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.
(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.)
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 to automatically and fully correlate and organize ALL these types of data from countless sources for everyone. All of these are things that we already have to limited extents, but they're still not taking full advantage of, yet.
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.
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.
and china. police in china generally is not armed. (china may or may not be considered a developed country, but i think that distinction is irrelevant. i am pretty sure there are more than three countries in the word where police is not armed, or where armed police is a distinct unit used only for specific tasks where arms are needed). but that wasn't the point i was making, rather, in most countries police simply does not get violent, nor do they have to fear being shot at, because of gun controls.
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'm fairly sure whatever they do you'd likely be complaining about it. Glad to be wrong though.
People are making independent communication networks using reticulum, LORA devices and hold tight - unregistered radio transmitters.
You can't seriously argue trying to take down ONE app is acting in the interests of national security?
They're afraid of people communicating. That's not a safety thing.
Clearly I have not worded my reply carefully enough, so for clarity: I am all for private messaging and against mass surveillance.
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.
(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.
Returning to the US from japan you notice. Japanese bathrooms don't have trash cans, so no paper towels. In the US, the bathrooms have trash cans overflowing with paper towel waste and it is quite a difference.
Where does all the trash go? More often than not, I ended up carrying trash in a backpack to throw away at my hotel.
on edit: changed myths to narratives to avoid confusion
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.
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.
BBC says 3000 but yeah.
https://www.outlookindia.com/national/2-terrorists-family-ho...
So the houses of 2 accused were razed because.....
I make additional effort to never experience that again. Connecting flight through Mumbai. An absolutely awful experience.
Search “parks and recs straight to jail”
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair_Flight_4978
Flying over a country does not make you immune to that country’s laws.
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.
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.
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.
Whatever will happen with you lawyering and fighting the border officers, will happen after you've been detained.
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's initial decisions need not be merely humanitarian but also political.
https://scroll.in/article/1081784/why-are-bangladeshis-turni.... This article explains that it's due to an increasingly unequal interactions as sowing distrust.
Explaining the Hindutva moment as a genuine counter reaction to anti-Hindu sentiment rather than a politically motivated movement seems to be misguided, even if not actively propogating the propaganda.
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". :-)
This stuff happens in many places, including in India.
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).
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.
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 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...
Resistance against totalitarianism is a duty.
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.
Not everything is about “fighting the power” (unless you’re a teen), there are plenty of good reasons to want to validate and approve these systems.
Musk was as usual likes to talk big and brave but same as with his fight in Brazil over X, or the Tesla factory in Germany, if he wants to operate there he needs to follow the rules. And there’s no moral argument (saving freedom) he can pull out of his wig in most parts of the world that he cares about.
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.
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.
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”, they’re surviving. The US society decided that a large class of people will be forced to operate at that level their whole life and are incentivized to do worse by the insane punishment model applied only to them.
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 people acting straight rather than always act on desperation. Depending on your goal, having people exercise self restraint works better than restraining them with tasers, chokeholds, and bullets to the back.
> 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”.
This is logical fallacy, but you've tried hard to pull a gotcha out of it.
Resisting because you are desperate is perfectly valid and doesn't create a contradiction.
It's not something reserved to "those who can afford a good lawyer." Desperation is one of the hardest drivers of resistance, not something reserved to rich people with lawyers and something to lose. And even if we suppose there's not resistance in USA, I said in USA or someplace with a healthier culture of resistance, which means even if you don't consider USA a place of resistance it still meets the logical test of falling within my statement.
>[now deleted] If you hear this for the first time, hello white male with plenty of money for a lawyer.
Lol you couldn't resist adding that in. Your little racially charged bits about why we're not allowed to call it resistance when a poor black person does such acts. While ignoring your very example of Rosa Parks who was a black woman, child of a teacher and itinerant worker and before activism working largely in domestic work for white families. The contradiction is yours.
My “very example” about which you are now quoting Wikipedia to me was resistance, not desperation. It wasn't a tweaker selling $5 crack because he literally has nothing better to look forward to. It wasn’t a mother driving without a license because she couldn’t afford the court taxes for a few traffic tickets. It was a woman who did it out of principle alone. That’s resistance, and it’s rare. Your speech fell on its face as soon as you had your big boy proud moment because you’re missing something important to back it up [0]. You were never taught enough pst that proud song and dance.
If you thought calling you privileged for your dissonant and ignorant line of argumentation is racist then let me add not educated enough[0] too. Read a book to understand these concepts, don’t expect you can just throw words around and people will bow to your wisdom. You make it impossible for me to take you seriously when you make junior level confusions like “resistance” and “desperation” all for a shitty national pride moment.
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.
> 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.
> “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.
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.
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)
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.
This also isn't even motivated by terrorists, but rather people daring to oppose the 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.
Spending crazy amounts in public education, healthcare, and nuclear arsenal?
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"
We also regulate roads. You can not drive around in tanks. Or without license plate...
We're much safer not opening that can of worms for now.
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.
'This is the right call' — VPN industry praises the UK’s decisions to leave VPN alone | TechRadar https://share.google/CyBImh95bt3VTubJV
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).
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.
Midterms are coming up and the regime has spoken openly about "rigging" them so... just give it some time (and download a copy!).
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.
(For once my tax dollars are producing something I appreciate, even if I don’t love the reason behind it.)
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...
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.
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.
Is it interesting that all these "democracies" around the world have persistent speech bans? When someone says something they don't like?
I seem to have a recollection of flipping through HN for a decade or so and people talking about all the meanie-pants who want people to be able to speak freely, even if it hurts people's feelings and might not be endorsed by the elected government.
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)?
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.
Aside: oof yeah this seems like terrible policy and takes India off my bucket list.
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.
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.
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...
https://updates.techforpalestine.org/bitchat-for-gaza-messag...
Does Apple still allow side loaded apps ?