It's really too bad that the two rising tech countries - China and India - have such a third-world approach to censorship on the Internet. You would think they would want to mimic the US's successful formula in hopes of building their presence as a tech powerhouse, but in this area they don't seem to be doing that.
We have yet to see how the US reacts when a massive section of it wants to secede.
India and China both face a significantly more difficult geopolitical reality than the USA.
Some of the world's most westernized and developed countries (Spain, Israel) are starting to use violence and suppressive tactics now that they are faced with even the smallest amount of secessionist unrest.
Kashmir is one of the most militarized border zones alongside the West Bank. I fully agree that there might be better and less suppressive methods that the Govt. can use to deal with the Kashmir issue, but to act as though a USA like policy would work in countries with very different ground realities is being willfully arrogant.
At the risk of sounding too cold, if the choice was between death of a few million people (which India has a long history of) and complete destruction of communication frameworks. I would choose that latter.
Now the big problem with what the Indian Govt. is doing, is that this has been going on for almost a year and they are making no efforts to bring Kashmir back to "normalcy". Such draconian policies should only come into place for very short durations with measures for removal, the second unrest goes below a certain point.
Just because it's successful in the US doesn't stop politicians from trying to enact the same measures here as well. We need to continue to fight back at every turn such that we don't go down the same path.
Please don't use "third-world" as a generic insult for countries.
Even the wrong-yet-common definition of "poor" doesn't fit here, because internet censorship isn't a function of wealth: Saudi Arabia is rather rich yet unfree. Russia and China area also not "third world".
Russia, a leading internet censor, actually happens to be the (current version of) a country that used to be the definition of either "first" or "second" world.
Not that I disagree with what you're saying but can you please clarify what you mean by "third-world approach"? It seems to imply some sort of inferiority compared to "first-world".
You mean the one involving outsourcing IP law enforcement to private cartels amid increasing calls to remove 230 protections from public-facing internet companies?
The American formula allows foreign agents to conduct elaborate, micro-targeted psyops campaigns to manipulate our elections; enables a dramatic resurgence in previously fading extremist ideologies; and facilitates one of the largest expansions of economic and regional inequality in American history?
I don't know if we can really assert we have this figured out. These are all especially areas of concern for governments like India and China, where fear of balkanization, civil war, and severe communitarian violence are either contemporary problems or have been fairly recently in their political histories.
But it takes strong laws, a strong / independent judiciary... and politicians who want to maintain the rule of law regardless of how convenient it is for them personally. Sadly it's not just a thing you "have" and keep.
When I left Kashmir a few months ago, my phone and all its contents were checked by Indian police at the airport. They asked me to unlock and checked photos, WhatsApp texts, etc.
Random arrests and extra-judicial killings of Kashmiris by the Indian state is a quite regular occurrence. A laughable narrative around how they were "Pakistan sponsored terrorists" is usually spun by the media/police nexus.
This is a reminder that without physical security, electronic security is pretty much worthless. The best encryption won't save you from rubberhose cryptanalysis where they beat you until you reveal your key. Clever circumvention technologies such as VPN won't save you when they arrest your for using circumvention technologies.
These are all good things, but we in tech, oftentimes think we can program our way out of bad physical governance. We can't! We need now more than ever to engage with everyone to make sure that we have good physical governments.
>Clever circumvention technologies such as VPN won't save you when they arrest your for using circumvention technologies.
True, but my question here is: given that VPNs are pretty much essential for the way many large corporations work (they're not going to let employees access sensitive data over the internet in the clear), how does India, a country with a large tech presence and which promotes itself as a good place for software development, handle this?
Circumvention technologies must be used by everyone, so you can't filter out some people.
It's very fun how Kazakhstan government worked against himself. They blocked a lot of websites including harmless ones (like pornhub) and plenty of useful ones (probably by mistake) along with opposition websites. So basically most of computer-literate people now have VPN ready to use and many people use it all the time, myself included. Government tried to block Tor and some major VPNs, but I don't think that it worked out. For example Cloudflare VPN works just fine.
Now even if they wanted to find out who reads opposition websites, they have no way to do that, because a lot of people use VPN every day. Again, thanks to Cloudflare, I just install and enable VPN for everyone I know to improve their browsing experience.
Perhaps there is also the need for untraceable/hidden tools for censorship circumvention. This may involve masquerading as normal traffic. I've heard of specialized hidden censorship circumvention tools that do this by tunneling information though protocols like ping or DNS which won't look as suspicious as a VPN. Of course, for wide deployment this will become a game of cat and mouse, but I don't see any reason it would be impossible to make a good solution that is very hard to detect.
Well, there isn't much we can do around here to solve physical security.
But we can make sure that the rubber hose is required. The government going around beating people on no evidence is a completely different situation than they knowing beforehand everything they need to do.
This is going to sound antiquated and tedious, so please bear with me. Rather than using a VPN/Tor/etc. which can be easily detected or requires a lot of OpSec to get right, consider having people in other countries that can help bundle archives of data for you. Ship the data back and forth over something non conspicuous and not subject to MITM proxies such as SFTP to AWS or one of the low-rent VPS providers. Use a ram based linux distribution in India to create the posts, tar the data up, SFTP to another country. A friend in that country outside of India pulls down the tarball and posts text and videos to social media for you. When you are done uploading your tarball, reboot, and all the data is gone from your end. You can boot back into whatever government approved OS image is acceptable.
If you set the filesystem permissions right on the SFTP server, then even if they beat the username / pw out of you, then all they will find is cat videos on the chroot SFTP server. Your friend will see the tarball of objectionable content in a hidden directory. Remember to sanitize EXIF data from pictures first as that has your GPS location and in some cases your cell phone serial number. Someone will suggest ssh keys over password, but they should not in this case. No data must be persisted on the India side of this scenario.
I will be the first to admit, this process is tedious. I am only suggesting it as a last resort when all else fails.
ssh could be used for proxy, so it might be marked as a VPN by ISP hardware. Better way would be to use something very popular like Gmail or Google Drive. I hope that chances are small for Google to co-operate with Indian government.
Governments everywhere do not like secrecy. Unless, naturally, it is their secrets. Everyone else should, ideally, sit at the table with their hands palm up and on the said table.
I wish it was an isolated incident, but the more politicians you hear, the more it becomes apparent that it is all about the side you are on.
- In 2014, Narendra Modi was elected Prime Minister on a plank of "development for all". Since the BJP's pedigree was one of Hindu nationalism (aka Hindutva), this was a change welcomed by many. He had a good track record of development as Chief Minister (equivalent of Governor in America).
- After a couple of major missteps (invalidating all high value currency notes, tax changes), growth started to slow. While it had been 7-9% between 2004 and 2014, it was now 5% or less.
- The BJP started to capture and subvert institutions that make India function as a democracy including the Courts[1] and the Election Commission[2]. They intimidated and coerced the media into toeing the BJP line [3].
- In 2019, the BJP won re-election. In this campaign, there was no talk of development (because there was precious little of it), no discussion of rampant unemployment. The BJP tried to convince us that the main issue was Pakistan (it wasn't) and how they were an existential threat to the nation (they weren't) and how Modi had "taught them a lesson" (he hadn't).
- Since then, Hindutva has made a big comeback. It is now priority #1, above unemployment, above low growth.
- The BJP is staking everything on killing the separatist movement in Kashmir and removing all special privileges of Kashmiris, building a temple over a destroyed mosque, and removing illegal Muslim immigrants. Though seemingly disparate, all of these facilitate the broader goal of establishing a Hindu Rashtra - a nation of Hindus, by Hindus, for Hindus. One where the secular Constitution of India is no longer valid.
- To enforce this, the BJP has resorted to totalitarian tactics, including the effective house arrest of millions of Kashmiris, coupled with an internet blackout. Thanks to the aforementioned capture of the Courts, the Supreme Court has done nothing to right this injustice [4].
That's where we are now.
On a personal note, writing this down broke my heart. I love my country and I grieve to see what is being done to it.
As a young tech person in India, this stuff makes me so angry. The ruling party here (BJP) doesn't have any real competition. Which means they can get away with pretty much anything.
They've banned VPNs. They'll chuck you in prison if you speak against the government or a politician. Then they'll brand you as an "anti-nationalist" and openly say to their supporters that you deserve to be shot.
Facial recognition is now being used to identify protestors. Bots and deepfakes are being used to spread propoganda.
Many people are upset, but there's nothing we can do. We can't speak out without fear of being reprimanded. We can vote for other parties, but there's no way that they'll ever win. The majority of the population has blind faith in BJP. The only demographic that appears to realise the implications well enough is the youth in urban areas - a very insignificant fraction of the nation's population.
Even the media is afraid to speak out against BJP because if they do then they get attacked by physical and virtual mobs.
The majority of the population has blind faith in BJP. The only demographic that appears to realise the implications well enough is the youth in urban areas - a very insignificant fraction of the nation's population.
Sounds all too familiar here in the US. We are effectively held hostage by rural voters, and the obvious remedy for this state of affairs -- abolishing the Electoral College -- will mean that those voters have the same legitimate grounds for complaint against us.
At some point we have to start re-evaluating the conventional wisdom that democracy is the best possible form of government at all possible scales.
Misleading Title. It is not about using VPN but about propagating rumors.
This is a law in India, as there were instances of riots caused by social media rumor.
Actual News
-----------
The FIR has been registered while taking cognisance of the social media posts by miscreants by using different VPNs, which are propagating rumours with regard to the current security scenario in the Kashmir valley, secessionist ideology and glorifying terrorists, the police said.
I am young Techie from India too and I totally support it.
The India government is taking action against spreading misinformation & fake news via VPN enabled social media. What is wrong here. Title is misleading and sensationalist.
> Mishi Choudhary, executive director of New Delhi-based Software Law and Freedom Centre, said that the authority did not need to chase people who are using VPNs, and should restore internet access like any other democratic society.
“Any alleged rumors can be addressed by putting out accurate and more information through the same social media platforms. Content-based restrictions on speech can only be allowed within the restrictions established by the Constitution and not in an ad hoc manner,” she said.
What's "wrong" is that it's very difficult to tell the difference between this and "The Indian government is taking action against spreading information and news via VPN enabled social media"
This is not the same coverage, but it does seem related, and I'm reasonably sure that the response that is served to Europeans is compliant with European regulations.
I really don't understand this mindset of a default behavior (e.g. use of cookies) is equivalent to _forcing_ something on someone. You have lots of choices around cookies because the program that stores and shares them is under your own control. Which sites you visit is under your control. Your Internet connection is under your control.
God knows why we need a nanny state that represents a small minority of the world to decide how the world wide web should work.
[+] [-] aarongray|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] screye|6 years ago|reply
India and China both face a significantly more difficult geopolitical reality than the USA.
Some of the world's most westernized and developed countries (Spain, Israel) are starting to use violence and suppressive tactics now that they are faced with even the smallest amount of secessionist unrest.
Kashmir is one of the most militarized border zones alongside the West Bank. I fully agree that there might be better and less suppressive methods that the Govt. can use to deal with the Kashmir issue, but to act as though a USA like policy would work in countries with very different ground realities is being willfully arrogant.
At the risk of sounding too cold, if the choice was between death of a few million people (which India has a long history of) and complete destruction of communication frameworks. I would choose that latter.
Now the big problem with what the Indian Govt. is doing, is that this has been going on for almost a year and they are making no efforts to bring Kashmir back to "normalcy". Such draconian policies should only come into place for very short durations with measures for removal, the second unrest goes below a certain point.
[+] [-] AWildC182|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SpaceManNabs|6 years ago|reply
Let's not associate the third-world with authoritarian or fascist.
In addition, the term itself is outdated.
[+] [-] xkemp|6 years ago|reply
Even the wrong-yet-common definition of "poor" doesn't fit here, because internet censorship isn't a function of wealth: Saudi Arabia is rather rich yet unfree. Russia and China area also not "third world".
Russia, a leading internet censor, actually happens to be the (current version of) a country that used to be the definition of either "first" or "second" world.
[+] [-] aniketpant|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _jal|6 years ago|reply
You mean the one involving outsourcing IP law enforcement to private cartels amid increasing calls to remove 230 protections from public-facing internet companies?
[+] [-] naravara|6 years ago|reply
The American formula allows foreign agents to conduct elaborate, micro-targeted psyops campaigns to manipulate our elections; enables a dramatic resurgence in previously fading extremist ideologies; and facilitates one of the largest expansions of economic and regional inequality in American history?
I don't know if we can really assert we have this figured out. These are all especially areas of concern for governments like India and China, where fear of balkanization, civil war, and severe communitarian violence are either contemporary problems or have been fairly recently in their political histories.
[+] [-] duxup|6 years ago|reply
But it takes strong laws, a strong / independent judiciary... and politicians who want to maintain the rule of law regardless of how convenient it is for them personally. Sadly it's not just a thing you "have" and keep.
India and China don't have those things.
[+] [-] arsalanb|6 years ago|reply
Random arrests and extra-judicial killings of Kashmiris by the Indian state is a quite regular occurrence. A laughable narrative around how they were "Pakistan sponsored terrorists" is usually spun by the media/police nexus.
[+] [-] RcouF1uZ4gsC|6 years ago|reply
These are all good things, but we in tech, oftentimes think we can program our way out of bad physical governance. We can't! We need now more than ever to engage with everyone to make sure that we have good physical governments.
[+] [-] magduf|6 years ago|reply
True, but my question here is: given that VPNs are pretty much essential for the way many large corporations work (they're not going to let employees access sensitive data over the internet in the clear), how does India, a country with a large tech presence and which promotes itself as a good place for software development, handle this?
[+] [-] vbezhenar|6 years ago|reply
It's very fun how Kazakhstan government worked against himself. They blocked a lot of websites including harmless ones (like pornhub) and plenty of useful ones (probably by mistake) along with opposition websites. So basically most of computer-literate people now have VPN ready to use and many people use it all the time, myself included. Government tried to block Tor and some major VPNs, but I don't think that it worked out. For example Cloudflare VPN works just fine.
Now even if they wanted to find out who reads opposition websites, they have no way to do that, because a lot of people use VPN every day. Again, thanks to Cloudflare, I just install and enable VPN for everyone I know to improve their browsing experience.
[+] [-] PureParadigm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcosdumay|6 years ago|reply
But we can make sure that the rubber hose is required. The government going around beating people on no evidence is a completely different situation than they knowing beforehand everything they need to do.
[+] [-] LinuxBender|6 years ago|reply
If you set the filesystem permissions right on the SFTP server, then even if they beat the username / pw out of you, then all they will find is cat videos on the chroot SFTP server. Your friend will see the tarball of objectionable content in a hidden directory. Remember to sanitize EXIF data from pictures first as that has your GPS location and in some cases your cell phone serial number. Someone will suggest ssh keys over password, but they should not in this case. No data must be persisted on the India side of this scenario.
I will be the first to admit, this process is tedious. I am only suggesting it as a last resort when all else fails.
[+] [-] vbezhenar|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] satya71|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] A4ET8a8uTh0|6 years ago|reply
I wish it was an isolated incident, but the more politicians you hear, the more it becomes apparent that it is all about the side you are on.
[+] [-] hprotagonist|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CodeSheikh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _jgdh|6 years ago|reply
- In 2014, Narendra Modi was elected Prime Minister on a plank of "development for all". Since the BJP's pedigree was one of Hindu nationalism (aka Hindutva), this was a change welcomed by many. He had a good track record of development as Chief Minister (equivalent of Governor in America).
- After a couple of major missteps (invalidating all high value currency notes, tax changes), growth started to slow. While it had been 7-9% between 2004 and 2014, it was now 5% or less.
- The BJP started to capture and subvert institutions that make India function as a democracy including the Courts[1] and the Election Commission[2]. They intimidated and coerced the media into toeing the BJP line [3].
- In 2019, the BJP won re-election. In this campaign, there was no talk of development (because there was precious little of it), no discussion of rampant unemployment. The BJP tried to convince us that the main issue was Pakistan (it wasn't) and how they were an existential threat to the nation (they weren't) and how Modi had "taught them a lesson" (he hadn't).
- Since then, Hindutva has made a big comeback. It is now priority #1, above unemployment, above low growth.
- The BJP is staking everything on killing the separatist movement in Kashmir and removing all special privileges of Kashmiris, building a temple over a destroyed mosque, and removing illegal Muslim immigrants. Though seemingly disparate, all of these facilitate the broader goal of establishing a Hindu Rashtra - a nation of Hindus, by Hindus, for Hindus. One where the secular Constitution of India is no longer valid.
- To enforce this, the BJP has resorted to totalitarian tactics, including the effective house arrest of millions of Kashmiris, coupled with an internet blackout. Thanks to the aforementioned capture of the Courts, the Supreme Court has done nothing to right this injustice [4].
That's where we are now.
On a personal note, writing this down broke my heart. I love my country and I grieve to see what is being done to it.
[1] - https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/judging-the-judges/ci...
[2] - https://frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/article29618205.e...
[3] - https://thewire.in/media/punya-prasun-bajpai-bjp-media
[4] - https://scroll.in/article/935432/analysis-supreme-court-orde...
[+] [-] 0xFFFE|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lousken|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amriksohata|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rabbitsfoot8|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] definitelyRobot|6 years ago|reply
They've banned VPNs. They'll chuck you in prison if you speak against the government or a politician. Then they'll brand you as an "anti-nationalist" and openly say to their supporters that you deserve to be shot.
Facial recognition is now being used to identify protestors. Bots and deepfakes are being used to spread propoganda.
Many people are upset, but there's nothing we can do. We can't speak out without fear of being reprimanded. We can vote for other parties, but there's no way that they'll ever win. The majority of the population has blind faith in BJP. The only demographic that appears to realise the implications well enough is the youth in urban areas - a very insignificant fraction of the nation's population.
Even the media is afraid to speak out against BJP because if they do then they get attacked by physical and virtual mobs.
It's a shame. So much potential.
[+] [-] CamperBob2|6 years ago|reply
Sounds all too familiar here in the US. We are effectively held hostage by rural voters, and the obvious remedy for this state of affairs -- abolishing the Electoral College -- will mean that those voters have the same legitimate grounds for complaint against us.
At some point we have to start re-evaluating the conventional wisdom that democracy is the best possible form of government at all possible scales.
[+] [-] Bang2Bay|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nine_zeros|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nu2ycombinator|6 years ago|reply
This is a law in India, as there were instances of riots caused by social media rumor.
Actual News ----------- The FIR has been registered while taking cognisance of the social media posts by miscreants by using different VPNs, which are propagating rumours with regard to the current security scenario in the Kashmir valley, secessionist ideology and glorifying terrorists, the police said.
I am young Techie from India too and I totally support it.
[+] [-] 1ris|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _jgdh|6 years ago|reply
And when you say you totally support it, do you support everything the BJP has done?
[+] [-] thbr99|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitxbitxbitcoin|6 years ago|reply
From the article:
> Mishi Choudhary, executive director of New Delhi-based Software Law and Freedom Centre, said that the authority did not need to chase people who are using VPNs, and should restore internet access like any other democratic society.
“Any alleged rumors can be addressed by putting out accurate and more information through the same social media platforms. Content-based restrictions on speech can only be allowed within the restrictions established by the Constitution and not in an ad hoc manner,” she said.
[+] [-] InitialLastName|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThePowerOfFuet|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhaavan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fennecfoxen|6 years ago|reply
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-02-14/india-...
[+] [-] Spare_account|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] macinjosh|6 years ago|reply
I really don't understand this mindset of a default behavior (e.g. use of cookies) is equivalent to _forcing_ something on someone. You have lots of choices around cookies because the program that stores and shares them is under your own control. Which sites you visit is under your control. Your Internet connection is under your control.
God knows why we need a nanny state that represents a small minority of the world to decide how the world wide web should work.
[+] [-] wolco|6 years ago|reply
or
Choose not to visit.
or
Delete your cookie
or use curl
or go private browser mode
or hunt in google for the title to read the cache page
or pay someone to copy over the contents to text.
Plenty of choices. I'd go private browser mode in your case. Well I would just accept the cookie.
[+] [-] hadrien01|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] all_blue_chucks|6 years ago|reply