Live data from Hacker News

Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey

thehindu.com

151–160 of 476 posts

Re: Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could even just shoot people for using the internet! It’s hopeless. Anyone who wants freedom should probably just give up now before it’s too late.

I'm not suggesting people should give up, I'm suggesting that some countries can resort to doing very uncute things when faced with noncompliance. When someone with the monopoly on the use of force says they will not allow something, that isn't something cute to ignore, it is serious.

Fair enough, yes people should be ready to fight for their rights (physically if necessary). The tone of your post came across as an attempt to demoralize. Intentional or not, my comment was a pushback against that.

Re: Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some relevant wisdom from the founding fathers of the United States: When asked about when kind of government the founding fathers had created, Ben Franklin replied "A Republic, if you can keep it." On democracy, John Adams wrote: "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." Thomas Jefferson further wrote that "The t…

John Adams wrote that as a reason why the United States is not a democracy. It's a Constitutional Republic. It's a consistent theme throughout the Federalist Papers. Individual States and localities have elements of democracy, but the US—built upon knowledge of Rome—is not. The United States of America is the second iteration of American government, after the one that failed in 1787. The arguments leading up to the 1…

Great point about what Adams is actually arguing! Of course, I know the country was founded as/is a Constitutional Republic, but it's always interesting to see how much our modern (American) understanding of democracy differs from how the founders understood it – and also how they shaped the fact that most of us now equate Constitutional Republic with the best form of democracy.

Re: Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey

#154

> the app enables communication even during network restrictions and creates a substantial risk of misuse by anti-national elements, terrorist organisations, organised criminal groups and cyber criminals seeking to evade lawful detection and continue communication despite legally imposed restrictions. This mouthful boils down to exactly this: a form of communication not controlled by the government creates a risk for…

Hilariously (darkly), during the pandemic, the very same reason is why the very same administrators were hell-bent on forcing Bluetooth-always-on contact tracing on the whole country's smartphone-carrying population.

(edit: viz. that forcible peer-to-peer bluetooth networking works. One man's unrestricted mass-surveillance is another person's "terrorist activity". Oh how the turntables turn and turn.)

Re: Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any instances of the US sending a tourist to jail in another country?

Ages ago there was a Russian citizen they wanted who was flying to the Caribbean. His flight had a surprise landing in Florida with the FBI waiting on the tarmac.

Belarus the same

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair_Flight_4978

Flying over a country does not make you immune to that country’s laws.

Re: Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what happens if you have a flight that gets diverted to India and they search your bags and find a satellite phone?

Believe it or not, straight to jail.

Do you have a reputable link?

Re: Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey

#157
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the formative narratives of Indian independence is that peaceful protest works in getting rid of bad governments. on edit: changed myths to narratives to avoid confusion

It’s funny because the Indian independence movement was a failure. Indians protested non-violently and sometimes violently for over a hundred years, and British control (first through the East India company and then directly by the crown) kept increasing with every passing year, eventually encompassing the entire subcontinent. India eventually gained independence because colonialism in general was not politically and…

People greatly misunderstand the Indian independence movement. The early Indian activists merely wanted India to have a devolved legislature like present-day Scotland and Wales, or like Canada and Australia used to have. It was relatively late that anyone really wanted independence. I think many of them still wanted to be a constituent state of the UK.

People always forget that Gandhi's first actions as a 'nationalist' were attempting to raise an army to fight on behalf of Britain. The idea that the Indian nationalists wanted to be a new nation from the get go is a modern day invention.

Re: Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey

#158
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or fly a plane or drone overhead and see [0] where the terminals are. After a few fines most people would decide it’s not worth the risk. I remember how the Uber rollout worked in Berlin. Uber said they don’t need to comply with anything the city asked for and enjoyed their position in the safety of an ocean away so the local authorities instituted eye watering fines for drivers caught providing Uber rides. Uber deci…

Depends on how many terminals there are and whether or not the neighborhoods they are in are sympathetic to the operators. It’s very easy to move them. Resistance against totalitarianism is a duty.

I wasn’t thinking of totalitarianism but rather a country objecting to Starlink operating on its territory. This is why I brought up Berlin and fines, not the secret police breaking in your house at night.

After living under one of those totalitarian regimes, all Incan say is that everything sounds easy in an HN comment typed from the safety of a democratic society.

Re: Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey

#159
post #17

India is pretty serious about being able to monitor all communications after the terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008. The terrorists used satellite phones to coordinate the attack. As a result, they banned most satellite communication devices. I learned about this earlier this year because I had a connecting flight through India on the way to go trekking in the Himalayas. I had planned to take a Garmin inReach with me,…

I disagree with the Modi and Hindutva project almost entirely, not only politically, but on a personal level coming from a minority community (Christian) in India. However, India is in what basically amounts to a perpetual state of war with Pakistan and has always been this way. India rarely agresses Pakistan and Pakistani terror groups do operate with seeming impunity in India (Pakistan doesn't even maintain a 'no-first-use' nuclear option, and is currently run by a military dictatorship... they're f'ing nuts). While all these actions are obviously crazy and in my opinion overbearing, people in the West don't understand how awful radical Islam is, especially of the South Asian variety. I'm not sure many Americans would react differently to the extremism of South Asian Islam to be honest.

To put it in perspective, many Indians (of all religions) died and fought in a bloody war to secure Bangladesh's (then East Pakistan's) freedom from what was a genocidal regime in West Pakistan. Decades later, the typical Bangladeshi muslim still hates Indians because any non-muslim Indian they consider 'Hindu', thus polytheist, and thus worthy of death. One thousand five hundred Indian soldiers died only for their neighbor to hate them in return for the 'crime' of not being born part of their religion. While Hindu nationalists are fucking insane, I honestly think many have been driven to it by the insanity of South Asian Islam.

Meanwhile, America has a relatively peaceful and cooperative neighbor (Mexico), which only has a crime problem on the border, and the average American seems ready to give up almost every civic right to deal with that. There are barely any terror attacks of note coming from these Mexican gangs, and congress has already ceded many constitutional rights (such as the right against unreasonable search and seizure) near the border zones. Anyway, imagine Mexicans hated everyone in America for the crime of being 'gringos' (even the non-whites) and that's basically what India has with all their neighbors.

If people in the west want India to liberalize, which we really should want to do, Western nations need to work on dismantling Pakistan and limiting Islamic extremism in the region.

Re: Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any instances of the US sending a tourist to jail in another country?

Ages ago there was a Russian citizen they wanted who was flying to the Caribbean. His flight had a surprise landing in Florida with the FBI waiting on the tarmac.

Notably, he was kept in the US, not sent to prison in another country?
Post reply on HN