing a template other state AGs can copy.
Second-order effects
Institutional customers regain confidence on the same negotiated-fix model that just reopened New York City schools to Zoom, making bespoke security concessions the price of winning back education and government accounts.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds — state inquiry, negotiated commitments, no admission of wrongdoing, followed by the FTC deal and eventually an $85M class-action settlement — security lapses at consumer-scale platforms get resolved through layered settlements rather than bans, with each regulator free-riding on the last one's concessions.
The trend: Hypergrowth video platforms are being pulled into a cascade of state and federal security settlements, where negotiated protocol commitments — not product bans — become the standard mechanism for regulating consumer software at scale.
Fmr White House official HR McMaster is now on the board of Zoom Zoom has major operations based in China and is suspected of being a vehicle for CCP surveillance https://twitter.com/...
I am very happy that @zoom_us has bought @KeybaseIO and announced a plan to offer an end-to-end encrypted mode that works with Zoom's video quality and scale. Details from @ericsyuan: https://blog.zoom.us/...
As a personal @KeybaseIO user and an enterprise corporate @zoom_us user, my feelings are somewhat analogous when @TripIt and @SAPConcur combined. I'm happy for the @KeybaseIO team. Accretive potential is clear. Execution is what matters now. https://www.techmeme.com/...
Very smart move to bulk up security for @zoom_us We live in an era where anyone who trusts software, data, hardware or a server farm based in China is a damn fool https://www.cnbc.com/...
If Keybase maintains its commitment to open-source, this would be groundbreaking🤩 for those in China, giving us a cross-platform, end-to-end-encrypted comms channel, that also doesn't require a state-telecoms mobile phone registration as @signalapp does https://keybase.io/...
keybase, the service we've been trusting to verify public keys, has been bought by zoom, a company that spent the last 2 months tanking its security reputation. is this good https://keybase.io/...
Terrible terrible news: https://keybase.io/... Closing my account at keybase now. Looking for a replacement. Zoom is NOT a trusted repository. I am very disheartened. Any suggestions for a self-hosted replacement for keybase folks?
Zoom buying Keybase is a really interesting move. They could actually deny every nation control over the video conferencing terrain. It could also open up interesting features with zoom, like in band file sharing.
That was fast. Very positive development for the privacy of @zoom_us users, which these days is almost every professional. Hope this means they will also be stepping into the policy debate over encryption. (Like they'll have a choice, so I hope they have a strategy there too!) ht…
Zoom has acquired Keybase. By the sounds of its blog post, Keybase seems uncertain about its role. From the blog: “There are no specific plans for the Keybase app yet. Ultimately Keybase's future is in Zoom's hands, and we'll see where that takes us.” https://techcrunch.com/...