So sending someone something offensive is grounds for banning protonmail, yet the bazillion scam call centers are somehow not a problem.
rldjbpin · 3h ago
> yet the bazillion scam call centers are somehow not a problem.
the local population is also in the blast radius of scam calls, and is recognized by the government as well. so much so that one receives a disclaimer voice message before getting connected to a call every now and then.
robocalls are also a problem the states continue to deal with, so it is easier said than done about such cat-and-mouse issues.
> So sending someone something offensive is grounds for banning
it took a whole lawsuit to come to this ruling. in vast majority of cases, people and businesses do not resort to approaching the courts for things such as this. especially given the backlog and time/resource costs associated with the whole ordeal. the plaintiff went through the effort, which is quite impressive to be honest.
lawik · 11h ago
A bit reductionist perhaps. I assume the reason they are pushung it further is that they didn't submit to the police requesting information. Good on them for not cooperating but this is the lever a nation can pull in response.
spwa4 · 4h ago
That reasoning only makes sense if the scam callcenters DO cooperate with Indian police/court and the state is actively happy with scam center responses (and so with their business). Because you can be 1000% sure they got sued.
So you're saying the same thing, just a more polite. You're still saying that the Indian government cooperates with scam call centers.
southernplaces7 · 4h ago
>That reasoning only makes sense if the scam callcenters DO cooperate with Indian police/court
Yes, or the obvious, that their ringleaders pay hefty bribes up the government food chain, as is common in many, many countries with organized crime activity.
Protonmail presumably didn't do any such thing, aside from also refusing to cooperate legally.
Either way, shame to see India going down this road of censoring X and Y or random snooping for reasons of political expediency.
Vaslo · 3h ago
Not reductionist at all. A country so steeped in corruption that even all its natural advantages (lots of English speakers, big population, low wages) can’t compete with China. They (their government specifically) needs to get their act together in the 21st century.
gigatexal · 11h ago
The scam call centers are in cahoots with the government. So… yeah. They’re not going anywhere.
marcod · 10h ago
I found watching the trailer to The Beekeper quite therapeutic for my scammy call center dislike (it's the best part of the movie imho).
I watch Jason Statham movies _because_ they're over the top.
gigatexal · 3h ago
Exactly. I misspoke. Praise be the name of Statham hah
FirmwareBurner · 4h ago
A Jason Statham movie over the top?! No way!
seesawtron · 8h ago
I think the main reason to ban was that the email provider refused to share identity of the sender. Still doesn't justify the actions
whalesalad · 3h ago
This is what happens when boomers run the government.
methuselah_in · 13h ago
In my recent history there was a email sent from peoton mail that there are bombs planted somewhere, which was fake obviously.
naughtyfinch · 22h ago
I have been using Proton Mail and Proton VPN for over 3 years now. I firmly believe in the fundamental right of privacy online. Indian government has been taking steps like these for quite some time now. They previously asked VPN companies to log and gather every bit of information they could about their users including their name and address (effectively driving all VPN companies out of India)
Sometimes, I question the meaning of freedom in India. On paper we are free citizens, but essentially we never seem to get the benefits of living in a free country.
JumpCrisscross · 21h ago
> On paper we are free citizens, but essentially we never seem to get the benefits of living in a free country
India has been mimicking Chinese and Gulf authoritarianism for a decade now. New Delhi is not truly authoritarian, but more an an elected federal government with autocratic powers, not dissimilar from the U.S. Both are mimicking China, to a certain extent, in ways good (industrial policy, moderating hyperindividualism like NIMBYism) and bad (suspending habeus, jingoism).
astar1 · 12h ago
It's becoming an illiberal democracy like Turkey. Which is still a lot different than the US imo.
I saw an interesting interview from 50's by one of India's founders on the topic of democracy in India: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WyWUlIbcRH8 . It seems India still has a long way to go, and the current government is reversing the trend.
I really hope the west thinks long and hard about foreign investment in/free trade with India without preconditions (although these are doubtful from the US under the current administration, maybe the EU can step up). The west had this idea that opening up trade with China would make the country more democratic and free, but it had the opposite impact (the extra resources only made things worse in these areas at home and aborad, especially after Xi's takeover in 2014).
utkarsh858 · 9h ago
The first point is completely invalid, here a lot of press, YouTubers berate Indian government in daily basis they do not suffer any setbacks except when netizens call out false propaganda in numbers for both pro and anti government media.
Second point the Indian leader arrested was involved in huge scams in liquor and policy, he used to live in a lavish palace and got called out by enforcement directorate. It's good he got arrested.
Canada has not provided even a single proof for Indias involvement in extrajudicial killings but instead harbor people who threaten Indians regularly. Despite extradition treaty Canada has become a safe harbor of terrorists and refused to extradite terrorists even after repeated requests by India.
Reversing the trend ? Are you kidding me, previous government imposed emergency rule when their position was threatened and commited human rights abuses.
swiftcoder · 9h ago
I'm unclear which of those things you don't think applies to the US as well?
It may not be as blatant, but the current administration is openly attempting to muzzle the press (i.e. banning the AP from Whitehouse), the last few US elections have been mired in law enforcement interactions (FBI investigation into Hilary's emails, Trump's various trials), and extrajudicial killings on foreign soil have openly been a thing since Obama's drone-strike-happy administration.
freefrog334433 · 7h ago
and Australia. Australian government tried making encryption illegal.
> Indian government has been taking steps like these for quite some time now.
In this instance though, this is from the High Court of the state of Karnataka and not the Indian Government. Karnataka isn't ruled by the same party at the center (imagine California and the current US Government). Again, the Government of Karnataka had nothing to do with this case either - it's the High Court.
Indian courts have done similar things forever. YouTube/FB etc quickly comply with court orders here; because judges would simply issue a blanket ban order on the website.
No comments yet
rldjbpin · 3h ago
> They previously asked VPN companies to log and gather every bit of information they could about their users including their name and address (effectively driving all VPN companies out of India)
in NordVPN (a paid mainstream provider without Mulvad-like conviction to privacy), you can connect to an Indian server without ever providing your personal details when signing in.
i wonder how much these rulings are enforced in reality. there is definitely no great firewall situation and outright jailing for breaching this law so far. but on the other hand, it is just a lower temperature setting in the frog-boiling process.
GenshoTikamura · 18h ago
Question the meaning of freedom in the whole world instead
archsurface · 13h ago
Add in Aadhaar.
guywithahat · 18h ago
People forget until how recently India was a socialist nation, and how easy it would be to slip back
> WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a [SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC] and to secure to all its citizens:
That said, I don't know how constitutional amendments work in India. This text may have been amended at a later date, but the original text remains.
SanjayMehta · 9h ago
“Socialist” and “Secular” were added by Indira Gandhi when she had declared an Emergency after being disqualified by a high court.
The word “socialist” was added to the Constitution by Indira Gandhi during the 70s.
This was during her “Emergency” when Parliament was essentially dysfunctional.
There have been campaigns to remove her changes, but nothing has come of it.
paxys · 17h ago
Socialism is an economic policy. It has nothing to do with "freedom".
guywithahat · 12h ago
Sure, but the premise of the economic policy is we give up freedom for equality and shared ownership.
harvey9 · 7h ago
I think freedom is a continuum. Some things are regulated even in the West so for example you need permission to open a new hospital.
fsckboy · 10h ago
>Socialism is an economic policy
...that is not taught in any school of economics.
it's actually a political platform or set of political promises
SanjayMehta · 15h ago
“Socialism” in the Indian context is associated with Indira Gandhi’s repressive policies from the Emergency she declared when she was thrown out of office in the seventies. The word “socialist” was added to the Constitution by her during that time when Parliament was essentially dysfunctional.
No comments yet
cryptonector · 16h ago
See Sanjay Gandhi's forced sterilization campaign at the behest of the World Bank and IMF. Tell me that reproduction is not a freedom. Tell me that Indira and Sanjay Gandhi weren't socialists.
terribleperson · 16h ago
There was also forced sterilization in the United States. Does that make the United States a socialist country? No, of course not.
The argument form "Bob did X, and Bob is an A, therefore all As do X" is nonsense.
edit:
There was also forced sterilization in the United States. Does that make the United States a socialist country? No, of course not.
The argument form "Bob did X, and Bob is an A, therefore anyone who does X is an A" is nonsense. The argument form "Bob did X, and Bob is an A, therefore all As do X" is similarly nonsense.
It's also a very weird argument to make when you say it was done "at behest of the World Bank and IMF.", considering those are certainly not socialist organizations.
cryptonector · 12h ago
> There was also forced sterilization in the United States.
Yes, in the 20s in New York State. It was quite rare by comparison to what happened in India. The point was not to say "this is what socialists do" but to say point out that they did it at the behest of capitalists, which is quite the incongruity -- an incongruity which you noticed yet you failed to make the connection that it made the Gandhis phonies. That should make you wonder how genuine they were as socialists.
sterlind · 11h ago
specifically, The Population Bomb was the big book during the era, which was written by a Stanford professor. India's forced sterilization campaign was at the behest of the World Bank, and championed by the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, all of which were strongly influenced by the book. Fun fact: the author, Mr. Erlich, is still alive (at the age of 92!) and has maintained his correctness, instead saying he was "too optimistic" when his forecasted mass starvation failed to materialize.
cryptonector · 18m ago
Malthusian predictions have two parts, one of which is proven time and time again, and the other which has yet to be proven but on the basis of which horrible things are justified:
1. population growth leads to food
production improvements which
enables more population growth,
2. catastrophic failure must result
eventually when we really run
into the planet's human carrying
capacity.
Malthusians like Paul Erlich are the boy who cried wolf. They are always wrong when they cry "wolf!", but who knows, maybe someday they might be right ("someday we will be right" is their message).
So far we've only seen the inverse of Malthusian catastrophes: population collapse.
We've seen population collapse twice in recorded history, perhaps more:
- the Roman empire
- now, almost everywhere
Malthusians like mr. Erlich might argue that the reason we're reaching population peaks (followed by collapse) is precisely due to their efforts. Perhaps. But population collapse is not all that fun either. Yet even today we have a great deal of political pressure from some quarters to do things that will speed up the collapse rather than slow it.
_bin_ · 12h ago
Just like it's reasonable for America to worry about the group that conducted forced sterilization (Jim Crow racists) and worry about the slide back to them attaining power, it makes sense to do the same for socialists.
Ideologies that further concentrate power in the hands of a central state - in India's case, things like Hindutva nationalism and socialism - are risky, particularly in developing nations where liberty is less firmly-established, and should be given a stern eye when they appear.
And, just like "southern democrat" is a "bad word" in America for obvious reasons and doesn't imply "democrat from the south", "socialist" is a bit taboo in India.
cryptonector · 35m ago
> Jim Crow racists
There were forced sterilization programs in New York State in the early 20th century, and the victims weren't specifically black.
zmgsabst · 12h ago
There’s a correlating factor:
Technocratic managerialism.
Communism, socialism, fascism, and progressivism are 20th century political systems based around technocratic managerialism — and all of them have attempted to control breeding in the population. That’s because technocratic managerialism is prone to such decisions.
Progressives in the US were behind both Great Society programs and forced sterilization — so it’s more or less accurate to say the US equivalent of socialists did also sterilize people.
cryptonector · 33m ago
> That’s because technocratic managerialism is prone to such decisions.
That's a nifty insight. Engineers want to engineer. If you place an engineer in charge of social policy they will likely try to engineer social and cultural changes.
lurkshark · 21h ago
This seems ineffective on a couple levels. One is that Proton users are a population that’s much more likely to be using a VPN anyway (they even offer a VPN service themselves). Another is that unless non-blocked providers reject email from Proton this doesn’t even solve the supposed issue. An Indian user of GMail is going to still receive and view email sent by Proton, so the goal of the block isn’t even achieved.
JumpCrisscross · 21h ago
The point isn’t to block Proton as much as give prosecutors and investigators another tool to either target folks or simplify prosecution. If a search reveals a Proton email address (or you can show someone using one), you’re done.
gruez · 20h ago
>If a search reveals a Proton email address (or you can show someone using one), you’re done.
But so far as I can tell, using protonmail isn't illegal yet?
JumpCrisscross · 19h ago
> so far as I can tell, using protonmail isn't illegal yet?
Not an expert on Indian law. But we have a court order blocking Proton Mail across India. Circumventing the block could be found tantamount to wilfully violating the court order.
KitN · 16h ago
no, i dont think that's how it works. if someone is using protonmail they won't be violating court's order. the order is just for protonmail to be blocked. doesn't say anything about the people using it.
dullcrisp · 17h ago
You’re done with what though? What’s the penalty for using a Proton email address? Death?
JCattheATM · 21h ago
Steps like this are all the more reason the decentralized internet has to start being given more priority. It's only a matter of time until the open internet stops being a thing.
rad_gruchalski · 21h ago
That’s a pipe dream. Like „untraceable, not-controlled-by-banks, decentralised currency bitcoin“. As soon as it becomes popular, it gets regulated.
Yes, it’s stupid. But it’s the reality of things.
tremon · 19h ago
Regulated and decentralized are not opposing ends on the same spectrum, under a mature government one can have both.
JumpCrisscross · 19h ago
> Regulated and decentralized are not opposing ends on the same spectrum, under a mature government one can have both
The point is it's regulated irrespective of the government's maturity. If it only works under a mature government, it's superfluous as a social tool. (Technology usually is.)
sneak · 15h ago
The fact that governments have regulated cryptocurrency does not change the value proposition of the technology.
The governments have also regulated cocaine. It didn’t work there, either.
neilv · 15h ago
> [...] bitcoin“. As soon as it becomes popular, it gets regulated.
And, before it gets popular and regulated, it gets overrun by criminals?
Definitely the case with Bitcoin. I don't know about ProtonMail, though.
DocTomoe · 11h ago
What is a criminal but a person who acts against pre-existing regulation anyway?
Bitcoin's 'criminal' use is/was 95% narcotics. In a world without a superficial 'war on drugs', where a state had no right to tell a citizen what to put into their own body, no user, no dealer would be criminal.
If you wish to fight crime, the solution might not be to 'make more things criminal', but to 'make less things criminal'.
On the other hand, I have been using bitcoin for cross-border value transfers where banks would have taken ridiculous fees, and I have used bitcoin for online micro-transactions where setting up other payment systems would have been expensive.
Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe · 8h ago
To me, the most promising such technology is reticulum[0]. I'm interested if someone knows of good alternatives
and when that happens, immediately every government ll step inside and turn your decentralized internet into a regulated firewalled one. I think don't understand the drawbacks of this stuff enough. Terrorists and drug cartels leave no trace behind on such networks.
zoobab · 8h ago
Replace "decentralized internet" by "uncensorable internet".
freeopinion · 20h ago
Would you care to remind everybody how they can guarantee that the party they are interacting with is in fact Proton even though anybody watching or facilitating the interaction won't be able to know?
3np · 18h ago
Today? Use their .onion address[0] over Tor and TLS. The TLS certificate is secured by the tor secret service key. No WebPKI or centralized CAs required.
For tomorrow we should keep exploring and adopting improvements. Pick your poison.
[0]: Discovery left as excercise for reader
mzajc · 14h ago
By this logic one could simply download Protonmail's TLS certificate instead of trusting a CA and access the service via clearnet. Fully decentralized. Discovery, once again, left as excercise for reader.
3np · 13h ago
Presumably the ISPs and vendors will be forced to block you/Proton there via regular means, so no.
vlan0 · 19h ago
And how exactly would that work?
nine_k · 12h ago
Consider the way BitTorrent works. You don't have to know what your peers are going to be, or where. You don't have to trust your peers: as long as they serve blocks with correct hashes, you are safe to take data from them. Equally, they don't have to know you or trust you.
It, of course, does not work for email. OTOH protocols like briar [1] theoretically could.
* Some company’s employees receive some inappropriate emails from a ProtonMail address.
* They file complaints and approach the court to identify who sent the emails.
* ProtonMail does not respond to queries about its users from foreign authorities unless the Swiss government directs it to. [1] It didn’t respond to this request.
* The court decides that blocking ProtonMail in the entire country will solve this problem and such problems forever.
> Under Swiss law, Proton is not allowed to transmit any data to foreign authorities, and we are therefore required by law to reject all requests from foreign authorities that are addressed directly to us. However, Proton is legally obligated to respond to orders from Swiss authorities, who do not tolerate illegal activities conducted through Switzerland and may assist foreign authorities in cases of illegal activity, provided they are valid under international assistance procedures and determined to be in compliance with Swiss law.
ssivark · 9h ago
Thanks for the helpful summary. Unfortunately, I can’t imagine what the courts could do differently in this case.
Regardless of whether Proton mail is a useful service with a principled stance, their refusal to engage under a sovereign legal system makes them simply “ungovernable” from the perspective of any sovereign government (lacking any relevant arbitration treaties). The only natural reaction seems to be to unperson them from engaging in transactions within the land. What other options does any sovereign government have when an entity simply refuses to engage?
It would be a different situation if Proton mail appeared in Indian court and argued why these details must be protected (within the contours of Indian law).
We take for granted the freedom to send bits anywhere in the world, and forget that we have an intricate system of decentralized governance (countries with local sovereignty, treaties, etc) in the physical world to regulate our ability to ship atoms around the world. As much as we all like our freedom, (and maybe exactly for that reason) decentralized self-governance feels like a value we ought to uphold.
xkcd1963 · 37m ago
"Swiss authorities, who do not tolerate illegal activities"
lol
sinuhe69 · 15h ago
Why not simply block the senders? How on earth does a high court support the demand of a single entity at the cost of the wide public, risking freedom oppression and censor of speech?
aprilthird2021 · 15h ago
It's India. That's how.
ujkhsjkdhf234 · 21h ago
Sounds like an endorsement of Proton Mail to me.
crop_rotation · 23h ago
I mean this is just absurd.
> On Tuesday, the Karnataka High Court directed the Indian government to block Proton Mail, a popular email service known for its enhanced security, following a legal complaint filed by New Delhi-based M Moser Design Associates. The local firm alleged that its employees had received emails containing obscene and vulgar content sent via Proton Mail.
How does this make any sense. Would the court block gmail if the same happens via gmail?.
India somehow is stuck in the worst of all worlds. There is no freedom like democratic countries and there is no good government like China.
To any westerners commenting, this is not same as think of the children. Government or courts mostly don't even need to give such excuses in India (max they might say to counter traitors). There is obscene amount of corruption in the country at every step from the local to the highest, and it is internalized by the citizens so much that everyone knows and nobody cares.
Edit: good government above means competent government
luotuoshangdui · 23h ago
> Good government like China
This is a bad joke. For starters, China blocked Proton Mail years ago.
crop_rotation · 22h ago
I am not claiming China is free or democratic at all, just that Government in turn is able to use it's authoritarianism to do stuff for the country.
indoordin0saur · 22h ago
FYI, a good term for this is "state capacity"
l33tfr4gg3r · 22h ago
If that's what you really believe, then I'd say Chinese government propaganda is working as intended.
crop_rotation · 22h ago
Have you ever really visited China? I would just say go to your preferred youtube channel and watch any chinese city and any indian city and then say the same thing as above.
InsideOutSanta · 22h ago
Don't base your opinion of China on YouTube channels that show you a few modern places in Chongqing or the high-speed train and pretend that this represents all of China. They don't show you the homeless people, the abandoned half-built high-rises, the dirty parks full of plastic waste, the barred-up windows because break-ins are so prevalent.
And travel 30 minutes outside of any major city. You'll see people living in broken-down buildings without heating when it's below zero, roads that haven't been maintained in decades, and poor people trying to jump in front of your car for insurance money.
China is neither the technological wonder of the world portrayed in these videos nor a bunch of peasants. It's a vast, complex country with a lot of good and a lot of bad.
decimalenough · 19h ago
I have traveled widely across both India and China. China is wealthier and better off across the board: HDI, GDP per capita, healthcare, you name it.
China has its problems for sure, but vast slabs of India remain mired in sub-Saharan Africa levels of poverty and squalor.
hirako2000 · 21h ago
Exactly the same could be said about several 1st world democratic countries. The point is India level of development is far lower than its neighbor having a similar population size and having come from as far down, or worse than India. The difference is a government that provided (more) benefits to its population.
mayama · 11h ago
That's the cost of having people protesting, blocking and badmouthing govt, for example you are doing right now. Try something like this in China against CCP, your account will be blocked within hour and cops will visit you in a day.
xmprt · 21h ago
I would love to say the same of India but unfortunately India has all of those problems and even the best parts of India don't hold a candle to even tier 2 cities in China.
cryptonector · 16h ago
"But the trains ran on time."
gitremote · 15h ago
For anyone who didn't get this reference:
'In fact, there's an old saying about Mussolini that goes something like this: "Mussolini made the trains run on time." In other words, even dictators have their good points. Sure, fascism is an often brutal model of efficient government, full of poverty and corruption, but hey, at least the trains were newly punctual.
"Italy's railway had entered into a state of disrepair after World War I, but after the war ended, there had been a number of measures implemented to boost efficiency. Mussolini, of course, liked to say he was responsible for those improvements. However, those changes actually took place before he assumed power, so technically, he couldn't really take credit (although that didn't stop him). More to the point, the trains didn't always run on time, either."
ToucanLoucan · 22h ago
You can disagree with their motives and methods but it's undeniable that the Chinese government is working incredibly hard for themselves and their citizens. The sheer manufacturing dominance of China speaks for itself, as does their presence on the global stage, as does their looming influence over geopolitics.
And yeah, they put out a shit ton of propaganda too. But it being propaganda doesn't by virtue of that fact make it lies. One would argue the more effective kind of propaganda is the kind that's verifiable fact, even if ideologically slanted in delivery.
And you know, I'm also biased as an American currently living under the "group of incompetent jackasses" administration, but I'd love for my government to do anything besides shutting down departments that make business owners mad and handing out tax breaks to the richest assholes here every fuckin day.
skywalqer · 17h ago
Yeah, but maybe it is a powerful country because it has a lot of hard-working people with improving conditions, not because it has a communist government. I mostly think that the Chinese government harmed Chinese development in the future with their shortsighted policies, like the one-child policy.
Also, does the government really work for its citizens if they are doing a genocide of one nation in the country?
Yeah, I agree that the Trump situation is frustrating and idiotic, however, we should not resort to shifting towards totalitarians. That's problematic thinking.
arandomusername · 16h ago
one child policy was disastrous, yeah.
It's a powerful country because of the leadership though. Policies and culture shape the country. China was extremely poor for a long time, and it wasn't because the people were lazy back then.
croes · 22h ago
The poverty rate in China declined even outside Chinese propaganda.
So there are benefits for the Chinese population.
lossolo · 18h ago
And where are you getting your information? The most interesting thing is how U.S. politicians often use the phrase 'Chinese Communist Party' when talking about China, invoking Cold War-era connotations of communism. But everyone knows that the only things still 'communist' about China are the party's name, its symbols, and the flag.
I’ve been to both the U.S. and China. There's significantly more propaganda about China in the U.S. than there is about the U.S. in China. Stop blindly believing what others say—go see for yourself. In the coastal and Tier-1 cities, you’ll witness how a population the size of the entire United States enjoys a higher standard of living than the American middle class, with greater affordability, and clean, safe, and beautiful urban environments (with infrastructure that is way ahead of US).
idiotsecant · 20h ago
There are undeniably ways in which the command economy is simply more efficient. The party can decide that in 10 years they will be world leader in this or that, put resources toward it, and accomplish that goal. That doesn't mean the Chinese way is best for everyone, and there are certainly humanitarian issues, there are inefficiencies typical of a command economy, and there are unintended consequences, (tofu dreg, etc) but it's undeniable that they're currently getting stuff done.
skywalqer · 17h ago
Yeah, more efficient in making suboptimal decisions for everyone in the country.
With freedom of thought and markets, you get competition of ideas, which ultimately selects a better solution than any central planner can plan.
JCharante · 22h ago
I mean the everyday people are happy and their GDP is high.
dgfitz · 22h ago
I have been under the impression that China has been lying about their GDP for years and years, I thought this was commonly known.
I have also been under the impression, for years and years, that it isn't a good idea to speak ill of the one-party regime, to anyone ever.
alephnerd · 21h ago
I highly doubt GDP numbers in China are falsified, but GDP per capita doesn't matter much when median household incomes in China remain in the $250-350/mo (EDIT: $400-500/mo, good callout, needed to update priors from covid) range according to Chinese government statistics.
This is why Chinese overproduction exists - incomes are too low for most Chinese consumers to purchase higher value goods that are made in China, because you aren't upgrading your cellphone or car every year when your household income is in that range.
bdangubic · 21h ago
maybe those numbers are right decades ago - now it is double that, in disposable income
income of $300-ish vs disposable income of almost $3k are quite different things :)
201984 · 20h ago
That's 3k per 6 months, so about $500/month disposable income.
bdangubic · 16h ago
yup! a whole world apart from $250-ish income originally stated
alephnerd · 15h ago
Hence why I edited it once you pointed out the issue. But my initial point still stands.
keybored · 21h ago
Pro-Chinese sentiment has increased lately here in the West it seems, and part of that must be because the Chinese have managed to put their best propaganda forward. But I don’t see how we can have any sane discussion when one side of the argument can be bad-faith dismissed off the bat.
blitzar · 20h ago
I used to believe the western propaganda "they are all peasants" - then I went to see with my own eyes.
If you are going to parrot western talking points then it would be insane conversation.
lossolo · 18h ago
> then I went to see with my own eyes
Exactly the same here. I went to see with my own eyes, and the reality is very different from what I hear in some news outlets and from politicians.
duxup · 22h ago
Every government is busy with some form of "do stuff for the country".
lotsofpulp · 22h ago
It seems clear above commenters are referencing that China performs better at accomplishing certain tasks, such as large scale infrastructure development, that isn’t comparable to other countries that “do stuff”.
duxup · 18h ago
I’m always skeptical of what I will call the admiration of “despotic efficiency / accomplishments”.
I’m not sure how efficient or how long accurate their success / failure rates are.
Especially when blocking a service would seem to have no impact on it…
aucisson_masque · 17h ago
You mean like the Stalin's 5 year plan from 70 years ago ?
Don't believe what any government pretend, especially communist ones. Chinese standard of living improved ? Absolutely.
Just like it did in previous emerging market, which were not ruled by communist party.
keybored · 19h ago
What’s the relevance of authoritarianism? Is it necessary for the good government or is it neutral or other?
Yeul · 21h ago
Chinese infrastructure is light years ahead of India and frankly a police surveillance state does make the streets safe.
tehjoker · 22h ago
Protonmail did not comply with Chinese law. I can't say I'm a fan, but this wasn't targeted at Protonmail, it was the same with Google. China requires this because China is a target for U.S. imperialism and must protect itself. The internet, mainly owned by the USA, is basically like radio free asia dot com.
Protecting Chinese technology firms also allowed China to grow highly competitive national companies, a phenomenon we don't see as much anywhere US technology companies were allowed free reign.
> The applicable Chinese law is the China Internet Security Law which came into force in 2017. The law essentially stipulates that foreign companies which operate in China and process the private information of Chinese citizens, must store such data in China and make it available to Chinese authorities upon request. An example of a company which has had to comply with this law is Apple, which has extensive operations in China. A similar law went into effect in Russia back in 2015 (known as Federal Law No. 242-FZ).
Explain how the "internet [is] mainly owned by the USA."
The robust Chinese technology sector is no doubt a reflection of smart and industrious Chinese people. Those smart and industrious people include those in the CPC engaged in wholesale industrial espionage.
tehjoker · 20h ago
The largest technology companies are headquartered in USA and have extensive ties with the US state??? I don't understand how you can think Europe, Africa, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea are unable to develop comparable technology, it's simply that the market opportunities are gobbled up by behemoths grown where the internet was invented backed by US diplomacy.
Here "good" means "is competent and calculating" I suppose. China's government wouldn't even blink blocking Proton Mail or any other non-Chinese technology without even giving a reason, though.
crop_rotation · 22h ago
Yeah that is a good tradeoff (IMHO) if it gives the citizens a tradeoff of infrastructure and social services. Indian government can jump through hoops to do the same thing but somehow can never do all that when it comes to rapid infrastructure development.
__rito__ · 22h ago
> "[...] never do all that when it comes to rapid infrastructure development."
India is now building 100 km highway per day. It created 24,000+ km in the last 5 years. [0]
It has the second-largest road network in the world, second only to the US. [1]
Yes the current government is doing some things well and that does include road development which has been extensive.
luckylion · 22h ago
Isn't 100km per day their goal while their record is at 37km on a single day? That's impressive by itself, but it's not quite the same (and those 5 year numbers would take them less than one year at that speed).
IAmBroom · 22h ago
Yes, "completely different from China's government" is really what's meant.
crop_rotation · 22h ago
No, I did mean "competent"
ivell · 22h ago
I wouldn't consider ghost cities and wasteful expenditure on infrastructure to just prop up GDP as good governance. As the saying goes not all that glitters is gold.
Democracy is messy, but there is some kind of transparency (freedom of press) that brings up issues out in the open.
Let's not be impatient with Democracy lest we lose all that we valued without us realizing it.
Democracy needs patience and preserverence.
hmm37 · 21h ago
A lot of the ghost cities news has been debunked as of late. When the news stories were coming out, a lot of the cities were just recently built. A decade+ later, a lot of the areas have been filled in...
"A lot" isn't really doing much for your argument that the existance of ghost cities is "debunked", given that it implies there are still ghost cities.
m4rtink · 22h ago
Yeah, that would be like the football lobby forcing the blocking of Cloudflare just because someone used it for unauthorized football streaming!
agnishom · 17h ago
> The local firm alleged that its employees had received emails containing obscene and vulgar content sent via Proton Mail.
How bad is the 'vulgar content' that it warrants banning of the service? This seems like extreme snowflake behavior
ricardo81 · 22h ago
Interesting. As a Brit, I imagine (possibly ideally) by the time I'm an old man in 20-30 years that India will be a beacon of democracy and freedom in the East, given its historical Western ties and a large English speaking population.
But your argument against their ruling speaks for itself, IMO.
There will come a point where India has to lead on this kind of thing.
sashank_1509 · 19h ago
India is as the commenter said, the worst of both worlds. The government managed to drive a comedian into hiding, for a make a crude (non political) joke about sex with parents. The government drove another comedian into hiding, for making a political joke and closed down the bar where he was performing, for the sole crime of hosting him. The government regularly censors movies, bans books, censors speech etc. At the same time we get no development, the drain outside my house is still not covered. It’s just arbitrary authoritarianism on the most pointless use cases.
India should have just been given to a monarch who liked the country and its people unlike the British or the Mughals
blitzar · 20h ago
I thought this 20-30 years ago.
alephnerd · 21h ago
India's legal system is based on the paternalistic British judicial system from the mid-19th to mid-20th century.
India, Malaysia, and Singapore all share the same common judicial origins because they were forked off in the 1940s to 1960s, and never saw the reforms that the UK, Canada, Australia, and NZ saw in the 1980s-90s.
Furthermore, civil libertarianism is more of an American judicial innovation, and even European countries are aligned with the primacy of the state over platforms.
ricardo81 · 21h ago
A pretty good starting point considering the USA constitution was based much off Scotland's enlightenment 200 years prior.
alephnerd · 21h ago
The Scottish Enlightenment never took hold in much of the UK though. That's why America was so "revolutionary" for the 18th and 19th century.
The British system remained paternalistic for a long time (eg. universal male suffrage only happened in 1918, collective bargaining was only legalized in 1945)
ricardo81 · 21h ago
It definitely took hold. It was an act of political union, albeit the democratic vote was heavily biased towards a larger English population, but the Scottish influence is imprinted in UK law, US law and any ex-colony.
The works of Adam Smith and David Hume arguably shaped the modern capitalist world which India is part of and branched off from.
Maybe there are nuanced arguments why it's less of a democracy, but I'm fairly sure nowadays every democracy has similar arguments.
alephnerd · 21h ago
But from a judicial standpoint, most of the strengthening around civil liberties as mentioned in the Scottish Enlightenment only happened in the 20th century.
Indian (and Malaysian and Singaporean) jurisprudence largely forked off from British jurisprudence in the 1940s-1960.
A number of the reforms in jurisprudence that happened post-WW2 weren't incorporated in the judicial codes for most colonies at that point, so judicial norms remain paternalistic.
> Scottish influence is imprinted in UK law, US law and any ex-colony
In Canada sure (Scots were overrepresented in "anglophone" Canada), but not the rest of the Commonwealth.
ricardo81 · 21h ago
You edited a bit but I appreciate your point and I'll defer to you as I don't know much about Indian Democracy or the behaviour of the current government. I suspect that the seed of self-determination has well and truly been planted though.
throwaway2037 · 14h ago
Can someone please explain how the Karnataka High Court can order New Delhi (nat'l gov't) to ban a website? I'm not doubting their authority to issue the command, rather I am confused how a regional high court can issue a national ban. Does this ban only apply in the state of Karnataka?
wtmt · 13h ago
That’s not how the law works in India. Any ruling by an Indian court on matters applicable to the entire country will apply to the entire country. There’s only one Supreme Court in India, and it cannot (and in many cases will not) handle all the cases relevant to national interest.
noxs · 22h ago
People often underestimate how much impact the education of certain aspect (Infrastructure in China and Democracy in Westerner countries) has made to their values to a government, and meanwhile the education is controlled by the government to certain degree.
sangeeth96 · 21h ago
> Would the court block gmail if the same happens via gmail?.
I mean, G will happily cough up the data and so will other big corps. Proton doesn’t… unless they go through the Swiss relationship route?
But this decision is stupid and harmful regardless.
DesiLurker · 20h ago
people will get stuck on 'good govt china..' but I get what you mean. moving on to core message. Indian courts are some of the dumbest, red-tape laden, corrupt entities out there. for westerners, its common for basic things like property disputes or even divorces to run for decades (yes -s plural). In India the legal process is itself a punishment. plus there is no consistency in case law or precedent. people often perjure themselves and walk around like its nothing. it really is free for all with Indian judiciary so I am not surprised at-all that they will do something stupid like this.
briandear · 22h ago
> no good government like China // good government means competent government
As someone that lived in China for 5 years, competent is the last adjective I’d use.
One could call China’s government competent the same way one could say Stalin was a competent administrator. Nazis were also very “competent” and efficient. In no universe should that be considered “good government.”
sashank_1509 · 19h ago
It really is between 2 choices:
1. An authoritarian government that can actually do things but also mess up and be harsh against anyone opposing it - China
2. A democratic government that can’t get anything done, citizens can’t rely on police for any crimes, courts for any justice, politicians for any development, where the politics of the nation just constantly seeks to divide on basis of caste, religion, language etc, and the nation as a whole wallows in mediocrity.
scheeseman486 · 15h ago
This is such a deeply simplistic and childish way of looking at the world.
sashank_1509 · 15h ago
Easy for you to say, I presume you don’t live in India
musicale · 21h ago
For a moment I thought you might be the Brian Dear who wrote The Friendly Orange Glow (a fascinating history of the PLATO system).
ilrwbwrkhv · 22h ago
I agree. The fact that India is so behind China while not being a free country is just horrible. Add to that massive amounts of pollution. People cannot breathe and no clean water.
JCharante · 22h ago
Don't they already block internet access to certain regions in order to slow down the spread of information? I'm not very surprised by these actions.
sangeeth96 · 21h ago
Related but India has been on a slow march to becoming a totalitarian surveillance state. Recently, we got public confirmation on govt. having backdoor access to WhatsApp to surveil on citizens when the FM talked about the Income Tax dept. scanning WhatsApp messages to catch offenders: https://m.economictimes.com/wealth/tax/is-the-government-alr...
Brybry · 21h ago
That article doesn't confirm an Indian government WhatsApp backdoor?
> Due to WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption, messages sent between two users are only readable by them; even the service provider cannot decrypt the contents of the messages. This prevents any third party, including service providers (WhatsApp, Telegram), from accessing the messages
> no verified evidence to suggest that the government is directly accessing private WhatsApp chats
> WhatsApp itself does not store message content, and it explicitly states that it cannot and does not produce the contents of user messages in response to any government request
Reading between the lines, it sounds like they're getting encrypted chat content directly from the phones (and also metadata from providers).
rlpb · 20h ago
I can't comment on what they're doing or not doing. But if they're getting chat content directly from the phones, say for example by having arranged with the app to cooperate with that exfiltration, then that is, by definition, a back door.
loufe · 20h ago
You must admit the way GP framed it strongly implies Meta gave the Indian government carte blanche access to intercept decrypted messages. That is a massive, order-of-magnitude different story than the Indian Gov't hacking phones (installing spyware, etc.) to exfiltrate messages decrypted on device. They are very different stories with very different implications.
(edit: you weren't GP)
gruez · 20h ago
>But if they're getting chat content directly from the phones, say for example by having arranged with the app to cooperate with that exfiltration, then that is, by definition, a back door.
Keyword being "if". There's no indication such backdoors exist, as opposed to something like malware being placed, or the phone being physically being tampered with.
perching_aix · 20h ago
A backdoor would be a feature of the service (be it on server or clientside) that'd explicitly allow for data exfiltration. The service provider complying with metadata requests and having vulnerabilities in their software are not backdoors, unless you can demonstrate that the metadata are oversharing info, or that the vulnerabilities are intentional.
giancarlostoro · 19h ago
Isn't the end to end encryption just not a default setting? It could be as easy as that.
Marsymars · 17h ago
WhatsApp does not have a setting without E2E encryption.
giancarlostoro · 13h ago
So then the government is picking and choosing which apps to go against based on how angry their voter base will be then.
sangeeth96 · 20h ago
I mean, right above the stuff you quoted, there is mention that govt. does now have the provision to access under exceptional circumstances:
> However, as Ashish Mishra, Partner-Cyber Security, NangiaNXT notes, “As of now, the government has the provision to access the encrypted messages under certain exceptions such as legal request, court matters, surveillance, and criminal investigations. The DPDP (Digital Personal Data Protection) Act, along with the Telegraph Act and IT Act, gives the government power to request such data from service providers.”
Given the general attitude towards digital privacy from the govt, I think it’s safe to assume they do have means to request.
It's unclear whether the government actually have the ability to read/intercept e2e messages, or merely declared they have the right to. That's an important distinction, because the government can declare it has the right to access such messages, without the service providers (ie. whatsapp) being able to follow through with it. We've seen something similar in uk, where a bill passed a few years ago gave the government the right to access encrypted data, and forced tech companies to provide access, but Apple didn't actually implement a backdoor. They instead decided to (very loudly) disable encryption entirely for the uk market.
sangeeth96 · 20h ago
The problem here is the govt/courts here downplay/ignore even the most straightforward RTI public (Right to Info) requests on many of these matters, the pegasus one still ongoing in courts even after all this time. Meta (FB’s) track record on these situations is spotty at best. WhatsApp is pretty much central to everything happening in India, whether for chatting with close ones, running businesses or amplifying political propaganda. IDK what WhatsApp looks like outside India but every govt. org, political party have verified accounts and directly message folks like me using the Biz APIs even though I’ve NEVER given them consent to do so before and AFAIK, there’s ZERO controls from user’s end to stop these.
I’d also have given WhatsApp a fair pass but Meta/Zuck has never shown any concrete proof that they stand by their users and not the ruling govt’s desires.
That along with all these events, quotes from ministry should suffice to have a reasonable assumption to not put trust on these platforms for private messages.
triknomeister · 21h ago
Majority Indian citizen understand this but this is a risk they are willing to take against the pervasive corruption (almost 60 years). Whether it actually leads to reduction in corruption is of course debatable.
TehCorwiz · 20h ago
Giving the people responsible for corruption more power to suppress speech and communication will not stop corruption. It just gives them new tools to entrench themselves.
DaSHacka · 20h ago
Giving the government more unchecked power reduces corruption?
JumpCrisscross · 19h ago
> Giving the government more unchecked power reduces corruption?
It's a weirdly-effective pitch! ("Drain the swamp.")
The stupidity of it is compounded by the fact that it's often not about giving the government unchecked power, but a subset of the powerful unchecked power.
crop_rotation · 20h ago
Do you honestly believe that ? Almost all government adjacent people (politicians/ civil servants) own land holdings way beyond their means. Everyone knows that everywhere. If the government wants to crack down on corruption there is extreme low hanging fruit that doesn't require big brother watching you.
triknomeister · 5h ago
I'm not saying it makes sense. But I'm pretty sure this is what majority of population thinks.
air3y · 8h ago
This is just misinformation. The Govt just gave officers from income tax department the power to access records through any means, whether breaking open locks and doors, or gain access to devices overriding access codes.
Such fantasy stories unfortunately fly in the country. There was one such false claim widely spread earlier, that facebook had provided the ruling party with access to directly block any posts on facebook they wanted gone.
sangeeth96 · 6h ago
I disagree mainly because there is a big lack of transparency from the govt/courts on these matters even when pressed with RTIs unless you have sources that say very explicitly otherwise from the mouths of govt/FB.
The trick the government has found is, just saying that gov can access messages is enough to make 99% of the whatsapp users to believe it, and make them scared of using tech for any goofy stuff. Why take risk? - wins always.
Aleksdev · 7h ago
They ban proton mail nationwide over a few offensive emails. Will they ban YouTube next if they make offensive videos about them?
josefritzishere · 22h ago
I never wanted a Proton email address before now.
dokyun · 21h ago
You probably still don't want one, given they've been known to divulge user info to various authorities in the past.
ziddoap · 16h ago
Sibling comment rightfully points out that a legitimate company will follow the laws. Proton is a legitimate company, so they follow the laws. This is detailed in their published threat model:
"“The Internet is generally not anonymous, and if you are breaking Swiss law, a law-abiding company such as Proton Mail can be legally compelled to log your IP address.” This cannot be changed due to how the internet works. However, we understand this is concerning for individuals with certain threat models, which is why since 2017, we also provide an onion site for anonymous access (we are one of the only email providers that supports this)."
And, in the case you are presumably talking about, Proton took it through the courts and ended up getting a ruling that "email services are not telecommunications providers. Consequently, email services are not subject to the data retention requirements imposed on telecommunications providers and are exempted from handing over certain user data in response to Swiss legal orders"
Which paints an incredibly different story than the one you are trying to paint.
Third, emails weren't handed over (nor were files, calendars, etc.). Which is another important distinction your comment does not mention.
Why parrot half of a story disparaging one of the only large email providers that fights in court to protect the privacy of its users?
dokyun · 10h ago
I was aware of the story beforehand. The context you've pasted here hasn't changed the intent of my statement, but I'm glad you took the time to type it.
> Third, emails weren't handed over
That they weren't, however the information that was handed over was enough to identify the target.
> Why parrot half of a story disparaging one of the only large email providers that fights in court to protect the privacy of its users?
Because despite their apparent and commendable work in trying to preserve the privacy of their users, they have regretfully failed to do so in the past, and it will more than likely proceed that way in the future.
It's not that I want to badmouth their efforts, but it has tainted them so I think it would be wrong not to bring it up. An email provider that has never divulged info (of which several exist) isn't tainted the same way as one that has. It may only be a difference of time and scale, but it's your freedom of choice, and I think freedom of choice is a very important thing. Email is decentralized, and the more email providers that exist and hold themselves to high standards the better. If more people moved between or started smaller email providers, it would help relieve these kinds of issues.
So that is why I would recommend against it.
ziddoap · 10h ago
If you believe "freedom of choice is a very important thing", you shouldn't have written your comment the way you did -- stripped of all detail and purely negative, as an attempt to make the decision for the readers.
Instead, you should have mentioned the context, and allowed people to come to their own conclusions. Your quote: "Because despite their apparent and commendable work in trying to preserve the privacy of their users, they have regretfully failed to do so in the past, and it will more than likely proceed that way in the future." alongside a bit more detail would have been a fantastic comment, instead of the vague accusatory one-liner you wrote.
dokyun · 9h ago
Since I don't consider it my job to provide context or be constructive, I let other people like you do it for me. I might follow up on it, as is my freedom of choice, but since I can't guarantee that happening I tend to do things that way. See, isn't that a fun system? I've augmented my own freedom with yours!
ziddoap · 3h ago
I had a glimmer of hope from your previous comment, but you managed to whisk it away immediately. Figures.
tristan957 · 20h ago
How do you expect businesses to operate if they do not comply with legal requirements?
Proton is obligated to cooperate with authorities just like any other company. Proton has a distinction in that it also takes certain cases to court when it argues there is no legal justification.
The best way to make sure they don't divulge information is to make sure they don't have information to divulge.
tianqi · 16h ago
This is just the best marketing for Proton Mail. I want to sign up for one immediately after reading it.
Ylpertnodi · 10h ago
Slippery sloping awa-ay: Oh, so now you support Pakistan, eh?
stego-tech · 12h ago
If only the court order made India block all their SMTP servers from contacting Proton Mail, so I’d stop getting contract role requests thousands of miles from my home with three-week lengths and $20/hr pay to be an AWS Architect and/or Lab Assistant.
IG_Semmelweiss · 12h ago
Is there any possible action against other vendors like fastmail, etc?
darthrupert · 11h ago
Typically it's amazingly great evidence for the high quality of a mail service that certain governments hate them.
rvalue · 10h ago
National security above all. Good for India
AStonesThrow · 10h ago
It intrigues me to wonder, in this day and age, what the legal meaning of "blocking" is.
In any given nation with a default-open Internet, what are the ramifications of a court or legal process "blocking" a service?
Protonmail is clearly more than a mere website; it's a full-featured communications platform; I'm sure it has a mobile app or at least access via the typical POP/IMAP interfaces.
So, "blocking" Protonmail could mean all sorts of things:
- Excise it from DNS
- Demand removal from Play Store, Apple Store, other mobile OS providers
- filter any IP traffic attempting to connect to service via web, IMAP, POP3
- inhibit or interfere with SMTP traffic to/from Protonmail servers, e.g. mail sending and delivery (MTA activity)
- expel/prohibit colocation of physical servers, VPS systems, or middleware that may be within jurisdiction
- deal legally with any physical office presence or employee contingent within the jurisdiction
Now within the Great Firewall of China and other default-deny Internet services, it's not difficult to see that Protonmail could easily be blackholed. But what if you're accustomed to open access like the USA?
There are so many considerations here. A simple court order to "block" an Internet service introduces quite a few layers to peel back. The USA's action against TikTok was fraught with confusion and ambiguity. Because TikTok is likewise a powerful communications service. So, tech people like us need more insight on what it means to "block" a service when a court says so!
air3y · 7h ago
Probably the ISPs would be required to block a given list of domains, and they will do it at DNS requests. Porn sites and torrent sharing sites used to be blocked this way. Some ISPs wont even do it properly. A decade or more ago, when these were banned, I could circumvent it by simply moving to using encrypted dns protocol by running dnscrypt. It is rarely implemented with a zeal, unlike chinese GFW reportedly does.
iLoveOncall · 23h ago
Are those essentially just sham cases orchestrated by the government to justify blocking an encrypted service?
It seems like such an insane over-reaction to an absolute non-issue.
shash · 22h ago
Doubtful. The petitioner in this case is an international architecture firm, hardly a typical group to be used for a sham case. The judgement itself isn’t out so we can’t see the court’s reasoning.
This is a bit more comprehensive: https://www.barandbench.com/amp/story/news/karnataka-high-co... and the Delhi case in which the ban is previously mentioned is only peripherally about email (the mail used by one of the parties is proton). The court makes an observation there that it should already have been banned so how is it still around.
hengheng · 22h ago
The built-in overreach makes it look like a structure set up in a way that encourage corruption, even though it won't happen in this case and is likely not even intended.
sagarpatil · 11h ago
First the ban on VPN and now Proton Mail. Facepalm.
zombiwoof · 22h ago
I imagine now hackers using Gmail and outlook to spam Indian courts with all sorts of nice images
timonpimba · 22h ago
Please don't give them ideas. You can not underestimate the indian court. They almost ordered to block Wikipedia.
kburman · 21h ago
India lack technical capability to decrypt web traffic at scale or power to force companies to do it for them. Like what happened with Apple and Telegram.
the local population is also in the blast radius of scam calls, and is recognized by the government as well. so much so that one receives a disclaimer voice message before getting connected to a call every now and then.
robocalls are also a problem the states continue to deal with, so it is easier said than done about such cat-and-mouse issues.
> So sending someone something offensive is grounds for banning
it took a whole lawsuit to come to this ruling. in vast majority of cases, people and businesses do not resort to approaching the courts for things such as this. especially given the backlog and time/resource costs associated with the whole ordeal. the plaintiff went through the effort, which is quite impressive to be honest.
So you're saying the same thing, just a more polite. You're still saying that the Indian government cooperates with scam call centers.
Yes, or the obvious, that their ringleaders pay hefty bribes up the government food chain, as is common in many, many countries with organized crime activity.
Protonmail presumably didn't do any such thing, aside from also refusing to cooperate legally.
Either way, shame to see India going down this road of censoring X and Y or random snooping for reasons of political expediency.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHKn-yDCE2w
India has been mimicking Chinese and Gulf authoritarianism for a decade now. New Delhi is not truly authoritarian, but more an an elected federal government with autocratic powers, not dissimilar from the U.S. Both are mimicking China, to a certain extent, in ways good (industrial policy, moderating hyperindividualism like NIMBYism) and bad (suspending habeus, jingoism).
e.g.:
-After a decade of Modi rule, India now ranked 161 out of 180 in the world press freedom index: https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/22/media/india-elections-press-f...
-Political opponents have been arrested on trumped up charges before elections: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrest_of_Arvind_Kejriwal
-Extrajudicial killings on Canadian soil and possible attempt on US soil before they were caught (despite extradition agreements between India and these countries): https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/india-government-agent-as...
I saw an interesting interview from 50's by one of India's founders on the topic of democracy in India: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WyWUlIbcRH8 . It seems India still has a long way to go, and the current government is reversing the trend.
I really hope the west thinks long and hard about foreign investment in/free trade with India without preconditions (although these are doubtful from the US under the current administration, maybe the EU can step up). The west had this idea that opening up trade with China would make the country more democratic and free, but it had the opposite impact (the extra resources only made things worse in these areas at home and aborad, especially after Xi's takeover in 2014).
Second point the Indian leader arrested was involved in huge scams in liquor and policy, he used to live in a lavish palace and got called out by enforcement directorate. It's good he got arrested.
Canada has not provided even a single proof for Indias involvement in extrajudicial killings but instead harbor people who threaten Indians regularly. Despite extradition treaty Canada has become a safe harbor of terrorists and refused to extradite terrorists even after repeated requests by India.
Reversing the trend ? Are you kidding me, previous government imposed emergency rule when their position was threatened and commited human rights abuses.
It may not be as blatant, but the current administration is openly attempting to muzzle the press (i.e. banning the AP from Whitehouse), the last few US elections have been mired in law enforcement interactions (FBI investigation into Hilary's emails, Trump's various trials), and extrajudicial killings on foreign soil have openly been a thing since Obama's drone-strike-happy administration.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/australian-pm-calls-en...
In this instance though, this is from the High Court of the state of Karnataka and not the Indian Government. Karnataka isn't ruled by the same party at the center (imagine California and the current US Government). Again, the Government of Karnataka had nothing to do with this case either - it's the High Court.
Indian courts have done similar things forever. YouTube/FB etc quickly comply with court orders here; because judges would simply issue a blanket ban order on the website.
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in NordVPN (a paid mainstream provider without Mulvad-like conviction to privacy), you can connect to an Indian server without ever providing your personal details when signing in.
i wonder how much these rulings are enforced in reality. there is definitely no great firewall situation and outright jailing for breaching this law so far. but on the other hand, it is just a lower temperature setting in the frog-boiling process.
English version: https://cdnbbsr.s3waas.gov.in/s380537a945c7aaa788ccfcdf1b99b...
In the preamble (p32), I see this text:
That said, I don't know how constitutional amendments work in India. This text may have been amended at a later date, but the original text remains.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty-second_Amendment_of_the_...
This was during her “Emergency” when Parliament was essentially dysfunctional.
There have been campaigns to remove her changes, but nothing has come of it.
...that is not taught in any school of economics.
it's actually a political platform or set of political promises
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edit: There was also forced sterilization in the United States. Does that make the United States a socialist country? No, of course not. The argument form "Bob did X, and Bob is an A, therefore anyone who does X is an A" is nonsense. The argument form "Bob did X, and Bob is an A, therefore all As do X" is similarly nonsense. It's also a very weird argument to make when you say it was done "at behest of the World Bank and IMF.", considering those are certainly not socialist organizations.
Yes, in the 20s in New York State. It was quite rare by comparison to what happened in India. The point was not to say "this is what socialists do" but to say point out that they did it at the behest of capitalists, which is quite the incongruity -- an incongruity which you noticed yet you failed to make the connection that it made the Gandhis phonies. That should make you wonder how genuine they were as socialists.
So far we've only seen the inverse of Malthusian catastrophes: population collapse.
We've seen population collapse twice in recorded history, perhaps more:
Malthusians like mr. Erlich might argue that the reason we're reaching population peaks (followed by collapse) is precisely due to their efforts. Perhaps. But population collapse is not all that fun either. Yet even today we have a great deal of political pressure from some quarters to do things that will speed up the collapse rather than slow it.Ideologies that further concentrate power in the hands of a central state - in India's case, things like Hindutva nationalism and socialism - are risky, particularly in developing nations where liberty is less firmly-established, and should be given a stern eye when they appear.
And, just like "southern democrat" is a "bad word" in America for obvious reasons and doesn't imply "democrat from the south", "socialist" is a bit taboo in India.
There were forced sterilization programs in New York State in the early 20th century, and the victims weren't specifically black.
Technocratic managerialism.
Communism, socialism, fascism, and progressivism are 20th century political systems based around technocratic managerialism — and all of them have attempted to control breeding in the population. That’s because technocratic managerialism is prone to such decisions.
Progressives in the US were behind both Great Society programs and forced sterilization — so it’s more or less accurate to say the US equivalent of socialists did also sterilize people.
That's a nifty insight. Engineers want to engineer. If you place an engineer in charge of social policy they will likely try to engineer social and cultural changes.
But so far as I can tell, using protonmail isn't illegal yet?
Not an expert on Indian law. But we have a court order blocking Proton Mail across India. Circumventing the block could be found tantamount to wilfully violating the court order.
Yes, it’s stupid. But it’s the reality of things.
The point is it's regulated irrespective of the government's maturity. If it only works under a mature government, it's superfluous as a social tool. (Technology usually is.)
The governments have also regulated cocaine. It didn’t work there, either.
And, before it gets popular and regulated, it gets overrun by criminals?
Definitely the case with Bitcoin. I don't know about ProtonMail, though.
Bitcoin's 'criminal' use is/was 95% narcotics. In a world without a superficial 'war on drugs', where a state had no right to tell a citizen what to put into their own body, no user, no dealer would be criminal.
If you wish to fight crime, the solution might not be to 'make more things criminal', but to 'make less things criminal'.
On the other hand, I have been using bitcoin for cross-border value transfers where banks would have taken ridiculous fees, and I have used bitcoin for online micro-transactions where setting up other payment systems would have been expensive.
[0] https://reticulum.network/
For tomorrow we should keep exploring and adopting improvements. Pick your poison.
[0]: Discovery left as excercise for reader
It, of course, does not work for email. OTOH protocols like briar [1] theoretically could.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briar_(software)
https://www.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/5re9s1/h...
* Some company’s employees receive some inappropriate emails from a ProtonMail address.
* They file complaints and approach the court to identify who sent the emails.
* ProtonMail does not respond to queries about its users from foreign authorities unless the Swiss government directs it to. [1] It didn’t respond to this request.
* The court decides that blocking ProtonMail in the entire country will solve this problem and such problems forever.
[1]: https://proton.me/blog/india-block-proton-mail (key text snippet below)
> Under Swiss law, Proton is not allowed to transmit any data to foreign authorities, and we are therefore required by law to reject all requests from foreign authorities that are addressed directly to us. However, Proton is legally obligated to respond to orders from Swiss authorities, who do not tolerate illegal activities conducted through Switzerland and may assist foreign authorities in cases of illegal activity, provided they are valid under international assistance procedures and determined to be in compliance with Swiss law.
Regardless of whether Proton mail is a useful service with a principled stance, their refusal to engage under a sovereign legal system makes them simply “ungovernable” from the perspective of any sovereign government (lacking any relevant arbitration treaties). The only natural reaction seems to be to unperson them from engaging in transactions within the land. What other options does any sovereign government have when an entity simply refuses to engage?
It would be a different situation if Proton mail appeared in Indian court and argued why these details must be protected (within the contours of Indian law).
We take for granted the freedom to send bits anywhere in the world, and forget that we have an intricate system of decentralized governance (countries with local sovereignty, treaties, etc) in the physical world to regulate our ability to ship atoms around the world. As much as we all like our freedom, (and maybe exactly for that reason) decentralized self-governance feels like a value we ought to uphold.
lol
> On Tuesday, the Karnataka High Court directed the Indian government to block Proton Mail, a popular email service known for its enhanced security, following a legal complaint filed by New Delhi-based M Moser Design Associates. The local firm alleged that its employees had received emails containing obscene and vulgar content sent via Proton Mail.
How does this make any sense. Would the court block gmail if the same happens via gmail?.
India somehow is stuck in the worst of all worlds. There is no freedom like democratic countries and there is no good government like China.
To any westerners commenting, this is not same as think of the children. Government or courts mostly don't even need to give such excuses in India (max they might say to counter traitors). There is obscene amount of corruption in the country at every step from the local to the highest, and it is internalized by the citizens so much that everyone knows and nobody cares.
Edit: good government above means competent government
This is a bad joke. For starters, China blocked Proton Mail years ago.
And travel 30 minutes outside of any major city. You'll see people living in broken-down buildings without heating when it's below zero, roads that haven't been maintained in decades, and poor people trying to jump in front of your car for insurance money.
China is neither the technological wonder of the world portrayed in these videos nor a bunch of peasants. It's a vast, complex country with a lot of good and a lot of bad.
https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/china/india?sc=...
China has its problems for sure, but vast slabs of India remain mired in sub-Saharan Africa levels of poverty and squalor.
'In fact, there's an old saying about Mussolini that goes something like this: "Mussolini made the trains run on time." In other words, even dictators have their good points. Sure, fascism is an often brutal model of efficient government, full of poverty and corruption, but hey, at least the trains were newly punctual.
https://history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myth/did-mussol...
The fact check goes on to explain:
"Italy's railway had entered into a state of disrepair after World War I, but after the war ended, there had been a number of measures implemented to boost efficiency. Mussolini, of course, liked to say he was responsible for those improvements. However, those changes actually took place before he assumed power, so technically, he couldn't really take credit (although that didn't stop him). More to the point, the trains didn't always run on time, either."
And yeah, they put out a shit ton of propaganda too. But it being propaganda doesn't by virtue of that fact make it lies. One would argue the more effective kind of propaganda is the kind that's verifiable fact, even if ideologically slanted in delivery.
And you know, I'm also biased as an American currently living under the "group of incompetent jackasses" administration, but I'd love for my government to do anything besides shutting down departments that make business owners mad and handing out tax breaks to the richest assholes here every fuckin day.
Also, does the government really work for its citizens if they are doing a genocide of one nation in the country?
Yeah, I agree that the Trump situation is frustrating and idiotic, however, we should not resort to shifting towards totalitarians. That's problematic thinking.
It's a powerful country because of the leadership though. Policies and culture shape the country. China was extremely poor for a long time, and it wasn't because the people were lazy back then.
So there are benefits for the Chinese population.
I’ve been to both the U.S. and China. There's significantly more propaganda about China in the U.S. than there is about the U.S. in China. Stop blindly believing what others say—go see for yourself. In the coastal and Tier-1 cities, you’ll witness how a population the size of the entire United States enjoys a higher standard of living than the American middle class, with greater affordability, and clean, safe, and beautiful urban environments (with infrastructure that is way ahead of US).
With freedom of thought and markets, you get competition of ideas, which ultimately selects a better solution than any central planner can plan.
I have also been under the impression, for years and years, that it isn't a good idea to speak ill of the one-party regime, to anyone ever.
This is why Chinese overproduction exists - incomes are too low for most Chinese consumers to purchase higher value goods that are made in China, because you aren't upgrading your cellphone or car every year when your household income is in that range.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/278698/annual-per-capita...
If you are going to parrot western talking points then it would be insane conversation.
Exactly the same here. I went to see with my own eyes, and the reality is very different from what I hear in some news outlets and from politicians.
I’m not sure how efficient or how long accurate their success / failure rates are.
Especially when blocking a service would seem to have no impact on it…
Don't believe what any government pretend, especially communist ones. Chinese standard of living improved ? Absolutely.
Just like it did in previous emerging market, which were not ruled by communist party.
Protecting Chinese technology firms also allowed China to grow highly competitive national companies, a phenomenon we don't see as much anywhere US technology companies were allowed free reign.
> The applicable Chinese law is the China Internet Security Law which came into force in 2017. The law essentially stipulates that foreign companies which operate in China and process the private information of Chinese citizens, must store such data in China and make it available to Chinese authorities upon request. An example of a company which has had to comply with this law is Apple, which has extensive operations in China. A similar law went into effect in Russia back in 2015 (known as Federal Law No. 242-FZ).
https://proton.me/blog/clarifying-protonmail-and-huawei
The robust Chinese technology sector is no doubt a reflection of smart and industrious Chinese people. Those smart and industrious people include those in the CPC engaged in wholesale industrial espionage.
Anyways, you can read more here: https://www.amazon.com/Surveillance-Valley-Military-History-...
Here "good" means "is competent and calculating" I suppose. China's government wouldn't even blink blocking Proton Mail or any other non-Chinese technology without even giving a reason, though.
India is now building 100 km highway per day. It created 24,000+ km in the last 5 years. [0]
It has the second-largest road network in the world, second only to the US. [1]
[0]: https://pib.gov.in/PressNoteDetails.aspx?NoteId=151963&Modul...
[1]: https://www.financialexpress.com/business/roadways-indias-ro...
Democracy is messy, but there is some kind of transparency (freedom of press) that brings up issues out in the open.
Let's not be impatient with Democracy lest we lose all that we valued without us realizing it.
Democracy needs patience and preserverence.
E.g. this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR4EYQ6JFUI
How bad is the 'vulgar content' that it warrants banning of the service? This seems like extreme snowflake behavior
But your argument against their ruling speaks for itself, IMO.
There will come a point where India has to lead on this kind of thing.
India should have just been given to a monarch who liked the country and its people unlike the British or the Mughals
India, Malaysia, and Singapore all share the same common judicial origins because they were forked off in the 1940s to 1960s, and never saw the reforms that the UK, Canada, Australia, and NZ saw in the 1980s-90s.
Furthermore, civil libertarianism is more of an American judicial innovation, and even European countries are aligned with the primacy of the state over platforms.
The British system remained paternalistic for a long time (eg. universal male suffrage only happened in 1918, collective bargaining was only legalized in 1945)
The works of Adam Smith and David Hume arguably shaped the modern capitalist world which India is part of and branched off from.
Maybe there are nuanced arguments why it's less of a democracy, but I'm fairly sure nowadays every democracy has similar arguments.
Indian (and Malaysian and Singaporean) jurisprudence largely forked off from British jurisprudence in the 1940s-1960.
A number of the reforms in jurisprudence that happened post-WW2 weren't incorporated in the judicial codes for most colonies at that point, so judicial norms remain paternalistic.
> Scottish influence is imprinted in UK law, US law and any ex-colony
In Canada sure (Scots were overrepresented in "anglophone" Canada), but not the rest of the Commonwealth.
I mean, G will happily cough up the data and so will other big corps. Proton doesn’t… unless they go through the Swiss relationship route?
But this decision is stupid and harmful regardless.
As someone that lived in China for 5 years, competent is the last adjective I’d use.
Sichuan Earthquake —> https://circa.art/ai-weiwei-recapturing-the-tragedy/
The Shanghai Lockdown —> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-59890533.amp
Local Chinese government corruption —> https://thediplomat.com/2025/03/how-local-corruption-evolved...
Tai Lake pollution —> https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/taihu-green-wash-or...
Land seizures —> https://rightsandresources.org/blog/the-guardian-chinese-vil...
Xinjiang —> https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/china-xinjiang-uyghurs-musl...
One could call China’s government competent the same way one could say Stalin was a competent administrator. Nazis were also very “competent” and efficient. In no universe should that be considered “good government.”
1. An authoritarian government that can actually do things but also mess up and be harsh against anyone opposing it - China
2. A democratic government that can’t get anything done, citizens can’t rely on police for any crimes, courts for any justice, politicians for any development, where the politics of the nation just constantly seeks to divide on basis of caste, religion, language etc, and the nation as a whole wallows in mediocrity.
> Due to WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption, messages sent between two users are only readable by them; even the service provider cannot decrypt the contents of the messages. This prevents any third party, including service providers (WhatsApp, Telegram), from accessing the messages
> no verified evidence to suggest that the government is directly accessing private WhatsApp chats
> WhatsApp itself does not store message content, and it explicitly states that it cannot and does not produce the contents of user messages in response to any government request
Reading between the lines, it sounds like they're getting encrypted chat content directly from the phones (and also metadata from providers).
(edit: you weren't GP)
Keyword being "if". There's no indication such backdoors exist, as opposed to something like malware being placed, or the phone being physically being tampered with.
> However, as Ashish Mishra, Partner-Cyber Security, NangiaNXT notes, “As of now, the government has the provision to access the encrypted messages under certain exceptions such as legal request, court matters, surveillance, and criminal investigations. The DPDP (Digital Personal Data Protection) Act, along with the Telegraph Act and IT Act, gives the government power to request such data from service providers.”
Given the general attitude towards digital privacy from the govt, I think it’s safe to assume they do have means to request.
That’s not the only incident to draw this conclusion from btw: https://www.business-standard.com/india-news/supreme-court-s...
I’d also have given WhatsApp a fair pass but Meta/Zuck has never shown any concrete proof that they stand by their users and not the ruling govt’s desires.
That along with all these events, quotes from ministry should suffice to have a reasonable assumption to not put trust on these platforms for private messages.
It's a weirdly-effective pitch! ("Drain the swamp.")
The stupidity of it is compounded by the fact that it's often not about giving the government unchecked power, but a subset of the powerful unchecked power.
Such fantasy stories unfortunately fly in the country. There was one such false claim widely spread earlier, that facebook had provided the ruling party with access to directly block any posts on facebook they wanted gone.
As for the second part, they sort of are still able to censor/remove posts a lot more easily so this is far from the “fantasy” you’re talking about: https://www.business-standard.com/companies/news/x-takes-ind...
"“The Internet is generally not anonymous, and if you are breaking Swiss law, a law-abiding company such as Proton Mail can be legally compelled to log your IP address.” This cannot be changed due to how the internet works. However, we understand this is concerning for individuals with certain threat models, which is why since 2017, we also provide an onion site for anonymous access (we are one of the only email providers that supports this)."
And, in the case you are presumably talking about, Proton took it through the courts and ended up getting a ruling that "email services are not telecommunications providers. Consequently, email services are not subject to the data retention requirements imposed on telecommunications providers and are exempted from handing over certain user data in response to Swiss legal orders"
Which paints an incredibly different story than the one you are trying to paint.
Third, emails weren't handed over (nor were files, calendars, etc.). Which is another important distinction your comment does not mention.
Why parrot half of a story disparaging one of the only large email providers that fights in court to protect the privacy of its users?
> Third, emails weren't handed over
That they weren't, however the information that was handed over was enough to identify the target.
> Why parrot half of a story disparaging one of the only large email providers that fights in court to protect the privacy of its users?
Because despite their apparent and commendable work in trying to preserve the privacy of their users, they have regretfully failed to do so in the past, and it will more than likely proceed that way in the future.
It's not that I want to badmouth their efforts, but it has tainted them so I think it would be wrong not to bring it up. An email provider that has never divulged info (of which several exist) isn't tainted the same way as one that has. It may only be a difference of time and scale, but it's your freedom of choice, and I think freedom of choice is a very important thing. Email is decentralized, and the more email providers that exist and hold themselves to high standards the better. If more people moved between or started smaller email providers, it would help relieve these kinds of issues.
So that is why I would recommend against it.
Instead, you should have mentioned the context, and allowed people to come to their own conclusions. Your quote: "Because despite their apparent and commendable work in trying to preserve the privacy of their users, they have regretfully failed to do so in the past, and it will more than likely proceed that way in the future." alongside a bit more detail would have been a fantastic comment, instead of the vague accusatory one-liner you wrote.
Proton is obligated to cooperate with authorities just like any other company. Proton has a distinction in that it also takes certain cases to court when it argues there is no legal justification.
The best way to make sure they don't divulge information is to make sure they don't have information to divulge.
In any given nation with a default-open Internet, what are the ramifications of a court or legal process "blocking" a service?
Protonmail is clearly more than a mere website; it's a full-featured communications platform; I'm sure it has a mobile app or at least access via the typical POP/IMAP interfaces.
So, "blocking" Protonmail could mean all sorts of things:
- Excise it from DNS
- Demand removal from Play Store, Apple Store, other mobile OS providers
- filter any IP traffic attempting to connect to service via web, IMAP, POP3
- inhibit or interfere with SMTP traffic to/from Protonmail servers, e.g. mail sending and delivery (MTA activity)
- expel/prohibit colocation of physical servers, VPS systems, or middleware that may be within jurisdiction
- deal legally with any physical office presence or employee contingent within the jurisdiction
Now within the Great Firewall of China and other default-deny Internet services, it's not difficult to see that Protonmail could easily be blackholed. But what if you're accustomed to open access like the USA?
There are so many considerations here. A simple court order to "block" an Internet service introduces quite a few layers to peel back. The USA's action against TikTok was fraught with confusion and ambiguity. Because TikTok is likewise a powerful communications service. So, tech people like us need more insight on what it means to "block" a service when a court says so!
It seems like such an insane over-reaction to an absolute non-issue.
This is a bit more comprehensive: https://www.barandbench.com/amp/story/news/karnataka-high-co... and the Delhi case in which the ban is previously mentioned is only peripherally about email (the mail used by one of the parties is proton). The court makes an observation there that it should already have been banned so how is it still around.
So this is what they come up with.