India Reportedly Wants To Build Its Own WhatsApp For Government Communications (techcrunch.com) 36
India may have plans to follow France's footsteps in building a chat app and requiring government employees to use it for official communications. From a report: The New Delhi government is said to be pondering about the need to have homegrown email and chat apps, local news outlet Economic Times reported on Thursday. The rationale behind the move is to cut reliance on foreign entities, the report said, a concern that has somehow manifested amid U.S.'s ongoing tussle with Huawei and China. "We need to make our communication insular," an unnamed top government official was quoted as saying by the paper. The person suggested that by putting Chinese giant Huawei on the entity list, the U.S. has "set alarm bells ringing in New Delhi." India has its own ongoing trade tension with the U.S. Donald Trump earlier this month removed the South Asian nation from a special trade program after India did not assure him that it "unfortunate," and weeks later, increased tariffs on some U.S. exports.
Buying an xmpp solution isn't an option (Score:3)
Right?
I love this craze world!
Re: Buying an xmpp solution isn't an option (Score:2)
And who would do the support and maintenance?
Re: (Score:2)
Why not deploy Matrix? Other governments have been looking at it or are even deploying it: https://matrix.org/blog/2018/0... [matrix.org]
Maybe they should just buy (Score:1)
Biackberry.
I'm guessing they want a huge contract with multiple companies in India, each providing kickbacks to the appropriate politician, for a "new" platform.
Why build what is already on the shelf? (Score:1)
https://github.com/RocketChat/... [github.com]
The ultimate Free Open Source Solution for team communications. https://rocket.chat/ [rocket.chat]
Rocket.Chat is the leading open source team chat software solution. Free, unlimited and completely customizable with on-premises and SaaS cloud hosting.
Messengers (Score:2)
Uh-oh (Score:2)
Trump is getting ready to throw the book at India. He's going to put them on Double Secret Probation....the Horror...the Horror...
Re: (Score:2)
He has enough things to discuss w/ Modi already - Indian requirements on Indian data residing on servers in India, regulations on Amazon and Walmart, tariffs on each other, oil supplies (since India has stopped Iran and reduced Venezuela), the Russian S-400s (which India is not gonna budge on), So I doubt he'll ask Modi to use something like WhatsApp that does nothing for US revenues (even if it does for Facebook)
Re: Uh-oh (Score:1)
Seems like a smart move (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Seems like a smart move. With the calls for governments to have backdoors in US apps, Chinese and Russion ones probably already having them this makes perfect sense. You just have to make sure you employ capable people, use independently verified encryption methods, and pay the staff enough that they aren't tempted to take bribes to compromise security.
One thing - why can't they use Signal or Telegram? Something they can have full control over
already done that for you (Score:2)
its also gov approved and has been hacked as people got their hands on it
https://github.com/dinsic-pim/
Re: (Score:2)
You didn't deserve to be modded down, that's an interesting theory (obviously based on the similar theory "cheap", "quick", and "quality", where you can only have two of the three)... but I disagree with it, I understand there might be a bit of a tug of war between affordability and protection but clarity/ease of use does not have to come at the expense of lower affordability or protection
There may be another reason (Score:2)
Remember when India recently proposed to break encryption [qz.com] on apps like WhatsApp?
Would the same rules apply to the "India's WhatsApp For Government"? Somehow I don't think so.
It's really Matrix (Score:1)
It's almost never mentioned in the news, but France's IM is really Matrix with custom client. The security flaw was in the custom registration portal which allowed registering from non-government e-mails, not related to Matrix itself.
No clue what India's plan is.
Fix the system; home-grown solutions will come (Score:2)
Hey, Indian politicos, ever wondered why:
1. China overtook you (in just a few short decades) in economic and then military power?
2. Many (although of course not all) Indians choose to leave home for the USA and elsewhere?
Fix your corrupt "democracy" and watch home-grown businesses explode, and not just in tech.
Reminds me of RIM vs. India eight years ago (Score:1)
India demanded RIM (the BlackBerry-maker) turn over all encryption keys to their government. RIM eventually did what they wanted. [theregister.co.uk]. This was around 8 years ago.
Ironically the best solution is possibly still for India just to pay for BBMe and use its end-to-end encryption. India kind of admitted itself that it was unbreakable, after all.