> 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.)
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 that will collect ALL this data and automatically correlate and organize it for everyone. All of these are things that we already have to limited extents, but they're still not taking full advantage of, yet.
>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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The USA is already on my blacklist of places never to go visit as a tourist again because you never know if they will send you to some prison in some nasty country.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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” anything. The US society with all its systems decided that a large class of people will be forced to operate at that level their whole life. And all this is complemented by insane punishments only for those people, to make sure that they have no reason to restrain themselves.
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 them acting straight rather than always act on desperation. Depending on your goal, having people self restraint works better than having to restrain them with tasers, chokeholds, and bullets to the back.
If you hear this for the first time, hello white male with plenty of money for a lawyer.
> 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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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)
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."
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
#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.
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
> 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.)
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 that will collect ALL this data and automatically correlate and organize it for everyone. All of these are things that we already have to limited extents, but they're still not taking full advantage of, yet.
We already have that, except for half of real life.
you are being too charitable in your evaluation.
>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.
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.
Most nations with gun control apply gun control to the street police also.
most nations with gun control do not need people to protect themselves against police violence. that's the real problem here.
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.
that doesnt apply to the U.S.
>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?
9/11 didn't write the patriot act.
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.
Playing Devils Advocate... isn't this the government taking action?
Yes, misinformed and counterproductive action.
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.
The article is about India, not the US.
I'm not condoning this but what would you suggest they should be doing to keep people safe?
I'm fairly sure whatever they do you'd likely be complaining about it. Glad to be wrong though.
How is private messaging causing people to become unsafe? If you're saying privacy = unsafe environment, then your right to privacy is meaningless.
That's not what I'm saying at all. If you've taken that from my comment you've misread it.
"Do you consider your position so weak that it cannot withstand debate?" -- Data, STNG
They're afraid of people communicating. That's not a safety thing.
and in this argument we pre-suppose that loss of privacy equates to an increase in safety, right?
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
A similar thing happened in the Falkland's War: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/history/bbcs-treason-battle...
The Indian government is pretty serious about cracking down violently on peaceful protesters: https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/07/23/india-excessive-force-us...
One of the formative narratives of Indian independence is that peaceful protest works in getting rid of bad governments.
on edit: changed myths to narratives to avoid confusion
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.
arguably the American colonies wanted the same thing. What is it with these colonizers that they don't want that!?
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.
So far the Modi clique is still in power though.
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/anantnag-terror-atta...
BBC says 3000 but yeah.
https://www.outlookindia.com/national/2-terrorists-family-ho...
So the houses of 2 accused were razed because.....
I don't trust the Modi clique one second.
> I had a connecting flight through India
I make additional effort to never experience that again. Connecting flight through Mumbai. An absolutely awful experience.
So what happens if you have a flight that gets diverted to India and they search your bags and find a satellite phone?
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.
Believe it or not, straight to jail.
The USA is already on my blacklist of places never to go visit as a tourist again because you never know if they will send you to some prison in some nasty country.
Now India is on the same blacklist.
Are there any countries NOT on this blacklist?
Are there any instances of the US sending a tourist to jail in another country?
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.
Weren't some of the German tourists last year sent to an ICE camp in Mexico?
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.
Belarus the same
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair_Flight_4978
Flying over a country does not make you immune to that country’s laws.
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.
Notably, he was kept in the US, not sent to prison in another country?
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.
[delayed]
Last year ICE was deporting legal tourists.
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.
Do you have a reputable link?
We have the best doctors in the world. Because of jail.
I think I missed the joke here. Can you please elaborate?
I think it’s from parks and recs. but the quote was “we have the best patients in the world. Because of jail. “
Search “parks and recs straight to jail”
Thanks.
It’s a “Parks and Recreations” reference.
You jail them so they can't leave? :-D
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.
The poster you're answering to just described what happens.
Not for diversions necessarily. Diversion versus expected connection should at least help one’s lawyers… hopefully.
Lawyers can get you out of jail, but you need to be pretty rich for your lawyers to prevent going to jail in the first place.
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.
India is kind of cute.
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". :-)
That is still the case. I looked up this law. It is strictly forbidden to ever connect the POTS network to an IP network. End of story.
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.
except this implies total control, and a willingness to use that control to gaslight your citizens into believing they have some control
Neither of those is a problem for any government on the planet, I promise.
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.
Reminds me of FSF versus some Uyghur. Summary:
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'm not suggesting people should give up, I'm suggesting that some countries can resort to doing very uncute things when faced with noncompliance.
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.
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.
That's funny considering the scale of WhatsApp now in the country.
Reminds me of Elon's answer to the question of what various countries can do about StarLink: "They can shake their fists at the sky."
India's solution is that they put anyone who has a starlink ground station in jail.
Starlink can be jammed.
Jamming can be defeated quite funnily, by digging a pit and putting the antenna at the bottom of it.
Thanks for sharing, very interesting: https://www.technology.org/2023/08/01/did-russia-learn-to-ja...
Why do you think China is putting lots of satellites into space.... All those tons into orbit isn't for the lolz.
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.
[0] https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/quadrf-can-spot-drone...
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.
Resistance against totalitarianism is a duty.
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.
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.
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” anything. The US society with all its systems decided that a large class of people will be forced to operate at that level their whole life. And all this is complemented by insane punishments only for those people, to make sure that they have no reason to restrain themselves.
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 them acting straight rather than always act on desperation. Depending on your goal, having people self restraint works better than having to restrain them with tasers, chokeholds, and bullets to the back.
If you hear this for the first time, hello white male with plenty of money for a lawyer.
> 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”.
It would be easier to shoot it out of the sky than try and jam a whole country from starlink
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.
voip is pretty effectively banned, or at least marginalized, in the USA. Can't use a Google Voice number for most payment services, for example.
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.
Honestly no idea what I’d do if I were in government.
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)
Originally, you'd communicate by mail, but some people didn't write things out in plain language; they used coated messages.
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.
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?
Provide a better alternative that satisfies the material grievances underlying the ideology
So there was no terrorism or crime or trafficking or money laundering prior to encrypted comms?
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.
Become a society where nobody feels it necessary to fall back on "terrorism" to get themselves properly heard.
Yeah, I don't think the terrorism in India is from lack of being heard.
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"
> Honestly no idea what I’d do if I were in government.
Spending crazy amounts in public education, healthcare, and nuclear arsenal?
We do regulate food. Tons of substances are not allowed.
We also regulate roads. You can not drive around in tanks. Or without license plate...
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.
But how far are they from such a headline do you think?
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.
The UK for now have given up on trying to ban vpns
'This is the right call' — VPN industry praises the UK’s decisions to leave VPN alone | TechRadar https://share.google/CyBImh95bt3VTubJV
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.
What a mix!
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.
Alex Pretti would like a word.
The US government killed two people protesting against their migration policy. Oh boy, MAGA is deep into America. Thanks for reminding me.
Most europeans love their chains, they call it freedom as a coping mechanism
Will there be a headline?
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.
> I was worried for a second there that it was the American government.
Midterms are coming up and the regime has spoken openly about "rigging" them so... just give it some time (and download a copy!).
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.
Meshtastic, reticulum, meshcore... We need more.
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.
Question, what do you do with the network?
You think the spooks are just sitting and watching people using other tech unmonitored and do nothing about it?
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.)
Not stated in the headline: it's the government of India.
Still available.
https://github.com/permissionlesstech/bitchat
To add:
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...
India.
Thank you Indian government for announcing the existence of this app to the public.
In long term, it seems democracies transform to autocracies. Well, china is the future indeed.
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.
> It's a Constitutional Republic.
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.
> 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.
Define "most" and "us".
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.
Regression to the mean...
Ooh definitely time to install this on my personal device then. Thanks Mr. Modi!
Aside: oof yeah this seems like terrible policy and takes India off my bucket list.
For clarity: Indian government.
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.
On the contrary, these projects should be given a boost.
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.
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)
Too bad it operates on Nostr, which is crypto-adjacent, otherwise they could move to Codeberg.
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."
and just stop doing business in a country with 17% of the world population? fat chance :)
In a few hours someone will release Streisand Chat as a fork
Democracy Dies in Darkness
Also in broad daylight
thats one, only 3.999, kiloforks to go
https://github.com/permissionlesstech/bitchat/forks
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.
They'd have been safe on Codeberg. Just saying, given yesterday's outrage.
Wow I didn’t know about this technology but it sounds like seriously cool stuff
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 do hope they were ignored. But then this is ultimately Microsoft we're talking about.
India is now going after domains too: https://www.reuters.com/world/worlds-biggest-domain-seller-f...
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...
TItle is missing a clarification: Indian government.
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.
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.
https://updates.techforpalestine.org/bitchat-for-gaza-messag...
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.
guess im downloading a copy of each version + the source code lmfao and im not even in india
#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.
2 Indias
With google banning side loaded apps, is what India wants to do just a waste of time by India.
Does Apple still allow side loaded apps ?
Only despots are afraid of people talking in channels they can't eavesdrop on.
What an excellent idea. This will surely make the protesters go away.</s>
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