Live data from Hacker News

Indian ISPs: We already give govt full access to web traffic

entrackr.com

51–60 of 113 posts

Re: Indian ISPs: We already give govt full access to web traffic

#51

Many, if not most, nations have similar provisions to this. I think it's wrong and just over the top. However, encrypting everything and using multi-hop routing wherever possible at least will add noise to this sort of dragnet surveillance. Personally, I've taken steps to obsfucate my traffic since similar legislation was introduced in the UK.

It is most often old people scraming at the cloud/internet. I hope the next generation is more aware about the severely negative foundations the current generation gifts to us in their cynicism shortly before their end of life.

But seriously, to me this is a sign that a state is never the friend of its people. There are no sensible security arguments without also looking at the dangers of dragnet surveillance. The US isn't different, the EU isn't different.

Re: Indian ISPs: We already give govt full access to web traffic

#52
post #43
post #23

Ok so how is it different from what the USA does?

Probably not at all. Still worth reporting and talking about. It's not okay if the US or India or any other country does it. I'm not happy that most comments here are so resigned, "well, yeah, everybody does it".

Worth talking because there are still people who argue that TLS and HTTPS is hassle that is not needed.

Re: Indian ISPs: We already give govt full access to web traffic

#53

I think we must all agree that national governments have a duty of care towards their citizens. From the Indian govt perspective, the dominance of the Internet by foreign owned businesses means that the country is vulnerable to malfeasance should those foreign governments mean India harm or come to decide - over the head of the government - what the Indian people want or need. This is about national sovereignty and n…

This government's police agencies have used Israeli spyware to plant incriminating evidence on journalists and activists. "National security" has come to mean "anything critical of the government".

Loose terms like "national security" are like good times that breed weak leaders. I think we must all agree that citizens have a right against persecution.

What track record does this government have that suggests they will do no wrong with their internet history logs?

Re: Indian ISPs: We already give govt full access to web traffic

#54
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snowden released his trove back in 2013. At that point it became obvious that anyone with power to surveil would use it. I suppose the news here is that the response was so relaxed that governments started doing it publicly and explaining the tech.

It was obvious before Snowden. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

This started in the 60s! I remember hearing about it in the mid 90s on random internet forums.

Re: Indian ISPs: We already give govt full access to web traffic

#56

I think we must all agree that national governments have a duty of care towards their citizens. From the Indian govt perspective, the dominance of the Internet by foreign owned businesses means that the country is vulnerable to malfeasance should those foreign governments mean India harm or come to decide - over the head of the government - what the Indian people want or need. This is about national sovereignty and n…

I agree that most western democratic nations are a very bad example when it comes to defending their own values. But government should simply not have the ability to monitor citizen communication. It was a problem in the past and it should not be a problem in the future.

Re: Indian ISPs: We already give govt full access to web traffic

#57

Many, if not most, nations have similar provisions to this. I think it's wrong and just over the top. However, encrypting everything and using multi-hop routing wherever possible at least will add noise to this sort of dragnet surveillance. Personally, I've taken steps to obsfucate my traffic since similar legislation was introduced in the UK.

[deleted]

Re: Indian ISPs: We already give govt full access to web traffic

#59
People really underestimate the full scale of this, specially today with so many sites using cloudflare without strict ssl reverse proxy connection, Cloudflare Endpoints in India are INSIDE ISP networks [1], what this means is the ISP (and therefore by extension the government) sees EVERYTHING going out of cloudflare servers over http in plaintext. Worse ISP will also modify that content so you get the "This site has been blocked in India under diretions from [...]" over https! cause that's what cloudflare saw when it did it's (insecure) http request

1. https://github.com/captn3m0/hello-cloudflare

Re: Indian ISPs: We already give govt full access to web traffic

#60
The real canary in the coalmine was actually a movie from 1999 called "Enemy of the State."

The plot for the movie was actually based on an account from an NSA employee who tipped one of the producers or director (I forget which) of the mass surveillance the agency was involved in.

To me this movie is iconic just because it predicted events so vividly almost a quarter of a century ago.

Post reply on HN