
How India, the World's Largest Democracy, Shuts Down the Internet - senthil_rajasek
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/internet/how-the-worlds-largest-democracy-shuts-down-the-internet
======
iKevinShah
Context is super important while reporting such news.

"India, the World's Largest Democracy, Shuts Down the Internet " \- False.

"India, the World's Largest Democracy, Shuts Down the Internet in the disputed
Kashmir region between India and Pakistan " (they had it blocked for entire
state of Jammu and Kashmir) where terror attacks are (were?) a norm, specially
in Kashmir

~~~
yati
Internet access was cut off recently also in the states of UP and Karnataka,
where terror attacks are totally not the norm. It was done in response to
protests against the CAA.

Edit: I mention this to call out the tendency of this government to use
internet access cuts to suppress dissent regularly as a powerful tool.

[https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/internet-
shutdown-...](https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/internet-shutdown-
continues-in-several-parts-including-mangaluru-ghaziabad-following-anti-
citizenship-protests/story-hnPSSj9oGh2AtZw8TQoxaM.html)

~~~
tomThom
Is burning buses just dissent for you?

------
ismail
We need to realise that the internet/social media shutdowns will now become
normal to “control” populations and ensure people cannot mobilise or protest.
Governments are putting in place the methods to avoid protest. The problem
with this if you have a maniac in charge it’s going to be a helluva thing to
get theM out. The only way around this is to develop tools and solutions.
Otherwise democracy as we know it is dead.

~~~
torified
>The only way around this is to develop tools and solutions.

It's an interesting thought experiment what those tools would be like.

Maybe something like freenet mixed with ipfs over a wifi mesh network? Not
sure how that would work with that much latency.

You could have throwaway wifi dropboxes to propagate between people.

One project I read about was a raspberry pi wifi "grenade". It boots off a usb
with the encryption key then it runs off a ramdisk. Then you "pull the pin"
and leave it. If it's discovered then nobody can analyze it to find out what
it was doing or who it was communicating with.

------
croon
I understand why this is flagged, but I wish it wasn't.

Regardless of the proposed merits of the shutdowns (I don't consider them
valid), the concept of this is horrifying.

------
desipenguin
The article starts with:

"Update 27 January 2020: News reports state that India's government has
restored Internet access to the Kashmir region"

RESTORED (albeit partially)

~~~
yipbub
"though residents there can currently only browse 301 websites approved by the
government and still cannot use social media"

It's also worth noting that this started in August 2019.

------
minewastaken
Realistically, what are the options to access Internet in a region where
government blocks it on an ISP level? Or is it back to carrier pigeons?

~~~
brokenmachine
People smuggle usb sticks into North Korea...

I've also read about still using the usb sticks or something similar for the
transport but using ipfs or dat so you can propagate updates to files, eg an
archive of news or resistance communications.

You could actually do this with carrier pigeons.

~~~
minewastaken
What is 'dat'? I couldn't find anything that would make sense in this context.

~~~
self
These should help:

[https://datprotocol.github.io/how-dat-
works/](https://datprotocol.github.io/how-dat-works/)

[https://www.datprotocol.com/](https://www.datprotocol.com/)

------
cat199
can anyone with any insight into indian governance comment on why this
wouldn't somehow be a massive legal liability?

I realize states typically have full autonomy w/r/t 'fighting terror', but the
economic implications for just about everything seem like this could result in
all kinds of lawsuits and also wouldn't be tenable from the perspective of
'political capital'

~~~
sbmthakur
India is massively under policed, which makes maintaining law and order a
daunting task in volatile situations[1]. For Kashmir, the situation is far
more complicated due to the presence of external terror.

1\. [https://www.livemint.com/news/india/india-s-police-force-
amo...](https://www.livemint.com/news/india/india-s-police-force-among-the-
world-s-weakest-1560925355383.html)

------
known
India is developing due to $160 billion/year FDI + NRI remittance; And Modi
regime destroyed the economy/credibility of India
[https://mobile.twitter.com/TimDraper/status/1207674025616519...](https://mobile.twitter.com/TimDraper/status/1207674025616519173)

------
nnq
Uhm, maybe it's time we work harder to put communication infrastructure in the
hands of corporations and other non-state non-nation transnational entities
that are powerful enough so governments don't have much power over them? Maybe
monopolies and tech giants could be a good thing you know... Under a few big
"Unbrella Co."-s you could have a nice pseudo-anarchic libertarian global
system.

 _Whatever happened with the idea of a future where corporations would be
truly transnational and would have private armies and police forces and such
and really dwarf governments in power? ...it sounded like a dystopia back
then, but nowadays I 'd really wish we'd be in that variant of the future
instead of the current one!_

~~~
ErrantX
I mean. In case the downvotes arent clear, you are aware of the history of
e.g. the British East India Company?

~~~
nnq
...wasn't that familiar with the gritty details this part of history, but from
a simple skimming, I see that things sort of worked-out fine until BEIC
shifted its focus from _trade and profit_ to _territory grabbing, waring
around, and administration_. And it started behaving as a nation, probably
because it was... all its owners where British nobility, right? That seems to
be also when things turned bad for them - they practically went bankrupt but
were still artificially kept a float by the then British Empire?

Probably a good lesson to be learned from BEIC for future transnational
megacorps: _(1) keep your focus on making profit and growing (growing in the
do-lots-of-R &D to increase your technological supremacy sense - you probably
can't grow marketshare after you're already a monopoly), (2) let governments
do the "drawing borders" and maintaining local civil order part, and (3)
diversity, diversity, diversity - if all your owners are from one nation and
one social-class / race / whatever, you'll be phagocytized or subverted by
that nation and/or sub-group._

