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

reuters.com

171–180 of 783 posts

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

#171
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't find any context for your claim so here is some reddit comment: So it’s true 3,300 people were arrested for posts online. What they don’t tell you are the statistics or context. The actual law for these arrests covers EVERYTHING online. These arrests include those arrested for terrorism (if the planning/act of terror includes any online communication in the UK), threats of violence, racist abuse, hate speech…

The arrest is the punishment. Here is a man getting arrested and subsequently harassed by the Police for 13 weeks for just posting a picture of himself with a shotgun in America. https://archive.is/bH56T

This has a bit more info: https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/business/orwellian-nightmare...

Notably:

> with the situation causing him considerable stress at a point where he was also dealing with an inquest into the deaths of his parents, who had both died in a car crash in 2023

so for some reason, there was something going on about his parents' death two years later. The article also states:

> He said the complaint against him was linked to an ongoing business dispute.

My take is that someone used his pictures of him holding guns (illegal in the UK) as support for a claim that he is an armed and dangerous stalker. Whatever got flagged regarding the inquest into his parents' deaths probably added suspicion. Police acted quickly (as they should, but probably too quickly) and made mistakes, but it looks like they couldn't accept that they were being used, so they decided to continue pressing onwards with the investigation, hoping they were still right and wouldn't be on the hook for a false arrest.

Getting falsely arrested is always terrible, but the way the media spins this as some kind of witch hunt about a LinkedIn post is misleading at best.

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

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

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.

[flagged]

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

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't find any context for your claim so here is some reddit comment: So it’s true 3,300 people were arrested for posts online. What they don’t tell you are the statistics or context. The actual law for these arrests covers EVERYTHING online. These arrests include those arrested for terrorism (if the planning/act of terror includes any online communication in the UK), threats of violence, racist abuse, hate speech…

> These arrests include those arrested for terrorism (if the planning/act of terror includes any online communication in the UK), threats of violence, racist abuse, hate speech and unwanted communication All of these attempts to "debunk" this statistic feel like they're missing the mark. How did the UK get a point where planning terrorism and making mean comments online go into the same statistic for arrests? Does it…

> How did the UK get a point where planning terrorism and making mean comments online go into the same statistic for arrests?

In most publications: because the people reporting on these statistics can get more views and clicks that way. FUD sells. If someone online can defuse the statistics, the reporters that spread them also could've, but chose not to.

As for the second half of the list, "racist abuse, hate speech, and unwanted communication" are pretty common things to incriminate. Even the extremely liberal freedom of speech laws in the USA do not permit stalking ("unwanted communication") and racist abuse is criminalized in all kinds of cases (i.e. firing someone because of their race).

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

#176

These things are more a factor of aggregate risk handling. As an example, if you have tuberculosis it is possible even in the US for the country to mandate that a doctor watch you take the treatment. Totalitarian? Authoritarian? A tool that could be used to force someone to have to show up to where a state-controlled authority could confirm that they are? Yes, all of these things could be words you could assign to th…

All good goals - but this can be done by the government forcing the private companies (Apple/Goog/Samsung) to build tools, reporting, support services around helping with both Scamming applications or Stolen phones etc....

This will keep the data out of governments hands, while pushing the cost burden to these companies and they would be better equipped to build around these goals than the government themselves.

We all know the govt doesn't have a great track record with using Pegasus etc... Giving away control to apps that can decide your phone is stolen and lock it opens the door to any possibility including a totalitarian regime. It would be naive to believe that even if this is done with good intentions, such control could be easily mis used by opposition parties, one malicious individual etc...

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

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't find any context for your claim so here is some reddit comment: So it’s true 3,300 people were arrested for posts online. What they don’t tell you are the statistics or context. The actual law for these arrests covers EVERYTHING online. These arrests include those arrested for terrorism (if the planning/act of terror includes any online communication in the UK), threats of violence, racist abuse, hate speech…

It also includes traveling to the United States where gun ownership is legal, and posting a picture of yourself holding a gun.

... following a police complaint about stalking, against a man involved in a business dispute, seemingly among other things. He may be innocent, but there's more to the story than the picture of the gun.

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

#179

Horrible for a so-called democratic country …

The clipper chip was brought to us by the country that proclaims to spread democracy across the world. Democracies can be authoritarian if you scare the public enough.

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

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you trust the government to only use it for good purposes? and not to track people who may be protesting or belong to opposing political/religious/cultural views? We know based on historical pegasus complaints that this trust has to be earned and can't be given. There are lots of ways to solve for this, mandating that these companies own the identification process through their systems, report misuse, govern apps…

Automatic mistrust of the government is a pretty juvenile take. Yes there are tons of ways, and having OEMs preload an app is the easiest one in a country of 1.1B mobile connections.

So, if you have tons of ways - you vote for the way that could lead to potentially the most exploitation of the population? No one is saying it "will" be exploited, but the potential itself should steer the solution clear off that direction.
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