EXCLUSIVE: Dr Liz Gordon – We have been ZoomBombed by CyberNazis!

This Saturday just gone, we held the annual meeting of QPEC, the Quality Public Education Coalition. QPEC was formed in the late 1990s by a group including John Minto and the late Ivan Snook. The only thing unusual about this year’s meeting was that it was held by Zoom, rather than our usual face to face meeting.  Very good online attendance – 65 people.

The morning session started.  There were three speakers, but before they got a chance to start, we had an unwelcome visitor. 

Those of you who know Zoom will be aware that there is a ‘share screen’ function that puts the sharer’s screen on to everyone else’s, at full size. Essentially what happened was that a neo-Nazi swastika-bearing person attacked our meeting and used ‘share screen’ to display his objectionable images and messages, thus hijacking the whole meeting.

ZoomBombing is a new phenomenon that has arisen from the dependence of people on video-conferencing as an important form of communication while in lockdown. In March and April, it was used in the USA by anti-Semitist activitists to disrupt Jewish religious services being run via Zoom. It has been reported that images of Jewish people being raped and murdered were shown, along with all the usual Nazi imagery.

As the anti-defamation League’s Oren Segal notes, “Extremists never miss an opportunity to leverage a crisis for their hatred”. Zoom was, in some ways, a soft target, because no-one predicted that it would be used to storm meetings.

Recent articles on white supremacists note that, since the 2019 Mosque attacks, they have been driven onto the internet where their identity can be protected. They use sites such as 4chan and 8chan (favourites of the Mosque shooter) to communicate. Paul Spoonley and others have warned that “the internet has allowed the far Right to become more international in reach and influence”. And, according to Jarrod Gilbert, the internet is the new home of far right supremacist activity. We also must not forget that the Mosque shooter live-recorded his rampage.

So in the future, instead of stormtroopers smashing homes and workplaces in person, fascist activity may be more likely concentrated on cyber attacks to disrupt and, I suspect, destroy. I am not sure whether this is the first cyberattack in New Zealand, but I am certain it will not be the last.

Zoom has quickly put in place a range of services to protect against ZoomBombing. A few simple things will protect your organisation.

First, control who is coming on your call.  Open or public meetings are easy to get into and disrupt.

Second, have one clear host who controls the levers. That person can stop or restart screen sharing at will, mute all or individual participants, put individuals on hold, stop file transfer and disable private chat.

Third, don’t panic.  Trace as much as you can find out about the person, use screenshots, hit ‘record’ if you are not already recording the meeting, note their Zoom ‘name’.

It is unfortunate that organisations like ours are going to have to start using these tactics as a matter of course. Groups representing people of colour, gay, disabled, Muslim and so on will have to learn that they are targets.

Organisers should know who gets the email invitation – in the QPEC case, it may (or may not) be worth trying to trace how the fascist recipient found out about the meeting. This is worrying.  The person must have received the invitation from one of our contacts.

These are practical steps, but the more interesting question is why on earth the fascist right was interested in disrupting a meeting of educationists on a Saturday morning?

There are a number of potential reasons.  It may be they thought they would try out Zoombombing and the QPEC meeting was a useful opportunity, a sort of practice session.

Or, this may be the beginning of a new wave of activism.  Disruption can be upsetting but can be managed. Increasingly, organisations will learn how to prevent such attacks.  What is more worrying is the potential for escalation into other forms of cyberattack.

The internet in all its forms is a powerful tool. It is worrying that bands of neo-Nazis are now marching through the internet looking for opportunities to recruit, disrupt, oppose and promote their cause.

The final issue is whether what happened on Saturday is illegal. It is a criminal offence to incite racial disharmony. But at the same time, it is perfectly legal for someone to enter a ‘public’ meeting (which this essentially was) and protest. There is also the Harmful Digital Communications Act, which makes cyber bullying and harassment illegal.  I think on balance people disrupting Zoom meetings with objectionable material are committing an offence.

And, Zoom traces all participants. So finding them should not be hard. Keep yourselves safe online.