Zoom adds eject option after Hayes video call hack
NEWTOWN — A leading videoconferencing company was listening on Oct. 13, when U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes said, “I am not OK” after her Zoom call with Newtown constituents was sabotaged by racists with “six minutes of vile disgusting … deplorable, hate.”
In response, Zoom has added a one-click security feature that allows the host to stop the video call, eject the offender, and resume the call after the hijacking has been documented and reported.
“This was a security feature I recommended after my unfortunate event,” Hayes wrote in a tweet earlier this week. “Thanks, @zoom_us for committing to keep virtual spaces safe.”
The racist Zoom-bombing, which made national headlines, came 22 days before Hayes was reelected to a second term representing the Danbury area and Connecticut’s Fifth Congressional District.
The story received nationwide coverage not only because Hayes is the first Black congresswoman to represent Connecticut, but because of the passionate way Hayes expressed her pain in a personal essay.
As Hayes’ staff ejected the first racist hijacker who had told Hayes to “shut up, n-word,” more hackers attacked the call, using the n-word and posting in the chat function, “SHUT UP N-word
GO PICK YOUR COTTON.”
Hayes, the 2016 national Teacher of the Year, said her instinct was to calm the mortified Newtown residets on the Zoom call, assure them that she was okay, and make sure that her staff was okay.
Later that night, Hayes said she realized that she herself was not okay.
“The only way we can cut the cancer of racism out of our communities is by calling it out when we see it and raising our collective voices to get rid of it,” Hayes wrote in the essay.
The racist attack remains under investigation in Newtown, along with two similar racist Zoombombings in Newtown — one during a virtual assembly of high school freshmen and their advisers, and one during a virtual meeting of the Newtown Non-Profit Council — both in late October.
“The cases are open and active and we are working on them diligently,” Newtown Police Chief James Viadero said Wednesday.
Hayes meanwhile said she was pleased with the one-click Zoom security feature, in a world where Zoom has become a household name.
“As we rely on virtual meetings, increased security is crucial,” Hayes tweeted.
The new Zoom feature doesn’t cancel the meeting but suspends it, a spokesman said.
“By clicking “suspend participant activities,” all video, audio, in-meeting chat, annotation, screen sharing, and recording during that time will stop, and breakout rooms will end,” Zoom spokesman Matt Nagel wrote in a mid-November blog post. “Hosts and co-hosts may resume their meeting by individually re-enabling the features they’d like to use.”
If only racism itself could be neutralized with a button.
“Wouldn’t that be something?” said Glenda Armstrong, president of the Greater Danbury NAACP. “It would be nice initially, because it would stop (racism) from coming out, but the systematic impact and the results of racism would still be present.”
Armstrong said as ugly and vicious as racist attacks are, they move people to social action.
“Without that man’s knee on George Floyd’s neck, there would be no George Floyd Justice in Policing Act in Congress,” said Armstrong, referring to the death of a Black man in police custody in May, which led to widespread civil unrest and police reforms.
“As horrific as it was what happened to Jahana and everyone who was on that call, sometimes we do have to be made uncomfortable enough to have the empathy to act for the greater good,” Armstrong said.