BTJ often gets requests to join video calls for podcasts or mission meetings to share about the Back to Jerusalem vision. Almost all of those requests are via the ZOOM application platform which presents a significant challenge, because BTJ does not use ZOOM and there are many reasons why Christians, especially missionaries, should be aware of this.
BTJ has adopted a policy of “ZERO ZOOM” for missionary phones or computers, because of ZOOM’s compromising relationship with China.
Although ZOOM is currently headquartered in the United States, the founder was born and raised in China and has a close relationship with the Chinese government. It has a large R&D/development presence in China with hundreds of engineers, much of the app’s code and engineering work has originated from China, and they currently have servers in China. The company is clearly exposed to Chinese laws that can compel companies to cooperate with government requests for data or access.
This can be seen with the Chinese House Church crackdown that took place last October with Zion church. After Zion Church was banned from their meeting place in Beijing, the members began to meet online. They regularly had several thousand members meeting together on ZOOM. When China conducted their raid on Zion Church, they did so simultaneously in several different cities. Zion Church members have shared with BTJ that they believe the raids were based on information collected through ZOOM meetings.
BTJ began restricting the use of ZOOM with missionaries in 2020 when it was learned that ZOOM had servers in China and that data traffic and encryption keys routed through these Chinese servers. This raised fears that the Chinese government could access them under national laws.
ZOOM is also known to have suspended accounts at China’s request.
BTJ also takes the example from both companies and nations that have significantly more resources than the ministry. Both SpaceX and the nation of Taiwan have banned ZOOM due to significant security and privacy concerns, including its link to China as it relates to “critical weaknesses” in the software and data leaks.
The major issue that BTJ still has with ZOOM however is that it still works in China. This is a big indicator whether BTJ missionaries can trust an app for security purposes. Applications like Gmail, YouTube, and Facebook are blocked in China because they do not meet China’s security requirements which is why they are not banned by BTJ.
Thank you for continuing to talk about this. So, what do you use instead? It’s hard to find a platform stable enough to win the whole team over, in spite of the security concerns with this platform.
We have been used jitsi meet a lot.