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Encryption Security

Over Two Dozen Encryption Experts Call on India To Rethink Changes To Its Intermediary Liability Rules (techcrunch.com) 36

Posted by msmash from the growing-resistance dept.
Security and encryption experts from around the world are joining a number of organizations to call on India to reconsider its proposed amendments to local intermediary liability rules. From a report: In an open letter to India's IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Thursday, 27 security and cryptography experts warned the Indian government that if it goes ahead with its originally proposed changes to the law, it could weaken security and limit the use of strong encryption on the internet. The Indian government proposed a series of changes to its intermediary liability rules in late December 2018 that, if enforced, would require millions of services operated by anyone from small and medium businesses to large corporate giants such as Facebook and Google to make significant changes.

The originally proposed rules say that intermediaries -- which the government defines as those services that facilitate communication between two or more users and have five million or more users in India -- will have to proactively monitor and filter their users' content and be able to trace the originator of questionable content to avoid assuming full liability for their users' actions. "By tying intermediaries' protection from liability to their ability to monitor communications being sent across their platforms or systems, the amendments would limit the use of end-to-end encryption and encourage others to weaken existing security measures," the experts wrote in the letter, coordinated by the Internet Society
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Over Two Dozen Encryption Experts Call on India To Rethink Changes To Its Intermediary Liability Rules More

Over Two Dozen Encryption Experts Call on India To Rethink Changes To Its Intermediary Liability Rules

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  • Encryption experts need to understand India too. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Friday January 10, 2020 @01:51PM (#59607020) Journal
    In India literacy and education levels are low. Indian population is very very divided. Caste is the first and probably the only thing most Westernes know. But it also has some 18 major languages and a few hundred dialects. It also has sizeable populations of minority religions, Muslims 12 to 14%, Christians 2 or 3%, sprinkling of Sikhs, Jains. Trace amounts of Buddhists and Jews. It also has political parties and democratic elections.

    It forms a very heady mix, win at all costs elections, huge prize money for winning politicians because the administration is extremely corrupt.

    A simple deep fake video is enough to trigger a riot that kills hundred people and create property damage of several million dollars.

    Government, in its usual, bureaucratic ways and bureaucrats who dont understand technology will come up with less than optimum solutions. If the cryptography experts try to make India maintain some sort of standard that would be applicable in well policed countries, with decent government and administrations they would not succeed.

    The problem India faces is real. Fake news/videos/audios will trigger riots and deaths and destruction. The government has to find the originator of such fake news. If the cryptogrphy experts propose a way to get neutral bodies like courts to first make a determination that some video is fake, and that the video triggered or threatens a serious law and order situation, etc before the tracing mechanisms trigger it would be good. Random police officers demanding random whatsapp forwards to be traced would be serious violation of privacy etc. But completely absolving the likes of WhatsApp from any responsibility from tracing would not be correct solution for India.

    • The pending tech failure of India is also the failure of globalism. What did the British know (long before tech existed) when that entire region (including Pakistan and Bangladesh) was once British Mandate India? Yes, it's a messy business when there are many ethnic and religious rivalries, a huge population, and one government to have to oversee it. It means there has to be rights that are NOT free as the tech world would like them to be, and if a majority rule situation applies, there will have to be c
      • Many of the lines drawn on the map by some bureaucrat in London for some administrative convenience, without any idea of local language, ethnicity etc eventually became independent countries. Shias + Sunnis, Hutu+Tutsi , Hindus+Muslims, Tamil+Sinhalese, Burmese+Rohighias+Tamils, Chinese+Tamils+Malays, Tamils+Malays all kinds of conglomerations, that would never formed a cohesive nation naturally are made into countries and granted independence by the British. The mess continues to this day.
        • As it happens, that's Just Not True. To find out the truth, or at least a close approximation of the truth, read Freedom at Midnight [wikipedia.org], a good attempt at an impartial description of the partition of India and Pakistan. Yes, Cyril Radcliffe, the man responsible for drawing the boundaries, had never visited India before, but that was done to insure impartiality. I gather that he regarded the fact that all sides were equally outraged by some of his decisions as proof that he'd done his job properly.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kjella ( 173770 )

          Many of the lines drawn on the map by some bureaucrat in London for some administrative convenience, without any idea of local language, ethnicity etc eventually became independent countries. Shias + Sunnis,

          Oh horror of horrors, the evil white man put two warring sects of Islam in the same room and they slaughtered each other so clearly it's the white man's burden. Multicultural countries like the USA can be functional if the ingredients are functional, the problem is some mix like oil and water. White Europeans fought two world wars last century, we got our shit together and made peace. Maybe some ruler long ago trapped them inside the same border but it's not our fault that dysfunctional tribal societies wan

    • Seriously? Your excuse for an authoritarian surveillance state is that the people are too stupid to handle freedom and privacy? Do you work for the Indian equivalent of Palantir or Cellbrite or something and stand to profit from your Orwellian dreams? Or are you really just that much of a stupendous misanthrope?

      • Have you ever been in a town in curfew because of riots? How many times? How many of your near and dear were traveling in a bus and a riot broke out in the area and were trying desperately to check their safety? Did you ever have a room mate who narrated a harrowing story of being stuck in a bus in a strange state and some ex-PM was assassinated and riots broke out everywhere and the bus driver hid the bus in some factory compound, where the passengers formed guard and took turns sleeping, for two days?

        You

  • Why cant you limit end-2-end encryption? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Friday January 10, 2020 @01:56PM (#59607040) Journal
    The experts need to convince the government and the society that end to end encryption is good for the society. Should you guarantee anonymity for the person who cried "fire" in a crowded theater?

    India is a crowded theater. These services amplify every cry of every person instantly across the breath and width of the nation. They can't shirk responsibility, they made profit from these users. They cant accept only the profit and refuse responsibility.

    • Should you guarantee anonymity for the person who cried "fire" in a crowded theater?

      Wish people would get this quote right. It should have the word "falsely" inserted between "who" and "cried"....

      • Agreed. Now should the society guarantee anonymity to the person who falsely cried fire in a crowded theater?

        • It's better that one jackass goes free; versus having millions of people suffer once a backdoor is leaked or hacked and all of the data on their phones are compromised.

          • In USA it is a jackass who did not do much damage.

            In India the fake video of a Muslim/Hindu being lynched by Hindu/Muslim mob would trigger a riot of monumental proportions. It is thousand people killed riot on one hand and the backdoor gets hacked for millions of phones on the other. You can guess what Gov of India would prefer.

            • You work for the Indian government don't you?

              • Long time ago. Indian tax payers paid for my world class engineering education for free. I felt I needed to pay my debt back to India. Did lots of community service in college, mostly after school tutoring for disadvantaged children. Then five years as a gazetted officer in the ministry of defense.

                • Fair enough.
                  Seeing as Indian tax payers paid for your education, how about you not stab them in the back today by supporting the ideas of a vile anti-citizen maniac?

                  • Modi is not as bad as the western media portray him to be.

                    Every one will mention the 2002 Gujarat riots two months after he became the chief minister of that state. Till 2002 riots were very regular in Gujarat and Maharashtra. Repeatedly under Congress rule, once in three to five years. By that average Gujarat should have had four more riots after 2002. But it got none. That is a cold hard inconvenient fact.

                    Did Modi encourage attack on Muslims? Did he order the police to stand down? Was incompetent and

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by vbdasc ( 146051 )

            I'm not Indian, but I'm not from a first-world country either, and I often feel the urge to give my 2 cents when someone doesn't seem to accept that for some people their lives could be more important than liberties envisioned by the American founding fathers. And that for these people the famous Franklin's quote about freedom and security might not make much sense.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

      While I don't agree with this law, is this really incompatible with end to end encryption? If User123987123 sent an encrypted blob to User873435345 then has the company not met the requirements of the law? Any attempt to filter the encrypted information would of course fail, and be a waste of time. But they can say they did it, and that they know the user ID who sent it.

  • What India is really saying is... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nadass ( 3963991 ) on Friday January 10, 2020 @02:19PM (#59607110)
    They're aiming for an 100% open government! All government business in every manner and capacity would be 100% Open Source since there would be absolutely no protections of any and all communications between any two parties (defined as individuals or computer systems operated by any individual). YAY!

    Which is probably an unintended consequence of their legislation... and would disqualify them of various international treaties and agreements with regards to protections of human rights and all... but WHATEVER! Yay to the first 100% OPENLY CORRUPT GOVERNMENT!!! (Did I say that out loud?)

  • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • ...to no longer be connected to the internet at large? They want to run their own internal "internet" that is crippled with no strong encryption or end-to-end protections.

    I'm going to say "Good luck with that, India!" Black hole of Calcutta indeed.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • This whole thing is poppycock and is a result of the idiocy of various Government's (most especially the United States of America) misclassification of the Internet as an "Information Services" rather than as "Common Carriers". And, of course, that Idjit Pie fellow who should be taken out in to a parking lot along with his butt-buddy William Barr, and both executed by firing squad.

    The whole problem would be solved in mere seconds if the CDA and similar statutes were immediately repealed, and all these so-c

  • Its their nation.
    Their laws to pass, enforce, work with, see a drop in investment over, see better police work with, have a better legal system with...
    If police work improves is that not a plus for the laws as expected? Something the gov wanted and the people voted for...
    Its their networks, their laws, their crypto to set at any level they want.
    The NSA went PRISM.. did the free "West" do much after that?
    Still have to buy from the same "good" NSA supporting "private" Western brands... but India is "

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