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India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app

reuters.com

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Re: India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app

#321

Post by cheema33 »

sateesh wrote: post #303
sharadov wrote: post #129

Indian government is big on pronouncements. It will be a garbage app that most likely will not work, considering the historical incompetence of the Indian government's expertise in all things tech. I am pretty certain Apple and Samsung will pay off someone in the government.

You are confounding intent with the implementation.It might be a garbage app to start with, but there is no opt out for the users. Given the payoff and endless iterations resources will be thrown at it and it would eventually get better.

> Given the payoff and endless iterations resources will be thrown at it and it would eventually get better.

Allow the user to download and install it if it turns out to be great. Do not shove things down people's throat against their wishes, like an authoritarian govt. Otherwise you start to resemble Stalin's Soviet Union.

Re: India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app

#322

Post by alabhyajindal »

reactivematter wrote: post #317

How is it different from preloading apps like Netflix, GMail and other shady apps for profits that collects a lot of data. Considering India's low literacy, having a state owned cyber safety app shouldn't be much of an issue. It's not like a backdoor, but safety of citizens, which is the prime mandate of a sovereign state.

The difference is restricting removal of the app. It takes away the user's choice. As far as I know all preloaded apps, at least on Android, can be disabled if not uninstalled.

> The November 28 order, seen by Reuters, gives major smartphone companies 90 days to ensure that the government's Sanchar Saathi app is pre-installed on new mobile phones, with a provision that users cannot disable it.

Re: India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app

#323

Post by jmye »

wholinator2 wrote: post #275
brigandish wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has always received weirdly vitriolic push back. Because, as the Home Secretary herself observed, it would fundamentally change the relationship between the individual and the state. > What really is the Government going to do with a digital ID service that they can't do already? This gives the impression of having done no research into a topic of which you now opine opposition to be "weirdly vitriolic". We live…

I dunno man, your reply doesn't sound _kind_. Maybe you could try to explain the point you're defending rather than ad hominem and overextrapolate a perceived insult. I genuinely want to learn and it's frustrating that your comment does not do that.

Calling their objections “weirdly vitriolic” belies both a complaint about “kindness”, and shows an explicit desire to not learn a single thing. Perhaps, if you have genuine curiosity in the future, you should be thoughtful about the questions you ask, and the ad hominem attacks you make in the asking, rather than whining after the fact because people didn’t excuse your lack of tactful interaction sufficiently?

Or just complain about “kindness” more - it’s easier to accuse others of being mean than to look in a mirror, I suppose.

Re: India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app

#324

Post by cheema33 »

SanjayMehta wrote: post #240
pixelatedindex wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://sancharsaathi.gov.in - Report fraud/scam calls and SMS directly from your phone. - Block or track lost/stolen phones by disabling their IMEI so they can’t be misused. - View all mobile numbers registered under your ID and report any unauthorized SIM cards. - Verify if a phone is genuine with an IMEI/device authenticity check. - Report telecom misuse, such as spoofed calls or suspicious international numbers.…

I've been using it since it came out. It does its job. I was getting 5-6 scam calls per day, now down to maybe 1 in a month. It's just a wrapper around their website (for now). I think this app is harmless but I don't think it should be forced onto anyone.

> I think this app is harmless..

It may be today. And you have no way to know for sure. But there is also no way to know what the app will do down the road when a politician you do not trust is in control of it.

Re: India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app

#325

Post by cindyllm »

jmye wrote: post #323
wholinator2 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno man, your reply doesn't sound _kind_. Maybe you could try to explain the point you're defending rather than ad hominem and overextrapolate a perceived insult. I genuinely want to learn and it's frustrating that your comment does not do that.

Calling their objections “weirdly vitriolic” belies both a complaint about “kindness”, and shows an explicit desire to not learn a single thing. Perhaps, if you have genuine curiosity in the future, you should be thoughtful about the questions you ask, and the ad hominem attacks you make in the asking, rather than whining after the fact because people didn’t excuse your lack of tactful interaction sufficiently? Or ju…

[dead]

Re: India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app

#326

Post by anonymous908213 »

energy123 wrote: post #262
djohnston wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share your abhorrence but are you really shocked? "Think of the children", "Stop the terrorists," these have been the foundations for the erosion of personal liberty for the past thirty years.

I am unconvinced from a practical standpoint that this vision of the world that you wish to live in is even possible today due to the increase in sectarian communal tensions, dense cities, widely available cars/guns/etc and stresses from cost of living and income inequality, as well as the spread of ideas that mass casualty attacks might be a thing to do (the US did not have school attacks until it became an unfortun…

In most countries, death by terrorist is at least an order of magnitude less likely than death by bee. Strangely, we do not seem to be on a campaign to lock all humans in-doors to protect them from bees, nor have we declared a global war on beeism. These stats hold from before the modern surveillance regime, and so can hardly be credited to it. It's not actually a problem in particular need of urgent solving. Regular people are safe from terrorism, much safer than they are against most kinds of tragic accidents. What regular people are actually in danger of is losing all of their human rights to fearmongerers, who constantly invoke terrorism to erode them further and further.

Bukele and Duterte did not rise out of an environment of terrorism, so I don't know why you thought it relevant to bring them up. I think it is really sad to see comments on HN of all places advocating that if we don't implement chat control we'll spiral into a lawless hellscape.

Re: India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app

#327

Post by komali2 »

charcircuit wrote: post #301
komali2 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What really is the Government going to do with a digital ID service that they can't do already? In 20 years, the UK suffers a terrorist attack just before an election, and then elects a ultra right wing government on a platform of "remigrating foreigners." You're a British born citizen but your mom fled from Iran in the 80s and immigrated to the UK. If you don't have digital ID, and the government decides to "remig…

Being able to break the law is never a good thing. Immigration agencies can still fight whatever after people have been kicked out as has been decided. Government inefficiency should never be celebrated.

> Immigration agencies can still fight whatever after people have been kicked out as has been decided.

Given that dragnet operations result in all sorts of random people being deported, including citizens, and given that sometimes these people are deported to countries where they face violence or death, you are arguing for state-sponsored violence without due process. Other than people immigrating, what other circumstances do you feel justify the elimination of due process?

Re: India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app

#328

Post by amarant »

da_chicken wrote: post #286
amarant wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? In Sweden we have digital ID and it's great! Super practical and I struggle to think of how it would be used to spy on citizens, given that it has the same legal protections as banks have regarding your account transactions etc. Like sure you could in theory see every document I've ever signed if you have a warrant for BankID servers, but you could probably glean most of that if you had a warrant for the bank…

Sweden's population is only around 11 million people, and you're geographically concentrated in the southern mainland provinces or near Stockholm. Both of those make thing a lot more practical to manage and make it a lot harder to abuse because you don't have the scale to make profit as attractive, or the distance to make oversight more difficult. You're also relatively culturally similar. It doesn't seem like those…

I mean, I can do all my voting, tax filings, etc. etc. All the way from Mexico, with no issues. You're right that most of that must of the Swedish population resides in the south, but, as someone who grew up in Northern Sweden, it's not like we're marginalised or anything, not really.

Re: India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app

#330

Post by amarant »

zug_zug wrote: post #270
amarant wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again,I struggle to think of how it'd be used gather any data not already available. Yes it's selling point is convenience. Convenience is good. In this particular case I disagree that there's a price in privacy. At least currently, and the way the Swedish electronic ID is implemented, I don't see it. With other variations there might be problems of course, though I'd worry more about someone messing up the security…

I used to think like that. Now in my country we have a president who would use that to deport or target political opponents, track people who criticize Israel, etc. You can never put the genie back in the bottle and you never know who will be in charge in 20 years

Yeah but the US was never a full democracy. Part of the problem with the US is that the president has way too much power to begin with.

If trump was elected prime minister of Sweden, he wouldn't have been able to do half the stuff he's done.

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