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Supreme Court to hear petition seeking ban on WhatsApp

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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Re: Supreme Court to hear petition seeking ban on WhatsApp

#21

Post by ultramancool »

capote wrote: post #19
JoshTriplett wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company isn't in their jurisdiction. At most, they could try to block it, like Brazil did.

Oh! I didn't realize it worked that way. So they can tell Apple to take something off their App Store because Apple has presence in their country? Would app stores be immune if their company doesn't have a presence in a country?

App stores may not be legally required to take it down as they're outside the jurisdiction... but a threat to block the app store entirely in the country is probably enough to get them to budge.

Re: Supreme Court to hear petition seeking ban on WhatsApp

#22

Post by rahimnathwani »

ilostmykeys wrote: post #16

Title is terribly missing which country you're talking about. Most here would assume the US, in which case the title would have more audience. So while I understand the intent is to have more audience, the integrity of communication is lost.

It's obvious from the domain (timesofindia.indiatimes.com).

Re: Supreme Court to hear petition seeking ban on WhatsApp

#23

Post by GabrielF00 »

dang wrote: post #8
x1798DE wrote: post #6

This is probably my US-centrism talking, but it seems like the title could be updated to reflect that this is India 's Supreme Court, not the US Supreme Court.

I'm tempted to agree, but if we consider the domain part of the title (which we do), it already says India. And it's good for HN readers to have to work a little.

FWIW the domain is in a smaller font with lower contrast than the title. I would guess that a lot of people automatically skip over the domain when they read hacker news headlines, because it's less legible than the title and feels distinct.

Re: Supreme Court to hear petition seeking ban on WhatsApp

#24

Post by avs »

lenish wrote: post #15
dineshp2 wrote: post #14

One of the arguments against mass surveillance is that it is blatant intrusion of privacy, and hence it should not exist. On the other hand, the arguments against encryption seem to be that it cripples the Government agencies in their work against terrorists, which is a genuine concern. There seems to be no way to address both these major concerns (that I am aware of), and hence the battle between privacy advocates a…

>Banning a single service such as WhatsApp is not a solution to this problem. Generalizing this argument a bit, banning encryption is also not a solution to this problem. The cat is, as they say, out of the bag, and unless we're going to burn every cryptography book and remove every website documenting cryptographic methods or hosting cryptography code, there's no putting it back [1]. 1: Presuming the development of…

I think this is worth taking a step further and asking for a definition of cryptography...what is cryptography?

Obviously here we are speaking in a mathematical sense, but encryption of information predates the internet. Hell, it predates electricity. Where do you draw the line? can I not encrypt my conversation with a friend by referencing shared unique experiences?

Re: Supreme Court to hear petition seeking ban on WhatsApp

#25

Post by jacquesm »

Every time you hear about something like this or read an article about something like this you have to slow down for a moment and realize that we brought this on ourselves. The original intent of the internet was peer to peer, not global centralized services that we all connect to.

There is no technical reason why something like whatsapp can't be peer-to-peer. Choosing for a centralized service is implicitly choosing for giving the powers that be the opportunity to massively listen in on our various modes of conversation, to figure out your 'graph' and/or to allow censorship.

An old quote has that the internet sees censorship as a routing problem and will route around the break. But that only works if we explicitly refuse to allow centralized services.

Re: Supreme Court to hear petition seeking ban on WhatsApp

#26

Post by zappo2938 »

avs wrote: post #24
lenish wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Banning a single service such as WhatsApp is not a solution to this problem. Generalizing this argument a bit, banning encryption is also not a solution to this problem. The cat is, as they say, out of the bag, and unless we're going to burn every cryptography book and remove every website documenting cryptographic methods or hosting cryptography code, there's no putting it back [1]. 1: Presuming the development of…

I think this is worth taking a step further and asking for a definition of cryptography...what is cryptography? Obviously here we are speaking in a mathematical sense, but encryption of information predates the internet. Hell, it predates electricity. Where do you draw the line? can I not encrypt my conversation with a friend by referencing shared unique experiences?

I was talking to young woman a bunch of us helped get into drug rehab recently and she said when she first moved here she used dating apps to find people who supply drugs. All of sudden, her best friend's name is Molly and going out line dancing mean something completely different on dating sites. I forget what she was calling the different drugs, but like a secret crypto key, they shared a common language.

Re: Supreme Court to hear petition seeking ban on WhatsApp

#27

Post by [deleted] »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #22
ilostmykeys wrote: post #16

Title is terribly missing which country you're talking about. Most here would assume the US, in which case the title would have more audience. So while I understand the intent is to have more audience, the integrity of communication is lost.

It's obvious from the domain (timesofindia.indiatimes.com).

[deleted]

Re: Supreme Court to hear petition seeking ban on WhatsApp

#29

Post by lake99 »

dineshp2 wrote: post #14

One of the arguments against mass surveillance is that it is blatant intrusion of privacy, and hence it should not exist. On the other hand, the arguments against encryption seem to be that it cripples the Government agencies in their work against terrorists, which is a genuine concern. There seems to be no way to address both these major concerns (that I am aware of), and hence the battle between privacy advocates a…

> One of the arguments against mass surveillance is that it is blatant intrusion of privacy

That argument does not hold under the current constitution of India. Under the guise of one threat or another (terrorists, corruption, protection of classes of people) the government has nullified all our rights. On the one hand the government is quite open about its maliciousness. On the other hand, unlike the First World governments, the government is honest about the rights it grants us. We don't have a situation where the constitution guarantees something, and the law enforcement agencies violate it.

The bottom line: if you care about your privacy, don't depend on the government, wherever you are.

Re: Supreme Court to hear petition seeking ban on WhatsApp

#30

Post by baby »

dineshp2 wrote: post #14

One of the arguments against mass surveillance is that it is blatant intrusion of privacy, and hence it should not exist. On the other hand, the arguments against encryption seem to be that it cripples the Government agencies in their work against terrorists, which is a genuine concern. There seems to be no way to address both these major concerns (that I am aware of), and hence the battle between privacy advocates a…

David Chaum had a solution he talked about this year at Real World Crypto. If you find someone who understood it you might be on something :)
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