Category Archives: DOJ, DC and inside the Beltway

Have You Met the Freedom Force?

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Several newly-elected Republican House members, including New York’s Nicole Malliotakis, have banned together to create a group they’ve dubbed the “Freedom Force” — to oppose “The Squad” of progressive Democratic congresswomen.“This group will give a contrast to the hard left,” Utah Rep.-elect and former NFL player Burgess Owens. Owens pledged that the new GOP band, made up of women and people of color, will work to protect small business-owners.At least eight incoming Republican lawmakers are in the group, including Reps.-elect Malliotakis; Michelle Steel of California; Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma; Victoria Spartz of Indiana; and Carlos Gimenez, Maria Elvira Salazar and Byron Donalds of Florida.

New 'Freedom Force' Aims To Bring Back Conservative Values Into Congress, Face-Off Against 'Squad' : US : Christianity Daily  Burgess Owens

“We have different cultures, backgrounds, colors. But what we have in common is that we have a love for our country… and we’re going to make sure we stay free,” Owens said of the coalition.

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, Malliotakis mentioned “a natural alliance” was occurring between members of the freshman class.

“I think what you’re going to see is a group of individuals who are going to serve as a counterbalance to the values of the socialist squad,” Malliotakis said.

“We don’t believe we should be dismantling the economy. We don’t believe we should be destroying free market principles. We don’t believe in Green New Deal. We don’t believe in packing the courts.” More here.

***GOP 'Freedom Force' Vows to Fight Socialism, Counter 'The Squad' in House

In part from WSJ: A quarter-century apart in age, Nicole Malliotakis and Michelle Steel are classmates. They’re both freshmen, Republicans who’ve won election to the House of Representatives for the first time. Each ousted an incumbent Democrat in a resolutely blue state—New York and California, respectively—where Joe Biden romped home in November. And each woman has a scathing view of the politics of the other’s state as well as of her own. They’re ready to scorn Govs. Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom. As for Mayor Bill de Blasio, Ms. Malliotakis, a state assemblywoman from New York City, practically combusts at the mention of his name.

“I think our leaderships are competing with each other to be the most radical. They keep getting bad ideas from each other,” says Ms. Malliotakis, 40, who will represent New York’s 11th Congressional District, comprised of the borough of Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn.

“The leadership is trying to make these states into Third World countries,” Ms. Steel, 65, responds. She is a member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, a local legislative body, and representative-elect from California’s 48th District, a beachy slice of the county. In Washington for a freshman orientation, including a lottery for office space, the two talk to me by Zoom from their hotel rooms near the Capitol.

Both are robust proponents of low taxes and limited government. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” Ms. Malliotakis says: “The government should provide an environment for that—and then get out of the way.” Ms. Steel—who was born in South Korea and came to the U.S. at 19—confesses to drawing her earliest political beliefs from her mother’s experience as a clothing-store owner in Los Angeles. “I saw that my mom was harassed—really harassed—by a tax agency, the State Board of Equalization,” she says. “And you know what? I decided that the Republican Party’s ideology is much better for small-business owners. They need less regulation and smaller taxes.” Her first foray into elective politics was a successful run for the Board of Equalization in 2007.

Both say the Democratic Party made a special effort to hobble Republican candidates who were women or minorities. “Speaking with some of the other new members of the House,” Ms. Malliotakis says, “I think Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats really, really went after us. They didn’t want the Republicans to have representation.” They wanted, she says, “to monopolize women and minorities.” Ms. Steel recounts that her opponent insinuated—“because I have an accent”—that she was “a communist agent related to China.” Suppressing a giggle, she notes that her parents fled communist North Korea to the south during the Korean War. “I don’t even speak Chinese,” she adds. “I speak Japanese and Korean.”

Ms. Malliotakis’s mother also fled communism—Cuba in 1959, when she was 16. After a brief spell in Spain, she came to the U.S., where she met and married a man who ran a Greek restaurant in Manhattan. This imprint of her mother’s flight is part of the reason she is a “passionate opponent” of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a fellow outer-borough New Yorker and self-described socialist. In opposition to “the Squad”—the nom de guerre of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s far-left cohort—Ms. Malliotakis started her own small group of congressional freshmen, the “Freedom Force.”

‘There’s four of us,” she says, “who on the first day bonded very quickly because we shared very similar circumstances.” She names the others: Carlos Gimenez, Cuban-born, and Maria Salazar, the daughter of Cuban-refugee parents, both from Florida; and Victoria Spartz from Indiana, born in Ukraine, who came to the U.S. at 22. “I guess you could say,” Ms. Malliotakis says, “that we’re the founding members.” But she’s certain that “others within the freshman class who are supportive of freedoms and liberties” will join them.

Ms. Steel adds promptly that she’s “going to work with them.” The Squad, Ms. Steel says, “including AOC, are totally out of line. I want to conserve what we have in this country for future generations. I have a grandson who is 15 months old.”

Ms. Malliotakis concurs. “For me, socialism is personal. We’re going to fight back vehemently when we see policies being proposed that will fundamentally change our nation.” She adds that Mrs. Pelosi faces a choice: “Is she going to work with us in a bipartisan way, to accomplish things? Or will she empower the socialist Squad and kowtow to them?”

 

$900Billion is an Outrage, Voters, Where are you?

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This almost 6000 page bill is an outrage and exactly where is every American on this? Members of Congress got less that 5 hours to read the bill and staffers as well as media scoured it for the ridiculous highlights as noted below.

 

It is not a complete list but here is a sampling.

Congress seals agreement on $900 billion COVID relief bill | KOKH

Beyond the:

We have: coronavirus relief bill released Monday includes $250 million in investment aid for the Palestinians and for encouraging Israeli-Palestinian dialogue in a provision titled the “Nita M. Lowey Middle East Partnership for Peace Act of 2020.”The act would create the “People-to-People Partnership for Peace Fund,” run by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to “provide funding for projects to help build the foundation for peaceful co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians and for a sustainable two-state solution.”

$169,739,000 to Vietnam, including $19 million to remediate dioxins (page 1476).
Unspecified funds to “continue support for not-for-profit institutions of higher education in Kabul, Afghanistan that are accessible to both women and men in a coeducational environment” (page 1477).
$198,323,000 to Bangladesh, including $23.5 million to support Burmese refugees and $23.3 million for “democracy programs” (page 1485).
$130,265,000 to Nepal for “development and democracy programs” (page 1485).
Pakistan: $15 million for “democracy programs” and $10 million for “gender programs” (page 1486).
Sri Lanka: Up to $15 million “for the refurbishing of a high endurance cutter,” which is a type of patrol boat (page 1489).
$505,925,000 to Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama to “address key factors that contribute to the migration of unaccompanied, undocumented minors to the United States” (pages 1490-1491).
$461,375,000 to Colombia for programs related to counternarcotics and human rights (pages 1494-1496).
$74.8 million to the “Caribbean Basin Security Initiative” (page 1498).
$33 million “for democracy programs for Venezuela” (page 1498).
Unspecified amount to Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Curacao, and Trinidad and Tobago “for assistance for communities in countries supporting or otherwise impacted by refugees from Venezuela” (page 1499).
$132,025,000 “for assistance for Georgia” (page 1499).
$453 million “for assistance for Ukraine” (page 1500). source

Spending bill: Massive omnibus would touch many lives source

Unemployment insurance ($120 billion). Revives supplemental federal pandemic unemployment benefits but at $300 per week — through March 14 — instead of the $600 per week benefit that expired in July. Extends special pandemic benefits for “gig” workers and extends the maximum period for state-paid jobless benefits to 50 weeks.

Direct payments ($166 billion). Provides $600 direct payments to individuals making up to $75,000 per year and couples making $150,000 per year — with payments phased out for higher incomes —- with $600 additional payments per dependent child.

Paycheck Protection Program ($284 billion). Revives the Paycheck Protection Program, which provides forgivable loans to qualified businesses. Especially hard-hit businesses that received PPP grants would be eligible for a second round. Ensures that PPP subsidies are not taxed.

 

Vaccines, testing, health providers ($69 billion). Delivers more than $30 billion for procurement of vaccines and treatments, distribution funds for states, and a strategic stockpile. Adds $22 billion for testing, tracing and mitigation, $9 billion for health care providers, and $4.5 billion for mental health.

Schools and universities ($82 billion). Delivers $54 billion to public K-12 schools affected by the pandemic and $23 billion for colleges and universities; $4 billion would be awarded to a Governors Emergency Education Relief Fund; nearly $1 billion for Native American schools.

Rental assistance. ($25 billion) Provides money for a first-ever federal rental assistance program; funds to be distributed by state and local governments to help people who have fallen behind on their rent and may be facing eviction.

Food/farm aid ($26 billion) Increases stamp benefits by 15% for six months and provides funding to food banks, Meals on Wheels and other food aid. Provides an equal amount ($13 billion) in aid to farmers and ranchers.

Child Care ($10 billion). Provides $10 billion to the Child Care Development Block Grant to help families with child care costs and help providers cover increased operating costs.

Postal Service ($10 billion). Forgives a $10 billion loan to the Postal Service provided in earlier relief legislation.

Tax extenders: Extends a variety of expiring tax breaks, including lower excise taxes of craft brewers and distillers. Renewable energy sources would see tax breaks extended, as would motorsport facilities, and people making charitable contributions. Business meals would be 100% deductible through 2022.

Water projects: Includes an almost 400-page water resources bill that targets $10 billion for 46 Army Corps of Engineers flood control, environmental and coastal protection projects. source

Unemployment benefits: Two expiring CARES Act programs, Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which made benefits available to the self-employed and gig economy workers, and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, which provided additional weeks of benefits, were extended for 11 weeks, averting a fiscal crisis for millions of Americans.

That timeline will set another key deadline to stop the programs from expiring in early March. In addition, Congress will add $300 to all weekly unemployment benefits, half the amount that supplemented benefits from April through July. Workers who rely on multiple jobs and have lost income will also be eligible for a weekly $100 boost as well.

Support for small businesses: The popular Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which provided distressed small businesses with forgivable loans to keep them afloat and leave employees on the books, was re-upped with $284 billion in funds.

Businesses that already received a PPP loan will be eligible to get a second one under the new terms. Some of the PPP funds will be set aside for the smallest businesses and community-based lenders.

The deal provides $9 billion in emergency Treasury capital investments for Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) and Minority Depository Institutions, financial institutions that largely cater to minorities, as well as an additional $3 billion for CDFIs through a Treasury fund. It also provides $20 billion in Economic Injury Disaster Loans grants for smaller businesses.

Housing assistance: The bill extends the eviction moratorium that is set to expire at the end of the year through the end of January.

The legislation includes $25 billion for rental assistance to families facing eviction. It’s the same amount proposed by a compromise $908 billion relief proposal introduced by the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus in early December. Eligible renters would be able to receive assistance with rent and utility payments, and bills that have accumulated since the start of the pandemic, by applying with entities that state and local grantees chose to administer the program.

Additionally, the bill includes an enhancement of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit to increase the supply for affordable housing construction.

Education: The bill includes several provisions relating to elementary, secondary and higher education. It would provide $82 billion of funds for schools and colleges to help them reopen classrooms and prevent virus transmission.

It also includes an expansion of Pell Grants. A summary from Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that the expansion would allow 500,000 people to become new recipients of the grants and 1.5 million students to get the maximum benefit.

Testing: The agreement includes $20 billion for the purchase of vaccines, $8 billion for vaccine distribution, $20 billion for states to conduct testing and $20 billion in extra federal relief for health care providers.

utrition Assistance: The deal directs $13 billion to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps), and to child nutrition benefits, the same amount set by the Problem Solvers Caucus earlier this month to pay for a 15 percent increase in SNAP benefits.

The SNAP language does not expand eligibility for the program and requires the secretary of Agriculture to provide reports on participation rates and unspent funding balances.

Transportation: Negotiators provided $45 billion for transportation, including $16 billion for another round of support for airlines, airline employees and contractors, $14 billion for transit systems, $10 billion for highways, $2 billion for intercity buses, $2 billion for airports and $1 billion for Amtrak.  source

Entertainment Venues

The bill has $15 billion for independent movie theaters, live entertainment venues and cultural institutions.

 

Chinese Slaves Manufacture Covid Masks Your Wearing

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So, while we are continuing to learn only some of the actions inside the United States by the Chinese Communist Party that include:

Senator Dianne Feinstein and her husband

The entire Biden Family

Congressman Eric Swalwell

… we are now finding that Georgia Senate candidate, Jon Ossoff in a contentious run-off race lied about his Chinese Communist Party business deal and finally came clean after he was about to be sued over his false financial disclosures.

Ossoff attracting surprising levels of GOP support in Georgia special - POLITICO

There is much more to bubble to the surface as noted by the shuttering of the Chinese Consulate in Houston a few months ago and the soon to be revealing of more details. Meanwhile, U.S. corporations are also very tied to the Chinese Communist Party least of which is Apple, Google and Facebook. But what about slaves?

Few people understand that China has re-education camps and slaves known as Uighurs and the treatment of this Turkic ethnic group which is native to China.

A very large and detailed investigation completed has noted below:

Medical masks and protective equipment made by Uighur laborers in China are being sold across Europe by at least two major distributors, and have been bought by governments and health bodies in at least five countries, an investigation by OCCRP and partners has found.

The workers are ethnic Uighurs from the western Chinese region of Xinjiang who have been sent to factories in other parts of the country under a controversial “labor transfer” program that experts say is coercive and prone to abuses.

China’s government has embarked on a campaign to stamp out unrest among Uighurs in Xinjiang via a campaign of mass surveillance and detention.

The labor transfer program ostensibly provides Uighurs in Xinjiang with new opportunities to leave home for factory jobs in other provinces. But rights workers say they are often coerced into complying, amid a crackdown that has seen over a million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities sent to re-education camps. Campaigners have been pushing for Western companies and governments to stop buying products made with Uighur labor.

Earlier this year, the New York Times revealed that medical masks made by Uighurs at a factory in Hubei province were being sold in the U.S. Now, OCCRP and its partners have found that some of Europe’s biggest medical distributors are also selling masks and protective equipment from this manufacturer, Hubei Haixin Protective Products. Publicly available documents show that Hubei Haixin until recently employed at least 130 Uighur workers transferred from Xinjiang.

The distributors include local branches of McKesson, a multinational giant that owns some of Europe’s largest pharmacy chains and medical wholesalers, and Swedish medical supply firm OneMed, which sold masks to health authorities and national stockpiles across the Nordic and Baltic regions.

Both McKesson and OneMed continued selling Hubei Haixin products throughout 2020, even after the Chinese company was named earlier this year by the New York Times and a think tank, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), as using potentially forced labor by Uighurs.

Reporters also found McKesson and OneMed sold products made by Zhende Medical, a publicly traded Chinese company that has been flagged as risky by rights experts because it has supply chains and subsidiaries in Xinjiang.

In a brief response sent to reporters, McKesson Europe’s public affairs director, Ronan Brett, said: “McKesson Europe is committed to good corporate citizenship and ethical sourcing. Suppliers must agree to McKesson Sustainable Supply Chain Principles (MSSP) which covers compliance with appropriate laws along with adherence to our strict policies on protecting workers, preparing for emergencies, identifying and managing environmental risk, and protecting the environment.” He did not respond to a request for further comment.

coronavirus/Norway-Erna-Solberg.jpg  Credit: Henrik Myhr Nielsen / NRK Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg welcomes a shipment of protective equipment by OneMed on March 23, 2020. The shipment included goods from Hubei Haixin. 

OneMed’s head of operations, Robert Schmidt, said the company found out in late 2019 that the Hubei Haixin factory employed workers from Xinjiang, but continued its relationship with the producer after finding no evidence they were being coerced or mistreated.

“OneMed’s overall assessment is that there is no forced labor or discrimination against the Uighur minority population in our supply chain,” he said. “But we will of course continue to follow the issue and act if we should receive any new information.”

According to documents obtained by reporters, OneMed contacted Hubei Haixin with concerns about Uighur workers in January, and the Chinese factory promised to return them to their homes in Xinjiang at the end of their contract in March. But in reality, the factory continued to employ them until this September, claiming that pandemic movement restrictions prevented the workers from going home. OneMed continued buying the products.

Neither Hubei Haixin nor Zhende Medical responded to requests for comment, but in a statement sent to one of its European distributors, and obtained by reporters, Zhende said, “It is not acceptable in Zhende to engage in or support the use of forced or compulsory labor.”

“The so-called ‘human rights abuses’ in Xinjiang or ‘persecution of ethnic minorities’ are lies of the century made up by extremist anti-China forces,” a representative of the Chinese Embassy in Oslo, Yang Yiding, wrote in a statement to reporters.

China’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

  Credit: Matteo Civillini Hubei Haixin masks ordered from LloydsPharmacy Italy bear the name of McKesson Global Sourcing Ltd, a U.K. subsidiary of McKesson. 

“Violation of Virtually Any Kind of Ethical Policy”

Over a million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities are believed to have been detained in newly built detention camps in recent years. China describes the camps as re-education facilities intended to combat Islamic radicalism, following a series of deadly inter-ethnic riots in Xinjiang and attacks by Uighur militants on ethnic-majority Han throughout China.

Uighurs have been documented working both in factories within Xinjiang’s detention camps, as well as being sent to regular factories throughout China via labor transfer programs, which are billed as a way of alleviating poverty and countering religious extremism.

It is important to keep reading the full summary found here.

 

China Used ‘Mass Surveillance’ on Thousands of Americans’ Phones

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Is the Caribbean Smartphone Market Closer to Asia than America? - Droid Island

Newsweek reports: A mobile security expert has accused China of exploiting cellphone networks in the Caribbean to conduct “mass surveillance” on Americans.

China Regional Snapshot: The Caribbean - Committee on Foreign Affairs

Gary Miller, a former vice president of network security at California-based analytics company Mobileum, told The Guardian he had amassed evidence of espionage conducted via “decades-old vulnerabilities” in the global telecommunications system.

While not explicitly mentioned in the report, the claims appear to be centered around Signaling System 7 (SS7), a communications protocol that routes calls and data around the world and has long been known to have inherent security weaknesses.

According to Miller, his analysis of “signals data” from the Caribbean has shown China was using a state-controlled mobile operator to “target, track, and intercept phone communications of U.S. phone subscribers,” The Guardian reported.

Miller claimed China appeared to exploit Caribbean operators to conduct surveillance on Americans as they were traveling, alleging that attacks on cell phones between 2018 to 2020 likely affected “tens of thousands” of U.S. mobile users in the region.

“Once you get into the tens of thousands, the attacks qualify as mass surveillance,” the mobile researcher said, noting the tactic is “primarily for intelligence collection and not necessarily targeting high-profile targets.” Miller continued: “It might be that there are locations of interest, and these occur primarily while people are abroad.”

A previous analysis paper covering 2018-2019, also titled Far From Home, contained a series of similar espionage claims about SS7, alleging that “mass surveillance attacks” in 2018 were most prevalent by China and Caribbean mobile networks. More here.

But hold on…. it does not stop there….we also have the Channel Islands…

Pin on Guernsey Island

Remarkable investigative details here.

The Bureau: Private intelligence companies are using phone networks based in the Channel Islands to enable surveillance operations to be carried out against people around the world, including British and US citizens, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism can reveal following a joint reporting project with the Guardian.

Leaked data, documents and interviews with industry insiders who have access to sensitive information suggest that systemic weaknesses in the global telecoms infrastructure, and a particular vulnerability in Jersey and Guernsey, are being exploited by corporate spy businesses.

These businesses take advantage of some of the ways mobile phone networks across the world interact in order to access private information on targets, such as location information or, in more sophisticated applications, the content of calls and messages or other highly sensitive data.

The spy companies see phone operators in the Channel Islands as an especially soft route into the UK, according to industry experts, who say the attacks emanating from the islands appear to be targeted at individuals rather than cases of “mass” surveillance. The Bureau understands that the targets of this surveillance have been spread across the globe, and included US citizens as well as people in Europe and Africa.

Ron Wyden, the Oregon senator and privacy advocate, described the use of foreign telecom assets to spy on people in the US as a national security threat.

“Access into US telephone networks is a privilege,” he said in response to the Bureau’s findings. “Foreign telecom regulators need to police their domestic industry – if they don’t, they risk their country being cut off from US roaming agreements.”

Markéta Gregorová, the European Parliament’s chief negotiator on trade legislation for surveillance technology, called for “immediate regulatory, financial and diplomatic costs on companies and rogue jurisdictions” that enabled these practices.

“Any commercial or governmental entity, foreign or domestic which enables the facilitation of warrantless cyber-attacks on European citizens deserves the full force of our justice system,” she told the Bureau.

Stop Using Zoom, Second Warning

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The first warning came last March.

March: As remote work surges amid the coronavirus pandemic, the FBI issued a public bulletin Monday warning Zoom and other video teleconferencing services may not be as private, or as secure, as users may assume.

Use of Zoom and similar services has exploded in recent weeks as companies, schools, governments, and individuals increasingly turn to its teleconferencing as ways to keep businesses and classrooms afloat while sheltering in pace or working from home. However the shift also represents an opportunity for attackers, as white supremacists, hackers and other trolls barge into digital meetings, a phenomenon known as “Zoombombing.”

In Massachusetts, there have been several incidents, including an unintended participant joining a high school’s virtual classroom only to yell profanities and reveal personal information about the teacher, according to the FBI. Another unwelcome participant with swastika tattoos joined a separate Massachusetts school’s Zoom meeting, the FBI reports.

“The FBI has received multiple reports of conferences being disrupted by pornographic and/or hate images and threatening language,” the FBI cautioned. “As individuals continue the transition to online lessons and meetings, the FBI recommends exercising due diligence and caution in your cybersecurity efforts.”

It’s not just private businesses and children whose meetings could be Zoombombed. Privacy and security issues in conferencing software may also pose risks to national security, as world leaders convene Zoom meetings. In some cases, world leaders such as U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson have shared screenshots of their teleconferencing publicly only to reveal Zoom meeting IDs, raising concerns that sensitive information could be compromised. More here.

Stupidly, government officials at all levels are using Zoom including the Biden presidential team. How dangerous is that? Those officials are not reading the warnings or the news? Yeesh

 

Zoom Biden Rally

For more proof, again this month…

Justice Department/December 2020: China-Based Executive at U.S. Telecommunications Company Charged with Disrupting Video Meetings

It is not only the U.S. that is sounding the warnings. The Telegraph reports warnings that “opportunistic criminals” (a formulation that’s practically redundant), can be expected to use bogus invitations to sessions in their social engineering efforts.

Connecticut Teen Arrested for Allegedly 'Zoom Bombing ... source

A security executive with the video-tech giant Zoom worked with the Chinese government to terminate Americans’ accounts and disrupt video calls about the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square, Justice Department prosecutors said Friday.

The case is a stunning blow for Zoom, one of the most popular new titans of American tech, which during the pandemic became one of the main ways people work, socialize and share ideas around the world. The California-based company is now worth more than $100 billion.

But the executive’s work with the Chinese government, as alleged by FBI agents in a criminal complaint unsealed Friday in a Brooklyn federal court, highlights the often-hidden threats of censorship on a forum promoted as a platform for free speech. It also raises questions about how Zoom is protecting users’ data from governments that seek to surveil and suppress people inside their borders and abroad.

Prosecutors said the China-based executive, Xinjiang Jin, worked as Zoom’s primary liaison with Chinese law enforcement and intelligence services, sharing user information and terminating video calls at the Chinese government’s request.

Jin monitored Zoom’s video system for discussions of political and religious topics deemed unacceptable by China’s ruling Communist Party, the complaint states, and he gave government officials the names, email addresses and other sensitive information of users, even those outside China.

Jin worked also to end at least four video meetings in May and June, including video memorial calls with U.S.-based dissidents who’d survived the crackdown by Chinese military forces that killed thousands of students and protesters. The Chinese government works to censor any acknowledgment of the massacre, including on social media outside China.

A Zoom spokesperson said in a statement Friday that the company has cooperated with the case and launched its own internal investigation. Jin, the company said, shared “a limited amount of individual user data with Chinese authorities,” as well as data on no more than 10 users based outside China. Jin was fired for violating company policies, the statement said, and other employees have been placed on administrative leave until the investigation is complete.

In an updated statement on Zoom’s website, the company said it “fell short” by terminating the meetings instead of only blocking access to participants in China, to abide by Chinese law. The company said it has reinstated the victims’ accounts and will no longer allow requests from the Chinese government to affect users outside mainland China.

“As the DOJ makes clear, every American company, including Zoom and our industry peers, faces challenges when doing business in China,” the company said in its statement. “We will continue to act aggressively to anticipate and combat ever-evolving data security challenges.”

Jin could not be reached for comment. Though Jin lives in China and is not in U.S. custody, officials said he could be transferred to the United States to face prosecution if he travels to a country that has an extradition treaty with the U.S.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.

Human-rights activists this summer said their Zoom accounts had been abruptly terminated shortly before or after they’d hosted video calls commemorating the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests, a bloody crackdown captured in the iconic photo of a man standing in front of a Chinese tank.

Zoom said in a statement then that the company “must comply with laws in the countries where we operate.” While the company said it regretted “that a few recent meetings with participants both inside and outside of China were negatively impacted,” the statement said it was not in the company’s power “to change the laws of governments opposed to free speech.”

Zhou Fengsuo, a student leader during the Tiananmen Square protests who had his paid Zoom account terminated this summer, told The Washington Post on Friday that he had worked with the FBI on the case and saw the charges as “tremendous news.”

“It’s so eye-opening to me how this U.S. company, having this connection, would report directly to” the Chinese Communist Party and “disrupt our meetings regularly on behalf of the CCP,” he said. “This executive was working for the government and police as an agent of persecution, and Zoom was paying this guy for doing that job.”

Prosecutors charged Jin, also known as Julien Jin, with conspiracy to commit interstate harassment and to transfer a means of identification. Jin, 39, had worked at the company since 2016, most recently as a “Security Technical Leader,” the complaint said.

Quoting from electronic messages between Jin and other Zoom employees, FBI agents outlined a months-long, high-pressure campaign by China’s “Internet Police” to view users’ video calls and suppress unwanted speech. In one April message, Jin said he had been summoned to a meeting with Chinese government officials who demanded that Zoom develop the capability to terminate any “illegal meeting” within one minute. In others, Jin sent meeting passwords and other sensitive internal data directly to Chinese law enforcement.

In the complaint, FBI agents said that Zoom employees in the U.S. had agreed to a Chinese government “rectification” plan that entailed migrating data on roughly 1 million users from the U.S. to China, thereby subjecting it to Chinese law. Zoom also agreed, the complaint states, to provide “special access” to Chinese law enforcement and national-security authorities. In one message cited in the complaint, Jin wrote that the authorities had wanted him to share detailed lists of the company’s “daily monitoring” of “Hong Kong demonstrations, illegal religions” and other subjects.

To terminate the Tiananmen Square calls, the complaint alleges, Jin’s co-conspirators fabricated evidence that they were intended to discuss child abuse, racism, terrorism and violence. Jin’s co-conspirators also entered some calls with fake accounts that used pornographic or terrorist-related profile images, and Jin pointed to those images as evidence to terminate the meetings and suspend the hosts’ accounts.

John Demers, the assistant attorney general for national security, said the firm had, like many others that do business in China, put itself in a difficult position by operating in an authoritarian country whose laws and practices often “run antithetical to our values.”

“The company was focused on complying with Chinese law and the expectations of Chinese law enforcement,” Demers said. “But what happened over time is those expectations increased. So it goes from, ‘Well, respond to our lawful requests,’ to ‘You must take action within a minute to shut down any action on your platforms’ – not just in China, but outside – that hits upon topics of sensitivity to the Chinese government.”

That pressure, he noted, spans many industries: He cited the controversy last year involving the National Basketball Association, in which the general manager of the Houston Rockets tweeted in support of Hong Kong protesters, leading to a backlash in China.

“The case is an illustration of the choices that companies are forced to make when they do business in China . . . [and] how the Chinese government will take advantage of the leverage they have over you to push their agenda,” he said. “You’ve got a consistent pattern of the Chinese government using economic leverage – the opportunity to access markets, foreign investments – in order to further political goals.”

John Scott-Railton, a researcher at the Citizen Lab in Toronto, said the filing showed how authoritarian governments have increasingly looked at major tech companies as top-priority intelligence targets ripe for infiltration and recruitment.

He pointed to another case last year against two former Twitter employees charged with spying on behalf of Saudi Arabia, including by sending the personal information of thousands of people, including Saudi critics and prominent dissidents.

The charges were announced on the same day that the Trump administration added four Chinese companies to the Commerce Department entity list for enabling human rights abuses within China by providing DNA-testing materials or high-technology surveillance equipment to the Chinese government. They were among 59 Chinese companies Commerce add to its export control entity list, including companies that have been accused of stealing trade secrets and using U.S. exports to support the Chinese military.

Zoom has faced questions before about how it guards against the potential misuse of video data by the Chinese government, which censors major news and social media websites beneath what’s known as a “Great Firewall.”

This spring, Scott-Railton and another researcher found the company had routed American users’ data through Chinese servers, potentially opening it to Chinese-government data requests. The company later said it had “mistakenly” sent American video calls to Chinese data centers amid a flood of calls.

Zoom employs more than 2,500 people around the world, including, as of last year, more than 500 in China who develop the software installed in computers around the world.

The company’s billionaire chief executive, Eric Yuan, was born in China but moved to Silicon Valley in the late ’90s, where he worked for the video start-up WebEx before founding Zoom in 2011.

The Federal Trade Commission last month reached a settlement with Zoom, in which the company resolved allegations that it had misled users about their data privacy and encryption measures by agreeing to new security rules.

Questions over business dealings in China have become more commonplace as a new wave of Chinese tech start-ups has gained international popularity and acclaim. TikTok, the wildly popular short-video app owned by the Beijing-based tech company ByteDance, drew suspicions of censorship from users last year because searches on the site related to topics suppressed by the Chinese government, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre or the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, showed few or no videos.

Internal guidelines for the site also mimicked Chinese-government censorship policies, and former employees for the company told The Post last year that key content-moderation decisions for international users were made in China. TikTok has said it has worked in recent months to distance its U.S. operations from the company’s Chinese headquarters.

Wang Dan, a Chinese dissident whose Zoom call on Tiananmen Square was also disrupted this spring, said the case showed how China could threaten free expression for people in the West.

“Interfering with the freedom of speech of those who have settled and lived in the United States in exile is . . . a serious attack to American sovereignty,” he told The Post on Friday. “The American people should also pay more attention to the [Chinese Communist Party’s] threat of American democracy.”