> the app enables communication even during network restrictions and creates a substantial risk of misuse by anti-national elements, terrorist organisations, organised criminal groups and cyber criminals seeking to evade lawful detection and continue communication despite legally imposed restrictions.
This mouthful boils down to exactly this: a form of communication not controlled by the government creates a risk for the country.
Sorry for pointing out the obvious, but if your country's safety depends on ability to block all forms of private person to person messages, your government has failed in one of its primary goals: providing safety for its citizens. They can blame Dorsey, Telegram, WhatsApp and what not, but it is their failure. Things will not change until people notice the obvious and vote out incompetent persons in power.
Hilariously (darkly), during the pandemic, the very same reason is why the very same administrators were hell-bent on forcing Bluetooth-always-on contact tracing on the whole country's smartphone-carrying population.
(edit: viz. that forcible peer-to-peer bluetooth networking works. One man's unrestricted mass-surveillance is another person's "terrorist activity". Oh how the turntables turn and turn.)
A Victorian police officer who was filmed grabbing a woman around the neck after approaching her for not wearing a face mask earlier this year will face no disciplinary action.
Agreed, and I'm happy to live in a country where this is likely true. The only thing more deadly than pandemics are governments that gained sufficient power to round up their citizens systematically in the name of the public good.
If you think that the 1:30 ratio of guns to people in the US is going to stop the government from doing whatever the fuck they want, you are suffering from a potentially terminal case of optimism. I am an ardent believer in “Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”(even though the context was the Penn family bribing the governor to avoid taxation, I still align with both the original and modern meanings), but a “well-armed militia” isn’t doing jack against an FBI task force or god forbid the military, which has recently been deployed in ever more dubiously-justifiable ways domestically.
You say that, and yet insurgents with a tiny fraction of the population using mostly 60s era guns with zero access to the US economy and base logistical stores or sources managed to keep the US on their toes for two decades. A single redneck in Texas with a hunting rifle has 100x more damage potential to the US military and economy than 1000 middle eastern insurgents.
Please. You could defend yourself from first or second hazmat wearing person that comes to your house, it would be very much different story defending yourself from SWAT team, then remotely detonating drones, finally if it all fails, try to defend yourself against B52.
The president was talking about injecting bleach, people were talking about old people dying as taking one for the future generation and the lack of Bluetooth contact tracing was what caused the deaths? Haven’t seen a shoehorn this bendy in a while. Phew.
As much as he says a lot of stupid stuff this bleach one always annoyed me because the full clip clearly showed that he wasn't talking about bleach he was talking about looking to find something as effective as bleach, and he was repeating something from an advisor who then pretended to not hear him when he asked. It always seemed like a media setup and I always dislike those no matter how bad the target is
We'd have to see the data to say wether it was true or bias. Perhaps comparing similar nations where one had Bluetooth contact tracing and the other didn't. I'm skeptical that it made much difference either way compared to the other factors.
> Sorry for pointing out the obvious, but if your country's safety depends on ability to block all forms of private person to person messages, your government has failed in one of its primary goals: providing safety for its citizens.
Sorry for pointing out the obvious, but "providing safety for its citizens" is not, has never been, and never will be a "goal" of any government on this planet.
Your "productive outlook" in this case is mere wishful thinking and campaign rhetoric. It will never come to pass in a meaningful way. The legitimacy of the state is defined by its monopolistic right to use force without meaningful consequence to the institution. It's a difference of degree, but since a government would lose a great deal of its supposed raison d'etre if they actually accomplish the goal, there isn't even an incentive to act on it.
Governments DO HAVE to try to protect its citizens against internal and external threats. Otherwise people will "abandon" the government up to a certain point.
Case in point: When cartels dominated small towns in Mexico, people gathered in small armies (Auto defensas).
I wonder how long it's going to take until we have universal communication monitoring, including in real life. It's not an impossible technical challenge, it's just a question of time. Every spoken word recorded forever and scrutinized. After all forms of distant private communication fall, the spoken word will be the last one remaining. And all these arguments they're making apply to it, too.
That went live about a decade ago. Heck, a lot of the people who built it and maintain it are here on HN, each getting paid so well and contributing only so little that if they can even admit it to themselves, they would never do it publicly.
What went live a decade ago? I feel like the monitoring technology we have now (let alone what we had in 2016) is still just scratching the surface, it can (will) get so much worse.
My post was talking about things like discreet microphones in public spaces that can automatically separate and recognize multiple voices, smartphones recording and sending every word (or, even better - 24/7 camera footage) to the relevant authorities. But it's not just recording - we still lack the deep level of organization to automatically and fully correlate and organize ALL these types of data from countless sources for everyone. All of these are things that we already have to limited extents, but they're still not taking full advantage of, yet.
> I wonder how long it's going to take until we have universal communication monitoring, including in real life. It's not an impossible technical challenge, it's just a question of time. Every spoken word recorded forever and scrutinized. After all forms of distant private communication fall, the spoken word will be the last one remaining. And all these arguments they're making apply to it, too.
There's a lot that scary about AI, but this is one of the scariest. Even if new good jobs pop up to employ all the people who work on things LLMs can do, governments and other powerful organizations now have this ability to analyze surveillance at scale that was unimaginable even by the East German Stasi.
It's conceivable we'll soon have a machine that can listen in on every phone call, read every text message and email, understand them, and flag dissident concepts and content. The manpower limit on oppressive surveillance will be gone. It'll be like having a spy following you around all the time, taking notes. All the guys who's job it is to listen can be redeployed as thugs to beat out the wrong-think.
It so great these smart kids invented all this. Truly for the benefit of mankind. /s
A scenario explored in the prescient and excellent TV show Person of Interest (2011). We're comfortably able to build The Machine and/or Samaritan by now.
I think you should blame the existence of authoritarian governments and not the technology. Seems odd to give them a pass. It's like blaming the gun instead of the shooter, and nobody does that. Right?
It's easy to criticize others when your own government basically mandates backdoors into all comm devices, thereby obviating the need for hamfisted maneuvers like blocking apps, etc.; after all, who needs to block apps when there are backdoors farther down which allow the reading of all keystrokes and characters displayed?
You vote against them when they're up for re-election. If they're not up for re-election, you vote against anyone who allies themselves with said person.
>This mouthful boils down to exactly this: a form of communication not controlled by the government creates a risk for the government.
Fixed that for you. It's a subtle but important difference.
There is only partial overlap between what's good for the government and the country. At some times in some countries the overlap may be substantial, or it may be scant if at all.
Those "protections" are in place for the protection of the government, not the citizens. That's also why the US tried to classify encryption as arms and why they passed the gun control act (people nowadays might think modern gun control was passed to help school kids, no lmao, it was passed in response to the killing of JFK).
I don't have the citations to back this up anymore than you did, but it was also passed because of the rise in Black Power movements walking around with guns.
I used to be an obnoxious gun control advocate until I learned that California's gun control legislation was brought about in response to the Black Panther's patrolling predominantly black neighborhoods while armed to protect the people of the neighborhood from state sponsored (police) violence.
Only two countries in the world have police who don't carry guns in regular service. Those are UK and NZ. In all other developed countries, the police may carry a gun, but there is a thorough investigation if it is ever fired.
Only two countries in the world have police who don't carry guns in regular service. Those are UK and NZ.
and china. police in china generally is not armed. (china may or may not be considered a developed country, but i think that distinction is irrelevant. i am pretty sure there are more than three countries in the word where police is not armed, or where armed police is a distinct unit used only for specific tasks where arms are needed). but that wasn't the point i was making, rather, in most countries police simply does not get violent, nor do they have to fear being shot at, because of gun controls.
>I don't have the citations to back this up anymore than you did, but it was also passed because of the rise in Black Power movements walking around with guns.
Were they what precipitated it or were they one of the many factors used to get the public on board?
I don’t think anyone thinks gun control was passed to help school kids. People have been begging the govt to pass stricter gun control laws to protect kids for decades with very little success.
Blocking communications is basically sweeping the issue under the rug in the hopes that it dissolves on its own. This is closer to avoiding of "taking action"
I mean one could say they are taking action when they lock up and kill random immigrants... or getting into unnecessary wars in the middle east. I would hardly call that a measure of competence. In fact, I would love a government that did absolutely nothing at all ahead of this one.
care to clarify yourself then? It's hard to see what other conclusion I should arrive at, because it seems like you're implying that privacy interferes with safety.
I've replied to other comments but to reiterate I am not saying that at all. I was simply trying to ask what the OP considers an appropriate form of safety a government might take.
You don't have to presuppose, you can choose any one of the common positions that work well. Like, it shouldn't matter if you have nothing to hide and are law abiding, or, it's safer for the children, or, it's for the greater good and you're being selfish, etc.
> Are you suggesting that taking down an application is making people safe?
No I'm not.
> You can't seriously argue trying to take down ONE app is acting in the interests of national security?
Again I'm not.
See my replies to all the other comments. I'm only interested in what the OP of the comment I was replying to think governments should be doing.
They implied that if this goes on (TFA) then the government is incompetent and all the people should be fired. Seems to me this sort of thing is the focus of most world governments (chat control, online identity checks, etc). These are all the same thing and as the op states indicates that all these governments are incompetent. So what does a competent government look like? What acceptable stuff should they be doing to solve the issues these measures are attempting to solve (however badly).
Maybe my wording lead to misunderstanding but there you go.
India is pretty serious about being able to monitor all communications after the terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008. The terrorists used satellite phones to coordinate the attack. As a result, they banned most satellite communication devices.
I learned about this earlier this year because I had a connecting flight through India on the way to go trekking in the Himalayas. I had planned to take a Garmin inReach with me, but luckily a day or two before my flight out I came across horror stories of people getting pulled out of security and taken to JAIL in India for having these things in their checked bags when TRANSITING India. Security there when transiting from Switzerland to Nepal was no joke - every single electronic item including anything with wires had to come out of bags including electric toothbrush.
In light of that, banning point to point communication seems on brand for India. Note that Apple gets a pass for its satellite capable phones by geofencing India and disabling the feature.
Japan has no trash cans. (reaction to the japanese subway attacks)
Returning to the US from japan you notice. Japanese bathrooms don't have trash cans, so no paper towels. In the US, the bathrooms have trash cans overflowing with paper towel waste and it is quite a difference.
One thing I noticed is that I tended to accumulate a lot of trash in Japan. Connivence stores were plentiful and the food was tasty, but it was all wrapped in plastic.
Where does all the trash go? More often than not, I ended up carrying trash in a backpack to throw away at my hotel.
I would eat the food at the store and then throw the trash away in the store's trash cans.
For things I didn't eat at the store I carried a small plastic bag to store my trash and when I got to my lodging I would throw it away. Also once you go inside the gates of a subway/train station there often seemed to be trash cans available.
To add some context, the removal of trash cans accelerated prior to the hosting of the Tokyo Olympics. The municipal government was concerned about trash possibly overflowing from the can, thereby ruining the appearance of the streets.
Meanwhile, Japanese subway stations still have trash cans, which are only blocked when foreign dignitaries visit the country. It doesn't seem authorities are reacting to the subway attacks from 30 years ago.
They're still quite rare and only the type with a clear bag hanging on a metal ring in the main areas.
The busiest stations have wandering staff picking up rubbish off seats and the floor etc.
Many of us Brits in station coffee shops still do the performance of looking for a bin because we're too embarrassed and too well-mannered to leave it anywhere else. It's endearing and funny at the same time (though of course it's also often due to forgetting there are no bins!)
The terrorists were only able to do so because mass-media news was live broadcasting everything on the air, and the terrorists holed up with hostages in the hotel were able to follow the blow-by-blow live.
(edit: i.e. SatCom alone can't do much, if there is no verifiable on-ground intel. And in 2008, our mass-media supplied it in liberal quantities, through multiple camera angles and replays and blow-by-blow commentaries.)
> Maintaining communications with their handlers in Pakistan was critical for several reasons. First, the handlers were monitoring live Indian news broadcasts and social media feeds, so they could provide real-time instructions throughout the operation and thus afford the attackers the ability to react to developments outside their targets.
> The communication also provided the attackers psychological support.
> The handlers were able to encourage the young, inexperienced militants to maintain their resolve and continue killing civilians and security forces by reinforcing their religious and financial motivations.
> During the operation, the handlers actively coached some of the attackers to continue shooting civilians and to hold positions against Indian security force responders.
That's wild. TIL; thanks for sharing. That appears to be an epic failure of all kinds of intelligence on both sides of the war.
And, it's a miracle the gaffe was not explained away as a "strategic master stroke" psyop engineered by the British to fool the other side and lull them into complacency.
> Side 1: Henlo world, look our people are here, about to surprise-attack Side 2, at this surprise location, at this time.
> Side 2: Lol. Not falling for that.
> Narrator: This is all totally absurd, and totally real of course.
> Side 1: Goes ahead with globally broadcasted secret plan anyway.
> Side 2: FML.
> Side 1: After the dust settles. "Psych! Master-Stroke!".
Also, pray tell why is everything (supposedly) "done" by those in positions of power framed as "strategic master stroke"s these days? I suppose only hyperbole makes sense, in a zeitgeist where "leadership" behaviour is jerk, knee-jerk, reactionary-by-default... epileptic.
You would have also observed how every single politician wanting to become PM had showed up around the Taj while the act was in progress to leech off the media feeding frenzy.
To broadcast that they are there to "stand in person with the heroes", literally making it all about themselves. How they showed up. But unfortunately they could only come the day after, because the then home minister beseeched them to not come on site. But now they are there, surrounded by their Z-plus security, in an ongoing urban conflict zone.
What kind of a state leader shows up in another state, compounding the security nightmare with their own entourage at the site of an ongoing security debacle and literal national emergency,with people being murdered as they spoke?
They are self-DoSing. Whatever you want to get banned, just make sure you some terrorists use it, and it will get banned. Want to ban, say, hijabs, or long pants? Have some terrorists wear them to cover their identities.
It’s funny because the Indian independence movement was a failure. Indians protested non-violently and sometimes violently for over a hundred years, and British control (first through the East India company and then directly by the crown) kept increasing with every passing year, eventually encompassing the entire subcontinent.
India eventually gained independence because colonialism in general was not politically and economically viable in a post WW2 world, and so Britain just got up and left (as they did from dozens of other colonies in the post war years).
Had the independence movement not existed and Gandhi himself not existed the end result would have been exactly the same.
I think the political non-viability was at least partly due to the combination of non-violence and the potential threat of violence, as I am of the opinion that the first never works without a threat of the second.
People greatly misunderstand the Indian independence movement. The early Indian activists merely wanted India to have a devolved legislature like present-day Scotland and Wales, or like Canada and Australia used to have. It was relatively late that anyone really wanted independence. I think many of them still wanted to be a constituent state of the UK.
People always forget that Gandhi's first actions as a 'nationalist' were attempting to raise an army to fight on behalf of Britain. The idea that the Indian nationalists wanted to be a new nation from the get go is a modern day invention.
Call it freedom or independence or autonomy or dominion or whatever else you want, it doesn’t change the underlying point. Indians wanted it, and Britain denied it. In fact they denied it quite emphatically and violently. Eventually the outcome was decided by geopolitical realities, not a bunch of people shouting slogans.
Britain did not deny it and was actively working towards allowing self-rule in India the entire time. You seem to be saying that Britain denied India independence while at the same time saying Britain allowed an independent India. The two views are fundamentally at odds.
It is simply not true to the same degree. The American colonies believed the King of England had violated their rights as Englishmen, Indian independence activists simply wanted Indians to have the same rights as other citizens of the UK and subjects of the British crown. The Indian independence movement started as a mirror of the Irish self-rule movement.
The 'Americans' felt that they were being treated as second class citizens with no meaningful political representation on their behalf. Hence rallying cries like 'no taxation without representation' which originated, at least in modern times, in Ireland.
The difference is that American colonials could return to England and have representation, while Indians could not, so no there is a distinct difference in what was being asked for.
hardly anything is ever true to the same degree, and so saying something is simply not true to the same degree seems oxymoronic, in that if it is not true to the same degree implies that it is somewhat true to a lesser degree.
There is a racial component to it that the American settlers did not have.
Gandhi and the original nationalists were English barristers who spoke English, believed in English institutions, were educated in England, and saw themselves as Englishmen and loyal subjects of the King.
That is how they've always seen themselves and how the average educated Indian saw themselves.
Gandhi's experiences in South Africa made him realize that no amount of education was going to make the English treat him the same simply because his skin made him not blend in. Gandhi is not the only person to see that. Lee yuan kew thought the same.
His first reaction was thinking he should prove Indian loyalty to the crown and this would win him points.
When that didn't work, he threw away all his tailored English suits and adopted (by show... It was all show) the habits of a Hindu holy man to lead his movements.
One can debate the efficacy or whatever but there was no great resistance to English rule. Many old Indians are neutral about it. That generation is dying though and the younger ones have a mythologized past.
So yes the degrees in this situation really mattered. The American settlers were seeking to forge a new nation with new institutions. The Indian nationalists just wanted to perpetuate English ones but were unable to do so under English rule.
What you describe, and the way you describe it, reads to me like a progressive application of the Saam, Daam, Dand, Bheda principle, attributed to the late great diplomat Chanakya.
Saam: First, they tried reason.
Daam: Then they demanded a price (Salt Satyagraha to initiate the Civil Disobedience Movement).
Danda: Then they moved to reject the regime entirely (Quit India). At a time when the colonial power was literally fighting on multiple fronts, in World War Two.
Bhed: Then they helped to throw them out, and attempt to build a whole new political identity.
Not exactly. There have been cases where tourists were denied entry and faced extended detention but they were held in U.S. facilities before being returned to their home countries.
There have been cases of incoming immigrants sent to foreign prisons without charges or trial. In March 2025 the U.S. administration flew 238 Venezuelan migrants from Texas directly to the "Terrorism Confinement Center" in El Salvador. The group included asylum seekers with active court cases, individuals who had entered the U.S. legally, and recent border crossers. The administration labeled them members of the "Tren de Aragua" gang to justify the move.
Outside of embassies, the US wouldn't have a place to set up government facilities in someone else's country. Deportees are handed to the receiving country's authorities at most. ICE "camps" (detention facilities) are to process people prior to deporting. Once in another country, they're already deported.
Ages ago there was a Russian citizen they wanted who was flying to the Caribbean. His flight had a surprise landing in Florida with the FBI waiting on the tarmac.
You know, this wasn’t always the state of things. This is a choice we’ve made.
Frankly, temporary transit through a nation’s airspace (while onboard a commercial jet that you don’t control) shouldn’t subject you to their legal jurisdiction.
Shall we revoke the concept of diplomatic immunity next? Close the embassies?
We seem to be unlearning all the hard lessons of the past. It’s not going to end well.
No, I don't think so. There's a set of people who consume media that deliberately and consistently conflates "immigrant" and "illegal immigrant", and they just can't disambiguate what happens to one from what happens to the other.
But what to do with an "illegal immigrant" who has been living in the country for 30 years (and PAID TAXES!) , had 4 kids and a perfectly normal , productive life?
Do you separate them from their kids, and send the bunch to a prison? That is insane.
Because from what we hear about ICE, that is exactly what is happening... when they don't just kill them outright.
It might be enlightening for some to look at what happens to someone who builds a house on land they don't own, and then lives there for 30 years. It's a pretty well established body of law.
Except your analogy is asinine, and in this case it would be more like paying rent for 30 years in an apartment but not being on the lease so they unceremoniously kick you out.
Over the years a bunch of biathlon competitors have had various flavors of a bad time in NYC despite complying with the federal level stuff they're supposed to and that the state NY is supposed to honor. IDK if any of them have gone to actual jail for very long though.
Same thing that happens whenever your flight gets diverted to South Korea and you have condoms, or Indonesia and you have legal weed, or to Australia and you have a pineapple.
Which is that it depends on the mood of the person in charge. Either you get to keep it, or it's confiscated and destroyed, or you go to jail, or you go to a firing squad.
We can guess which is more likely in each country. Indonesia almost always executes people found with drugs. Australia would probably just destroy your pineapple. India, being authoritarian but not completely insane, my guess is they'd take it and fine you.
I was probably thinking of Romania a century ago. But you can imagine for every normal thing there is probably a country where it is banned. And South Korea is a country where some things are banned that you wouldn't expect.
I'm aware of stories of people who've had their flights unexpectedly grounded in New York (, New York) so they just abandoned their checked pistol and refused to collect it. I'd imagine something similar. If you never take possession, it becomes harder to charge and convict someone for possession.
But wouldn't they know whose bag it was anyway? And there's cameras everywhere so it wouldn't help if you e.g. removed the bag tags or discarded the contents somewhere else in the airport.
When you're standing at the customs office entering a country, your lawyers are far far FAR away and the people talking to you won't care about them even a little bit.
Whatever will happen with you lawyering and fighting the border officers, will happen after you've been detained.
I disagree with the Modi and Hindutva project almost entirely, not only politically, but on a personal level coming from a minority community (Christian) in India. However, India is in what basically amounts to a perpetual state of war with Pakistan and has always been this way. India rarely agresses Pakistan and Pakistani terror groups do operate with seeming impunity in India (Pakistan doesn't even maintain a 'no-first-use' nuclear option, and is currently run by a military dictatorship... they're f'ing nuts). While all these actions are obviously crazy and in my opinion overbearing, people in the West don't understand how awful radical Islam is, especially of the South Asian variety. I'm not sure many Americans would react differently to the extremism of South Asian Islam to be honest.
To put it in perspective, many Indians (of all religions) died and fought in a bloody war to secure Bangladesh's (then East Pakistan's) freedom from what was a genocidal regime in West Pakistan. Decades later, the typical Bangladeshi muslim still hates Indians because any non-muslim Indian they consider 'Hindu', thus polytheist, and thus worthy of death. One thousand five hundred Indian soldiers died only for their neighbor to hate them in return for the 'crime' of not being born part of their religion. While Hindu nationalists are fucking insane, I honestly think many have been driven to it by the insanity of South Asian Islam.
Meanwhile, America has a relatively peaceful and cooperative neighbor (Mexico), which only has a crime problem on the border, and the average American seems ready to give up almost every civic right to deal with that. There are barely any terror attacks of note coming from these Mexican gangs, and congress has already ceded many constitutional rights (such as the right against unreasonable search and seizure) near the border zones. Anyway, imagine Mexicans hated everyone in America for the crime of being 'gringos' (even the non-whites) and that's basically what India has with all their neighbors.
If people in the west want India to liberalize, which we really should want to do, Western nations need to work on dismantling Pakistan and limiting Islamic extremism in the region.
I find it telling you blame India's lack of modernization on Pakistan. A reflection of the times.
Maybe dismantle the caste system first. You need a civil rights movement.
This is India's biggest hurdle but it seems too ingrained in the society.
All peoples should have the same opportunity, but the structure of power in India likes the way things are.
Explaining the Hindutva moment as a genuine counter reaction to anti-Hindu sentiment rather than a politically motivated movement seems to be misguided, even if not actively propogating the propaganda.
> Largely uncited and generalised exposition of Bangladeshi's misses other factors which could be involved in their decision towards distrust of India.
It's reasonable to distrust a neighboring country with distinct interest, even if they went to war for you, sure. You don't owe them anything.
Similarly, it's actually also normal for India to have concerns about illegal migration, similar to Europe, America, Australia, and Canada.
But the propaganda coming out of Bangladesh is purely religious in form, and it's pretty clear that that is the main reason why they dislike India. Pakistan literally slaughtered them and they're all bhai-bhai with them now.
The article cites the CAA as a reason for Bangladeshi distrust, except the data show that India is acting as a humanitarian in this disaster. Non-muslims are physically persecuted in both Bangladesh and Pakistan. Pakistan particularly is an apartheid state where non-Muslims have fewer political rights. Bangladesh is slightly better but violence against non-Muslims is rampant. People like to paint India as having high rates of religious violence, which is true, compared to America, but not true compared to Pakistan or Bangladesh. Pakistan regularly executes Christians for blasphemy. India doesn't. Non-Muslim refugees should qualify for extra protection from secular nations given the on-the-ground realities of South Asia. Literally the cited reason for the creation of Pakistan is that South Asian muslims constitute a distinct nation from every other religion in the subcontinent. Neither the Jews nor the Parsis nor the Christians ever made such an argument.
Well regardless, countries cannot get angry over other countries making immigration policy (and yes, this also applies to Indian migrants to America, blah blah blah)
> Explaining the Hindutva moment as a genuine counter reaction to anti-Hindu sentiment rather than a politically motivated movement seems to be misguided, even if not actively propogating the propaganda.
If you read about the history of Savarkar, then I think this is exactly what you see. He was kind of meh about everything until he witnessed anti-Hindu extremism from Muslims, and then went off his rocker. Before that, he was a relatively benign nationalist and humanitarian. Well anyway, more to the point of it really being just the Muslims, Savarkar was defended by an Indian Christian barrister.
Are you an American or South Asian, out of curiosity? I feel like Americans don't really have the ability translate South Asian politics. Not that I'm some expert, but I can report personal on-the-ground experiences.
Are you a European, out of curiosity? I feel like South Asians don’t really have the ability to translate European history. Not that I’m some expert, but we can report good on-the-ground experiences about "relatively benign nationalism" and where it leads.
I wonder what is it with this denial of the existence of India prior to 1947. If people were specific and said that they were referring to the Republic of India as the successor state to British-controlled India, then it would at least make some sense. Otherwise it sounds completely insane.
If India was invented 79 years ago, then you need to explain the various East India companies established in the 1600s, and all the references to India and the Indians by the Romans and the Greeks and the Persians and the Chinese before the Abrahamization of Europe. Europeans were literally looking for ways to India and ran into the West Indies and North America by accident.
There was no unified political entity prior to 1947---technically, 26 January 1950---because it took that long for Sardal Patel's program of political unification of sovereign princely states to conclude, so that the now-unified political entity would govern itself under common constitutional, and common law, with democratic universal franchise.
The East India Company, and then the British Raj, held power because they were able to broker deals with opposing (and warring) princely states and kingdoms. They used contractual leverage to make those sub-sub-regions keep each other in check.
The British Raj was a kingdom of kingdoms, in addition to being a protectorate. These are literal legal facts [0].
The word Hindu is literally an exonym. A name given to a people by foreigners. Our very collective identity was conferred upon us by outsiders.
In its Interpretation Act 1889, the British Parliament adopted the following definitions in Section 18:
(4.) The expression "British India" shall mean all territories and places within Her Majesty's dominions which are for the time being governed by Her Majesty through the Governor-General of India or through any governor or other officer subordinates to the Governor-General of India.
(5.) The expression "India" shall mean British India together with any territories of any native prince or chief under the suzerainty of Her Majesty exercised through the Governor-General of India, or through any governor or other officer subordinates to the Governor-General of India.[1]
Who agreed to the legal terms? The rulers of the sovereign princely states and kingdoms.
> There was no unified political entity prior to 1947
There have been many (empires, not modern, Westphalian nation-states), but the British managed to create the largest yet. Pakistan was carved out of British India on Muslim and non-Muslim lines.
> Who agreed to the legal terms? The rulers of the sovereign princely states and kingdoms.
Sovereign in name, but vassals nonetheless.
> Our very collective identity was conferred upon us by outsiders.
It is a name, not an identity. This is like saying the Indians conferred upon the Chinese their identity because the word cīna is of Sanskrit origin and the world calls the Chinese ... Chinese ... due to that.
It is a name. The identity comes from the rituals, beliefs, clothing, literature, temples, architecture, food and so many other cultural and civilizational markers.
Pakistanis who were looking for their fathers in Arabia, Persia and Turkey in the past based upon a deliberate avoidance of their Indic origin have recently started a political project to reclaim their identity based upon the IVC. They can try all they want but civilizational continuity is the only thing that matters. Names are dime a dozen. If you have a problem with Hindu/India and other exonyms, you could always call yourself Bhāratīya or some such. It is all the same.
I upvoted that comment because it's obvious tin foil hat "oooh look at the boogeyman" speech. That fact along with its critique contributes to the discourse on HN.
Indian Government is struggling to address this issue at face. PM Modi hasn't responded to this in public. To address this, Government is taking into all sort of measures like blocking public communication and social media. Like they have done for other measures like for terrorism , control and govt lead propaganda to control the narrative.
It is interesting that they tried to do this app with a _miniscule_ usage. Usage might be so small, that they could have bothered less about it.
But since they did it, Jack Dorsey is now using his clout to share about this app and bring some light on the situation. With what we have seen with Twitter/X and not-standing up to Elon, let's just remember that Dorsey isn't champion of free speech either.
> Jack Dorsey is now using his clout to share about this app and bring some light on the situation
Failed attempts at censorship are the best thing that could ever happen to Bitchat: free advertising for a vibcoded and questionably secure entry in a space with plenty of competitors. As others have commented it's basically impossible to shut down an open source app by blocking the source distributor, but press is priceless.
I played around with Briar [1] for a while: it worked well, and had an option to install peer-to-peer without going through any app store, was sad to see that the authors put it in maintenance mode. It also had a security audit.
This was a legit case for the students, who suffered the most here. Better systems need to exist, including parametric computer testing and same day results - thereby making re-examinations simpler for the affected students.
I am also aware of the attempts to bring down NEET here, which I feel isn't given the right amount of scrutiny, and showing the cracks in the system. Exam leaks have been happening in India for a long time, and it looks like better systems need to exist for preventing this.
As far as censorship goes, many people should start making SDR based chat systems for long distance relays as well ... they can make this easily today
In the late 90s I attended a Telephone industry conference while working for a telephony test equipment company. A rep. from the Indian government gave a talk on their telephone system regulations. During the question period I got up and asked how India was dealing with voice over internet protocol (VOIP). With a straight face the speaker replied "We will not allow it". :-)
And it's also cute when people imply the internet is unregulateable. There are plenty of tools that countries use to regulate internet traffic. They can require ISPs to DPI the traffic and block it. They can MITM traffic. They can shut off the internet entirely. They can throw people in jail. etc.
This stuff happens in many places, including in India.
>And it's also cute when people imply the internet is unregulateable. There are plenty of tools that countries use to regulate internet traffic. They can require ISPs to DPI the traffic and block it. They can MITM traffic. They can shut off the internet entirely. They can throw people in jail. etc.
I don't think there's any country that can keep a lid on the internet. The best they can do are leaky blocks (china's gfw is probably the best in the world, but still quite leaky), or complete shutdowns (eg. iran).
As I understand it, China's GFW is intentionally leaky, balancing as much control as they can get away with but not enough to forment open revolt. As with a lot of things, the best control is not total control.
Also not revealing their capabilities. During normal times, some VPNs work. Whenever there is a protest in Beijing, suddenly, none of them work any more.
They could even just shoot people for using the internet! It’s hopeless. Anyone who wants freedom should probably just give up now before it’s too late.
Fair enough, yes people should be ready to fight for their rights (physically if necessary). The tone of your post came across as an attempt to demoralize. Intentional or not, my comment was a pushback against that.
There are workarounds for all of those things up until the point of you suffering violence for just using any encryption. But if you are at that point, then your country is completely fucked.
It is trivial for a law to simply ban workarounds. The vast majority of countries can and do censor the internet in some ways, and they all use violence to compel compliance with it. The only thing that varies is the extent to which it is censored.
Or fly a plane or drone overhead and see [0] where the terminals are. After a few fines most people would decide it’s not worth the risk.
I remember how the Uber rollout worked in Berlin. Uber said they don’t need to comply with anything the city asked for and enjoyed their position in the safety of an ocean away so the local authorities instituted eye watering fines for drivers caught providing Uber rides. Uber decided to comply.
Depends on how many terminals there are and whether or not the neighborhoods they are in are sympathetic to the operators. It’s very easy to move them.
I wasn’t thinking of totalitarianism but rather a country objecting to Starlink operating on its territory. This is why I brought up Berlin and fines, not the secret police breaking in your house at night.
After living under one of those totalitarian regimes, all Incan say is that everything sounds easy in an HN comment typed from the safety of a democratic society.
National firewalls and other such things are tools of totalitarianism. Except possibly in wartime, or if they are causing harmful interference, or if Starlink refuses to pay taxes, I don’t really see a good argument against things like Starlink.
Or if the country already operates another system on the same frequencies, or just hasn’t validated and authorized Starlink on their territory, something countries really like to do.
Not everything is about “fighting the power”, there are plenty of good reasons to want to validate and approve these systems.
Musk was as usual likes to talk big and brave but same as with his fight in Brazil over X, or the Tesla factory in Germany, if he wants to operate there he needs to follow the rules. And there’s no moral argument (saving freedom) he can pull out of his wig in most parts of the world that can make him money.
I can see how that worked in Berlin. In USA or someplace with a healthier culture of resistance that would fail laughably. Americans will drive with no license, registration, in cars they've stolen back from the repo man because they refuse to pay anything to anyone. When my car was totalled by an illegal alien, the police didn't even show up, wisely because they were surely driving without license, identity documents, insurance, registration, or any sort of recoverable assets or any way to punish them but to throw them in an overflowing jail. You could try fining them but it would be like trying to draw blood from a stone. I suppose could try to jail them, but you'd find our jails are already full, and we already let violent criminals out on bail.
In much of the world including USA poor people will slang crack for $5 under threat of life in jail and fines higher than they could ever hope to pay. Suffice to say there's an endless line of people willing to uber for roughly crack slinging wages without the risk of life imprisonment even if the fines are as bad -- because their alternatives are worse.
Albania and Georgia have much healthier culture of resistance than the US.
The US has almost entirely lost this culture except for short moments in isolated places. Minneapolis is nearly a proof by exception in this. Very, very few people need to be detained or killed to get the mass of Americans to stay inside and self-censor. Much less is required to get businesses to put their head down and play nice with the government.
FR lol, people in the US love to talk a big game but most of us take the freedoms for granted and will fold at the drop of a hat when real consequences are on the line
I think you wanted the opportunity to beat that “healthy culture of resistance” drum. Every tweaker, every inbred, every starved person acting out of desperation is Rosa Parks now.
You name things and decide that‘s “resistance”. People break the law because there’s no real consequence or because they just have nothing to lose. They’re not “resisting”, they’re surviving. The US society decided that a large class of people will be forced to operate at that level their whole life and are incentivized to do worse by the insane punishment model applied only to them.
The only people doing the “resisting” in the US are those who can afford a good lawyer. Everyone else does what the cracks in the system allow, or what they need to do out of desperation.
No German Uber driver is desperate enough to risk their whole livelihood especially for that meager payoff. Most civilized countries make sure that people have something to lose which will keep people acting straight rather than always act on desperation. Depending on your goal, having people exercise self restraint works better than restraining them with tasers, chokeholds, and bullets to the back.
> because their alternatives are worse.
Ah, ok. So not “a healthy culture of resistance” but more “desperation because the country made sure that’s driving them”.
>Ah, ok. So not “a healthy culture of resistance” but more “desperation because the country made sure that’s driving them”.
This is logical fallacy, but you've tried hard to pull a gotcha out of it.
Resisting because you are desperate is perfectly valid and doesn't create a contradiction.
It's not something reserved to "those who can afford a good lawyer." Desperation is one of the hardest drivers of resistance, not something reserved to rich people with lawyers and something to lose. And even if we suppose there's not resistance in USA, I said in USA or someplace with a healthier culture of resistance, which means even if you don't consider USA a place of resistance it still meets the logical test of falling within my statement.
>[now deleted] If you hear this for the first time, hello white male with plenty of money for a lawyer.
Lol you couldn't resist adding that in. Your little racially charged bits about why we're not allowed to call it resistance when a poor black person does such acts. While ignoring your very example of Rosa Parks who was a black woman, child of a teacher and itinerant worker and before activism working largely in domestic work for white families. The contradiction is yours.
Resistance is a choice. “No other choice” is just surviving. The gotcha was already in the fact that you started by proudly waving a flag of “healthy culture of resistance” and immediately switched to desperate people having no other options. The healthy culture of resistance as you see it is made of the most desperate and dilapidated people doing desperate things.
My “very example” about which you are now quoting Wikipedia to me was resistance, not desperation. It wasn't a tweaker selling $5 crack because he literally has nothing better to look forward to. It wasn’t a mother driving without a license because she couldn’t afford the court taxes for a few traffic tickets. It was a woman who did it out of principle alone. That’s resistance, and it’s rare. Your speech fell on its face as soon as you had your big boy proud moment because you’re missing something important to back it up [0]. You were never taught enough pst that proud song and dance.
If you thought calling you privileged for your dissonant and ignorant line of argumentation is racist then let me add not educated enough[0] too. Read a book to understand these concepts, don’t expect you can just throw words around and people will bow to your wisdom. You make it impossible for me to take you seriously when you make junior level confusions like “resistance” and “desperation” all for a shitty national pride moment.
Your rebuttal rests upon a logical fallacy of false mutual exclusion that one cannot exercise resistance as a means of survival. You believe resistance comes from rich white people with lawyers; I believe it largely comes from the hungry and those with no other choice. The truth is it comes from a bit of both.
Putting aside the geopolitics of satellite destruction, we're likely moving to the realm of microwave based disablement instead of kinetic. It's the thing that can scale and provide some plausible deniability while the numbers are low.
Lots of countries ban voip in some way or another. Not allowed to connect to the PSTN. Disrupted by licensed ISPs based on traffic inspection. Large vendors yelled at. Etc.
isn't phone tech itself digital over the internet nowadays just like VOIP if it isn't using VOIP directly?
on the other phone calls are getting replaced by video chat with the various messengers, making VOIP a dying technology, at least the part that end users access directly.
Yes, but PSTN using voip is paying all the telecom fees and taxes and respecting the government surveillance mandates which is what the Indian Government is concerned about.
> on the other phone calls are getting replaced by video chat with the various messengers, making VOIP a dying technology, at least the part that end users access directly.
Not so much in countries where it's banned and the ban is enforced.
sure, but i as a user care about the tech, and what i am trying to say is that VOIP as tech for endusers is no longer interesting because we use video chat now.
Not on the PSTN you don't. The PSTN is a parallel internet whose main difference is that you need a verified identity to connect to it. It also simulates circuit switching and costs a lot.
i don't get your point. that does not matter. what i mean is that as a user i care about the tech that runs on my phone, not how the connection is made. i don't make phone calls anymore. nowadays everything is done with video chat. neither PSTN nor VOIP offer that, so their use will eventually decline unless they start offering video. phone numbers are also a privacy nightmare. they need to be replaced with something that allows me to pre-authorize who can call me. this is unlikely to happen any time soon, but the point is that VOIP in particular is hardly relevant except in a few specific use cases.
If Modi government wants to ban something, it is usually good stuff.
> “The application’s design, which enables communication even during network restrictions, creates a substantial risk of misuse by anti-national elements, terrorist organisations, organised criminal groups, and cybercriminals seeking to evade lawful detection and continue communication despite legally imposed restrictions,” the notice mentioned.
Literally any encrypted mesh net communication protocol would be subject to the same propaganda. The point of this stuff is providing checks and balances for the people against a rogue government, or emergency situation.
Yeah, did you know criminals can use roads to commit crimes, too? We should destroy all of the roads. Terrorists also use food to give them energy to commit more terrorism, so we should start regulating access to food behind mandatory ID checks.
Yes, exactly that. Tons of crime is committed using only in-person communication. Should we all have microphones in our homes? Do detective work, flip sources, follow the money.
I believe that most of terrorism does happen because the people behind it have some goals, not for funsies; so trying to fight the causes would be one thing to do. Obviously, that's difficult for many reasons, and making life more shit for everyone else is cheap and easy, and hence preferred.
But if the cause is "death to the West" or "from the river to the sea" or "India should not be secular" then it's a bit of a problem. How do you fight the cause?
If you were sane, you would realise that restricting the right of billions of people to communicate privately, a right they have enjoyed for all the thousands of years of human history, is handing terrorists a complete and total victory far beyond any act of violence they could commit. The purpose of a government is not to prevent 100% of all crime and terrorism by locking every citizen in a straitjacket.
This also isn't even motivated by terrorists, but rather people daring to oppose the government.
> Honestly no idea what I’d do if I were in government.
It's not ordinary citizens' job to figure out solutions to these problems. Government has teams of intelligence agencies to answer these questions. Encrypted chat is fundamental infra that shouldn't be blocked.
Title should specify that it is Indian government. I was worried for a second there that it was the American government. I should have read the url though.
I was fully expecting that was about Trump administration, and was a bit disappointed that my prediction turned out to be wrong. I do not support this; I expected the first federal court and then all the appeals to serve a verdict cementing the right of encrypted communication to exist in the US.
Be careful what you wish for. Bringing a test case to the current supreme court is playing with fire, and we are far more likely to end up with precedent rejecting a right to encrypted communications, given the current make up of the court. They have already shown a willingness to show deference to national security, and our fifth amendment protections are already eroding (State v. Andrews in NJ, government can compel the production of a password under the foregone conclusion exception). For now this is still state dependent, but its only a matter of time before a case reaches the supreme court.
We're much safer not opening that can of worms for now.
Something like this would be basically impossible in the US, and it wouldn't even matter what kind of administration tried it. The US government doesn't even order ISPs to block websites because they run afoul of all kinds of 1st amendment litigation. They just have the FBI seize a domain after a court order.
Honestly I would think something like this would come from the EU or UK. UK is trying to ban VPNs, EU is trying to ban private chat completely. EU countries routinely block whole swaths of IPs and websites, etc.
Oh boy , this is American exceptionalism at its finest. The US has by far the most authoritarian government of all mentioned entities.
Really you should protest against your government.
Yes, it is American exceptionalism (and quite foolish) to make the claim that "This could never happen in the US".
No, the American government is NOT more authoritative than the UK in the way they handle freedom of websites. The grandparent comment is correct: the US government does not (currently) order ISPs to block specific websites.
Yes, those in the US should protest the current government (many of us already are doing so).
I think maybe there is more than one way to quantify authoritative.
Just looking at the percentage of the population in prison, or murders by cop per inhabitant, that are also good indicators of "repression", and the US might rate first worldwide.
Sorry OPs first sentence mentions this is basically impossible in the US and then compared to EU or UK. There is a certain tone and I don't think this comment was a good faith criticism on EU or UK policy
How many people has the US sent to jail due to saying naughty things on Twitter vs the UK? If were going to speak of authoritarianism. Just due to ensuring free speech and right to bear arms the US is possibly the least authoritarian developed nation outside of maybe Switzerland.
This is 100% not true. On multiple measures of freedom the US scores around the 75th percentile if I remember correctly; I believe the category is something like “flawed democracy” on the economist’s democracy index, and that’s not even an publication that I particularly like. It’s not even in the top 30.
Bluetooth based messaging apps are naturally able to circumvent internet restrictions that inhibit protests, citizen journalism and other kinds of unapproved activities but there are several ways Bluetooth could be updated as a protocol to introduce compatibility with some kind of antibody-esque suppression of communication standard.
It's just a matter of interested parties setting up a body to create the standard, which might genuinely be a huge bottleneck under the current geopolitical landscape.
I was thinking the same thing. We do need more. I set up a Meshtastic node at the house and joined https://chicagolandmesh.org/ which has been a fantastic community for beginners in mesh based comms.
you use it to access the internet, but the point is if the internet access is disabled you still have a local network for p2p communication across the city. also multiple people/hubs in the network can provide provide internet access over different ISPs providing resilience if some ISPs go down, but not all of them.
freifunk in germany and funkfeuer in austria do the same thing.
But here it shows another problem: who controls the distribution channel, they also control which program can be found and installed (by the mass) and which not.
Without a critical mass of adoption, mesh applications are largely useless.
No, not doing nothing. They are probably funding it, like Tor, as this kind of technology is useful in intelligence and the promotion and sustainment of foreign resistance movements.
(For once my tax dollars are producing something I appreciate, even if I don’t love the reason behind it.)
Indian government also blocked Telegram a while back to prevent exam leaks and stopped Whatsapp's rollout of usernames (which has some legitimate concerns) but more or less it wants complete China-like control of it's citizens' communications. Except no one uses any homegrown chat app (for good reasons)
Some relevant wisdom from the founding fathers of the United States:
When asked about when kind of government the founding fathers had created, Ben Franklin replied "A Republic, if you can keep it."
On democracy, John Adams wrote: "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
Thomas Jefferson further wrote that "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
tl;dr democracies need to be fought for, or else they won't stay democracies forever.
John Adams wrote that as a reason why the United States is not a democracy. It's a Constitutional Republic. It's a consistent theme throughout the Federalist Papers.
Individual States and localities have elements of democracy, but the US—built upon knowledge of Rome—is not.
The United States of America is the second iteration of American government, after the one that failed in 1787. The arguments leading up to the 1789 Constitution are quite explicit around why democracies don't work. America is a nation of nations, which is why "these United States" as a plural term was used frequently until after the Civil War, when having it be a singular concept once-and-for-all was of paramount importance.
That said, this is ban is clearly a restriction on freedom of expression, and highly un-American.
Which is a kind of democracy. Democracy is a broad term describing all forms of government where power is granted by the people. This is a weird framing that I see brought up by Americans only, and I don't understand it, because direct democracies (what these Americans are actually referring to when they say 'democracy') are basically extinct in the modern world. They keep trying to distance themselves from the term. Most democratic nations today are presidential or parliamentary republics, just like you, or something that can be approximated to one of them. I'm doubtful that the US founders didn't recognize they were founding a democratic nation, just a specific subcategory - but ultimately still a state that should hopefully answer to the people.
Neither does federalism relate to the form of government - you could have a federal or distributed direct democracy if you wanted to. They're just different categories of things, the way you choose how to best represent the will of a group of people is a different question from how you subdivide these groups into self-governing blocks.
But Adams was specifically arguing not against democracy in the broad term, but specifically, unconstrained direct democracy, so this is not relevant to this discussion.
Is it interesting that all these "democracies" around the world have persistent speech bans? When someone says something they don't like?
I seem to have a recollection of flipping through HN for a decade or so and people talking about all the meanie-pants who want people to be able to speak freely, even if it hurts people's feelings and might not be endorsed by the elected government.
> Democracy is a broad term describing all forms of government where power is granted by the people
No. It's not. I encourage you to read the quite enlightening treatment of democracies in the Federalist Papers. And Greece's government was nothing like Rome. If there is a conflation there, it is one largely created by America.
Which in its own right is interesting. What is interesting about the longest-running continuous constitutional government in history (America)?
Great point about what Adams is actually arguing! Of course, I know the country was founded as/is a Constitutional Republic, but it's always interesting to see how much our modern (American) understanding of democracy differs from how the founders understood it – and also how they shaped the fact that most of us now equate Constitutional Republic with the best form of democracy.
If us means humans living in democracies, I would say that parliamentary democracy has more supporters and constitutional republics.
And even if us == the US, I would argue that most US citizens actually have only a very hazy idea about how their own system of government works, much less how others work. Most of these people think that chanting "USA, USA" in unison is democracy.
> And even if us == the US, I would argue that most US citizens actually have only a very hazy idea about how their own system of government works, much less how others work. Most of these people think that chanting "USA, USA" in unison is democracy.
That's a very dim view of your fellow Americans. I don't have such a dim view myself; there are certainly people who don't care and didn't pay attention in their high school civics classes, but I've found that most people do care and do pay attention. I wonder if your opinion is colored by recent events, and whether you'd have thought the same in 2008?
Remember that Google is working to introduce developer verification to Android soon, making it trivial for governments to force Google to revoke a certain developer's apps within that country. The whole developer verification thing is about security... for Google's grip on Android and goverments' grip on communication
Lets imagine that github does give in and it does take down bitchat, will it result in the death (or at least a huge loss) for github? I mean of course a lot of open-source projects on github won't feel safe when they know that github can easily give in to the government pressure. Plus the general state of github right now is already causing projects to migrate to some better alternatives.
Agree, sounds like it is working for its intended purposes.
The thing about it is they specifically are targeting the repo which is interesting because the only thing that can really stop the proliferation of these apps is not allowing user to install from other sources which would have to come from Google preventing this.
Hopefully google won't prevent people from installing from outside sources /s
This change is largely drivin by claims that installing apps from other sources is insecure... I'd argue this is why it's insecure... Not insecure for individuals.
Insecure for oppressive governments.
If your country's security depends on someone on the internet taking their product off for the whole world something must be wrong with the people in power. This is censorship and suppression at its peak.
Fun fact: They have deployed facial recognition vans, AI smart glasses and illegally tracking the protesters (most of which are students) without their consent to threaten and deter them.
Uggh in any given project I tend to gauge the hype to working tech ratio. The higher it is, the more annoying the project. BitChat is about as annoying as you get. The reason is simple: bluetooth connectivity only works at scale if everyone has the app, and even then it only works under extremely high node density -- packed stadiums, maybe an apartment building if you're super lucky. The combination of extremely wide distribution and extreme density never happens.
To make it even more annoying, good projects like Briar have been doing this for over 10 years. Why would BitChat suddenly succeed or get any attention at all?
Because it’s Jack Dorsey and that’s it. I agree it’s not novel or interesting. It’s frustrating for me particularly because I want some kind of widely decentralized network but something that actually has a chance to work, which Dorsey has the capability (financially, connections, etc) to make happen. Instead he decides to waste time on something that’s DOA.
This may not be much, but if you’re outside India, please write to your local representatives and also to the Indian government that you are going to avoid products made in India as much as possible, will avoid visiting the country for tourism or work, and will not invest in the Indian markets or in foreign currency bank deposits. Clearly state the reasons why, and ask how the “largest democracy in the world” could be so short sighted and dictatorial.
Note that India is heavily dependent on money from elsewhere (hence a lot of recent policy changes to bring in more foreign money). It is a net importer and isn’t strong enough on exports.
There are some recent policy changes to attract more foreign currency deposits with lots of expectations.
If there is a hint that these subversive actions are also going to hurt the economy, there is a tiny, tiny sliver of a chance that the powers that be will be a bit more afraid of losing the next round of elections in the state governments and in a few years at the union level. That could possibly limit the ignorant knee jerk reactions and bans.
I sincerely hope that Microsoft responds with "If the Indian government wants to block content hosted on U.S. servers, they are more than welcome to set up their own Great Firewall."
I understand the source is thehindu.com - but I'm assuming there's no way we can get that title updated? "Government orders..." sort've misleadingly implies something that "Indian government orders..." does not.
Ban Post-It notes and any other piece of paper than can be passed around with messages written on them by bad people. No whispering into people ears either unless your lips are plainly readable.
Unfortunately Bitchat feels like an unfinished proof of concept.
At a festival I got notifications there are "other users nearby", which made me question if and how the app is broadcasting it's presence, possibly at all times. I also couldn't figure out a way to turn off these notifications (there's barely any settings) and I ended up uninstalling the app.
For context, there are currently mass protests against the Indian government which the government is violently suppressing. It also just cut off the internet in a major city to stop the protesters communicating, so this ban is probably to try and suppress other means of communication.
To imagine that US MNCs readily obey these orders. There was a time when Gmail exited China due to Aurora attacks, and Chinese GFW is universally hated, so why is India allowed to create a GFW like censorship on US platforms? Indian courts have even blocked Reuters articles GLOBALLY before. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/19/india-judg...
#2 post on HN currently is: India’s first privately developed rocket reaches orbit on dramatic debut launch. In the same page, there is this news about banning an OSS app, built on open tech. Just saying.
We evaluated Bitchat and determined it would be a really useful tool for Gaza - Israel controls all internet access to Palestine and would frequently cut off internet access to Gazans. We tried building our own but when Bitchat came out we focused on that instead.
Well, this also shows why we all should remove our dependency on Microsoft-GitHub in the long run. The US government just fiddle-influences too much here. Tomorrow it could be your project too.
Bitchat, berty, briar, all do use Bluetooth for communication. It would be funny if popular apps also add p2p Bluetooth options or just over any network, and seeing them trying to ban the internet.
Aside of if it's right or not (i actually think it is), the bag is out in the open, anyone any countries, any bad person or security persons are going to look at it now
This mouthful boils down to exactly this: a form of communication not controlled by the government creates a risk for the country.
Sorry for pointing out the obvious, but if your country's safety depends on ability to block all forms of private person to person messages, your government has failed in one of its primary goals: providing safety for its citizens. They can blame Dorsey, Telegram, WhatsApp and what not, but it is their failure. Things will not change until people notice the obvious and vote out incompetent persons in power.
(edit: viz. that forcible peer-to-peer bluetooth networking works. One man's unrestricted mass-surveillance is another person's "terrorist activity". Oh how the turntables turn and turn.)
Maybe the videos were fake, but I saw at least a couple of this happening.
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/dra...
The arrest of a woman in Australia for promoting an anti-lockdown protest online has drawn criticism, after video of the incident went viral.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54007824
A Victorian police officer who was filmed grabbing a woman around the neck after approaching her for not wearing a face mask earlier this year will face no disciplinary action.
https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/australia/victoria...
The infection spread based on being in the same enclosed space as an infected person, and was not based on being only a few feet apart.
Sorry for pointing out the obvious, but "providing safety for its citizens" is not, has never been, and never will be a "goal" of any government on this planet.
this is not a productive outlook to have
Governments DO HAVE to try to protect its citizens against internal and external threats. Otherwise people will "abandon" the government up to a certain point.
Case in point: When cartels dominated small towns in Mexico, people gathered in small armies (Auto defensas).
Same thing with Zapatistas.
The US supreme court has explicitly ruled, on several occasions, that the government has no duty to protect its citizens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeShaney_v._Winnebago_County
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzale...
Proceeds to give example of one of the most oligarchical countries that ignore financial transparency laws on an industrial scale.
My post was talking about things like discreet microphones in public spaces that can automatically separate and recognize multiple voices, smartphones recording and sending every word (or, even better - 24/7 camera footage) to the relevant authorities. But it's not just recording - we still lack the deep level of organization to automatically and fully correlate and organize ALL these types of data from countless sources for everyone. All of these are things that we already have to limited extents, but they're still not taking full advantage of, yet.
There's a lot that scary about AI, but this is one of the scariest. Even if new good jobs pop up to employ all the people who work on things LLMs can do, governments and other powerful organizations now have this ability to analyze surveillance at scale that was unimaginable even by the East German Stasi.
It's conceivable we'll soon have a machine that can listen in on every phone call, read every text message and email, understand them, and flag dissident concepts and content. The manpower limit on oppressive surveillance will be gone. It'll be like having a spy following you around all the time, taking notes. All the guys who's job it is to listen can be redeployed as thugs to beat out the wrong-think.
It so great these smart kids invented all this. Truly for the benefit of mankind. /s
The majority of people though may not be as well off.
If you're so well off, what criticism do you have to share and to worry about?
The fact that they can get away with shit like this makes them pretty competent in my book.
To me it’s the opposition that’s incompetent, not being able to put an end to the circus.
How you can vote someone out?
Or, even better, don't give our responsibility to uknown electorate at all.
Fixed that for you. It's a subtle but important difference.
There is only partial overlap between what's good for the government and the country. At some times in some countries the overlap may be substantial, or it may be scant if at all.
I used to be an obnoxious gun control advocate until I learned that California's gun control legislation was brought about in response to the Black Panther's patrolling predominantly black neighborhoods while armed to protect the people of the neighborhood from state sponsored (police) violence.
Reference to start from: https://www.kcra.com/article/liberty-limits-black-panther-pa...
This topic is full of subtlty so recommend reading the sources from that article and so on.
and china. police in china generally is not armed. (china may or may not be considered a developed country, but i think that distinction is irrelevant. i am pretty sure there are more than three countries in the word where police is not armed, or where armed police is a distinct unit used only for specific tasks where arms are needed). but that wasn't the point i was making, rather, in most countries police simply does not get violent, nor do they have to fear being shot at, because of gun controls.
Were they what precipitated it or were they one of the many factors used to get the public on board?
9/11 didn't write the patriot act.
I'm fairly sure whatever they do you'd likely be complaining about it. Glad to be wrong though.
They're afraid of people communicating. That's not a safety thing.
Clearly I have not worded my reply carefully enough, so for clarity: I am all for private messaging and against mass surveillance.
People are making independent communication networks using reticulum, LORA devices and hold tight - unregistered radio transmitters.
You can't seriously argue trying to take down ONE app is acting in the interests of national security?
No I'm not.
> You can't seriously argue trying to take down ONE app is acting in the interests of national security?
Again I'm not.
See my replies to all the other comments. I'm only interested in what the OP of the comment I was replying to think governments should be doing.
They implied that if this goes on (TFA) then the government is incompetent and all the people should be fired. Seems to me this sort of thing is the focus of most world governments (chat control, online identity checks, etc). These are all the same thing and as the op states indicates that all these governments are incompetent. So what does a competent government look like? What acceptable stuff should they be doing to solve the issues these measures are attempting to solve (however badly).
Maybe my wording lead to misunderstanding but there you go.
> I'm not condoning this but what would you suggest they should be doing to keep people safe?
That led me to believe you consider request to ban the app as an action in the interest of the general public, making them safe.
I appreciate your response, thanks!
Why do you need to encrypt your network traffic with ssl, is you have nothing to hide....
I learned about this earlier this year because I had a connecting flight through India on the way to go trekking in the Himalayas. I had planned to take a Garmin inReach with me, but luckily a day or two before my flight out I came across horror stories of people getting pulled out of security and taken to JAIL in India for having these things in their checked bags when TRANSITING India. Security there when transiting from Switzerland to Nepal was no joke - every single electronic item including anything with wires had to come out of bags including electric toothbrush.
In light of that, banning point to point communication seems on brand for India. Note that Apple gets a pass for its satellite capable phones by geofencing India and disabling the feature.
Returning to the US from japan you notice. Japanese bathrooms don't have trash cans, so no paper towels. In the US, the bathrooms have trash cans overflowing with paper towel waste and it is quite a difference.
Where does all the trash go? More often than not, I ended up carrying trash in a backpack to throw away at my hotel.
For things I didn't eat at the store I carried a small plastic bag to store my trash and when I got to my lodging I would throw it away. Also once you go inside the gates of a subway/train station there often seemed to be trash cans available.
Meanwhile, Japanese subway stations still have trash cans, which are only blocked when foreign dignitaries visit the country. It doesn't seem authorities are reacting to the subway attacks from 30 years ago.
The busiest stations have wandering staff picking up rubbish off seats and the floor etc.
Many of us Brits in station coffee shops still do the performance of looking for a bin because we're too embarrassed and too well-mannered to leave it anywhere else. It's endearing and funny at the same time (though of course it's also often due to forgetting there are no bins!)
What's next? A bomb under a bench? No more benches!
(edit: i.e. SatCom alone can't do much, if there is no verifiable on-ground intel. And in 2008, our mass-media supplied it in liberal quantities, through multiple camera angles and replays and blow-by-blow commentaries.)
cf. Westpoint's Urban Warfare Project Case Study #16: Mumbai Terrorist Attacks: https://mwi.westpoint.edu/urban-warfare-project-case-study-1...
> Maintaining communications with their handlers in Pakistan was critical for several reasons. First, the handlers were monitoring live Indian news broadcasts and social media feeds, so they could provide real-time instructions throughout the operation and thus afford the attackers the ability to react to developments outside their targets.
> The communication also provided the attackers psychological support.
> The handlers were able to encourage the young, inexperienced militants to maintain their resolve and continue killing civilians and security forces by reinforcing their religious and financial motivations.
> During the operation, the handlers actively coached some of the attackers to continue shooting civilians and to hold positions against Indian security force responders.
And, it's a miracle the gaffe was not explained away as a "strategic master stroke" psyop engineered by the British to fool the other side and lull them into complacency.
> Side 1: Henlo world, look our people are here, about to surprise-attack Side 2, at this surprise location, at this time.
> Side 2: Lol. Not falling for that.
> Narrator: This is all totally absurd, and totally real of course.
> Side 1: Goes ahead with globally broadcasted secret plan anyway.
> Side 2: FML.
> Side 1: After the dust settles. "Psych! Master-Stroke!".
Also, pray tell why is everything (supposedly) "done" by those in positions of power framed as "strategic master stroke"s these days? I suppose only hyperbole makes sense, in a zeitgeist where "leadership" behaviour is jerk, knee-jerk, reactionary-by-default... epileptic.
The media was so stupid that it literally showed commando positions. Literal position second by second.
The govt then later banned this information, staggering it to one hour after the fact
To broadcast that they are there to "stand in person with the heroes", literally making it all about themselves. How they showed up. But unfortunately they could only come the day after, because the then home minister beseeched them to not come on site. But now they are there, surrounded by their Z-plus security, in an ongoing urban conflict zone.
What kind of a state leader shows up in another state, compounding the security nightmare with their own entourage at the site of an ongoing security debacle and literal national emergency,with people being murdered as they spoke?
on edit: changed myths to narratives to avoid confusion
India eventually gained independence because colonialism in general was not politically and economically viable in a post WW2 world, and so Britain just got up and left (as they did from dozens of other colonies in the post war years).
Had the independence movement not existed and Gandhi himself not existed the end result would have been exactly the same.
People always forget that Gandhi's first actions as a 'nationalist' were attempting to raise an army to fight on behalf of Britain. The idea that the Indian nationalists wanted to be a new nation from the get go is a modern day invention.
There is a racial component to it that the American settlers did not have.
Gandhi and the original nationalists were English barristers who spoke English, believed in English institutions, were educated in England, and saw themselves as Englishmen and loyal subjects of the King.
That is how they've always seen themselves and how the average educated Indian saw themselves.
Gandhi's experiences in South Africa made him realize that no amount of education was going to make the English treat him the same simply because his skin made him not blend in. Gandhi is not the only person to see that. Lee yuan kew thought the same.
His first reaction was thinking he should prove Indian loyalty to the crown and this would win him points.
When that didn't work, he threw away all his tailored English suits and adopted (by show... It was all show) the habits of a Hindu holy man to lead his movements.
One can debate the efficacy or whatever but there was no great resistance to English rule. Many old Indians are neutral about it. That generation is dying though and the younger ones have a mythologized past.
So yes the degrees in this situation really mattered. The American settlers were seeking to forge a new nation with new institutions. The Indian nationalists just wanted to perpetuate English ones but were unable to do so under English rule.
Saam: First, they tried reason.
Daam: Then they demanded a price (Salt Satyagraha to initiate the Civil Disobedience Movement).
Danda: Then they moved to reject the regime entirely (Quit India). At a time when the colonial power was literally fighting on multiple fronts, in World War Two.
Bhed: Then they helped to throw them out, and attempt to build a whole new political identity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saam_Daam_Dand_Bheda
BBC says 3000 but yeah.
https://www.outlookindia.com/national/2-terrorists-family-ho...
So the houses of 2 accused were razed because.....
I make additional effort to never experience that again. Connecting flight through Mumbai. An absolutely awful experience.
Search “parks and recs straight to jail”
There have been cases of incoming immigrants sent to foreign prisons without charges or trial. In March 2025 the U.S. administration flew 238 Venezuelan migrants from Texas directly to the "Terrorism Confinement Center" in El Salvador. The group included asylum seekers with active court cases, individuals who had entered the U.S. legally, and recent border crossers. The administration labeled them members of the "Tren de Aragua" gang to justify the move.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair_Flight_4978
Flying over a country does not make you immune to that country’s laws.
Frankly, temporary transit through a nation’s airspace (while onboard a commercial jet that you don’t control) shouldn’t subject you to their legal jurisdiction.
Shall we revoke the concept of diplomatic immunity next? Close the embassies?
We seem to be unlearning all the hard lessons of the past. It’s not going to end well.
Do you separate them from their kids, and send the bunch to a prison? That is insane.
Because from what we hear about ICE, that is exactly what is happening... when they don't just kill them outright.
Which is that it depends on the mood of the person in charge. Either you get to keep it, or it's confiscated and destroyed, or you go to jail, or you go to a firing squad.
We can guess which is more likely in each country. Indonesia almost always executes people found with drugs. Australia would probably just destroy your pineapple. India, being authoritarian but not completely insane, my guess is they'd take it and fine you.
..what? Condoms are not outlawed there, are they?
Whatever will happen with you lawyering and fighting the border officers, will happen after you've been detained.
To put it in perspective, many Indians (of all religions) died and fought in a bloody war to secure Bangladesh's (then East Pakistan's) freedom from what was a genocidal regime in West Pakistan. Decades later, the typical Bangladeshi muslim still hates Indians because any non-muslim Indian they consider 'Hindu', thus polytheist, and thus worthy of death. One thousand five hundred Indian soldiers died only for their neighbor to hate them in return for the 'crime' of not being born part of their religion. While Hindu nationalists are fucking insane, I honestly think many have been driven to it by the insanity of South Asian Islam.
Meanwhile, America has a relatively peaceful and cooperative neighbor (Mexico), which only has a crime problem on the border, and the average American seems ready to give up almost every civic right to deal with that. There are barely any terror attacks of note coming from these Mexican gangs, and congress has already ceded many constitutional rights (such as the right against unreasonable search and seizure) near the border zones. Anyway, imagine Mexicans hated everyone in America for the crime of being 'gringos' (even the non-whites) and that's basically what India has with all their neighbors.
If people in the west want India to liberalize, which we really should want to do, Western nations need to work on dismantling Pakistan and limiting Islamic extremism in the region.
Maybe dismantle the caste system first. You need a civil rights movement.
This is India's biggest hurdle but it seems too ingrained in the society. All peoples should have the same opportunity, but the structure of power in India likes the way things are.
Next work on how you treat women.
India's initial decisions need not be merely humanitarian but also political.
https://scroll.in/article/1081784/why-are-bangladeshis-turni.... This article explains that it's due to an increasingly unequal interactions as sowing distrust.
Explaining the Hindutva moment as a genuine counter reaction to anti-Hindu sentiment rather than a politically motivated movement seems to be misguided, even if not actively propogating the propaganda.
It's reasonable to distrust a neighboring country with distinct interest, even if they went to war for you, sure. You don't owe them anything.
Similarly, it's actually also normal for India to have concerns about illegal migration, similar to Europe, America, Australia, and Canada.
But the propaganda coming out of Bangladesh is purely religious in form, and it's pretty clear that that is the main reason why they dislike India. Pakistan literally slaughtered them and they're all bhai-bhai with them now.
The article cites the CAA as a reason for Bangladeshi distrust, except the data show that India is acting as a humanitarian in this disaster. Non-muslims are physically persecuted in both Bangladesh and Pakistan. Pakistan particularly is an apartheid state where non-Muslims have fewer political rights. Bangladesh is slightly better but violence against non-Muslims is rampant. People like to paint India as having high rates of religious violence, which is true, compared to America, but not true compared to Pakistan or Bangladesh. Pakistan regularly executes Christians for blasphemy. India doesn't. Non-Muslim refugees should qualify for extra protection from secular nations given the on-the-ground realities of South Asia. Literally the cited reason for the creation of Pakistan is that South Asian muslims constitute a distinct nation from every other religion in the subcontinent. Neither the Jews nor the Parsis nor the Christians ever made such an argument.
Well regardless, countries cannot get angry over other countries making immigration policy (and yes, this also applies to Indian migrants to America, blah blah blah)
> Explaining the Hindutva moment as a genuine counter reaction to anti-Hindu sentiment rather than a politically motivated movement seems to be misguided, even if not actively propogating the propaganda.
If you read about the history of Savarkar, then I think this is exactly what you see. He was kind of meh about everything until he witnessed anti-Hindu extremism from Muslims, and then went off his rocker. Before that, he was a relatively benign nationalist and humanitarian. Well anyway, more to the point of it really being just the Muslims, Savarkar was defended by an Indian Christian barrister.
Are you an American or South Asian, out of curiosity? I feel like Americans don't really have the ability translate South Asian politics. Not that I'm some expert, but I can report personal on-the-ground experiences.
The argument that Jews need their own state specifically in the area between Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria is integral to Israel’s politics and history.
Are you a European, out of curiosity? I feel like South Asians don’t really have the ability to translate European history. Not that I’m some expert, but we can report good on-the-ground experiences about "relatively benign nationalism" and where it leads.
Do you remember that time two dozen or so years ago when a couple buildings collapsed in NYC? After some planes rammed into them?
You mean, since India and Pakistan were invented 79 years ago?
If India was invented 79 years ago, then you need to explain the various East India companies established in the 1600s, and all the references to India and the Indians by the Romans and the Greeks and the Persians and the Chinese before the Abrahamization of Europe. Europeans were literally looking for ways to India and ran into the West Indies and North America by accident.
The East India Company, and then the British Raj, held power because they were able to broker deals with opposing (and warring) princely states and kingdoms. They used contractual leverage to make those sub-sub-regions keep each other in check.
The British Raj was a kingdom of kingdoms, in addition to being a protectorate. These are literal legal facts [0].
The word Hindu is literally an exonym. A name given to a people by foreigners. Our very collective identity was conferred upon us by outsiders.
[0] Obligatory Wikipedia... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Raj#British_India_and_...
In its Interpretation Act 1889, the British Parliament adopted the following definitions in Section 18:
Who agreed to the legal terms? The rulers of the sovereign princely states and kingdoms.There have been many (empires, not modern, Westphalian nation-states), but the British managed to create the largest yet. Pakistan was carved out of British India on Muslim and non-Muslim lines.
> Who agreed to the legal terms? The rulers of the sovereign princely states and kingdoms.
Sovereign in name, but vassals nonetheless.
> Our very collective identity was conferred upon us by outsiders.
It is a name, not an identity. This is like saying the Indians conferred upon the Chinese their identity because the word cīna is of Sanskrit origin and the world calls the Chinese ... Chinese ... due to that.
Pakistanis who were looking for their fathers in Arabia, Persia and Turkey in the past based upon a deliberate avoidance of their Indic origin have recently started a political project to reclaim their identity based upon the IVC. They can try all they want but civilizational continuity is the only thing that matters. Names are dime a dozen. If you have a problem with Hindu/India and other exonyms, you could always call yourself Bhāratīya or some such. It is all the same.
Indian Government is struggling to address this issue at face. PM Modi hasn't responded to this in public. To address this, Government is taking into all sort of measures like blocking public communication and social media. Like they have done for other measures like for terrorism , control and govt lead propaganda to control the narrative.
It is interesting that they tried to do this app with a _miniscule_ usage. Usage might be so small, that they could have bothered less about it.
But since they did it, Jack Dorsey is now using his clout to share about this app and bring some light on the situation. With what we have seen with Twitter/X and not-standing up to Elon, let's just remember that Dorsey isn't champion of free speech either.
Failed attempts at censorship are the best thing that could ever happen to Bitchat: free advertising for a vibcoded and questionably secure entry in a space with plenty of competitors. As others have commented it's basically impossible to shut down an open source app by blocking the source distributor, but press is priceless.
I played around with Briar [1] for a while: it worked well, and had an option to install peer-to-peer without going through any app store, was sad to see that the authors put it in maintenance mode. It also had a security audit.
[1]: https://briarproject.org/
* https://briarproject.org/news/2026-maintenance-mode/
I am also aware of the attempts to bring down NEET here, which I feel isn't given the right amount of scrutiny, and showing the cracks in the system. Exam leaks have been happening in India for a long time, and it looks like better systems need to exist for preventing this.
As far as censorship goes, many people should start making SDR based chat systems for long distance relays as well ... they can make this easily today
In the late 90s I attended a Telephone industry conference while working for a telephony test equipment company. A rep. from the Indian government gave a talk on their telephone system regulations. During the question period I got up and asked how India was dealing with voice over internet protocol (VOIP). With a straight face the speaker replied "We will not allow it". :-)
This stuff happens in many places, including in India.
I don't think there's any country that can keep a lid on the internet. The best they can do are leaky blocks (china's gfw is probably the best in the world, but still quite leaky), or complete shutdowns (eg. iran).
When someone with the monopoly on the use of force says they will not allow something, that isn't something cute to ignore, it is serious.
FSF: if you use PGP your communications will be unreadable by outsiders.
Some Uyghur: bruh, the government assigned a Han Chinese person to live in my house and watch me whenever I use technology.
I remember how the Uber rollout worked in Berlin. Uber said they don’t need to comply with anything the city asked for and enjoyed their position in the safety of an ocean away so the local authorities instituted eye watering fines for drivers caught providing Uber rides. Uber decided to comply.
[0] https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/quadrf-can-spot-drone...
Resistance against totalitarianism is a duty.
After living under one of those totalitarian regimes, all Incan say is that everything sounds easy in an HN comment typed from the safety of a democratic society.
Not everything is about “fighting the power”, there are plenty of good reasons to want to validate and approve these systems.
Musk was as usual likes to talk big and brave but same as with his fight in Brazil over X, or the Tesla factory in Germany, if he wants to operate there he needs to follow the rules. And there’s no moral argument (saving freedom) he can pull out of his wig in most parts of the world that can make him money.
In much of the world including USA poor people will slang crack for $5 under threat of life in jail and fines higher than they could ever hope to pay. Suffice to say there's an endless line of people willing to uber for roughly crack slinging wages without the risk of life imprisonment even if the fines are as bad -- because their alternatives are worse.
The US has almost entirely lost this culture except for short moments in isolated places. Minneapolis is nearly a proof by exception in this. Very, very few people need to be detained or killed to get the mass of Americans to stay inside and self-censor. Much less is required to get businesses to put their head down and play nice with the government.
You name things and decide that‘s “resistance”. People break the law because there’s no real consequence or because they just have nothing to lose. They’re not “resisting”, they’re surviving. The US society decided that a large class of people will be forced to operate at that level their whole life and are incentivized to do worse by the insane punishment model applied only to them.
The only people doing the “resisting” in the US are those who can afford a good lawyer. Everyone else does what the cracks in the system allow, or what they need to do out of desperation.
No German Uber driver is desperate enough to risk their whole livelihood especially for that meager payoff. Most civilized countries make sure that people have something to lose which will keep people acting straight rather than always act on desperation. Depending on your goal, having people exercise self restraint works better than restraining them with tasers, chokeholds, and bullets to the back.
> because their alternatives are worse.
Ah, ok. So not “a healthy culture of resistance” but more “desperation because the country made sure that’s driving them”.
This is logical fallacy, but you've tried hard to pull a gotcha out of it.
Resisting because you are desperate is perfectly valid and doesn't create a contradiction.
It's not something reserved to "those who can afford a good lawyer." Desperation is one of the hardest drivers of resistance, not something reserved to rich people with lawyers and something to lose. And even if we suppose there's not resistance in USA, I said in USA or someplace with a healthier culture of resistance, which means even if you don't consider USA a place of resistance it still meets the logical test of falling within my statement.
>[now deleted] If you hear this for the first time, hello white male with plenty of money for a lawyer.
Lol you couldn't resist adding that in. Your little racially charged bits about why we're not allowed to call it resistance when a poor black person does such acts. While ignoring your very example of Rosa Parks who was a black woman, child of a teacher and itinerant worker and before activism working largely in domestic work for white families. The contradiction is yours.
My “very example” about which you are now quoting Wikipedia to me was resistance, not desperation. It wasn't a tweaker selling $5 crack because he literally has nothing better to look forward to. It wasn’t a mother driving without a license because she couldn’t afford the court taxes for a few traffic tickets. It was a woman who did it out of principle alone. That’s resistance, and it’s rare. Your speech fell on its face as soon as you had your big boy proud moment because you’re missing something important to back it up [0]. You were never taught enough pst that proud song and dance.
If you thought calling you privileged for your dissonant and ignorant line of argumentation is racist then let me add not educated enough[0] too. Read a book to understand these concepts, don’t expect you can just throw words around and people will bow to your wisdom. You make it impossible for me to take you seriously when you make junior level confusions like “resistance” and “desperation” all for a shitty national pride moment.
on the other phone calls are getting replaced by video chat with the various messengers, making VOIP a dying technology, at least the part that end users access directly.
> on the other phone calls are getting replaced by video chat with the various messengers, making VOIP a dying technology, at least the part that end users access directly.
Not so much in countries where it's banned and the ban is enforced.
> “The application’s design, which enables communication even during network restrictions, creates a substantial risk of misuse by anti-national elements, terrorist organisations, organised criminal groups, and cybercriminals seeking to evade lawful detection and continue communication despite legally imposed restrictions,” the notice mentioned.
Yeah, did you know criminals can use roads to commit crimes, too? We should destroy all of the roads. Terrorists also use food to give them energy to commit more terrorism, so we should start regulating access to food behind mandatory ID checks.
Originally you’d communicate by mail and they could get a warrant. The day encrypted comms showed up, they wouldn’t just want to give up.
If you love the encryption but hate the terrorism, what to do? Double down on old school / physical surveillance? (Obviously not my field)
That was why the government decided to ban mail, and since that didn't cover all cases, they also banned people handing things to each other.
At least, I think that is how I remember it going in an alternate world where physical laws mimiced electronic laws.
Remember, the terms of service for your LG TV say you have to warn visitors to you house they're being eavesdropped.
This also isn't even motivated by terrorists, but rather people daring to oppose the government.
It's not ordinary citizens' job to figure out solutions to these problems. Government has teams of intelligence agencies to answer these questions. Encrypted chat is fundamental infra that shouldn't be blocked.
It is generally extremist arms interested in destabilizing India to strengthen other regional powers (usually Pakistan).
The goal of much of these terrorist attacks simply end with ... no India, not "we demand change to policies in a reasonable way"
Spending crazy amounts in public education, healthcare, and nuclear arsenal?
We also regulate roads. You can not drive around in tanks. Or without license plate...
Midterms are coming up and the regime has spoken openly about "rigging" them so... just give it some time (and download a copy!).
We're much safer not opening that can of worms for now.
Honestly I would think something like this would come from the EU or UK. UK is trying to ban VPNs, EU is trying to ban private chat completely. EU countries routinely block whole swaths of IPs and websites, etc.
'This is the right call' — VPN industry praises the UK’s decisions to leave VPN alone | TechRadar https://share.google/CyBImh95bt3VTubJV
Yes, it is American exceptionalism (and quite foolish) to make the claim that "This could never happen in the US".
No, the American government is NOT more authoritative than the UK in the way they handle freedom of websites. The grandparent comment is correct: the US government does not (currently) order ISPs to block specific websites.
Yes, those in the US should protest the current government (many of us already are doing so).
Just looking at the percentage of the population in prison, or murders by cop per inhabitant, that are also good indicators of "repression", and the US might rate first worldwide.
As a note, I think you meant authoritarian; authoritative means “preeminent/most trustworthy”
It's just a matter of interested parties setting up a body to create the standard, which might genuinely be a huge bottleneck under the current geopolitical landscape.
freifunk in germany and funkfeuer in austria do the same thing.
Without a critical mass of adoption, mesh applications are largely useless.
(For once my tax dollars are producing something I appreciate, even if I don’t love the reason behind it.)
https://github.com/permissionlesstech/bitchat
The request has not yet been published by GitHub to https://github.com/github/gov-takedowns/tree/master/India/20...
Also not mentioned in the project's GitHub repository yet per https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Apermissionlesstech%2Fbitc...
When asked about when kind of government the founding fathers had created, Ben Franklin replied "A Republic, if you can keep it."
On democracy, John Adams wrote: "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
Thomas Jefferson further wrote that "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
tl;dr democracies need to be fought for, or else they won't stay democracies forever.
Individual States and localities have elements of democracy, but the US—built upon knowledge of Rome—is not.
The United States of America is the second iteration of American government, after the one that failed in 1787. The arguments leading up to the 1789 Constitution are quite explicit around why democracies don't work. America is a nation of nations, which is why "these United States" as a plural term was used frequently until after the Civil War, when having it be a singular concept once-and-for-all was of paramount importance.
That said, this is ban is clearly a restriction on freedom of expression, and highly un-American.
Which is a kind of democracy. Democracy is a broad term describing all forms of government where power is granted by the people. This is a weird framing that I see brought up by Americans only, and I don't understand it, because direct democracies (what these Americans are actually referring to when they say 'democracy') are basically extinct in the modern world. They keep trying to distance themselves from the term. Most democratic nations today are presidential or parliamentary republics, just like you, or something that can be approximated to one of them. I'm doubtful that the US founders didn't recognize they were founding a democratic nation, just a specific subcategory - but ultimately still a state that should hopefully answer to the people.
Neither does federalism relate to the form of government - you could have a federal or distributed direct democracy if you wanted to. They're just different categories of things, the way you choose how to best represent the will of a group of people is a different question from how you subdivide these groups into self-governing blocks.
Is it interesting that all these "democracies" around the world have persistent speech bans? When someone says something they don't like?
I seem to have a recollection of flipping through HN for a decade or so and people talking about all the meanie-pants who want people to be able to speak freely, even if it hurts people's feelings and might not be endorsed by the elected government.
No. It's not. I encourage you to read the quite enlightening treatment of democracies in the Federalist Papers. And Greece's government was nothing like Rome. If there is a conflation there, it is one largely created by America.
Which in its own right is interesting. What is interesting about the longest-running continuous constitutional government in history (America)?
If us means humans living in democracies, I would say that parliamentary democracy has more supporters and constitutional republics.
And even if us == the US, I would argue that most US citizens actually have only a very hazy idea about how their own system of government works, much less how others work. Most of these people think that chanting "USA, USA" in unison is democracy.
That's a very dim view of your fellow Americans. I don't have such a dim view myself; there are certainly people who don't care and didn't pay attention in their high school civics classes, but I've found that most people do care and do pay attention. I wonder if your opinion is colored by recent events, and whether you'd have thought the same in 2008?
Democracy -> Tyranny
Aside: oof yeah this seems like terrible policy and takes India off my bucket list.
The thing about it is they specifically are targeting the repo which is interesting because the only thing that can really stop the proliferation of these apps is not allowing user to install from other sources which would have to come from Google preventing this.
Hopefully google won't prevent people from installing from outside sources /s
This change is largely drivin by claims that installing apps from other sources is insecure... I'd argue this is why it's insecure... Not insecure for individuals. Insecure for oppressive governments.
Fun fact: They have deployed facial recognition vans, AI smart glasses and illegally tracking the protesters (most of which are students) without their consent to threaten and deter them.
To make it even more annoying, good projects like Briar have been doing this for over 10 years. Why would BitChat suddenly succeed or get any attention at all?
Note that India is heavily dependent on money from elsewhere (hence a lot of recent policy changes to bring in more foreign money). It is a net importer and isn’t strong enough on exports.
There are some recent policy changes to attract more foreign currency deposits with lots of expectations.
If there is a hint that these subversive actions are also going to hurt the economy, there is a tiny, tiny sliver of a chance that the powers that be will be a bit more afraid of losing the next round of elections in the state governments and in a few years at the union level. That could possibly limit the ignorant knee jerk reactions and bans.
https://github.com/permissionlesstech/bitchat/forks
At a festival I got notifications there are "other users nearby", which made me question if and how the app is broadcasting it's presence, possibly at all times. I also couldn't figure out a way to turn off these notifications (there's barely any settings) and I ended up uninstalling the app.
To imagine that US MNCs readily obey these orders. There was a time when Gmail exited China due to Aurora attacks, and Chinese GFW is universally hated, so why is India allowed to create a GFW like censorship on US platforms? Indian courts have even blocked Reuters articles GLOBALLY before. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/19/india-judg...
https://updates.techforpalestine.org/bitchat-for-gaza-messag...
Does Apple still allow side loaded apps ?