Supreme Court to hear petition seeking ban on WhatsApp
timesofindia.indiatimes.com
Supreme Court to hear petition seeking ban on WhatsApp
1–10 of 86 posts
Re: Supreme Court to hear petition seeking ban on WhatsApp
#2I found it interesting that a "right-to-information (RTI)" activist would be against encryption, calling national security reasons. It seems RTI is the Indian version of FOIA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Information_Act,_2005) which confuses me even more - how are those connected?
I could kind of see how the plaintext communication makes bribery and similar things harder (which is what RTI should prevent), but if that's the reasoning it seems to be really backwards.
Re: Supreme Court to hear petition seeking ban on WhatsApp
#3I found it interesting that a "right-to-information (RTI)" activist would be against encryption, calling national security reasons. It seems RTI is the Indian version of FOIA ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Information_Act,_2005 ) which confuses me even more - how are those connected? I could kind of see how the plaintext communication makes bribery and similar things harder (which is what RTI should prevent…
There is probably no direct connection between RTI and encryption. Here are some other stories I found involving this gentleman:
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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/gurgaon/Most-mobile-...
http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/two-gurgaon-sc...
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/move-to-link-digital-l...
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All three don't have anything to do with government corruption. What I get from this is:
1. He is involved in things other than government corruption.
2. RTI is a tool that he uses, so RTI activist is probably a misnomer
3. This is possibly just an well intentioned old man who doesn't understand technology doing the wrong thing for the right reason.
But the supreme court is hearing him? Well then I hope that this gets squashed at the highest level before it turns into a discussion.
Re: Supreme Court to hear petition seeking ban on WhatsApp
#4I found it interesting that a "right-to-information (RTI)" activist would be against encryption, calling national security reasons. It seems RTI is the Indian version of FOIA ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Information_Act,_2005 ) which confuses me even more - how are those connected? I could kind of see how the plaintext communication makes bribery and similar things harder (which is what RTI should prevent…
There is probably no direct connection between RTI and encryption. Here are some other stories I found involving this gentleman: -- http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/gurgaon/Most-mobile-... http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/two-gurgaon-sc... http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/move-to-link-digital-l... --- All three don't have anything to do with government corruption. What I get from this is: 1.…
The article points out that he's 27 years old.
Re: Supreme Court to hear petition seeking ban on WhatsApp
#5It struck me as I was reading this, the entire reason this is even a possible thing is the advent of the "App Store"
If users obtained thier software elsewhere, the system could still "ban" it, but people would still obtain it.
With the app stores, it becomes fairly easy for a government to unilaterally ban a piece of software.
Re: Supreme Court to hear petition seeking ban on WhatsApp
#6This 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.
Re: Supreme Court to hear petition seeking ban on WhatsApp
#7It struck me as I was reading this, the entire reason this is even a possible thing is the advent of the "App Store" If users obtained thier software elsewhere, the system could still "ban" it, but people would still obtain it. With the app stores, it becomes fairly easy for a government to unilaterally ban a piece of software.
They could still obtain it, but the government could still mandate that local ISPs and telcos block connectivity to it.
This is like what they do when they ban websites.
Re: Supreme Court to hear petition seeking ban on WhatsApp
#8This 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.
Re: Supreme Court to hear petition seeking ban on WhatsApp
#9It struck me as I was reading this, the entire reason this is even a possible thing is the advent of the "App Store" If users obtained thier software elsewhere, the system could still "ban" it, but people would still obtain it. With the app stores, it becomes fairly easy for a government to unilaterally ban a piece of software.
They could still obtain it, but the government could still mandate that local ISPs and telcos block connectivity to it. This is like what they do when they ban websites.
They do ISP-level DNS banning, like what happened with Twitter.
Sometimes we can't engineer ourselves out of a problem and need to do it democratically. Looks like this government is a little rotten if you ask me.
Re: Supreme Court to hear petition seeking ban on WhatsApp
#10I found it interesting that a "right-to-information (RTI)" activist would be against encryption, calling national security reasons. It seems RTI is the Indian version of FOIA ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Information_Act,_2005 ) which confuses me even more - how are those connected? I could kind of see how the plaintext communication makes bribery and similar things harder (which is what RTI should prevent…
No, there's no relation between RTI and what he's doing. An 'RTI activist' is common term used in India for people who write formal RTI requests to various departments of government to legally force them to shell out information (for public good) which is otherwise hard to find or they are unwilling to give. There have been cases of corrupt politicians/govt employees getting the 'RTI activists' murdered, so you can imagine the importance of it. This petition just means he is doing another act of what he thinks is important for public welfare.