Indian government to intercept, monitor, and decrypt citizens’ computers • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by rootkea » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 8:29 AM UTC

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,

Oh yes, you mean the one where a journalist is put under draconian NSA for criticizing the government.[0]

> democratic government

Oh right. The one where hate-mongering communal bigot is made the Chief Minister.[1]

Congratulations India!

> independent judiciary

Absolutely. I guess that' why the 4 senior-most judges of the Supreme Court of India came out and said that the democracy was at stake.[2] Isn't it?

> the upcoming dystopian big data-driven, social network-like integrated citizen evaluation program

By any chance, do you mean like the one used by 40 departments of Indian government to spy on it's citizen?[3]

> So, its wildly inappropriate to mention India and China in the same vein here

Oh it's absolutely appropriate to mention India and China in the same vein here.

[0] https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/manipur-journalist-ki...

[1] https://www.thequint.com/news/india/new-up-cm-yogi-adityanat...

[2] https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/supreme-court-cris...

[3] https://www.huffingtonpost.in/2018/09/07/the-indian-governme...

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

#152

Post by birksherty » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 9:46 AM UTC

mkagenius wrote: post #137

andai wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Summary: WhatsApp aggressively pushing online chat backups, to which they do have the keys.

So, are we safe if we disable the backups?

No, whatsapp is not open source. You have to trust facebook on whatever they tell you. Nobody can say for sure that there are no backdoors inside it. If someone says that than they are lying.

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

#153

Post by vishaltelangre » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 10:29 AM UTC

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 that this is what the motive is. But I agree that this decision is very irresponsible and can have a disastrous impact. It could surely help in detecting a pattern which may put the nation in some sort of risk, but there is a greater and inevitable chance that it can be easily misused by the granted authorities or some personnel working for those authorities.

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

#154

Post by vaylian » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 10:46 AM UTC

LinuxBender wrote: post #103

This will be an unpopular opinion, but I personally like highly oppressive and intrusive governments trying to impose their will on the internet and technology. Usually when this happens, it results in substantial innovation around privacy, security and awareness. Such movements will ultimately force many people underground and into various forms of VPN's, non standard operating systems and custom hardware. To be cle…

> Usually when this happens, it results in substantial

> innovation around privacy, security and awareness [...]

... in the HN filter bubble. Not in the general public.

Consider yourself lucky to be knowledgeable about IT. Most people are not and they have plenty of other things to think about instead of their IT-education.

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

#155

Post by ilrwbwrkhv » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 2:30 PM UTC

All governments do it. Some just do it in the open.

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

#156

Post by hopler » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 4:19 PM UTC

794CD01 wrote: post #95

rectang wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that cynicism is warranted, but an alternative view is that rights and freedoms are gradually being offered to a wider and wider percentage of the population. We start off with rights reserved for all wealthy white landowners... along the way we get more rights for people of all races... both males and females... and so on as our reality comes into greater conformance with our ideals. This is the "arc of the…

That narrative is only applicable retrospectively. It doesn't say anything about the future. Whichever way the arc of the universe bends, we call justice.

It's not a narrative, it's a forecast. It reflects a belief that divinely inspired human intelligence will win over evil. MLK was an activist, not a historian. If justice was the same as history, we wouldn't have a word for justice.

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

#157

Post by hopler » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 4:22 PM UTC

dgzl wrote: post #116

vkou wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every state, prior to the second half of the 20th century had sodomy laws - which made being in a homosexual relationship a felony, at best, and a death sentence, at worst. Some states still have those laws on the books.

And I would hope that a respectable court would consider sexual acts to be acts of expression between parties, which is a protected right.

Free speech (expression is not in the Constitution) is not predicated on consent. If sex is a protected act of expression, than so is any kind of physical assault.

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

#158

Post by manquer » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 5:04 PM UTC

jammygit wrote: post #18

The article was vague. How does this law compare to other countries? Is it NSA or Hemisphere level data dragnets, is it Australian style "Australian law > mathematical law", or is it something different?

This is just an inter departmental circular circular blown out of proportion by click bait media coverage, the law has not changed. Legally you still need a magistrate sign off, which is not a private court like FISA is.

This isn't to say that the Indian intelligence agencies do not try and monitor outside the judicial purview ( who really noes ? Without Snowden we wouldn't know about NSA either). Even if they want, the Indian security apparatus simply does not have kind of resources (both money and tech) to implement a dragnet like NSA has, today. Of-course this may change in future as tech may become cheaper, expertise easier.

The security threat for India is also considerably different than first world countries, two neighbors(Pakistan and China)with border disputes, both nuclear armed and not friendly, Pakistan is not exactly stable and also funds/controls proxy agents who use terror tactics and has significant active support and arms from the U.S. GPS. was disabled during last "war" in late 90's so an Indian system with local coverage was developed. If there is serious thought in the intelligence community that because monitoring is not good enough then it is tough not attempt any means necessary.

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

#159

Post by navait » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 5:06 PM UTC

pkd wrote: post #110

navait wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While dictatorship is obviously absurd, what about Indira Gandhi and the Emergency?

Indira Gandhi's shenanigans led to the the establishment of the Basic Structure Doctrine of the Indian constitution, which I hope will prevent anybody else from exploiting the same loopholes

That sounds like a good lesson was learned.

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

#160

Post by manquer » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 5:13 PM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #76

techie128 wrote: post #65

This is basically part of a smear campaign against the government in power (NDA). The law was designed under the previous government and has been in existence before this government came to power. Nothing new was introduced since 2008. As far as constitutional protections go, Indians have a right to privacy which has been held up in the courts as recently as this year. This has been affirmed several times in the rece…

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.”

while i don't agree with OP about it being politically motivated around the current government. Most of what he says is true. There is no new law, there are other draconian laws like POTA, TADA, Sedition Act and AFSPA in place which give the Government already enormous power which they don't hesitate to use. The current government and many past ones do certainly abuse such powers nothing new expect it is spilling over digital domain more than ever before.