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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

#581

Post by kube-system »

guyomes wrote: post #402
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…

The best implementation I know of digital ID is the one in Estonia. It comes with a data tracker, such that each citizen can see who exactly has been looking at their data [1]. [1]: https://e-estonia.com/digital-id-protecting-against-surveill...

US credit reports also show you who is looking at them. Does visibility really matter when mandatory participation is normalized as a part of functioning in society?

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

#582

Post by iamnothere »

jack_tripper wrote: post #501
greenavocado wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your digital id is great until your leadership decides you need to be conscripted and sent to their meat grinder and the penalty for failing to appear for your death sentence is being cut off from food and water because everything is linked. The idea of all these digital documents is never a problem until you go through the exercise of figuring out what it will all be used for (controlling you).

[flagged]

Useless doomerism. There are many cracks to hide in, most investigations are closed without a conviction, etc. You don’t need to have spy-level tradecraft to be a dissident.

I wish this kind of nonsense “you are helpless” posting were forbidden by HN rules. It serves no useful purpose.

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

#583

Post by philipallstar »

theoreticalmal wrote: post #547
lambchoppers wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should maybe read some articles about modern situations where people dodged conscription before assuming what is practical today. The average person who hasn't thought about it for a week is certainly in trouble but..

Why is the solution to avoiding conscription being able to hide rather than making the conscription not happen in the first place?

You need to convince, what, 300 people in a country to vote in their voting system the right way, and then it affects millions of people.

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

#585

Post by 4gotunameagain »

ThatMedicIsASpy wrote: post #580
4gotunameagain wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about downloading reddit, which is infested with the weirdest pornography that exists ? While I am very much against facial scanning etc, it is quite clear that something needs to be done about the access of porn to kids. It is a drug like any other that we do not allow kids to consume.

So what is your plan on dealing with wikipedia? I accessed porn in 2011 when I was 11. I played Postal 2 when I was 10. But no English skills at that age means not much came out of that game at that time except cat silencers. How many kids these days play 18+ rated games?

Do a few nude photographs on wikipedia hold the same addiction potential as an infinite stream of short form HD videos - specifically optimized for attention capture - on platforms like reddit ?

I am not even sure whether I should take you seriously.

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

#586

Post by [deleted] »

sateesh wrote: post #306
rglover wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments in their current form .

Why you think so, pls elaborate. In the current form governments all over the world are increasingly having massive power over what citizens can do, don't and increasing it by degrees day after day.

[deleted]

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

#587

Post by kube-system »

Tor3 wrote: post #505
lxgr wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But GP raise a valid point: If IDs are ubiquitous and commonly used for non-government business, the government does implicitly gain substantial "veto power" over non-government transactions (by revoking existing credentials or not issuing new ones). Availability has to be ensured just as much as security and privacy in such a scenario, and that's not trivial. (I still personally think it's worth trying.)

In those places where a system like Sweden's has been implemented, the usage is constricted to certain areas. And in the case where it's used elsewhere, that's an option that is not mandatory (and in any case far and few between). A way to identify an individual is typically related to financial or contractual issues. So far, at least. Looking at you, the UK

Yes, but those "certain areas" are mandatory for functioning in society. And that ID is managed by a single central authority.

The US by contrast, has a distributed system where there are many authorities that can issue IDs that are valid for the activities of daily life.

The only common nationally issued ID in the US is a passport and people only get that for international travel -- and it wasn't even until 2024 that a majority of Americans even had one.

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

#588

Post by iamnothere »

eru wrote: post #381
Saline9515 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Legal" protections can disappear in one evening, and then you are left with a centralized system, very practical for population control.

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.

Services do not regularly query your SSN or DL to determine if it is actively “in service” or is blocked. In fact most types of businesses don’t touch SSNs at all (the potential liability for mishandling it is radioactive). And the few that request licenses typically are only using it as part of a one-time KYC flow, there is no ongoing link to a central provider.

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

#589

Post by iamnothere »

amarant wrote: post #330
zug_zug wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t get it, so you’re saying that the US isn’t a full democracy and the leader has too much power, but you think the US should implement digital ID anyway ignoring that situation? As if that will help?

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

#590

Post by mcdonje »

gclawes wrote: post #529
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…

It's not really that a digital ID can be used to spy on people (governments can already do this to a pretty large degree without needing spyware). It's that it's a permission system that can be instantly updated and centrally managed by people that have legal authority to spy on you. If your digital ID is controlled centrally by the government (the guys that are watching most things you do already), and you need your…

I was with you until your 3rd paragraph. Why are you carrying water for climate change accelerationists and racists?

The examples don't even make sense historically. Haven't you noticed that most governments are failing to decarbonize, and government force against citizens is usually against the left?

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