Hopefully they rather use something like http://matrix.org
Hey, but where all the budget will go then?
India reportedly wants to build its own WhatsApp for government communications
31–40 of 72 posts
Re: India reportedly wants to build its own WhatsApp for government communications
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like you want to suggest that Matrix is not secure - as others pointed out already the bug that was reported about has nothing to do with matrix and was fixed quickly. Also you do not seem to understand that bugs and resulting security problems are something that happen every day - and get fixed quickly, usually, after discovery. This is what they mean when domain experts say things like "security is a proce…
The goal was to provide a secure whatsapp alternative for he French administration. They failed the "secure" part - nothing else matters, and that does not mean that rolling your own should be discouraged - it means that these things are hard, and chances are your pet project will be less secure than established systems. > Please do not link to that website until they wake up and stop insulting visitors with this UI…
> Thank the French for that, who are the main reason behind the EU legislation about Cookies.
This again is wrong. The problem originated by publishers who track users and disrespect their privacy for many years.
The regulation that happened after a very long time of people urging governments to do something about that, makes this initial problem better visible.
Still it is important to understand: no cookies are needed at all for publishing content.
Re: India reportedly wants to build its own WhatsApp for government communications
#33Hopefully they rather use something like http://matrix.org
If past is any indication, either of the Ambanis or Adani will get contract.
But it's a good idea nonetheless. A lot of confidential data is sent over WhatsApp.
Imagine the data that PM/FM has!
Re: India reportedly wants to build its own WhatsApp for government communications
#34An interesting aside: In 1998, India tested its nuclear weapons (Pokhran-II [1]). Almost immediately, US imposed sanctions. One of the terms of the sanction? "Bar the export of certain defense and technology material" [2]. I can't find a source but I do remember that IE used to ship with reduced encryption. Perhaps we have learnt some lessons since then :-) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokhran-II [2] http://edit…
This is why my hair stands up every time we have the "backdoored encryption" discussion -- we had, and probably still have, people in positions of power that think of encryption as something that should be regulated on the order that guided missiles are.
Re: India reportedly wants to build its own WhatsApp for government communications
#35An interesting aside: In 1998, India tested its nuclear weapons (Pokhran-II [1]). Almost immediately, US imposed sanctions. One of the terms of the sanction? "Bar the export of certain defense and technology material" [2]. I can't find a source but I do remember that IE used to ship with reduced encryption. Perhaps we have learnt some lessons since then :-) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokhran-II [2] http://edit…
This is why my hair stands up every time we have the "backdoored encryption" discussion -- we had, and probably still have, people in positions of power that think of encryption as something that should be regulated on the order that guided missiles are.
As a technologist, I agree with your view.
But in cases like sanctions, I think the "Let me show who has the power" mentality takes over.
So, a country (say USA) can pressure its companies (like Microsoft in 1998) to stop providing some features/services/products to have some leverage over the sanctioned country. The unfortunate pattern in history has been that politics wins over rationality.
Re: India reportedly wants to build its own WhatsApp for government communications
#36An interesting aside: In 1998, India tested its nuclear weapons (Pokhran-II [1]). Almost immediately, US imposed sanctions. One of the terms of the sanction? "Bar the export of certain defense and technology material" [2]. I can't find a source but I do remember that IE used to ship with reduced encryption. Perhaps we have learnt some lessons since then :-) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokhran-II [2] http://edit…
Indeed, encryption algorithms and implementation are subject to restrictions on export similar to munitions. It used to be very strict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...
There's an interesting story about PGP author circumventing that law by publishing his code in a book.
Re: India reportedly wants to build its own WhatsApp for government communications
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Conversations is the only decent XMPP client, and server XEP support is a mess. Its unusable for normal people if you want to use any kind of advanced features.
I concur, tried to adopt it at dayjob when HipChat closed, but it was impossible. Conversations IM client is alright, but we couldn't find a client for IOS that just worked. It's mission impossible. I hope they go for Matrix, like France did, but I get a feeling they'll be hit hard by NIH.
Yeah, iOS XMPP client support does seem to be the issue. Riot gets cross platform support from electron. Perhaps the world needs an electron based XMPP client...
One relatively low effort path for a government might be to simply adopt something like Chatsecure and fix it.
Re: India reportedly wants to build its own WhatsApp for government communications
#38What do they have to hide? Internal communication is usually great source for historians and posterity. Not to mention parliamentary investigative bodies.
"The rationale behind the move is to cut reliance on foreign entities, the report said, a concern that has somehow manifested amid U.S.’s ongoing tussle with Huawei and China."
Yeh, I understand. My comment was half tongue-in-check and half a pity that future historians won't have a look into internal communications of this sort.
Re: India reportedly wants to build its own WhatsApp for government communications
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
The goal was to provide a secure whatsapp alternative for he French administration. They failed the "secure" part - nothing else matters, and that does not mean that rolling your own should be discouraged - it means that these things are hard, and chances are your pet project will be less secure than established systems. > Please do not link to that website until they wake up and stop insulting visitors with this UI…
> Thank the French for that, who are the main reason behind the EU legislation about Cookies. This again is wrong. The problem originated by publishers who track users and disrespect their privacy for many years. The regulation that happened after a very long time of people urging governments to do something about that, makes this initial problem better visible. Still it is important to understand: no cookies are nee…
The cookie situation has been exacerbated exactly because of the cookie law. Previously I could just block cookies client-side (like any sane user avoiding cookies would) and every site worked just fine. However, after the cookie regulation, numerous sites just straight up started to block access _unless_ you accept their cookies.
Cookie regulation is one of the best examples of how governments meddling into tech has backfired.
It would have been a much better idea to launch a public awareness campaign about cookies and their client-side blocking, or even provide patches to open source browsers to have a better UX for blocking cookies by default. The only regulation that should have been passed (if any), would have been to allow access (to static content) despite blocking of cookies client-side.
Re: India reportedly wants to build its own WhatsApp for government communications
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why my hair stands up every time we have the "backdoored encryption" discussion -- we had, and probably still have, people in positions of power that think of encryption as something that should be regulated on the order that guided missiles are.
As a technologist, I agree with your view. But in cases like sanctions, I think the "Let me show who has the power" mentality takes over. So, a country (say USA) can pressure its companies (like Microsoft in 1998) to stop providing some features/services/products to have some leverage over the sanctioned country. The unfortunate pattern in history has been that politics wins over rationality.
Do you have some reference to something that suggests that this is what actually happened? I don't think the US government made Microsoft put weak encryption in export versions of IE because India tested a nuke.