Slashdot Mirror
India Rolls Out Central Monitoring System To Snoop On All Communications
hypnosec tipped us to news that India is rolling out a new intrusive monitoring system, using the authority of a 2000 telecom law. Quoting The Times of India: "However, Pavan Duggal, a Supreme Court advocate specialising in cyberlaw, said the government has given itself unprecedented powers to monitor private Internet records of citizens. 'This system is capable of abuse,' he said. The Central Monitoring System, being set up by the Centre for Development of Telematics, plugs into telecom gear and gives central and state investigative agencies a single point of access to call records, text messages, and emails as well as the geographical location of individuals."
Privacy advocates are worried about abuse, partially because India has no effective privacy legislation, and the "...Indian government under PM Manmohan Singh has taken an increasingly uncompromising stance when it comes to online freedoms, with the stated aim usually to preserve social order and national security or fight 'harmful' defamation."
Copycats! The US Government has been doing that for years.
Well at least India is open about spying on their own citizens.
So do you mean India does officially what the US does unofficially ?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Did you miss the bit where proper controls and judicial oversight aren't in place?
i can offer some perspective to India. At first the whole thing seems a bit absurd and draconian, you might even be outraged over it. eventually stuff like this just becomes routine enough to find its way into inane stuff like farm subsidy bills, and aside from the occaional GPS device snuck onto some college kids car you really dont notice it at all. After a while you start to actively ignore the fact that your country runs secret torture camps and foreign prisons for people who say or do the wrong things. Finally you just stop challenging it alltogether and praise it as being something, hell anything your highly factioned, ineffective government can unilaterally agree upon as passable legislation. after a few years and high profile criminal acts like shootings and bombings, you begin to look back and conclude the entire spy-on-everyone thing as being a hopelessly useless effort on the part of the government to keep no one safe.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Ahahahaha, I love it when some shithole 3rd world insolvent country rolls out a new method to keep control of its teeming masses.
Maybe instead of trying to watch everyone all the time like a giant prison ward, they'd be more successful at preventing sedition by I dunno, maybe making their country a better place to live so people wouldn't be so angry all the time?
They could start by - instead of their parliament and grand poobah (or whatever they're both called) wasting their efforts on trivial political point-scoring against each other all the goddamn time - passing a fucking budget since they haven't passed one in the last 4 years?
Wait, are we still talking about India?
-Styopa
Like the USG one, this will be wide open for attacks. Simplest ones might be things like compression bombs. (Such would have to be larger than usual when
decompressed.) However the system will suck in any traffic, so any traffic that might attack functions that probably exist to parse any of the data, or any attacks that might exist in the filesystem, can be carried out without any targetting whatsoever. They dont talk about any possible ways that might exist to have the spy
system send traffic out, but if such exist, these kinds of spy systems could be used to knock out all manner of communications at once. Having the data corrupted might impede many investigations though to the extent anyone depends on these systems, effectively reducing the government resources. There seems to be a certain amount of hubris in putting such things up.
"FBI are liars who excel in cointel"
"They said your conspiracy theory was right"
"Holy sh-- everybody listen to the FBI"
The government is inefficient, that's why, here in the US, we've privatized it!
Meanwhile 600 million Indians still have to schlep down to the nearest river or railway to take a dump in the morning because there aren't enough toilets for everyone. But I'm glad they've got their priorities straight.
Bah, details!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If people incorrectly call Native Americans, "Indians", what would they call Native Indians?
As long as proper encrypted communication protocols and communications tools with source code available for peer review are in place, there really is no problem with this.
There, fixed that for ya'.
Ezekiel 23:20
call center employees
I know in actual fact that the US and Canada aren't much better for tracking communications but at least the governments don't come right out and say it. How can you deny people the right to free speech? When you can go to jail simply by speaking your mind or taking liberty to view a document / picture then we have a problem.
The internet is an open resource and it should stay that way, just because you can find offensive content doesn't mean it should be blocked. What offends you won't always offend me and vice verse, if you don't like what you see then stop viewing it, but to have an entire country force censorship and monitoring on there people is just sad.
So now every tech support call in the world is monitored by the indian government? If I defame their leaders while on the phone with Dell, will their be consequences?
Of all the things India needs to spend money on right now I'd put this near the bottom of the list.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
The one guy I know who worked closely with the FBI, well he was a U.S. Marshall.
He's fucking smart, does not believe in conspiracy theories. But is pissed at the direction this government is going.
He's also old, retired, and taken part in some high profile historic cases. But I think he's more mad that he sees more of the same and a bit more everyone else giving a fuck less about it. He also doesn't hold every individual responsible for upholding the whole. He knows for a democracy to work we've got to do it together.
So do you mean India does officially what the US does unofficially ?
No. The US government doesn't do that, the article you linked to is a bunch of bullshit fearmongering by people with no knowledge or insight into how the communications industry works.
Specifically, the US has the capability to sniff International communications only. When it comes to domestic communications, the only way they can get access is either to submit a warrant for a CALEA tap, which mirrors specific phone numbers over a trunk to a local LE facility, or submit a subpoena to have the Telco/ISP turn over records. They do not have any kind of pervasive monitoring ability and even if they wanted it there's no common point of intercept.
What India is talking about doing is installing pervasive monitoring gear at every ISP and telco which would allow real-time government traffic snooping, the US does not do this.
U.S. Marshall ... does not believe in conspiracy theories. But is pissed at the direction this government is going.
The Bill of Rights. How quaintly old school. What nonsense did they teach about that back when he was in school?
That's a buzzword from back in India's socialist days. I guess the free market, democracy talk is just all a bunch of bullshit.
Have gnu, will travel.
Maybe we'll actually start to see implementation the end-to-end encryption that should have been there on everything from the beginning*.
*Admittedly, it wasn't really practical in the beginning but those days are long past
they are typically referred to as "east indians".
Since when? O_O I mean most of the people in India live in poverty and dirt poor conditions as it is.
"Is it legal"
"I will make it legal"
Legality is the cloak of tyranny. It always becomes legal, that which tyrants need to rule. And before some leftwing nut quotes this, I'll do it for you.“They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.” -Says the man trying to remove the restraints against tyranny.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
This is just a tool for the government to stifle increasing public dissent against its increasingly blatant corrupt practices. Almost every minister in the govt. is involved in big ticket corruption. Every week throws up a new scam involving some big names. Hell, the Law Minister(!!) of the country was recently caught trying to change a report by the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) implicating the government in a scam. The Railway Minister is involved in a huge pay-to-be-promoted scam. This is just in the last two weeks. There are scores of other such "-gates". The government refuses to sack the corrupt ministers, openly saying it will "brazen it out" instead. This is easily one of the most corrupt governments in the world.
What a convenient time to announce the Panopticon now that SADDA HAQ has been screened.
There are two kinds of Sikhs in India. The first are Pakhandis who tie Pagh on the outside to conceal the absence of the 10 Gurus on the inside. You know, those are the likes of Kurvi-Tasch Pale Pink Pagh K.P.^W "They Should Cut the Word 'S'"® Gill and the Sky Blue Flange Pagh "Hey PTC camera crew, start shooting! Look, I bow at the Darbar Sahib" Manmohan ^W. The average gaura who sports a bandhana, a five o'clock shadow and performs random acts of kindness is more of a Sikh than these. The second are those gratuitously called "Terrorists" that are targeted by the first. These have simple demands like clean water, fresh air, food grown in fertile soil, not being poisoned with pesticides, ending farmer suicides, Monsanto Frankencrops, industrial pollution, atomic waste, proliferation of liquor shops, facilitating opium to be pipelined from Talibanistan via AfghanoSindhoBalochistan straightway into the veins of Punjabi youth, state sponsored harassment by real terrorists Shiv "We Torch Sikhs for Fun & Profit" Sena, and last but not least, the right to their own language, culture and religion.
Thus the "need" for Orwellianism. Will someone please address this super snooper program to the ash piles bearing 2.5 lakh charred and rusted karhas?
BSN~SSA
Hello! I am Many Rapi from India. Sent me your sister.
"US does unofficially" I'm not sure what you mean by that. The US has been doing that officially since 2001. As for snooping on conversations of foreigners, I don't know, I think any person would be disappointed if their government wouldn't snoop on foreign communications to give their nations an advantage.
Honestly though, they have more serious issues here, from an outsider's viewpoint, they had rapes where the rapists pretty much got away, Bollywood pirates are punished with heavy fines and prison, adding electronic monitoring of a nation that has a nearly inexistent infrastructure really doesn't seem that important.
China pretty much does the same thing, they even block incoming and outgoing traffic through their "Great Fire Wall". In a nation state like India, which is a union of essentially 24 different cultures, the only way the govt found to keep people together and stay as one country is through coercion, and free people might not let that happen. Given a chance India will split into 500+ princely states like before independence from the British. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_princely_states_of_India
Democracy? You really mean "Demon-Mock-Crazy". Kalyug, meet Jacob's Trouble.
It won't be long before Aseem Trivedi and Alok Dixit are martyred along with the Sikhs. If there are "convenient" outbreaks of virulent diseases there, presume false flag population control (Georgia Guidestones) by the UN and global elites to save the local corrupt elites in their compounds with separate atmospheres, food stores and life support systems. At this rate, don't expect a Tiranga on the Moon in this century, if ever.
It grieves me to say this. If religion is the essence of culture and culture is the dress of religion, then corruption is the essence of Desi and Desi is the dress of corruption. Don't screetch "racism, bigotry, etc." to me. Prove me wrong by your kaam!
Indeed. Didn't read the link deeply enough... should be logically flamebait-ed :-)
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Selling the information to the CIA, MI6, Mossad, etc may partially help to pay for the Central Monitoring System... Oh, who am I kidding? It'll go straight to the pockets of a few insider employees.
Oppression is the same everywhere. There is a level reached where the USA is no different than DPRK and it is the same with India. Ballots mean nothing except the academic exercise of the franchise.
Steganography comes to mind. I could speak of other measures, but not in plaintext. Let your informed imagination fill in the details.
If I had a company that outsourced development of my product to India, I'd be pretty nervous.
> with thestated aim usually to preserve social order
I do believe this is the reason dictators give.
>and national security
Hmmm. Maybe it's about memes to placate sufficient quantities of the masses.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
they are typically referred to as "east indians".
This is only by the people who perpetuate the racist term of "Indians" referring to "Native Americans" or "American Aboriginals".
Calling actual Indians "East Indians" doesn't make sense because there isn't a country named "East India", nor is there a country named "West India" to require a distinction between East and West Indians.
As if proper controls and judicial oversight are in place in USA and Sweden?
they are typically referred to as "east indians".
This is only by the people who perpetuate the racist term of "Indians" referring to "Native Americans" or "American Aboriginals".
"Native Americans" is just as racist as "Indians". Which is to say not very given it's also about as racist as "Africans", "Europeans", and "Asians".
As in :
Dude -- you are SO under surveillance !!!!!
99% Indians are living off the grid
Casteism
I'm sorry, but Naraka has been deprecated in favor of Punjab, which is the REAL Hell. With all that contaminated water, polluted air, pesticides, farmer suicides, CANCER, Monsanto Frankencrops, industrial pollution, atomic waste, proliferation of liquor shops, facilitating opium to be pipelined from Talibanistan via AfghanoSindhoBalochistan straightway into the veins of Punjabi youth, state sponsored harassment by real terrorists Shiv "We Torch Sikhs for Fun & Profit" Sena, and identity oppression, Naraka just could not compete.
That is why it is necessary to inquire as to what words the people themselves use in identifying themselves. Of course this does not extend to those who have been understood as the "gamut of peoples holding power over world affairs from the middle of the last millennium" (whites).