
Indian government to intercept, monitor, and decrypt citizens’ computers - Down_n_Out
https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/21/indian-government-to-intercept-monitor-and-decrypt-citizens-computers/
======
dgzl
And here is the natural born right to privacy that Americans have, as well as
the rest of the world in my own opinion:

Bill of Rights, amendment 4:

 _" The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,
and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the
persons or things to be seized."_

~~~
vkou
It's a nice right in theory, but in reality, stop-and-frisk, border control,
parallel construction, 'I smelled weed in the car', 'I had a hunch', 'the drug
dog gave me a signal', 'we got an anonymous tip (from an illegal search, via
parallel construction)' all exist, and are regularly employed in the United
States.

They also tend to be disproportionately targeted at particular, inconvenient,
segments of the population.

~~~
dgzl
I consider stop-and-frisk to be in direct volition with the fourth amendment.
Boarder control is a little different. I have the intention of extending these
rights to all humans, so the boarder shouldn't change the rights of humans.
Becoming aware of substance abuse (while say operating a vehicle) has
potential for being "reasonable cause" for search... Though I'm not sure I'd
entirely buy it.

I'm convinced that since citizens don't know their rights, that the government
doesn't think we care about them, and uses that against us when we try
defending them. It's the idea of... If you don't use them, you lose them.

~~~
Brockenstein
>I'm convinced that since citizens don't know their rights, that the
government doesn't think we care about them, and uses that against us when we
try defending them. It's the idea of... If you don't use them, you lose them.

Alternatively, some people are willing to give up some rights for a feeling of
security.

Or some people are willing to curtail some rights because it hurts people they
don't like a lot more than it hurts them.

Or some people imagine gutting rights they don't regularly seem to need will
never come back to bite them. People aren't going to defend things they don't
care about.

Or some people seem to imagine that if a certain right doesn't seem to benefit
them directly that it's not worthwhile to defend.

Or some people seem to think that maintaining the status quo is a right that
they need to defend, no matter how many people are harmed by the inequality in
the current landscape.

I mean you're not wrong. But that's certainly not the only issue issue causing
the erosion of liberty.

------
eps
As someone on /r/sysadmin has correctly remarked - if you are outsourcing to
India, you should assume that all data they have access to it is now also
freely accessible to the Indian government.

~~~
throwawaymjabba
Don't get me wrong, but I feel the /r/sysadmin folks are extremely pissed off
at Indians, probably because of all the outsourcing. I find it amusing that
they blame it on shitty coding by Indians whenever there is a breach or a
website down incident, but keep quite on the nationality when the
outage/breach has nothing to do with outsourcing.

------
billfruit
Things like this is why I think India has a very flawed political system, the
executive is having too much power, and the Constitutional guarantees to
citizens are flimsy, and courts including the Supreme Court are temperamental
and inconsistent.

Civil law protections are insufficient as they are presently. Govt can put you
in jail on flimsy grounds, but you can't sue for damages on wrongful
imprisonment, etc. Most things are governed by criminal laws, where only
remedy is punishment for the convicted, instead of having a strong tort law,
where the aggrieved parties can extricate monetary damage claims.

~~~
worldexplorer
NSA has been doing this for decades.

~~~
pas
This is more like the FISA courts and NSLs. Not the dragnet stuff.

Though usually the lines are a bit blurry, sometimes secret warrants are
issued to access already dragneted data. But those warrants are very far from
real oversight.

------
ankit219
Slightly off topic, but this order kind of defines the state of India.
Whatever the issue is, there are always two sides both of which try to shape
the narrative in their favour. One side arguing through twitter and some of
self owned websites, what the implications could be, and other saying that the
order already existed, and this is limiting the scope to only 10 agencies and
doing it to curb terrorist activities, as if that makes it all ok.

The issue is that while this order is passed, there is no remedy for the
citizens if their privacy is breached in any sense. The power is given to the
home ministry, who at this point, think of themselves more as campaigner for
next election, rather than an elected govt body, and hence it will be bad for
political opponents in elections due in 2019. Since they made it concerning
National Security, it is not covered under Right to Information either.

(The order and notification says that the interception and monitor could only
be for certain citizens, or group of citizens, if they are deemed a threat for
national security. Even Apple might be asked to break the encryption in this
case.)

------
imhoguy
In less than decade both USA and EU will take lessons from these developing
experiments (India, China, Russia, Australia) and will introduce the same
locally. At first societies will be educated to stigmatise any resistance and
ease the law change. Hiding data from govt will be like tax evasion or act of
terrorism.

~~~
pm90
Nah. There has been pretty strong backlash against FB. GDPR is (as imperfect
as it is) a thing. I don't see the West going down that road, disregarding
catastrophic failure modes.

~~~
techie128
What do you call NSA surveillance? Pretty much all your life is online and NSA
can get its hands on it in transit.

------
wtmt
It's very worrisome how things have been going on in India, more so in the
last two decades. Regardless of which party is in power, mass surveillance is
increasing, and ways to preserve privacy have been under attack (the
government tried to force Blackberry to allow interception of all messages
when BBM was a thing; now it wants the same with WhatsApp and other platforms;
and then there's the whole biometric based, unchangeable and irrevocable
unique ID called Aadhaar...the list is long).

Unfortunately, most politicians here don't understand (or don't care about)
the impact of any of these even to protect themselves from attack or
suppression by authoritarian and untrustworthy people in power. Most states
also have laws that allow them to detain people without a court order or
presenting them in a court of law for up to a year, and the police can also
make several laws and enforce them.

It's just a matter of time that immigration officials and police will start
asking people to reveal their social media passwords, go through their
personal and private information, etc.

For all the positives that India as a country has, it has a lot to learn from
other countries when it comes to privacy, freedom, freedom of speech, etc.

I believe big technology companies have a role to play in India and around the
world to help defeat such dangerous (and often futile) moves by governments.

------
j0hnM1st
In India people call this "Mitron"

MITRON

1\. A large group of unsuspecting people, about to be hit by something they
will take a long time to recover from.

[https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=MITRON](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=MITRON)

~~~
iliekcomputers
Not to ruin the joke, but I'll just clarify that "mitron" is actually Hindi
for "friends" and is used by our Prime Minister a lot (especially in
speeches).

------
sidcool
As an Indian, this is scary. In the name of national security, this can go
either way.

~~~
y-c-o-m-b
> In the name of national security

This is detrimental to national security. It's irresponsible and negligence at
best. There is no such thing as bullet-proof cyber-security measures and all
these data leaks in the last several years are evidence of that. The more data
that is mined, the more information for intruders (foreign and domestic) to
have access to. For example Russia could have penetrated America's NSA and
used the data mined there to create profiles of people they could effortlessly
manipulate in America's 2016 elections.

~~~
techie128
> For example Russia could have penetrated America's NSA and used the data
> mined there to create profiles of people they could effortlessly manipulate
> in America's 2016 elections.

How do you know they haven't already done exactly that?

------
jammygit
The article was vague. How does this law compare to other countries? Is it NSA
or Hemisphere level data dragnets, is it Australian style "Australian law >
mathematical law", or is it something different?

~~~
Dravidian
Atleast in developed countries individual rights are well enforced, so NSA
atleast requires permission from secret court & Australian anti-encryption law
at least was passed in their parliament (or equivalent).

In India govt just used a loophole to give several government aagencies to
access any computer without limitations or hurdles.

I certainly believe this is intended for data analysis for elections & for
abuse of people critical oof the government; especially journalists.

------
sunasra
First, it was Aadhaar and now this. Somehow Indian Govt wants to track every
citizen and build their dictatorship.

~~~
screye
> build their dictatorship.

I highly doubt any Indian government wants or even thinks they can do this.

India in all its diversity, consists of a huge number of separate factions.
The Government only works due to a mutual compromise from enough factions to
form a coalition. Also, the Indian judiciary and parliament hold genuine power
and exercise it too.

It is nearly impossible for a single person to gain enough momentum to even
start being dictatorial.

Admittedly, Modi's government has consolidated more power in one person than
most of India's past governments. But, even then it only in comparison to the
nearly dysfunctional mega coalitions of the INC.

~~~
navait
While dictatorship is obviously absurd, what about Indira Gandhi and the
Emergency?

~~~
pkd
Indira Gandhi's shenanigans led to the the establishment of the Basic
Structure Doctrine of the Indian constitution, which I hope will prevent
anybody else from exploiting the same loopholes

~~~
navait
That sounds like a good lesson was learned.

------
sonnyblarney
I wonder what the implications will be for Western companies outsourcing
there, anyone care to chime in?

~~~
throwawaymjabba
I don't think Western companies really outsource important stuff to India. Its
mostly brain dead work. Some of us call ourselves cyber coolies if we are
working for the outsourcing companies. American companies are actually careful
about employing Indians and other foreigners even in US. I remember one Indian
colleague telling me how his US employer had to get approval from the US govt
before hiring him full time in US. The employer had to show paperwork that he
wouldn't have access to important information (trade secrets and the like).
This employer makes things for agriculture. So I wonder have cautious the US
govt would be for defense and related industries. I know they don't even allow
non citizens to work in defense related projects even inside US.

So, unlike the Chinese, we (Indians) don't really get to learn much from
outsourcing, other than may be lessons on keeping the end customer happy by
exploiting the employees.

------
imhelpingu
Oh my! Who can imagine living in an environment where the government is known
to be intercepting, monitoring, and decrypting your digital activity as their
perfectly acceptable MO!?

------
formatkaka
Does using an app like cloudflare 1.1.1.1 protect us from this ?

Cloudflare app link - [https://blog.cloudflare.com/1-thing-you-can-do-to-make-
your-...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/1-thing-you-can-do-to-make-your-
internet-safer-and-faster/)

~~~
Dravidian
Using cloudflare DNS over ISP is definetly better, but you definetly need
VPN/ToR or both to stop govt snooping on your online activities.

------
LinuxBender
This will be an unpopular opinion, but I personally like highly oppressive and
intrusive governments trying to impose their will on the internet and
technology.

Usually when this happens, it results in substantial innovation around
privacy, security and awareness. Such movements will ultimately force many
people underground and into various forms of VPN's, non standard operating
systems and custom hardware.

To be clear, I am not condoning India's actions and I have no doubt many
people will be hurt by this. I am merely pointing out that there will also be
many unintended consequences and I personally believe that their government
will ultimately lose more trust, control and visibility than they gain.

~~~
shakna
This is why I don't like laws like these.

They're utterly ineffective at their stated goals. The targets are largely
unaffected.

However, the average person is affected. And can be deeply affected.

~~~
Santosh83
Yeah because the real purpose of these laws is to control the citizens, as
ever more unrest in future is a given, for just about any country. Nothing
except physically shackling every human being is going to stop crazy
terrorists from ploughing through a crowd in a vehicle, but mark my words,
you'll find western 'democracies' employing technology in literally every
sphere of life to ostensibly control these 'terrorists' although the end
result will be a dystopia of totally controlled citizenry that will find it
impossible to break their chains unless they're prepared to die.

------
nutcracker46
It is easy to task authorities with intercept and decryption duties; actually
doing it successfully is another matter entirely. Mathematics works both ways,
friends.

~~~
onetimemanytime
>> _It is easy to task authorities with intercept and decryption duties;
actually doing it successfully is another matter entirely. Mathematics works
both ways, friends._

Actually if Apple, Goog, FB etc are forced to surrender the key--at the
penalty of being excluded from 1.x billion people in India--math works only
one way...

~~~
gruez
they can't surrender keys they don't have (e2e). the only issue is that they
may be forced to do a key change. one way around this would be to show a
prominent notice if your peer changed keys, which would make it immediately
obvious what was going on.

~~~
stanleydrew
The idea that showing a warning makes it immediately obvious what is going on
is ridiculous.

It would take a large-scale public education campaign to teach people what it
means when they see a warning message that reads "Peer key changed. Are you
sure you want to proceed?"

If you need to be convinced, go ask your mom or dad whether it's immediately
obvious what is going on when they see an insecure connection warning in their
web browser. In my experience everyone just clicks through to "proceed anyway"
without comprehending it at all.

~~~
saagarjha
That’s why most browsers now make this difficult to do.

------
kvhdude
I am surprised they are not simply mandating a keylogging software in all
laptops/phones and get it over with instead of trying to decrypt.

------
caymanjim
Every country who can afford to already does this. They're simply admitting a
little more about it than most.

------
known
[http://www.linuxliveusb.com/](http://www.linuxliveusb.com/) \+
[https://prism-break.org/en/all/](https://prism-break.org/en/all/) can
insulate you.

------
known
The Indian journalist jailed for a year for Facebook posts

[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-
india-46631911](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-46631911)

~~~
nonamechicken
People getting jailed for Facebook posts happen frequently in India. Looking
at the arrests they have made so far, there are 3 categories of people whom
you shouldn't criticize or make fun of in Facebook: politicians, religion and
women.

------
known
In 2014 Modi campaign promised honest/progressive govt.

Now,

    
    
        50% ministers in his cabinet are facing corruption/criminal charges in courts
    
        fulfilled just 9% poll promises http://www.electionpromisestracker.in/governments/central-government
    
        and utter contempt for truth and knowledge https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/smriti-irani-to-sharad-yadav-8-most-bizarre-statements-from-politicians-in-2018_in_5c18d2dfe4b08db990575cfc

------
qwerty456127
As far as I know elections work quite well in India and Australia (which is
moving in the same direction), so how do things like this happen? Do the
people consider government spying on them Ok?

~~~
Santosh83
Majority of the people in India are too busy making ends meet to know or care.
This may change as the relatively more educated/affluent younger generations
replace the older ones, but for now there are other bigger problems on
everyone's minds. Of course govts all over the world use precisely this
strategy to push through draconian laws... if the people aren't too stressed
out/distracted to care, the evergreen excuses of terrorism and national
security are trotted out.

We have general elections next year and the main deciding factors will
probably be stuff like demonetisation, rising prices/taxes, perceived
arrogance/authoritarianism etc. This issue will go almost unnoticed except by
the techically aware minority, just as the wholesale decimation of India's
environment by the current govt is also going unnoticed except by the small
'green' minority.

~~~
sbmthakur
> This issue will go almost unnoticed except by the techically aware minority,
> just as the wholesale decimation of India's environment by the current govt
> is also going unnoticed except by the small 'green' minority.

Would you care to expound to here? The last I checked this government has done
more on renewable energy front than any other government.

~~~
qwerty456127
In general "the renewable energy front" is also a kind of populism. I would
strongly prefer my government to invest in nuclear power plants maintenance,
upgrading and building and in research in the nuclear area than in what is
generally considered renewable.

------
crazybrain10
Frankly whether we agree or not, nearly all the government's are actively
spying on it's citizens.. Buzzwords like Right to Privacy is just like that
only a buzzword. So , if a government needs someone's data, they will somehow
take it.

------
wpdev_63
If you want to see where the USA will be politically in 10 years look no
further than China and India with these draconian policies. We are in
competition with them.

------
techie128
This is basically part of a smear campaign against the government in power
(NDA). The law was designed under the previous government and has been in
existence before this government came to power. Nothing new was introduced
since 2008.

As far as constitutional protections go, Indians have a right to privacy which
has been held up in the courts as recently as this year. This has been
affirmed several times in the recent past. So, no, India does not have weak
protections for its citizens.

Finally, India is a place where mere WhatsApp forwards on the basis of rumors
or made up stories cause people to go out and riot. Communal violence can be
instigated using such means. So such laws are essential to track down the
perpetrators.

NSA, CIA also silently spy on Americans without much oversight in the name of
security. In fact it is done at a mass scale.

~~~
closeparen
Denial, justification, and appeal to “everyone else is doing it” are a lot
less compelling when used in the same breath that when deployed separately.

“Uighur detention camps don’t exist and also aren’t that bad.”

~~~
techie128
Nothing in my post was even close to "Denial" or that everyone else is doing
it. I was pointing out that my western counterparts are barking up the wrong
tree when their own government is guilty of mass surveillance on not just
their own people but everyone on this planet while India has stronger
protections that have been held up in court.

People in glass houses should not be pelting stones.

~~~
dirkgently
Your Western counterparts also complain when Western government does this.

You have a really huge chip on those shoulders.

------
JadeNB
The first few lines of the story make it clear that there is not (necessarily)
some physical seizing of computers going on here; it is the _data_ that are
being intercepted, monitored, and decrypted.

~~~
draugadrotten
...and 7 years of prison if the service provider does not hand the authorities
the encryption keys...

MITM for iMessage, Whatsapp etc seems to be guaranteed here.

~~~
mkagenius
> Whatsapp etc seems to be guaranteed here

It is end to end encrypted

~~~
g45y45
Which means that authorities can force the providers to inject public keys
into the directory services, thus allowing the authorities access to the
cleartext. End-to-end is a buzz word. What is important is key distribution,
which is set to be subverted by governments everywhere...

~~~
InGodsName
Don't think they will deploy great firewall for blocking telegram which
operate from offshore.

~~~
g45y45
I dont know why people bring up telegram. A vast majority of chat messages is
sent directly in the clear to Telegram servers. Telegram can spy on your
conversations. If they can, anyone can. It is NOT an encrypted messenger. It
is a crappy plaintext messenger that has an encrypted feature that nobody
uses. Also - Stop using telegram. IT IS NOT ENCRYPTED LIKE YOU AND YOUR
FRIENDS THINK IT IS.

~~~
InGodsName
It does have secret chats, which are supposed to be E2E encrypted

------
Dravidian
This is much worst than what we saw in Australia, current Indian govt headed
by right wing political party with track record of human rights abuses have
passed this order without passing through Parliament using a loop hole in the
IT ACT.

This is likely aimed at upcoming elections for data analyses via ISP & to
target journalists critical of the current govt in India.

But I feel that the International community isn't going to rally up for India
like they did for Australia; I doubt even if expats would.

~~~
techie128
Spreading FUD about India?

~~~
Dravidian
No,stating opinions based on factual information on the present Indian govt.

~~~
fuckofidiot
"Current Indian govt headed by right wing political party with track record of
human rights abuses have passed this order without passing through Parliament
using a loop hole in the IT ACT". It's your opinion without any fact. The law
was introduced by UPA.[https://m.hindustantimes.com/india-news/in-arun-
jaitley-s-st...](https://m.hindustantimes.com/india-news/in-arun-jaitley-s-
stinging-counter-on-snooping-order-a-reference-to-upa-s-2009-rule/story-
Qofgl1aJ7J6RZX2Nn9JnxO.html)

------
ilrwbwrkhv
All governments do it. Some just do it in the open.

------
magesh_magi1
TL;DR This is a a decade old directive . This was a 2009 directive, if at all
anything that has changed now it is instead of open ended notification in 2009
which said any company can access the data, this directive limits the number
of companies to specific 10 agencies that can access that too after getting
necassary permission. Details in [https://www.opindia.com/2018/12/fact-check-
congress-lies-mha...](https://www.opindia.com/2018/12/fact-check-congress-
lies-mha-circular-access-to-computers-says-bjp-wants-to-snoop/)

~~~
Dravidian
To western readers clicking on the above 'opindia' article, it is a right-wing
media outlet like 'Breitbart'.

It is well known to propagate fake news in support of the ruling right wing
political party.

~~~
nonamechicken
Is FirstPost rightwing?

>The Ministry of Home Affairs on Friday clarified that its recent order
authorising 10 agencies to snoop on any computer in the country in the
interest of national security is based on the UPA-era IT Act and the IT Rules
2009 that allow for surveillance by a competent authority and said all cases
of surveillance will be placed before a review committee headed by the cabinet
secretary.

[https://www.firstpost.com/india/mha-says-snooping-order-
base...](https://www.firstpost.com/india/mha-says-snooping-order-based-on-upa-
era-it-rules-no-new-powers-conferred-on-any-security-agencies-5771621.html)

I know for sure that "give password or spend 7 years in jail" is not a new
rule. It was there for at least a while.

>Section 69 of the Information Technology Act, as amended by the Information
Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008, empowers the central and state governments
to compel assistance from any "subscriber or intermediary or any person in
charge of the computer resource" in decrypting information. Failure to comply
is punishable by up to seven years imprisonment and/or a fine.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#India](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#India)

>A major amendment was made in 2008. It introduced the Section 66A which
penalized sending of "offensive messages". It also introduced the Section 69,
which gave authorities the power of "interception or monitoring or decryption
of any information through any computer resource". It also introduced for
child porn, cyber terrorism and voyeurism. It was passed on 22 December 2008
without any debate in Lok Sabha. The next day it was passed by the Rajya
Sabha. It was signed by the then President (Pratibha Patil) on 5 February
2009.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Technology_Act,_20...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Technology_Act,_2000)

UPA ruled India in 2008.

------
RaceWon
Room 641A

------
macawfish
Modi.

~~~
sundar4344
BJP

~~~
j0hnM1st
Mitron

------
m23khan
Even if I take the headline with grain of salt and assuming it's meant to
capture reader's interest, it is rather surprising the Nation involved is not
your run-of-the-mill authoritarian/repressive nation but one that bills itself
as the 'World's largest democracy'.

