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Indian government to intercept, monitor, and decrypt citizens’ computers

venturebeat.com

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Re: Indian government to intercept, monitor, and decrypt citizens’ computers

#41

Post by ankit219 »

Slightly off topic, but this order kind of defines the state of India. Whatever the issue is, there are always two sides both of which try to shape the narrative in their favour. One side arguing through twitter and some of self owned websites, what the implications could be, and other saying that the order already existed, and this is limiting the scope to only 10 agencies and doing it to curb terrorist activities, as if that makes it all ok.

The issue is that while this order is passed, there is no remedy for the citizens if their privacy is breached in any sense. The power is given to the home ministry, who at this point, think of themselves more as campaigner for next election, rather than an elected govt body, and hence it will be bad for political opponents in elections due in 2019. Since they made it concerning National Security, it is not covered under Right to Information either.

(The order and notification says that the interception and monitor could only be for certain citizens, or group of citizens, if they are deemed a threat for national security. Even Apple might be asked to break the encryption in this case.)

Re: Indian government to intercept, monitor, and decrypt citizens’ computers

#42

Post by InGodsName »

g45y45 wrote: post #33
mkagenius wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whatsapp etc seems to be guaranteed here It is end to end encrypted

Which means that authorities can force the providers to inject public keys into the directory services, thus allowing the authorities access to the cleartext. End-to-end is a buzz word. What is important is key distribution, which is set to be subverted by governments everywhere...

Don't think they will deploy great firewall for blocking telegram which operate from offshore.

Re: Indian government to intercept, monitor, and decrypt citizens’ computers

#43

Post by dgzl »

dragonwriter wrote: post #39
dgzl wrote: post #37

And here is the natural born right to privacy that Americans have, as well as the rest of the world in my own opinion: Bill of Rights, amendment 4: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the…

Devotion to the quasi-religious idea of “natural rights” is not nearly as surprising as the belief that what are very clearly political compromises of the late 18th Century somehow perfectly captured such rights.

Well are you trying to be surprised, or are you trying to defend your natural born rights? It sounds like you're not interested simply because it's redundant.

Re: Indian government to intercept, monitor, and decrypt citizens’ computers

#44

Post by stanleydrew »

gruez wrote: post #10
onetimemanytime wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It is easy to task authorities with intercept and decryption duties; actually doing it successfully is another matter entirely. Mathematics works both ways, friends. Actually if Apple, Goog, FB etc are forced to surrender the key--at the penalty of being excluded from 1.x billion people in India--math works only one way...

they can't surrender keys they don't have (e2e). the only issue is that they may be forced to do a key change. one way around this would be to show a prominent notice if your peer changed keys, which would make it immediately obvious what was going on.

The idea that showing a warning makes it immediately obvious what is going on is ridiculous.

It would take a large-scale public education campaign to teach people what it means when they see a warning message that reads "Peer key changed. Are you sure you want to proceed?"

If you need to be convinced, go ask your mom or dad whether it's immediately obvious what is going on when they see an insecure connection warning in their web browser. In my experience everyone just clicks through to "proceed anyway" without comprehending it at all.

Re: Indian government to intercept, monitor, and decrypt citizens’ computers

#45

Post by simplecomplex »

dragonwriter wrote: post #39
dgzl wrote: post #37

And here is the natural born right to privacy that Americans have, as well as the rest of the world in my own opinion: Bill of Rights, amendment 4: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the…

Devotion to the quasi-religious idea of “natural rights” is not nearly as surprising as the belief that what are very clearly political compromises of the late 18th Century somehow perfectly captured such rights.

ALL human morality is quasi-religious. Democracy is fundamentally a moral philosophy. The crime of murder is "natural rights".

Our whole society is built on natural rights.

Re: Indian government to intercept, monitor, and decrypt citizens’ computers

#46

Post by saas_sam »

vkou wrote: post #40
dgzl wrote: post #37

And here is the natural born right to privacy that Americans have, as well as the rest of the world in my own opinion: Bill of Rights, amendment 4: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the…

It's a nice right in theory, but in reality, stop-and-frisk, border control, parallel construction, 'I smelled weed in the car', 'I had a hunch', 'the drug dog gave me a signal', 'we got an anonymous tip (from an illegal search, via parallel construction)' all exist, and are regularly employed in the United States. They also tend to be disproportionately targeted at particular, inconvenient, segments of the populatio…

And when those phenomena are fought, it is on the basis of the Constitution.

Re: Indian government to intercept, monitor, and decrypt citizens’ computers

#47

Post by escherplex »

imhoguy wrote: post #30

In less than decade both USA and EU will take lessons from these developing experiments (India, China, Russia, Australia) and will introduce the same locally. At first societies will be educated to stigmatise any resistance and ease the law change. Hiding data from govt will be like tax evasion or act of terrorism.

educated ...reminiscent of contemporary video clip interviews with individuals saying I don't mind if the government reads my correspondence. I have nothing to hide.

But for an historic contrarian view:

Berlin 1931 (Weimar Republic): I don't mind if the government reads my letters. I've got nothing to hide.

Berlin 1936 (national socialism): You writings make you an enemy of the state!

Re: Indian government to intercept, monitor, and decrypt citizens’ computers

#48

Post by dgzl »

vkou wrote: post #40
dgzl wrote: post #37

And here is the natural born right to privacy that Americans have, as well as the rest of the world in my own opinion: Bill of Rights, amendment 4: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the…

It's a nice right in theory, but in reality, stop-and-frisk, border control, parallel construction, 'I smelled weed in the car', 'I had a hunch', 'the drug dog gave me a signal', 'we got an anonymous tip (from an illegal search, via parallel construction)' all exist, and are regularly employed in the United States. They also tend to be disproportionately targeted at particular, inconvenient, segments of the populatio…

I consider stop-and-frisk to be in direct volition with the fourth amendment. Boarder control is a little different. I have the intention of extending these rights to all humans, so the boarder shouldn't change the rights of humans. Becoming aware of substance abuse (while say operating a vehicle) has potential for being "reasonable cause" for search... Though I'm not sure I'd entirely buy it.

I'm convinced that since citizens don't know their rights, that the government doesn't think we care about them, and uses that against us when we try defending them. It's the idea of... If you don't use them, you lose them.

Re: Indian government to intercept, monitor, and decrypt citizens’ computers

#49

Post by dgzl »

simplecomplex wrote: post #45
dragonwriter wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devotion to the quasi-religious idea of “natural rights” is not nearly as surprising as the belief that what are very clearly political compromises of the late 18th Century somehow perfectly captured such rights.

ALL human morality is quasi-religious. Democracy is fundamentally a moral philosophy. The crime of murder is "natural rights". Our whole society is built on natural rights.

And from what I understand, this was a new point of view from governments at the time. The idea of natural born rights was kind of in stark contrast to how governments usually operated: with authority and a lack of respect of human rights.

Re: Indian government to intercept, monitor, and decrypt citizens’ computers

#50

Post by g45y45 »

InGodsName wrote: post #42
g45y45 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which means that authorities can force the providers to inject public keys into the directory services, thus allowing the authorities access to the cleartext. End-to-end is a buzz word. What is important is key distribution, which is set to be subverted by governments everywhere...

Don't think they will deploy great firewall for blocking telegram which operate from offshore.

I dont know why people bring up telegram. A vast majority of chat messages is sent directly in the clear to Telegram servers. Telegram can spy on your conversations. If they can, anyone can. It is NOT an encrypted messenger. It is a crappy plaintext messenger that has an encrypted feature that nobody uses. Also - Stop using telegram. IT IS NOT ENCRYPTED LIKE YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS THINK IT IS.
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