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India bans MasterCard from adding new customers

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Re: India bans MasterCard from adding new customers

#141

Post by passivate »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #28

The obsession with where data physically sits at rest is so amusing to me. Not limited to overzealous governments and financial data; healthcare is singularly obsessed with this. It makes no sense whatsoever, of course. I'd much rather store properly encrypted personal information or financial data in North Korea than storing it unencrypted in my home country. I would understand if they demanded both storage and proc…

Governments care about financial data for a lot of legitimate reasons, including fraud, criminal activity, etc. Having the data local makes sending legal notices for data access easier and makes supervision easier. A country shouldn't rely on sending international data-access petitions to random data centers with possibly hostile governments who will fight them on jurisdiction and non-treaty grounds.

I think what they're doing makes sense.

Re: India bans MasterCard from adding new customers

#142

Post by eunos »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #73

we have known for some time since well before the Tiktok ban in the US, that the world wide web was heading to the fractured web. It started with china. The moment the world accepted their firewall conditions, it was the moment that we said we are OK with letting you earn the benefits of the web, without the cost of openness. Open countries could set a marker on this issue. Either you are open or your are not. And if…

I argue that Snowden's disclosure accelerated the trends.

Re: India bans MasterCard from adding new customers

#143

Post by passivate »

zohch wrote: post #31
asaddhamani wrote: post #25

Data from Indian transactions should be stored and ideally even processed in India. This seems fair and reasonable to me.

What makes it fair and reasonable and does whatever rationale you use here not open up the door to further nativism? I mean if it is fair and reasonable that Indian transactions should be stored and processed in India, is it not also fair and reasonable that goods sold in India should be made in India, that movies that show in India should be made in India, that all news consumed in India should be written in India?…

> is it not also fair and reasonable that goods sold in India should be made in India, that movies that show in India should be made in India, that all news consumed in India should be written in India?

Of course, thats what every country wants, and they develop policies that give tax breaks or concessions to local businesses. That's why tariffs were enacted.

I'm sorry, I don't really get your point, maybe you can restate it?

Re: India bans MasterCard from adding new customers

#144

Post by lou1306 »

bloniac wrote: post #60

All the tech people in this thread arguing how it makes no difference technically where the data resides etc etc. really guys can you not think further than that? It’s simple and obvious the Indian government is exercising total control over its affairs. Naming technical distinctions completely misses the point. This is not a technical issue and has zero to do with tech. It’s political.

Data residency absolutely makes a difference, and I find it stunning that people don't see it.

Ok, so you decide to store your nation's sensitive data in another country, $nation. If things get awry, there is a (pretty remote) risk that $nation will break your encryption. But there's also a much less remote risk that $nation will simply block all connections from your country and prevent you from accessing your own data. How do you deal with such a threat?

Re: India bans MasterCard from adding new customers

#145

Post by passivate »

thayne wrote: post #37
asaddhamani wrote: post #25

Data from Indian transactions should be stored and ideally even processed in India. This seems fair and reasonable to me.

You think it is fair for companies to be required to run servers in every country they operate in? That seems pretty wasteful and inefficient to me.

We require businesses to register themselves, to file taxes in every country, etc, etc. We don't have global governments, and supervision of local financial data for fraud/criminal activity should be done locally. It sounds to me like its more efficient compared to the alternative.

Re: India bans MasterCard from adding new customers

#146

Post by anticodon »

actuator wrote: post #86
gpm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a billion person country. It might not make sense for every country to demand things like this, but that doesn't mean it doesn't make sense for giant countries too, and it doesn't make it inefficient. At India's scale costs are already amortized anyways, but worse, consider India's physical location. It's surrounded by hostile nations (Myanmar, China, Pakistan, make a wall around it). To get data out of the coun…

Afaik, Myanmar is not a hostile country. Neither the elected government nor the military dictatorship has animosity at the state level.

China and India are not friends. China needs Myanmar because it would allow it to transfer its goods faster and cheaper: no need to go around through Strait of Malacca.

If pro-China government is installed in Myanmar it means that it automatically becomes hostile to India.

Controlling trade routes explains many wars and coups.

Re: India bans MasterCard from adding new customers

#147

Post by alienthrowaway »

signal11 wrote: post #38
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #28

The obsession with where data physically sits at rest is so amusing to me. Not limited to overzealous governments and financial data; healthcare is singularly obsessed with this. It makes no sense whatsoever, of course. I'd much rather store properly encrypted personal information or financial data in North Korea than storing it unencrypted in my home country. I would understand if they demanded both storage and proc…

India wants data residency because it wants to apply its own somewhat unique approach to law enforcement to all digital data — financial and otherwise. This is a country that switches off mobile data (3G and 4G) at the drop of a hat[1], and switched off an entire state’s mobile Internet access for 18 months [2]. This may appear unnecessary and capricious to some especially in the West. However I’m sure pro-Indian gov…

> And that is, in my view, the driver for India’s interest in data residency.

I thought you were going to go further with that thought. I'm from an African country where the government tried to block social media during protests at DNS level. These efforts were trivially thwarted by using VPNs. The next trick was to cut off the internet entirely - unfortunately for the government, this broke electronic payments and ground the economy to a halt, so the internet blackout lasted a day.

I suspect one of the factors is that India wants to be able to cut itself off from the internet without breaking (payment) systems that have data stored offshore.

Re: India bans MasterCard from adding new customers

#148

Post by passivate »

signal11 wrote: post #38
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #28

The obsession with where data physically sits at rest is so amusing to me. Not limited to overzealous governments and financial data; healthcare is singularly obsessed with this. It makes no sense whatsoever, of course. I'd much rather store properly encrypted personal information or financial data in North Korea than storing it unencrypted in my home country. I would understand if they demanded both storage and proc…

India wants data residency because it wants to apply its own somewhat unique approach to law enforcement to all digital data — financial and otherwise. This is a country that switches off mobile data (3G and 4G) at the drop of a hat[1], and switched off an entire state’s mobile Internet access for 18 months [2]. This may appear unnecessary and capricious to some especially in the West. However I’m sure pro-Indian gov…

>What I feel about this is that of course India has the sovereign right to do as it pleases, but its messy, adhoc approach to digital governance won’t win it any laurels and will actually tarnish its reputation. Also, it would be on a much better footing if it passed a decent law on digital privacy, which many have been saying is long overdue — leading to a flourishing unregulated economy in selling Indians’ data[3].

You seem to be on a general critique of Indian policy, and also applying it to this specific case. If we untangle those two for a moment, what exactly is messy, adhoc about this financial data residency requirement? It seems logical to me that local financial data should remain local for legitimate legal reasons (supervision of fraud/criminality being the most obvious ones). Why would this tarnish their reputation?

Re: India bans MasterCard from adding new customers

#149

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #28

The obsession with where data physically sits at rest is so amusing to me. Not limited to overzealous governments and financial data; healthcare is singularly obsessed with this. It makes no sense whatsoever, of course. I'd much rather store properly encrypted personal information or financial data in North Korea than storing it unencrypted in my home country. I would understand if they demanded both storage and proc…

Will you always be able to access your data stored on North Korean soil?

Sure, if it's properly encrypted, the North Korean government may not be able to access it, but nothing's stopping them from cutting you off and holding your data hostage.

I used to work for a company that made software for casinos. Many of them were on tribal land, and refused to use any cloud services because they didn't want any of their data on American soil. All their software was on-prem, all their data was on-prem. If Uncle Sam came a-knockin' with warrants and court orders, they'd tell him to take it up with the tribal elders.

Re: India bans MasterCard from adding new customers

#150

Post by draw_down »

naruvimama wrote: post #126

Let us imagine a scenario where Mastercard holds EU or US citizens data in China or Russia and refuses to move it to EU/US. If it is a bit hard to digest, perhaps one needs to extend the same respect to India's sovereignty.

“One”?

MC likely hasn’t done this because it’s kind of a huge undertaking. I say this only as explanation, not as an excuse. India warned firms of this years ago so there is no excuse. It doesn’t really have anything to do with respect.

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