Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

venturebeat.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 170 posts

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

#141

Post by sbmthakur »

screye wrote: post #67
sunasra wrote: post #59

First, it was Aadhaar and now this. Somehow Indian Govt wants to track every citizen and build their dictatorship.

> build their dictatorship. I highly doubt any Indian government wants or even thinks they can do this. India in all its diversity, consists of a huge number of separate factions. The Government only works due to a mutual compromise from enough factions to form a coalition. Also, the Indian judiciary and parliament hold genuine power and exercise it too. It is nearly impossible for a single person to gain enough mome…

> Admittedly, Modi's government has consolidated more power in one person than most of India's past governments. But, even then it only in comparison to the nearly dysfunctional mega coalitions of the INC.

I don't like what is happening but it is far better than controlling the entire government from 10 Janpath.

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

#143

Post by sbmthakur »

_mdlf wrote: post #26

This is much worst than what we saw in Australia, current Indian govt headed by right wing political party with track record of human rights abuses have passed this order without passing through Parliament using a loop hole in the IT ACT. This is likely aimed at upcoming elections for data analyses via ISP & to target journalists critical of the current govt in India. But I feel that the International community isn't…

> This is much worst than what we saw in Australia, current Indian govt headed by right wing political party with track record of human rights abuses have passed this order without passing through Parliament using a loop hole in the IT ACT.

The main opposition party has far worse record of human rights abuses. So please spare us the propoganda

> This is likely aimed at upcoming elections for data analyses via ISP & to target journalists critical of the current govt in India.

Even prior to this government, journalists were being targeted by the regime. It has more to do with India's archaic laws(eg: defamation) than anything else.

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

#144

Post by CryptoPunk »

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.

The concept of natural rights that underlies the Constitution developed over thousands of years through a process that involved both extensive deliberation, and extensive practical experience.

We ignore the wisdom of moral tradition to our own detriment.

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

#145

Post by nonamechicken »

known wrote: post #132

The Indian journalist jailed for a year for Facebook posts https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-46631911

People getting jailed for Facebook posts happen frequently in India. Looking at the arrests they have made so far, there are 3 categories of people whom you shouldn't criticize or make fun of in Facebook: politicians, religion and women.

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

#146

Post by throwawaymjabba »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #31

I wonder what the implications will be for Western companies outsourcing there, anyone care to chime in?

I don't think Western companies really outsource important stuff to India. Its mostly brain dead work. Some of us call ourselves cyber coolies if we are working for the outsourcing companies. American companies are actually careful about employing Indians and other foreigners even in US. I remember one Indian colleague telling me how his US employer had to get approval from the US govt before hiring him full time in US. The employer had to show paperwork that he wouldn't have access to important information (trade secrets and the like). This employer makes things for agriculture. So I wonder have cautious the US govt would be for defense and related industries. I know they don't even allow non citizens to work in defense related projects even inside US.

So, unlike the Chinese, we (Indians) don't really get to learn much from outsourcing, other than may be lessons on keeping the end customer happy by exploiting the employees.

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

#147

Post by throwawaymjabba »

eps wrote: post #27

As someone on /r/sysadmin has correctly remarked - if you are outsourcing to India, you should assume that all data they have access to it is now also freely accessible to the Indian government.

Don't get me wrong, but I feel the /r/sysadmin folks are extremely pissed off at Indians, probably because of all the outsourcing. I find it amusing that they blame it on shitty coding by Indians whenever there is a breach or a website down incident, but keep quite on the nationality when the outage/breach has nothing to do with outsourcing.

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

#148

Post by dirkgently »

techie128 wrote: post #80
closeparen wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denial, justification, and appeal to “everyone else is doing it” are a lot less compelling when used in the same breath that when deployed separately. “Uighur detention camps don’t exist and also aren’t that bad.”

Nothing in my post was even close to "Denial" or that everyone else is doing it. I was pointing out that my western counterparts are barking up the wrong tree when their own government is guilty of mass surveillance on not just their own people but everyone on this planet while India has stronger protections that have been held up in court. People in glass houses should not be pelting stones.

Your Western counterparts also complain when Western government does this.

You have a really huge chip on those shoulders.

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

#149

Post by wtmt »

It's very worrisome how things have been going on in India, more so in the last two decades. Regardless of which party is in power, mass surveillance is increasing, and ways to preserve privacy have been under attack (the government tried to force Blackberry to allow interception of all messages when BBM was a thing; now it wants the same with WhatsApp and other platforms; and then there's the whole biometric based, unchangeable and irrevocable unique ID called Aadhaar...the list is long).

Unfortunately, most politicians here don't understand (or don't care about) the impact of any of these even to protect themselves from attack or suppression by authoritarian and untrustworthy people in power. Most states also have laws that allow them to detain people without a court order or presenting them in a court of law for up to a year, and the police can also make several laws and enforce them.

It's just a matter of time that immigration officials and police will start asking people to reveal their social media passwords, go through their personal and private information, etc.

For all the positives that India as a country has, it has a lot to learn from other countries when it comes to privacy, freedom, freedom of speech, etc.

I believe big technology companies have a role to play in India and around the world to help defeat such dangerous (and often futile) moves by governments.

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

#150

Post by paramahans »

creative-coder wrote: post #140
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.

Don't put India in the same basket as China We have fundamental enforceable human rights, democratic government, independent judiciary, (way too much)state-independent media, functional Intellectual Property Rights(IPR) regime while China lacks all of these. Also, India has not even begun to setup the kind of real-time mass surveillance, through millions of cameras, already in place (to be fair, US is comparable here…

"We have fundamental enforceable human rights, democratic government, independent judiciary, (way too much)state-independent media, functional Intellectual Property Rights(IPR) regime while China lacks all of these."

I don't agree with you here. Maybe you live in a different India. Democratic government -Yes Independent Judiciary - Nope. Look up about the recent Rafael Fiasco. Also, a judge was killed and replaced by a Yes man to protect a mafia politician. Search Justice Loya for more details

state-independent media - To some extent. But there are many ruling party pet new channels

Functional Intellectual Property Right ??? Really ?

Post reply on HN