Whenever India and its authoritarian stances are mentioned, a number of folks (I presume Indians, both on HN and elsewhere) come out of the woodwork to sing praises of "national security" while saying nothing about how such power can be abused.
It is truly sad to see that an entire populace can't see the perils of a government with broad-reaching powers, when government institutions jailing the opposition, censoring the press, and supressing minorities is rather commonplace there[1][2].
Well that's what we call power of propaganda, I say that as an Indian(still living in India).
I honestly couldn't do anything even after writing letters, talking to friends who can talk to people who make shitty decisions, just cause there is no larger sentiment against these decisions, things just go by.
And now I have to say I am not sure when will the general public understand this issue, or will they ever. Are we just too lazy to do anything about it, or too divided to put up a fight...
Truly sad to see. Taking away rights to privacy is not the way of fighting the wrongs and problematic elements, and considering how corrupt our system can be I have no hope of it not being abused wildly. :(
Btw if anyone here is from Australia, you guys had a similar bill a few years ago correct? what happened after that? I am curious any hope of overturning this stuff from the sheer corporate backlash?
Or, maybe I am too optimistic about people who sold their souls for money, making a stand.
Yeah, the Assistance and Access Act (2018) passed and is still the law of the land. It gave law enforcement, intelligence and the government the ability to compel Australian providers to backdoor their services. Can't tell you how often it's been invoked since it also allows for gag orders.
Probably only 1 out of 10 Aussies would have even heard of it. The mainstream media here are about half a dozen ideologically aligned corporations who are not the type to ask hard questions, and the average Australian is focused only on their wealth, their family or their recreation.
Australian here. What Assistance and Access bill did is different, and clever in some ways. TL;DR: it doesn't attack encryption directly - it doesn't give the government power to direct anyone to hand over keys, for instance. In fact the bill specifically prohibits the government in asking anyone to introduce a "systemic weakness". A systemic weakness is something that would allow the government to spy on everyone - which is what India seemingly wants to do.
But as I said it's clever. It can specifically prohibit introducing new "systemic weaknesses" because they already have one that's more than good enough for their purposes. That would be silent security updates. They have given themselves the power to compel tech company (Apply/Google/Microsoft) to install a silent security update on a specific device. The "silent security update" would of course be a bug (spy intercept) of some sort. It doesn't bypass encryption because it doesn't need to - a human can only consume unencrypted data, so that's what the spy bug intercepts.
They've ensured that it will never be systemic to their own satisfaction by putting several hurdles in place, like independent judicial review of the bug and which devices will be targeted. The fundamental principle is the only acceptable reason for targeting someone is criminal activity. If those hurdles are respected (and it seems likely they would mostly be followed) it means the Chinese like surveillance society India seems to be trying to create would be very difficult in Australia, even with this law. Which I guess would make it a reasonable compromise between government privacy invasion and law and order concerns.
The flaw is it's impossible to know if they are being respected. All companies and people forced to inject these spy ware updates are automatically subject to a gag order. All that review I mentioned happens in secret, and they have specifically exempted themselves from publishing any meaningful information on who, what, why and how devices are targeted.
To finish the picture - if the Australian government was concerned about criminal behaviour happening over Signal, it's highly unlikely they would be approaching Signal as India has apparently done. (I can't for the life of me think of a reason why Signal would give a shit about what the India government thinks or wants. Ditto the Australian government.) Instead they would direct Google to inject keyboard and screen monitors into Android. Google makes a lot of money in Australia, so it's likely they would comply. Like I said - it's clever.
But not impossibly so. It only works if they can target a particular device. For a commercial products this is invariably easy - Apple, Google, Microsoft all want you to sign in with an identity so they can milk some profit out of it either by charging you or at least displaying advertising. But open source projects, like Fedora or Debian, go out of their way to not identity the users, and worse Debian creates audit trails like reproducible builds. So their users are largely immune to Australia's Assistance and Access Bill (2019). But they aren't immune to India's rubber hose approach.
Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
It's propaganda. It's the same reason why a large portion of Indians (even with full internet access...) are fervently pro-Putin in the context of the Ukraine-Russia war.
We're going a bit off topic here but I'll expand a bit.
If we both (presumably) start from the premise of "this invasion is a bad thing", then following this up with "anyone who supports it is just a moron duped my propaganda" and/or "the Russian administration are simply crazy" isn't helpful. This did not happen in isolation, it happened against a backdrop of decades of western failures in diplomacy & deterrence.
That's worth examining if we wish to prevent future wars.
I'm not an Indian, but I can understand why a country that was oppressed by the Great Britain for such a long time, and endured such atrocities, can opt to support the party that stands on the opposite side of Britain.
That alone could explain why not only India, but big parts of the worlds, especially the ones that suffered from the British and American imperialism, would rather see an arch-enemy of their usurper win against oppressors puppet state.
India was the chief non-aligned country of the Cold War, and for decades has warmer relations with the Russian Federation (and it's predecessor the USSR) than the west.
I understand this. I'm simply asserting that if one believes in this political drivel, ignoring the onslaught happening in Ukraine, then you've not progressed as a human much beyond the middle ages.
Unfortunately, it's how humans work. As a species, we did not progress beyond the Middle Ages. Our tech did, but we didn't. Still the same tribalism as before.
When we plunder the other village, take their crop and their wives, it's to bring justice to the world. When they come to us, take our crop and our wives, they are evil aggressors.
Nothing has changed, and probably will not change anytime soon. Thousands of years of evolution are still stronger than whatever thin layer of civilization we try to put on top.
90% world the world (i.e. nearly everybody outside the west) has a similar position on the Russia-Ukraine issue as India though. Is 90% of the world propagandized? Or can they have a legit different perspective on things?
Countries can have more complex positions than the simple "Ukraine good, destroy Russia" (or its inverse, "Russia good, invade Ukraine") dichotomy that many in the west go for. Many countries don't approve of Ukraine's invasion, but also don't like NATO very much and show some understanding for Russia's position.
Most countries wish to be neutral on this matter, continuing to trade with both Russia and the west, i.e. similar to India's position. Look at how many countries chose to sanction Russia. Of those who voted against Russia, most who chose to sanction are western countries. Very few Asian and African countries imposed sanctions. 87% of countries chose not to impose sanctions.
It is truly sad to see that an entire populace can't see the perils of a government with broad-reaching powers, when government institutions jailing the opposition, censoring the press, and supressing minorities is rather commonplace there[1][2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emergency_(India)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_Muslims_in_In...