Why don't they ban phones too?
Satellite phones are banned.
Indian government moves to ban ProtonMail after bomb threat
131–140 of 173 posts
Re: Indian government moves to ban ProtonMail after bomb threat
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Blocking an email provider has absolutely no positive effect on the safety of the citizens I agree that it's a half assed patched, but if a platform isn't responding to litigation or law enforcement requests, there is always the chance of bad actors weaponizing that loophole. And it's not like Proton AG hasn't been linked to terror attacks. The perpetrator of the Bataclan Massacre used Protonmail to communicate wit…
That is false information, there was no connection between Proton and the Bataclan attack.
Upvote this. Can't edit my previous comment which misread the wired article linked or can @Dang just delete the offending comment for incorrect/misleading info?
Re: Indian government moves to ban ProtonMail after bomb threat
#133Re: Indian government moves to ban ProtonMail after bomb threat
#134Wtf!! I am user of Protonmail and its other services (from India). The protonmail ID is actually my main Email-Id and is used everywhere, even on government sites. Hope https://internetfreedom.in/ steps in or some other organization.
I wouldn't trust someone else to host my email ID. Get yourself your own domain at porkbun.com, make sure it's a .com or at least a very reliable TLD that won't be going anywhere, and then setup proton to point to it. You are no longer locked into any one provider :) You can always transfer your domain and you can always transfer your email host.
Do your due diligence when choosing a registrar.
I recall a blog post where an attacker got access to the blogger's domain through a social engineering attack on the registrar, and subsequently got access to their emails.
I'm curious if anyone knows the article I'm mentioning and how to prevent such an attack. I couldn't find the article back.
Re: Indian government moves to ban ProtonMail after bomb threat
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue is India doesn't have a judicial agreement with Switzerland over data sharing (which includes User IP Addresses) for criminal investigations [0] while the US does [1], and Protonmail only honors Swiss litigation [2] This should change with the new India-Switzerland FTA though. [0] - https://carnegieendowment.org/files/ParsheeraJha_DataAccess.... [1] - https://www.dataprivacyframework.gov/framework-article/1…
The issue is that India has a body of hand picked bureaucrats, who have the authority to both target and ban platforms they cannot control or spy on. The article clearly states that all was a hoax and there weren't any bombs. The Indian government is setting up a nice slippery slope here for total political control of the Internet. Perhaps ProtonMail would be better off if they just pulled out of the country.
> issue is that India has a body of hand picked bureaucrats, who have the authority to both target and ban platforms they cannot control or spy on
Agreed. Indian jurisprudence has not kept up and is still stuck in an authoritarian mindset found in the Colonial British legal system (same problem in Pakistan, Malaysia, Kenya, and Singapore as well btw)
> setting up a nice slippery slope here for total political control of the Internet
The Indian government has always had the authority to control electronic communication due to the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885 [0] and it's equally authoritarian successor the Telecommunications Act, 2023 [1].
India always has been, and sadly, always will be an Illiberal Democracy, and for the exact same reasons that Malaysia, Kenya, and Pakistan will be as well.
It's the original sin of the British Colonial legal system.
[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Telegraph_Act,_1885
[1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act,_2023
Re: Indian government moves to ban ProtonMail after bomb threat
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't trust someone else to host my email ID. Get yourself your own domain at porkbun.com, make sure it's a .com or at least a very reliable TLD that won't be going anywhere, and then setup proton to point to it. You are no longer locked into any one provider :) You can always transfer your domain and you can always transfer your email host.
Do your due diligence when choosing a registrar. I recall a blog post where an attacker got access to the blogger's domain through a social engineering attack on the registrar, and subsequently got access to their emails. I'm curious if anyone knows the article I'm mentioning and how to prevent such an attack. I couldn't find the article back.
If the social engineering can get past 2FA, then the only options you have are
1. The registrar has offices in your country, so you can take legal action against them. Of course, this also means that your despotic government can force the registrar to ban you, etc.
2. The registrar is not in your country, so you depend on their benevolence to reverse the social engineering.
Re: Indian government moves to ban ProtonMail after bomb threat
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its possible for young people to make these mistakes. My wife is not an old man and her default position is not to defend e2e encryption. So all it takes is a spurious argument against it (think of the children!) and without skin in the game she is happy to go along. The argument is about proportional gain vs proportional loss and she is not aware of the devastating loss of privacy that would come from banning strong…
You could prevent this by teaching rational thinking and cognitive biases at the school level, but I assume the reason that hasn’t happened yet because said students would start calling out the hyperbole that politicians and business people often like to employ.
I am not going to jump to the bait of defending my own wife as a rational person.
Instead I'll just point out that difference in information is not difference in ability. She just wasn't aware encryption was used basically everywhere, and so could be forgiven for not having at hand the information to refute the assertion that some back doors in one algorithm or system is harmless.
Only an education in these subjects will help, or a widespread awareness campaign by educated folks. Or even a law protecting it as a fundamental right.
Just as I criticize her field all the time, and am quickly embarrassed by my presumption of hyper rational super powers. Or at least I was for years.. I'm getting better.
Re: Indian government moves to ban ProtonMail after bomb threat
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. No press freedom: what explains the presence and popularity of the wire, scroll, news minute, the quint, etc? Traditional print media that’s critical of the current party in power includes The Hindu, Telegraph etc. That there’s no press freedom is false. 2. Ethno-nationalist state: what ethnicity are we talking about here? BJP loses often in elections locally, and majority of their opponents are Hindus. What India…
[dead]
This comment is filled with so many half-truths and misinformation, it should not belong here.
Please respect hacker news guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
* Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity.*
Re: Indian government moves to ban ProtonMail after bomb threat
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
India is target Protonmail rather than all companies in countries that India doesn't have an agreement with though, right? My point was just that singling out Protonmail doesn't make sense and misses the point on how email works.
Think of laws like Blacklists/Deny Lists. A platform is default allowed until it denies to comply with Law Enforcement Requests. When that happens, a platform can by denied/blacklisted. This is why Protonmail is blocked in India and not Gmail or Yahoo. If Proton AG decided to ignore US Law Enforcement requests, it would get shut down the same way. This exact thing happened to Lavabit in 2013.
I may be getting out over my skis here, hopefully someone will correct me if so. But I believe this is the main distinction with a Common Law system, where everything is default legal unless regulated by legislation. Effectively, laws are only blocklists under legal systems based on Common Law.
I don't know for sure if India is Common Law, though given its history with the British Empire I would guess that it isn't.
Re: Indian government moves to ban ProtonMail after bomb threat
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your statements are correct but they aren't relevant to parent's point. Blocking an email provider has absolutely no positive effect on the safety of the citizens. While it has the potential of a lot of negative effects, like the inability of other innocent citizens to use their email account. It is the same thing when the GoI went ahead and blocked pastebin.com because of a bunch of pastes.
> Blocking an email provider has absolutely no positive effect on the safety of the citizens. If all the available platforms allow for data sharing and tracking on judicial orders, then a perpetrator does not have a safe way to give threats, without the risk of being identified. In my opinion, this is a deterrent in itself, the fear of getting caught.
Ah my bad, I should have explicitly mentioned that merely a threat does not constitute a safety issue enough to justify a broad ban. If such a ban could prevent a real attack, then sure.
Yes, personally even I would feel disturbed and anxious when somebody threatens me, but it would be too broad to classify mental disturbance as a safety issue. I am saying this having survived an episode where my father was threatened for life.