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

reuters.com

461–470 of 783 posts

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

#461
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of digital ID is a huge problem in many domains and enables a lot of scams and crime in the first place. Requiring identification in situations that don't need it is where the problems start, but that's possible with analog IDs as well, and is often even worse there (since these provide neither security against digital copies, nor privacy, which digital ID can, e.g. via zero knowledge proofs).

The problem with digital ID is that it can be switched off in an instant. I was talking to some people in a strike picket line about this. They seemed unaware of it. Suddenly you would be unable to travel, pay your bills and access internet etc for doing the wrong thing.

If an authoritarian state tells a bank to block you as a customer you get exactly the same result. All these options of blocking people are already available to states in general.

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

#462
post #403

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…

BankID isn't what they are proposing. Not in any way shape or form. Try learning about a topic before you make stupid comments like that.

What is so fundamentally different about DID proposed in the UK or the US then? I read through some of the documents about it and the data scoping that will be available, which isn't with something like BankID seem to be the only difference. What am I missing here?

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

#463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mate, this isn't even remotely "nationalist". This stuff is being pushed across the world. Digital ID? The only people really desperate for it are our rulers.

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…

You're comparing a developed, mature nation to a developing one? Good one! Let's try doing this in middle east too!

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

#464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be used as evidence that the person who has GrapheneOS on their phone is attempting to break the law. Telegram and Signal chats are often used as circumstantial evidence of malfeasance in Indian national security cases, so the jump to using GrapheneOS as evidence of malfesance is tiny.

FUD

I see it more as an extra reason to use it:

- If only criminals want privacy, privacy becomes suspicious

- If more people use an open OS, it's more profitable for commercial entities to not put in extra effort to block these devices due to the FUD going around about them being insecure

So if someone suggests that using open source software is increasingly being seen as suspicious, the #1 thing to do is start using it

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

#465

I'm shocked by people and state using the crutch of cyber crime or scams to push a totalitarian solution to a problem that is better solved by improved education and targeted campaigns against common security pitfalls. I abhor any decision that robs even a grain of my individual freedom.

> I'm shocked India is currently run by a nationalist regime headed by the so called "butcher of Gujarat"[1], there isn't much that would shock me wrt to that lot's totalitarian tendencies. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_image_of_Narendra_Modi

[deleted]

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

#466
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of digital ID is a huge problem in many domains and enables a lot of scams and crime in the first place. Requiring identification in situations that don't need it is where the problems start, but that's possible with analog IDs as well, and is often even worse there (since these provide neither security against digital copies, nor privacy, which digital ID can, e.g. via zero knowledge proofs).

The problem with digital ID is that it can be switched off in an instant. I was talking to some people in a strike picket line about this. They seemed unaware of it. Suddenly you would be unable to travel, pay your bills and access internet etc for doing the wrong thing.

A digital ID is not doing all of that. The way it's implemented in Sweden, just to take an example already mentioned, is simply to identify you, and only for certain parts of society (mostly governmental services, banks, insurance and the like, and a few more). It's not about authorizing you for travel. If you need an ID for picking up your valuable shipment from the post office then you simply show your driver's license or passport, you don't use a digital ID for that. At all. If someone took away your digital ID then that would mean zero for your internet access, and zero for your ability to travel. It's not used for that at all. What would be a problem is paying the bills, because the ID identifies you for using network banking. However, alternative ways for identifying you for the latter are far worse concerns.

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

#469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what are the odds that this problem organically appeared and then they happen to be able to take advantage of it? Quite low. Borders weren't open to fabricate an excuse to engage in authoritarianism - the excuse was simply fabricate, whole-cloth, with no basis in reality to justify it. There is no immigration problem in the USA. Large portions of the American economy are dependent on immigration, documented or othe…

What is it about being a US citizen that increases criminality? Shouldn't we expect that crime comes down as the US has been a leader in immigration, considering immigrants commit less crime? Has crime come down in Europe as it became a leader? I've been trying to make sense of the statistics. Interested to hear any explanation that can reconcile these contrasting observations.

Generally it seems to be more related that if you are an immigrant, you more likely try to keep your heads down. This comes from a video about immigration in sweden. For which the first generation of immigrants want to contribute to society in most cases, while the second generation seems to be more open to crime. The second generation does of course has then the citizenship and are not considered to be immigrants anymore. But this does does not need to correlate with immigration and culture per se, but also can have todo about second generations being badly integrated and/or having less oportunities then other citizens. Just seems citizens generally accept less shit from the government then immigrants do.

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

#470
post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US (approximately) everyone has a social security number and a driver's license. In practice, those are equivalent to universal ID, just more annoying to use in everyday life.

Digital ID is also an identification system, social security number isn't. For instance you can't ID people on porn sites using it.

You can't ID people on porn sites with what's implemented in most European countries either.

I feel like what you mean by "digital ID" is very different to what others mean.

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