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

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

#71
post #10

Yes they do, mainly because it’s the law. That it’s a misguided law is open for debate, but I don’t believe there is any state in the world that doesn’t monitor and control tele-communications (internet is regulated as tele-communications WW).

I’ve wondered about this for a while now with all the social media banning. The FCC requires one to have a license to broadcast over the airwaves and from what I understand these regulations stem from a limited number of frequencies. But I wonder if the FCC would have been created if that physical constraint did not exist. Was the FCC more about the constrained physics or controlled information?

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

#72

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 wil…

"National security" has come to mean "anything critical of the government".

Yes this is true!

Hence government needs to invest in indoctrination in order to better convince the people of the justness of their actions. Singing the national anthem, waving the flag, inventing enemies without and within - it's pretty easy to build the 'cognitive infrastructure' required to carry the day

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

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NATing IPv4 traffic requires maintaining a 5-tuple of connection state[1], which means the ISP must log these 5-tuples to be able to track citizens individually. Further, if there's another layer of NAT (such as a free WiFi service in an airport or a WiFi router in a citizen's home), cooperation is needed at that NAT layer too. IPv6 obviates the need to maintain these 5-tuples since it has a larger IP address space.…

> Each citizen can then be assigned an unique IP address You don't understand how IPv6 works.

You would want to use NAT with ipv6 if you want to hide somewhat your traffic— say at university as one example.

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

#75

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.

> But government should simply not have the ability to monitor citizen communication.

What if the citizens were agents of the enemy?

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

#76
post #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…

Do you honestly believe the US government doesn't have the same access to cloudflare data within the states?

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

#77
post #76
post #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…

Do you honestly believe the US government doesn't have the same access to cloudflare data within the states?

> the US government doesn't have the same access to cloudflare data within the states?

Yes. There is almost certainly access. But it’s partial and adversarial, not automatic as in India.

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

#78

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.

I remember watching Enemy of the State in theaters with my dad. I remember thinking it was a cool movie, but sort of unrealistic and over-the-top, like James Bond.

Now I think it's unrealistic because Will Smith and Gene Hackman survived the first 25 minutes of the film.

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

#80

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.

Digression:

If you like "Enemy of the State," you absolutely must watch "The Conversation"[1] if you haven't already. You may decide, as many have before you, that it exists in the same universe as "Enemy of the State," and that Gene Hackman's character in "Enemy of the State" is an older, even more cynical Harry Caul from "The Conversation."

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conversation

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