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India Wants Tech Platforms To Break Encryption And Remove Content The Government Thinks Is 'Unlawful' (buzzfeednews.com)
India's government wants to make it mandatory for platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Google, to remove content it deems "unlawful" within 24 hours of notice, and create "automated tools" to "proactively identify and remove" such material. From a report: It also wants tech companies to build in a way to trace the source of the content, which would require platforms like WhatsApp to break end-to-end encryption. India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) published [PDF] the proposed rules on its website following a report on Monday by The Indian Express revealing the government's proposal to modify the country's primary IT law to work them in. The report comes days after India's government seemingly authorized 10 federal agencies to snoop into every computer in the country last week. The proposed measures have provoked concerns from privacy activists who claim they would threaten free speech and enable mass surveillance.
[...] If India does work these rules into its IT law, it would have precedent: Earlier this month, Australia passed a controversial encryption bill that would require technology companies to give law enforcement agencies access to encrypted communications, saying that it was essential to stop terrorists and criminals who rely on secure messaging apps to communicate.
[...] If India does work these rules into its IT law, it would have precedent: Earlier this month, Australia passed a controversial encryption bill that would require technology companies to give law enforcement agencies access to encrypted communications, saying that it was essential to stop terrorists and criminals who rely on secure messaging apps to communicate.
Fuck over your own people like it's a good thing.
Best to just pull out of India altogether. Bad programmers, people with no money.
I really want facebook to just block such countries. Seriously, I think that american culture is already too infectious, and I think it would be interesting to see what would happen if internet for each country become a bit more localized. Not completely, but enough so that you can have a cultural variety.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."
India. lol.
If you really want to screw up your citizens, make sure they do not have access to basic utilities like running water, electricity and sanitation. Oh, wait!!
Create the Great Firewall of India (HINT china will help) to filter content.
Block anything that can't be scanned.
It looks like the world's largest democracy is coming into some bumpy times. The Indians have a strange love-hate relationship with the British due to the lasting influence of the British Raj there, but they are now showing an unhealthy tendency to emulate the UK in its snooping, anti-privacy attitudes. No government needs to control what its citizens can read and write unless it has totalitarian aims. Clearly, the UK does want to control its people just as Orwell predicted, but until now the Indian government has not been visibly interested in this sort of control. It's ver sad, and very bad news for the people of India.
India. Merkel. Bruxelles what's the differrence.
This is India trying to control their populace. Just because a government is elected, doesn't mean it can't be repressive. You get a faction that gets into power and they want to keep that power. See the Republicans in the USA and Wisconsin and Michigan doing incredible undemocratic things and undermining our Republic for their own pathetic power.
Authoritarianism is on the rise. And as global climate gets worse, so will governments in their crackdown on their citizens.
The people will not only allow it, but welcome it. Migration and immigration is going to get even worse and those that have are going to be very angry at the have nots trying to come and get what they have. The USA is a prime example. There are dark days ahead and I don't think people are capable of rising above their base instincts.
Now It's "If we can't read it your guilty" what is the world coming to.
The only way to intercept messages will be at the endpoints, and autoritarian governments will have no power to block or filter.
The downside of course is it makes stuff like ransomware even easier.
My rights don't need management.
This is yet another reason why centralizing onto just a few massive platforms run by ad companies is a disaster in the making.
We need to re-establish a decentralized internet, with strong user-controlled end-to-end encryption. It must allow public or recipient-restricted messages, and be censorship and mass surveillance resistant.
If we don't do that, we will lose the free internet, as more and more countries clamp down on the ad companies the public is centralizing onto.
Companies, governments, organizations. These things are not trustable, stop pretending they have your best interests in mind just because they give you things you want.
These things are not moral centers, they arnt continually benevolent and they always need moderation and oversight
Stop being lazy and stupid
If India (or any country) wants Facebook (or any big social media platform) to do something stupid like break encryption or censor content, Facebook could rally the impacted citizens by blocking all access. On the home page or app startup screen put something like: "Your government is making an unreasonable request, because of this no citizens of India may use Facebook until this changes." Imagine if instead of removing search results for "objectionable" content Google just said, "Fine, if you don't want your citizens looking at this, your citizens can't use Google at all, and we are telling your citizens why."
The tech companies face a choice:
Submit to the will of India ( and set a precedence ) or lose that very lucrative market.
Going with the former will see other countries follow suit with demands of their own. The latter will cause a shareholder revolt.
The USG will also want encryption broken, they just won't demand it publicly and since you were kind enough to do it for India . . .
A difficult choice is coming.
I have written several encryption programs and am involved with some encryption privacy networks. India can hit tech companies all they want, but they can't touch me or my systems.
Republicans love giving power to government for law enforcement purposes. Democrats love giving power to government for social justice purposes. Libertarians are against big government in case it ever becomes corrupt, but were always ridiculed because "that could never happen here." Well, now do you believe it could happen here? The only real check on authoritarianism is to prevent government from amassing that much power in the first place.
Yes a benevolent oligarchy or a benevolent dictatorship can be more effective than a democracy. But the tradeoff is a higher risk of turning into an authoritarian oligarchy or dictatorship. The Libertarian argument is that it's better to just suffer with less effective government, than to give government more power and risk it turning authoritarian and abusing that power. Every time you the thought "there aught to be a law against that" crosses your mind, the next thing you should think about is how such a law could be abused by the government. Only after you've considered that full range of possibilities can you impartially decide if things really would be better with such a law. Otherwise you end up like China, which has thousands of behavioral laws that are never enforced. Unless you piss off the Communist leadership, in which case they throw the book at you and either send you to a labor camp or chop off your head.
Rather than submit to all these authoritarian governments, perhaps Facebook, Google, et al should just pull the plug on said country. Perhaps some business is lost for a while but should profit trump ethics every single time. Someone has to stand up to the dictators and repressive regimes.
You must be captain crunch. You've fried your brain and word on the street is you're a creep who likes to mesmerize star struck hacker scene kids with drugs your new age massages and chakra bullshit in order to cop a feel.
China please do the needful and erase that shithole country full of pederasts right off the map. Theres nothing of value there since colonialism anyways..
Time to stop doing business with India.
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
They don't need to break end to end encryption to allow tracing source of message. They just need to implement a message signing scheme similar to PGP with their server holding public key registry and keep those signatures (as hidden part of payload) while forwarding messages. This way after getting device with final message you can check original author. Obviously it does not solve every possible case (eg copying just content instead of using forward function), but should be enough for all those chain letter like scare stories.
And the majority are actually RIABNs (Republicans in all but name.) Most of them take advantage of the same government services they claim to hate, or work directly for the government while espousing how less government is better government. Try getting them on health care and see what they think about having THEIR health care pulled (hint: you should just go get a government job yourself if corporations aren't giving you good benefits or buying healthcare yourself is too expensive.)
America is already a shell of its former self and the proles on both sides of the party divide are too stupid to realize it and start pushing back, before they become SIABNs (Slaves in all but name) thanks to the increasing decline of trickle down economics.
The only way to intercept messages will be at the endpoints,
Yes, but that is also a problem, because the average tech user is really stupid and will happily give control of their endpoint to anyone for any reason, however malicious.
There are 2 principal differences between India and China. First, India is economically poor, but China is economically wealthy. Second, India is a democracy, but China is an authoritarian nation.
Beyond those differences, India is similar to China. For example, Indians relish killing female fetuses, so do the Chinese. The ratio of male infants to girl infants is 1.09. (Get more information about this issue.)
Of course, both New Delhi and Beijing censor information.
Among the Russian elites, supporters of Vladimir Putin use India to justify rejecting democracy. They point to the poverty and poor governance in India. They recommend autocratic China as a model for Russian development.
Get more informatioin about this issue.
There are 2 principal differences between India and China. First, India is economically poor, but China is economically wealthy. Second, India is a democracy, but China is an authoritarian nation.
Beyond those differences, India is similar to China. For example, Indians relish killing female fetuses, so do the Chinese. The ratio of male infants to girl infants is 1.09. (Get more information about this issue.)
Of course, both New Delhi and Beijing censor information.
Among the Russian elites, supporters of Vladimir Putin use India to justify rejecting democracy. They point to the poverty and poor governance in India. They recommend autocratic China as a model for Russian development.
Get more informatioin about this issue.
quantum internet ... and autoritarian governments will have no power to block or filter.
Really? And who says that you'll be able to access it once built and running? If it works the Gvt will keep it to themselves -- you won't be able to get anywhere near it, physically OR logically.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For fifteen years governments and corporations have been trying to shut down citizen access to thepiratebay. I just checked to see if it was still up before starting this post and thepiratebay.org didn't load. For half a second I thought maybe they had lost the battle, but then I searched for them and pulled up another domain instantly. In a perfect world* we wouldn't need profit driven organizations fighting government and corporate rage, but until I'm elected, I'm glad there are people working out how to make a service resist all forms of censorship.
I expect that all sorts of dumb criminals will be caught and innocent citizens will have their privacy invaded as these sorts of government oppression succeed. I'm glad that math exists and is well enough disseminated that even as it becomes harder, those of us with pencil, paper, and knowledge can remain immune. I understand the cost to freedom this represents, but thankfully highly motivated criminals are out there fighting for our ability to resist the evils of government.
* Vote for me as supreme world dictator for life and I'll promise whatever lie you currently accept from your politicians.