India Wants Tech Platforms To Break Encryption And Remove Content The Government Thinks Is 'Unlawful' (buzzfeednews.com) 108
India's government wants to make it mandatory for platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Google, to remove content it deems "unlawful" within 24 hours of notice, and create "automated tools" to "proactively identify and remove" such material. From a report: It also wants tech companies to build in a way to trace the source of the content, which would require platforms like WhatsApp to break end-to-end encryption. India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) published [PDF] the proposed rules on its website following a report on Monday by The Indian Express revealing the government's proposal to modify the country's primary IT law to work them in. The report comes days after India's government seemingly authorized 10 federal agencies to snoop into every computer in the country last week. The proposed measures have provoked concerns from privacy activists who claim they would threaten free speech and enable mass surveillance.
[...] If India does work these rules into its IT law, it would have precedent: Earlier this month, Australia passed a controversial encryption bill that would require technology companies to give law enforcement agencies access to encrypted communications, saying that it was essential to stop terrorists and criminals who rely on secure messaging apps to communicate.
[...] If India does work these rules into its IT law, it would have precedent: Earlier this month, Australia passed a controversial encryption bill that would require technology companies to give law enforcement agencies access to encrypted communications, saying that it was essential to stop terrorists and criminals who rely on secure messaging apps to communicate.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: Go on (Score:2)
India's lack of dependence on the international economy is why it is so impervious to International peer pressure. And so it is free to write its own definitions of morality.
I'm pretty sure that many international companies outsourcing their IT/support to India would disagree with you. Many of them would move their operations to other countries before they let any government access to their computers.
Re: (Score:2)
Hopefully.
Re: (Score:1)
And its highly likely they bullied Australia into making their anti-encryption laws to bypass the US legal system, because if Aussie gets it, the USA will get it by proxy.
And now you are getting upset because the rest of the world says, "Well if they can have a backdoor, so can we"
So, yes, the US got this ball rolling and so now EVERY COUNTRY will be demanding access thanks to the USA, and yes those countries have exactly the same right as the USA to demand access.
Re: (Score:2)
---
Re: (Score:1)
Time to stop outsourcing, finally (Score:1)
Best to just pull out of India altogether. Bad programmers, people with no money.
As an anti globalist (Score:1)
I really want facebook to just block such countries. Seriously, I think that american culture is already too infectious, and I think it would be interesting to see what would happen if internet for each country become a bit more localized. Not completely, but enough so that you can have a cultural variety.
Re:As an anti globalist (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I'm a globalist, and I want them to drop those countries as well. No country should be trusted on the basis that only individuals and not organizations are worthy of trust, but no country which has deliberately compromised cryptology should be trusted even slightly.
We know what it looks like when each country is more localized, and it's not pretty.
Re:As an anti globalist (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, countries and "authorities" should never be trusted in the least. They they have to be watched carefully and have to be kicked hard regularly to remind them that it is not their place to tell people how to live and what to think. If the population of a country forgets that, they get fascism sooner or later, as can nicely be observed at this time in many places.
Re: (Score:2)
No. Authorities that have been voted into office by easily manipulated morons or by people that want their screwed up belief enforced on anybody else are not any better. Democracy has mostly failed. The voters do just not have the quality required.
Re: (Score:2)
"George Washington was right, it's neither our place nor our duty to become involved ing foreign entanglements."
George Washington was responsible for the standing US army. Guess he blew that one.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As soon as a country doesn't trust its citizens with crypto, that opens up so many doors to abuse. Anything from untracably forging documents (a big thing in India is faking other people's death certificates since it can take years for people to prove they are not dead, and unless there is a well-greased tribute, most courts won't take the case), to official oppression, to mass criminal activity on a grand scale.
India isn't like the West. The caste system is still present, and corruption is commonplace.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah... A believer in making all people the same.
People are all more the same than they are different. I'm a believer in amending or replacing the social systems that convince them otherwise for the profit of a few who would abuse them.
Yeah, there's been a lot of bad stuff done over the years... Stop focusing on it and celebrate the good.
People are still doing bad things, and part of progress is getting to where there's less of that happening. You can't get there by pretending you're somewhere you aren't.
Re: (Score:2)
You know, "Facebook" is not the Internet. It is in fact a rather small contributor only. Anybody can put up their own website and content on their own server (with dynamic DNS if needed), a rented server or rented web-space.
Re: (Score:1)
Anybody can put up their own website and content on their own server
*Ahem* Check your service contract first. And you better hope your content doesn't offend your service provider, or the state either. See, our real problem is our dependence on these services that are really agents of the state.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Is this the same India with a socially-stratifying caste system? So fucking enlightened!
Re: (Score:1)
Emulating the UK? (Score:4, Insightful)
It looks like the world's largest democracy is coming into some bumpy times. The Indians have a strange love-hate relationship with the British due to the lasting influence of the British Raj there, but they are now showing an unhealthy tendency to emulate the UK in its snooping, anti-privacy attitudes. No government needs to control what its citizens can read and write unless it has totalitarian aims. Clearly, the UK does want to control its people just as Orwell predicted, but until now the Indian government has not been visibly interested in this sort of control. It's ver sad, and very bad news for the people of India.
Re: (Score:2)
No government needs to control what its citizens can read and write unless it has totalitarian aims.
Or unless they're trying to prevent a lynching [bbc.com] based on false information.
Re: (Score:2)
Imagine if the driver who plowed into the crowd at Charlotteville would have been pulled out of his car and killed on the spot, that wouldn't have been good. Mob justice rarely gets us the answers we're looking for.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
indian culture is VERY authoritarian. do NOT break rules, FOLLOW orders and fall into place, citizen.
I predict nothing good will come from this. *maybe* the US will pull back from all the h1b bullshit, but I doubt it since the h1b crap is all about profit and profit always comes before privacy and even long-term security.
every indian I've met in the bay area, over the last 25 or so years, has been more republican oriented than democrat. they will certainly do what they're told, not step out of line and h
Re:Emulating the UK? (Score:4, Interesting)
biggaijin observed:
It looks like the world's largest democracy is coming into some bumpy times. Clearly, the UK does want to control its people just as Orwell predicted, but until now the Indian government has not been visibly interested in this sort of control. It's ver sad, and very bad news for the people of India.
Modi's government has displayed repressive and authoritarian tendencies from day one. Luckily, as Al Jazeera reports [aljazeera.com], his Bharatiya Janata Party lost 56 seats in parliament in local elections in the northern states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh in recent months. That's a significant swing in popular support from last spring, and it may mean India is getting as tired of Modi as, for instance, Hungary is of Viktor Orban [ft.com] ...
The trend and it's getting worse. (Score:1, Insightful)
This is India trying to control their populace. Just because a government is elected, doesn't mean it can't be repressive. You get a faction that gets into power and they want to keep that power. See the Republicans in the USA and Wisconsin and Michigan doing incredible undemocratic things and undermining our Republic for their own pathetic power.
Authoritarianism is on the rise. And as global climate gets worse, so will governments in their crackdown on their citizens.
The people will not only allow it, b
Vote Libertarian then (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes a benevolent oligarchy or a benevolent dictatorship can be more effective than a democracy. But the tradeoff is a higher risk of turning into an authoritarian oligarchy or dictatorship. The Libertarian argument is that it's better to just suffer with less effective government, than to give government more power and risk it turning authoritarian and abusing that power. Every time you the thought "there aught to be a law against that" crosses your mind, the next thing you should think about is how such a law could be abused by the government. Only after you've considered that full range of possibilities can you impartially decide if things really would be better with such a law. Otherwise you end up like China, which has thousands of behavioral laws that are never enforced. Unless you piss off the Communist leadership, in which case they throw the book at you and either send you to a labor camp or chop off your head.
Re: (Score:2)
In my experience, the American libertarians just want corporate overlords rather then government overlords. None of that pesky human rights for the proles unless rich enough to sue and enough government to keep their "employees" in line.
The whole idea of a right wing libertarian is an oxymoron.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Wanting to have an effective government is not the same as thinking "there ought to be a law against that", because it's not about how many laws there are. It's about how effective are its policies. In some cases it may increase the number of laws, but just as equally we should be looking to remove ineffective laws. And we should be doing t
Re: (Score:2)
Monarchy is the smallest government of all, a government of one and for every one, disagree and get publicly tortured to death, hardly what anyone would call Libertarian. Government should be huge because it should involve every citizen, you can have equal access to democracy and or equal access to justice without big government in fact huge government, to ensure that level of access.
Basically what is happening is the psychopathic authoritarian control freaks are looking at networking and AI and salivating
Re: (Score:2)
"Monarchy is the smallest government of all, a government of one and..."
Um, where in history have you seen a monarchy that was a government of one. Clue: you haven't.
Re: (Score:2)
Problem with less government is that someone else will pick up the slack, either explicitly (think 90s era Microsoft if there had been no antitrust case) or implicitly (manufacturers polluting waterways for those down stream.)
The government is supposed to represent the people's collective voice in situations where no individual voice alone will be able to correct problems -- at least, that's what modern democratic governments are supposed to be. The libertarian ideal is essentially equivalent to giving up
The quantum internet can't get here soon enough. (Score:3)
The only way to intercept messages will be at the endpoints, and autoritarian governments will have no power to block or filter.
The downside of course is it makes stuff like ransomware even easier.
Re: (Score:2)
quantum internet ... and autoritarian governments will have no power to block or filter.
Really? And who says that you'll be able to access it once built and running? If it works the Gvt will keep it to themselves -- you won't be able to get anywhere near it, physically OR logically.
Decentralize! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is yet another reason why centralizing onto just a few massive platforms run by ad companies is a disaster in the making.
We need to re-establish a decentralized internet, with strong user-controlled end-to-end encryption. It must allow public or recipient-restricted messages, and be censorship and mass surveillance resistant.
If we don't do that, we will lose the free internet, as more and more countries clamp down on the ad companies the public is centralizing onto.
Re: (Score:1)
There is exactly one single point of failure in the entire internet, the service provider, gotta get around them...
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair, we have PGP and other forms of encrypted communication. And setting up your own SMTP and POP server is still doable. It's not that it can't be done, just that it isn't popular to do. Installing Whatsapp is easier, especially for the rest of your friends.
This leads me to something I always think when reading shit like this "to stop terrorists and criminals who rely on secure messaging apps to communicate". I'd assume that proper terrorist cells are technically capable enough not to rely on Whatsa
No. This is tyranny you idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies, governments, organizations. These things are not trustable, stop pretending they have your best interests in mind just because they give you things you want.
These things are not moral centers, they arnt continually benevolent and they always need moderation and oversight
Stop being lazy and stupid
Re: (Score:2)
Stop being lazy and stupid.
Social media could rally the citizens (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Better just to allow the gov to get what it wants and keep the ads in place.
Like PRISM in the USA.
The US internet did not stop on the first request for PRISM. The US brands did nothing and the internet kept working for the gov and the ads.
Re: (Score:1)
Unless it looks good on the spreadsheet, that kind of stuff just isn't going to happen. Their purpose is singular.
Re: (Score:2)
an alternative will be available/pop up, that does follow the gov rules, but 99.9% of the people won't care and will happily use the alternative.
The problem is choice (Score:2)
The tech companies face a choice:
Submit to the will of India ( and set a precedence ) or lose that very lucrative market.
Going with the former will see other countries follow suit with demands of their own. The latter will cause a shareholder revolt.
The USG will also want encryption broken, they just won't demand it publicly and since you were kind enough to do it for India . . .
A difficult choice is coming.
Re: (Score:1)
but they can't touch me or my systems.
That might be true, after your ISP decides to snip the cable/fiber..
Time to Pull the Plug? (Score:2)
Closed for business (Score:3)
breaking end to end not needed for tracing source (Score:2)
They don't need to break end to end encryption to allow tracing source of message. They just need to implement a message signing scheme similar to PGP with their server holding public key registry and keep those signatures (as hidden part of payload) while forwarding messages. This way after getting device with final message you can check original author. Obviously it does not solve every possible case (eg copying just content instead of using forward function), but should be enough for all those chain lett
Re: (Score:1)
Thanks piratebay! (Score:2)
For fifteen years governments and corporations have been trying to shut down citizen access to thepiratebay. I just checked to see if it was still up before starting this post and thepiratebay.org didn't load. For half a second I thought maybe they had lost the battle, but then I searched for them and pulled up another domain instantly. In a perfect world* we wouldn't need profit driven organizations fighting government and corporate rage, but until I'm elected, I'm glad there are people working out how to