
India Asks Google, Facebook to Screen User Content - narad
http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/05/india-asks-google-facebook-others-to-screen-user-content/
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threepointone
Ridiculous - "At the meeting, Mr. Sibal showed attendees a Facebook page that
maligned the Congress Party’s president, Sonia Gandhi. “This is unacceptable,”
he told attendees, the executive said, and he asked them to find a way to
monitor what is posted on their sites."

I'm not allowed to criticize my government in a public forum? Pardon my
language, but this is fucking ridiculous.

~~~
yalogin
Haa. Sonia Gandhi is not technically part of the government. But of course she
is more powerful than the government.

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bishnu
What? She is an elected member of parliament. She is in every way a part of
the government. Her role is not reflective of the power she yields but that is
a separate issue.

~~~
movingahead
An elected member of parliament is not a member of government in India, and I
guess, everywhere else. Legislature and executive are two separate parts of a
democracy.

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suprgeek
Not an unusual request considering the utter cluelessness and Sycophantic
bootlicking of the people involved. Consider that the perceived slight is to
the defacto head of India - Sonia Gandhi (a person with terrifying power but
Zero accountability, completely outside the Govt.) this is being held up as
the reason to institute an Orwellian nightmare of Censorship. A reasonable
response is FU in nice terms.

[EDIT - minor spelling]

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bishnu
Sonia Gandhi is an MP, she is not "completely outside the government". A few
people have said this now, where is this talk coming from?

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anonInd
The misinformation comes from the RSS propaganda machine. Irony, they are way
too active on FB.

edit: missed a word

~~~
dman
Source?

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tejaswiy
Just. Wow. Mind boggling amounts of stupidity.

"In the second meeting with the same executives in late November, Mr. Sibal
told them that he expected them to use human beings to screen content, not
technology, the executive said.

The three executives said Mr. Sibal has told these companies that he expects
them to set up a proactive prescreening system, with staffers looking for
objectionable content and deleting it before it is posted."

~~~
tomjen3
It is funny how much people who don't contribute to the world think they get
to tell other people what to do.

~~~
brettnak
I agree. As much as I disagree with Ayn Rand on some things, she certainly
disliked uselessness as much as I do. I can't help but wonder if certain
aspects of her future's government in Atlas Shrugged is the natural end stage
of a government.

~~~
teja1990
I wish if Google and FB said, " Sorry Sibal we don't censor results , if u
insist we would leave!" Though its not viable , it will scare the politicians.

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jjcm
This seems to be a fairly reoccurring theme - countries requesting internet
sites to mass censor user content. Rarely though do they understand the scale
of what that means. In the article, it stated that they wanted each item to be
screened by a human. In the same way that I'll quote a client a much larger
price if they want IE6 support, I often don't see why these companies don't
just quote the country a price for the manpower required to do this. Kind of
a, "Listen, pay us X per year to hire people to do this. Otherwise, it's
simply impossible for us to do, and we'll fight your request in court til the
end of time." While I doubt any country would actually pay, I think it would
serve to at least educate the politicians as to how much work censoring the
internet actually requires.

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bad_user
The request itself may be clueless, however you can easily mass censor content
that contains certain keywords.

It can get pretty effective too, as is the case with spam filtering. You could
even detect the tone of the article - if it's a positive or a negative one.
Plus you can hellban the users too and they won't notice the censorship until
much later.

So I don't get what a discussion of costs will bring, as there's always a
cheaper way. Freedom of speech is the issue here, not cost.

~~~
nekojima
"The request itself may be clueless, however you can easily mass censor
content that contains certain keywords."

Then you get ridiculous situations for mass banned keywords like recently in
Pakistan or for a long time in China, most recently 'jasmine tea' was banned.
China arguably has the most 'sophisticated' censorship system in the world,
with over a million staff policing internet content & developing systems to
monitor content, but it is still noticeable to users. So your theory that it
can be implemented without notice is largely false.

Its also quite easy to get around most keywords by using slang or alternatives
for political leaders, such as 'The Old Man' (usually negative) for Robert
Mugabe, 'Mr Bow Tie' (sarcastic, negative) for HK CE Donald Tsang or 'The
Lady' (positive) for Aung San Suu Kyi. Using single initials is also popular.

I've lived in several dictatorships & the ingenuity of anti-censorship can be
quite simple to overcome complex systems.

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eCa
This is what you get when you seriously consider making SOPA into law: "If you
can get companies to strangle funds and kidnap domains of people saying _that_
, can't you not also make _this_ disappear?"

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jezclaremurugan
Freedom of speech was the one advantage we had over other developing
countries. I guess the Indian Gov was scared by the support the anti
corruption movement got online.

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tomcreighton
I'd like it if the companies asked to do this just pulled out of the country
altogether. "Can't deal with the fundamental nature of the internet? No
internet, then." It's needlessly vindictive on my part, but we've seen this
story play out again and again. That's not how it works!

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dontblink
The problem with what you suggest (ignoring the vindictiveness), is that the
people pushing for these asinine rules would benefit from the consequences of
the loss of the internet while the masses would instead be harmed.

What I'd like to see is thorough background investigations of the people who
are pushing for these stupid laws be made very very public, such that they are
properly exposed as frauds and sycophants.

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prayag
Ok, I will play the devil's advocate here because someone has to. This has
been going on since the pre-internet era. India unlike the US and like the UK
doesn't have unlimited free speech and have fairly strong defamation and libel
laws. This was a rich man's problem because how would you defame someone
unless you have access to printing press or can go on radio and television.
The internet changed all that. The government doesn't want it to change (for
obvious reasons), hence all this hoopla.

Of course the free speech will win because it's almost impossible to censor
the internet but the people in power will not go down without a fight.

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bad_user
In case you are trying to give justifications for these requests because _this
has been going on since the pre-internet era_ , then don't - freedom of speech
should be a fundamental right of all people.

~~~
prayag
I am justifying anything. I am telling it how it. People in the US think of
freedom of speech as a fundamental right which it should be. This is not the
case with most other countries. It's the same as people in other countries
thinking that universal healthcare should be a fundamental right, many people
in the US don't agree.

I personally am in favor of both being fundamental rights.

~~~
movingahead
@prayag : Right to Freedom of Speech is a legally enforceable Fundamental
Right in India. Are we talking about different Indias ?

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prayag
Nope. We are talking about the same India. I don't know if you have actually
read the Constitution of India but the right to expression in India comes with
riders. From the Constitution of India Part III Section 19.

This is the foot-note about the Right of Expression: "Nothing in sub-clause
(a) of clause (1) shall affect the operation of any existing law, or prevent
the State from making any law, in so far as such law imposes reasonable
restrictions on the exercise of the right conferred by the said sub-clause in
the interests of 4[the sovereignty and integrity of India,] the security of
the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or
morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an
offence.]"

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lisperforlife
Sibal is an idiot. Nobody in India takes him seriously. When he is not busy
kissing sonia and rahul's ass, he talks from his own.

~~~
prayag
I disagree. I think Sibal is one of the smarter and honest guy in the
government. I do think people take him seriously. He is the person behind the
$35 tablet, he is moving the country from an absolute points based system of
grading to relative grade based system and is opening up more IITs. He has
risen among the ranks in the government to Human Resources and Education
Minister. You might not agree with what he does but I don't think you can take
him trivially.

~~~
Lawliet_Kira
Yes,I agree. The way he has managed his sector is brilliant.Last month I went
to 'panchayat samiti' at taluka level and shocked to see that people were
using UNIX and tablet Pc for their daily work.They sure have come long way.

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ajays
Have the Indian politicians learnt nothing from the events unfolding in the
Middle-East this entire year? Or could it be that they _have_ seen the power
of the 'net, and are scared? This (defamatory pages) could just be a ruse to
assert control over the 'net, to prevent an Indian Jasmine Revolution.

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nekojima
An 'Indian Jasmine Revolution' is highly unlikely in India because there are
at least the relatively free-and-fair elections that are/were completely
absent in Libya, Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, Yemen....

There might be massive corruption in the main parties, nationally, regionally
and locally, but there is at least something of a choice and a possible
release for the pressure-valve of public opinion.

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madrik
What is this? Watch your speech, because Big Sib has installed the Netpolice;
that which does not ingratiate itself to the fancies of the power-mongers
shall be expunged.

No service provider should bear, or provide any means to further, this idiocy.

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amritsharma
"A man who answered the phone in Mr. Rai’s office said he did not talk to the
press and hung up when a reporter asked for a press contact."

Wow.

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rohit89
I'm constantly amazed at the cluelessness shown by officials. Sometimes I
wonder if they're doing it just to troll us...

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teja1990
Someone please remind Mr.Sibal that India is a democracy , one of the largest
of its kind!!

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ww520
Would Google pull out of India because of this?

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FameofLight
No, they will never. Because its executive function to ask many things, but we
have fairly independent judiciary that take of these non-sense things by
executives.

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shareme
Why is Indian govt afraid of its own citizens words?

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threepointone
There is a cultural angle to this - Indian politicians (and even lots of
jingoistic citizens) take insults to their honour/culture waaaay too
seriously. That, and they're troglodytes who don't understand the Internet.

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yardie
This I don't understand. Most of the Chinese and Indian politicians have STEM
backgrounds. In theory, they are supposed to be very smart and critical
thinkers. I find it hard to believe that someone that believes in the theory
of evolution and the laws of thermodynamics doesn't have the same regard for
freedom of expression or the cost of the human life.

~~~
yalogin
Can you explain what STEM background means? Most politicians in India are
uneducated. Of course the ones at the national level are educated but by and
large they are think only save their seats and get reelected, nothing beyond
that.

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drivingmenuts
Science, Technology, Engineering, Math.

Having a STEM background doesn't mean they aren't pig ignorant, it just means
...

Well, to be honest, it probably doesn't mean _anything_ other than they were
capable of passing a test.

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tathagata
Holy cow!!

