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

Indian police open case against hundreds in Kashmir for using VPN

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 244 posts

Re: Indian police open case against hundreds in Kashmir for using VPN

#41

Post by pjg »

arsalanb wrote: post #13

When I left Kashmir a few months ago, my phone and all its contents were checked by Indian police at the airport. They asked me to unlock and checked photos, WhatsApp texts, etc. Random arrests and extra-judicial killings of Kashmiris by the Indian state is a quite regular occurrence. A laughable narrative around how they were "Pakistan sponsored terrorists" is usually spun by the media/police nexus.

Is this functionally different from the US immigration authorities asking to inspect a person's social media content on their cellphone/laptop when entering the US ? Not just from "hostile" countries like Iran but occasionally from visitors from Canada ? I know at least one Canadian born citizen (had an Islamic name ) who was asked to reveal their social media profile and had their smartphone searched

Re: Indian police open case against hundreds in Kashmir for using VPN

#42

Post by LinuxBender »

This is going to sound antiquated and tedious, so please bear with me. Rather than using a VPN/Tor/etc. which can be easily detected or requires a lot of OpSec to get right, consider having people in other countries that can help bundle archives of data for you. Ship the data back and forth over something non conspicuous and not subject to MITM proxies such as SFTP to AWS or one of the low-rent VPS providers. Use a ram based linux distribution in India to create the posts, tar the data up, SFTP to another country. A friend in that country outside of India pulls down the tarball and posts text and videos to social media for you. When you are done uploading your tarball, reboot, and all the data is gone from your end. You can boot back into whatever government approved OS image is acceptable.

If you set the filesystem permissions right on the SFTP server, then even if they beat the username / pw out of you, then all they will find is cat videos on the chroot SFTP server. Your friend will see the tarball of objectionable content in a hidden directory. Remember to sanitize EXIF data from pictures first as that has your GPS location and in some cases your cell phone serial number. Someone will suggest ssh keys over password, but they should not in this case. No data must be persisted on the India side of this scenario.

I will be the first to admit, this process is tedious. I am only suggesting it as a last resort when all else fails.

Re: Indian police open case against hundreds in Kashmir for using VPN

#43

Post by saagarjha »

screye wrote: post #22
aarongray wrote: post #3

It's really too bad that the two rising tech countries - China and India - have such a third-world approach to censorship on the Internet. You would think they would want to mimic the US's successful formula in hopes of building their presence as a tech powerhouse, but in this area they don't seem to be doing that.

We have yet to see how the US reacts when a massive section of it wants to secede. India and China both face a significantly more difficult geopolitical reality than the USA. Some of the world's most westernized and developed countries (Spain, Israel) are starting to use violence and suppressive tactics now that they are faced with even the smallest amount of secessionist unrest. Kashmir is one of the most militarize…

> Such draconian policies should only come into place for very short durations with measures for removal

One of the problems when giving a government powers like this for a “short duration” is they tend to end up sticking a lot longer than that.

Re: Indian police open case against hundreds in Kashmir for using VPN

#44

Post by AsyncAwait »

reaperducer wrote: post #35
screye wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have yet to see how the US reacts when a massive section of it wants to secede. India and China both face a significantly more difficult geopolitical reality than the USA. Some of the world's most westernized and developed countries (Spain, Israel) are starting to use violence and suppressive tactics now that they are faced with even the smallest amount of secessionist unrest. Kashmir is one of the most militarize…

We have yet to see how the US reacts when a massive section of it wants to secede. We have? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War

During the Internet age, is what OP probably meant.

Re: Indian police open case against hundreds in Kashmir for using VPN

#45

Post by friendly_fren »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #24
definitelyRobot wrote: post #20

As a young tech person in India, this stuff makes me so angry. The ruling party here (BJP) doesn't have any real competition. Which means they can get away with pretty much anything. They've banned VPNs. They'll chuck you in prison if you speak against the government or a politician. Then they'll brand you as an "anti-nationalist" and openly say to their supporters that you deserve to be shot. Facial recognition is n…

They say "anti-nationalist" is a bad thing? Wow.

Why do you think nationalism is bad?

Re: Indian police open case against hundreds in Kashmir for using VPN

#46

Post by sabman83 »

godelski wrote: post #40
definitelyRobot wrote: post #20

As a young tech person in India, this stuff makes me so angry. The ruling party here (BJP) doesn't have any real competition. Which means they can get away with pretty much anything. They've banned VPNs. They'll chuck you in prison if you speak against the government or a politician. Then they'll brand you as an "anti-nationalist" and openly say to their supporters that you deserve to be shot. Facial recognition is n…

> deepfakes are being used to spread propoganda. Do you have examples for us? Okay if it is in Arabic/Hindi/etc. We talk about the potential for damage here (on HN) and so I think it is important to have examples of this happening in the wild.

https://www.vice.com/en_in/article/jgedjb/the-first-use-of-d...

Re: Indian police open case against hundreds in Kashmir for using VPN

#47

Post by dickjocke »

pjg wrote: post #41
arsalanb wrote: post #13

When I left Kashmir a few months ago, my phone and all its contents were checked by Indian police at the airport. They asked me to unlock and checked photos, WhatsApp texts, etc. Random arrests and extra-judicial killings of Kashmiris by the Indian state is a quite regular occurrence. A laughable narrative around how they were "Pakistan sponsored terrorists" is usually spun by the media/police nexus.

Is this functionally different from the US immigration authorities asking to inspect a person's social media content on their cellphone/laptop when entering the US ? Not just from "hostile" countries like Iran but occasionally from visitors from Canada ? I know at least one Canadian born citizen (had an Islamic name ) who was asked to reveal their social media profile and had their smartphone searched

OP is saying he was leaving Kashmir. Generally US authorities ask this stuff when you arrive.

Re: Indian police open case against hundreds in Kashmir for using VPN

#48

Post by Klonoar »

PureParadigm wrote: post #21
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #14

This is a reminder that without physical security, electronic security is pretty much worthless. The best encryption won't save you from rubberhose cryptanalysis where they beat you until you reveal your key. Clever circumvention technologies such as VPN won't save you when they arrest your for using circumvention technologies. These are all good things, but we in tech, oftentimes think we can program our way out of…

Perhaps there is also the need for untraceable/hidden tools for censorship circumvention. This may involve masquerading as normal traffic. I've heard of specialized hidden censorship circumvention tools that do this by tunneling information though protocols like ping or DNS which won't look as suspicious as a VPN. Of course, for wide deployment this will become a game of cat and mouse, but I don't see any reason it w…

Your intentions are really good, but this kind of comment is _exactly_ what the person you're responding to was talking about - you're just playing another cat-and-mouse game and not solving the real issue.

The world is hitting a breaking point where this has to be solved by fixing governments/legislation/what have you, not by programming more.

(Edit: a typo)

Re: Indian police open case against hundreds in Kashmir for using VPN

#49

Post by godelski »

PureParadigm wrote: post #21
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #14

This is a reminder that without physical security, electronic security is pretty much worthless. The best encryption won't save you from rubberhose cryptanalysis where they beat you until you reveal your key. Clever circumvention technologies such as VPN won't save you when they arrest your for using circumvention technologies. These are all good things, but we in tech, oftentimes think we can program our way out of…

Perhaps there is also the need for untraceable/hidden tools for censorship circumvention. This may involve masquerading as normal traffic. I've heard of specialized hidden censorship circumvention tools that do this by tunneling information though protocols like ping or DNS which won't look as suspicious as a VPN. Of course, for wide deployment this will become a game of cat and mouse, but I don't see any reason it w…

I remember reading on the Signal Blog[0] about using domain fronting to hide their traffic from governments. I think we not only need to have a serious conversation about this (hey corps, if you want to do some good, just look the other way or actually embrace this!) but need to push for technology like this and others. India is heavily invested in WhatsApp and we know that it leaks a lot of metadata. We see in HK users being deanonymized through WA/Telegram/Signal because phone numbers are how social graphs are created or through weak encryption.

There's currently a lot of apathy because people feel defeated. But as the tech literate I feel it is our place to lead these conversations.

[0] https://signal.org/blog/looking-back-on-the-front/

Re: Indian police open case against hundreds in Kashmir for using VPN

#50

Post by godelski »

Klonoar wrote: post #48
PureParadigm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps there is also the need for untraceable/hidden tools for censorship circumvention. This may involve masquerading as normal traffic. I've heard of specialized hidden censorship circumvention tools that do this by tunneling information though protocols like ping or DNS which won't look as suspicious as a VPN. Of course, for wide deployment this will become a game of cat and mouse, but I don't see any reason it w…

Your intentions are really good, but this kind of comment is _exactly_ what the person you're responding to was talking about - you're just playing another cat-and-mouse game and not solving the real issue. The world is hitting a breaking point where this has to be solved by fixing governments/legislation/what have you, not by programming more. (Edit: a typo)

We're on a tech form. We aren't political experts, we're tech experts. While we should be aware and discuss the political issues at the end of the day we aren't experts in that. But being experts in tech, we can approach the problem from that end. This isn't a "I'm a hammer therefore every problem is a nail" this is "It is a complicated problem that involves nails, screws, rivets, welding, etc. I am good at using a hammer, so let me take care of the nails".
Post reply on HN