[HN Gopher] India asks WhatsApp to withdraw new privacy policy o...
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India asks WhatsApp to withdraw new privacy policy over 'grave
concerns'
Author : totaldude87
Score : 177 points
Date : 2021-01-20 13:51 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| geodel wrote:
| Here is quote of IT minister:
|
| "The sanctity of personal communications needs to be
| maintained.."
|
| LOL. Seems govt IT cell has freaked out seeing one of their
| propped journalist whatsapp chat leaked.
| leroman wrote:
| This is no longer an individual rights issue, political powers
| targeting people to change national political choices is a
| government concern.
| fguerraz wrote:
| People jumping ship is super bad news for government surveillance
| as WhatsApp has a convenient backdoor that alternatives don't
| have: the majority of users don't disable unencrypted backups in
| the cloud. So until now, despite all their hand waving about how
| bad encryption is, governments had an easy judicial way of
| accessing messages.
| morekozhambu wrote:
| India has proposed a PDPB - Personal Data Protection Bill.
|
| https://iapp.org/news/a/indias-data-privacy-bill-under-commi...
|
| PDPB bill itself:
| https://iapp.org/media/pdf/resource_center/India_Draft_Perso...
| Triv888 wrote:
| Somewhat unrelated but, in the U.S., I believe that the
| government still doesn't need a warrant for emails stored 180+
| days in the cloud, because the Email Privacy Act never passed:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_Privacy_Act .
| overqualified wrote:
| I have one word for you: IRC. Check it out. Start with freenode.
| You will like the freedom, as it was back in 1990x.
| wtmt wrote:
| This is just a show of power by poorly informed people and a
| gimmick to distract people. Don't read too much into this as the
| government caring about privacy.
|
| The central government in India has no interest in the privacy of
| residents or citizens. This government argued in the Supreme
| Court that Indians do not have the right to privacy in the
| constitutional case about it a few years ago (fortunately, the
| Supreme Court disagreed and declared that privacy as a
| fundamental right is read in/through a few articles in the
| constitution). This government also sold vehicle registration and
| related data to several entities for money.
|
| It has pushed the poorly designed and poorly implemented Aadhaar
| biometric identity for residents for almost everything, resulting
| in denial of service and also deaths (including starvation deaths
| of kids) due to people not getting their entitlements.
|
| This government hurriedly got a couple of private companies (Make
| My Trip and 1mg) to develop a "contact tracing app" called
| Aarogya Setu for COVID-19 that requires 24/7 location access and
| Bluetooth to be on as well. The data from the apps is stored in
| central servers that these private companies have access to (a
| right to information request showed that the government isn't
| really aware who engaged the companies or what the relationship
| with the government is). The application was declared to be open
| source but the sources have been old versions released a long
| time after, and have little bearing to what's in the app stores.
|
| India still doesn't have a privacy law (personal data protection
| law). It has been in the works for a very long time, though broad
| reasoning in the draft gives the government the power to compel
| anyone to provide data.
|
| The recent suspensions of prominent politicians in the U.S. by
| major tech companies has triggered the ruling party and the
| central government to worry about the "control" that these
| companies wield. The government is worried that its own
| propaganda troll armies (called "IT cell" locally) will start
| facing such issues.
|
| The ministry that wrote to WhatsApp to not implement the new
| policy wouldn't even know that WhatsApp has been sharing
| information with Facebook since 2016 (when it temporarily allowed
| some users to opt out, which most didn't because they didn't
| understand or care about the implications).
|
| The government, faced with farmers agitating against recent laws
| and unwilling to accept anything but a repeal of those, seems to
| consider this as a time to gather some goodwill by making
| WhatsApp kneel to show who's the boss in the country (both the
| carrot and the stick here are WhatsApp Pay's sustainability and
| future).
|
| P.S.: I haven't listed sources for the claims made above, because
| all of them, except for the personal speculation about why the
| government is doing this, can be verified from authentic news
| sources online.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| well the govt does not seem to think so,
| https://kashmirreader.com/2020/05/01/right-to-access-interne...
| which has led to this https://thekashmirwalla.com/2020/12/high-
| speed-internet-ban-...
|
| so it can either be that it is a fundamental right, in which
| case my rights have been trampled and there is no recourse or
| it is not a fundamental right, and i can go fuck myself for
| being born here because i have to suffer because the govt gets
| a boner talking about the land because it gets them votes.
|
| unbelievable
| selimthegrim wrote:
| In Kerala it (Internet) is supposed to be fundamental right,
| and if they abolished 370 SC should hold it applies to you
| too. funny.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| http://jkhome.nic.in/orders.html
|
| search for "temporary". this is from the govt. What
| fearmongering is this?
|
| students have been unable to attend schools since 5 august
| 2019 and you make 8 million humans suffer because of a
| boogeyman which doesnt exist? hasn't the recent arnab leaks
| suggested that pulwama was a false flag along with arnab
| getting prior info about something like balakot? if this is
| true and factually it does look like it, so who is the
| boogeyman? if allegedly india did pulwama attack on its own
| people and blamed kashmiri militants for it and pakistan
| for aiding them which has led to the crackdown on militancy
| in kashmir and this supposedly "anti-national" elements
| which in reality don't exist so why are we suffering?
|
| if modi wants to fuck himself over the blood of indians to
| stay in power, do it but why am i suffering?
| hesarenu wrote:
| I always hear out this mythical IT army. But then you see more
| of anti govt especially anti modi comments everywhere. Like the
| one above and some other in this very list. If they exist it
| seems that are very bad or the opposition has very good IT
| army.
| birksherty wrote:
| Because this is hacker news, no Indian aunty uncle are here.
| To see it go to local twitter, fb, whatsapp local groups.
| That "IT army" can be seen everywhere and whoever says it's
| mythical clearly belongs to that army or don't live in India.
| signal11 wrote:
| As background, to set the scene for what the state of privacy is
| in India: India has no privacy legislation, and selling datasets
| seems to be a popular informal activity[1]. (That article is
| worth a read in its entirety.)
|
| It's not unusual for shops to demand a telephone number during
| even small purchases, and your number will be spammed with SMS
| ads shortly thereafter. Also email spam if they somehow get your
| email.
|
| Chat archives (possibly backups?) of people under investigation
| have been leaked to the media with no consequence to the leaker.
|
| Essentially it's an extreme "laissez-faire" environment, one
| almost out of a textbook example of what happens in the absence
| of any regulation whatsoever.
|
| The above doesn't have anything to do with Facebook or WhatsApp
| (except tangentially), it's just to note that privacy legislation
| would be a very helpful quality of life improvement for many
| Indians.
|
| Perhaps someone on HN who knows more about this can share why the
| efforts to have privacy legislation in India have so far been
| unsuccessful.
|
| [1] https://restofworld.org/2020/all-the-data-fit-to-sell/
| notetaker wrote:
| I came across this article yesterday:
| https://tigerfeathers.substack.com/p/the-internet-country
|
| In section titled "Part 3: Becoming Data Rich" of the above
| article, they talk about the privacy protection legislations
| that are going to be implemented in India. Adding the part that
| caught my attention below:
|
| ___
|
| Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA) is a policy
| framework that defines how the economic primitive of data can
| be freed up so that individuals and businesses can choose how
| to best protect it and use it for their own gain. This
| innovation, which is presently being rolled out in the
| financial services industry, has its philosophical roots in a
| piece of impending legislation known as the Personal Data
| Protection Bill (PDP).
|
| According to this bill, Indians will (for the first time) get a
| litany of new rights pertaining to their data. Specifically,
| they will get the following rights:
|
| The right to data confirmation: The right to know what data is
| being stored about them, how it has been processed, and who
| else it might have been shared with
|
| The right to data correction or erasure: The right to update
| their data stored with a service provider, in order to make
| corrections, edits, and omissions of data that is no longer
| relevant
|
| The right to be forgotten: The right to have their data deleted
| from a service provider's database should they withdraw their
| consent to its continued storage
|
| The right to data portability: The right to obtain and share
| their data in a structured and machine-readable format
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| Due to the lack of legislation, the data broker market operates
| freely without any repercussions. Deleting your data from a
| website which publicly displays your private information is a
| nightmare and often unsuccessful.
|
| On that note, a pro tip for anyone incorporating a company in
| India. Give a separate email id, phone number when you
| incorporate because as soon as its available on the
| MCA(Ministry of Corporate Affairs) database the brokers buy it
| for (~ INR 100/ ~1.37 USD) legally and put it out for sale to
| the spammers/scammers often displaying the email id publicly.
|
| It will feel intuitive to give your personal phone, email in
| the forms when starting a company but you'll regret it. I'm
| waiting for the Data-Privacy legislation to be passed, so I can
| sue the X out of these brokers; Until then I'm creating an
| account with these brokers to delete my own details and if not
| possible then updating it with fake data.
| [deleted]
| s314159265358 wrote:
| Indian here There are some privacy laws, and some cyber-crime
| laws, but basically no one cares enough about those to
| implement them. I feel this is not an india only problem but
| with many developing nations as most people literally do not
| care... Also I have not been bombarded by spam except through
| SMS, but that's not a big problem either as no one uses SMS
| anymore
|
| Ah india also has anti piracy laws but that's a story for
| another time
| clashmeifyoucan wrote:
| Incidentally, it's weird to me how we lack internet laws in a
| lot of aspects yet have strong IT laws when it comes to
| blocking and censoring websites when needed (eg. porn1)
|
| [1] https://internetfreedom.in/why-is-porn-being-blocked-in-
| indi...
| monadic3 wrote:
| Soapboxing over mundane morality will always be politically
| popular. Talking about the political economy is much more
| difficult.
| shabda wrote:
| The Supreme Court of India declared the right to privacy a
| fundamental right under Article 21 - as the same level as right
| to life and personal liberty.
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/08/indias-supreme-court-u...
|
| This ruling was one the the landmark rulings in recent times,
| and a true David vs Goliath story - where a small group of
| privacy activists won against mandatory Aadhaar.
|
| While it is true that right to privacy implementation remains
| patchy, there is growing awareness around privacy - both from
| government, and against large corporations. For example, half
| of my contact list is now on Signal and last week I had more
| chats on Signal than on WA.
| searchableguy wrote:
| There is Personal Data Protection Bill in work:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Data_Protection_Bil...
|
| It exempts government and give them more power over data held
| by the private companies in later amendments.
|
| Proper enforcement capacity is also needed otherwise it will be
| abused to selectively target companies and startups but make
| little difference in privacy.
|
| Most Indians are not rich enough to afford paying for multiple
| software subscriptions monthly. They give away privacy as a
| substitute for that. Market forces at play.
| revel wrote:
| That bill is seriously hard to comply with. It's like GDPR
| but more stringent and there are data import / export
| mandates on top.
|
| Whenever that rule gets passed it's going to put a real
| squeeze on a lot of mid-large sized companies that have been
| playing fast and loose for a while. Facebook would definitely
| be violating many different parts of the law
| cassianoleal wrote:
| > users in the EU are exempt from the new privacy policy
|
| How does this work if someone outside of the EU is in the same
| group or private chats as an EU user?
|
| Surely by sharing information about those chats they would be
| breaking the GDPR if that's the case.
| llimos wrote:
| The GDPR covers EU citizens wherever in the world they are. Is
| there a way for me to tell WhatsApp that I am an EU citizen not
| currently based in the EU?
| esperent wrote:
| I'd guess it's based on your phone number. Use an EU number
| to sign up and they'll treat you as an EU citizen.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| > The GDPR covers EU citizens wherever in the world they are.
|
| No. In law, EU GDPR absolutely does not cover EU citizens who
| are physically outside the EU.
|
| GDPR makes no reference to citizens or residents and is
| understood to apply to any person whenever they are
| physically present in the EU, and to data which is
| created/located physically inside the EU's borders (and to
| data which has crossed the border within the rules).
|
| Citation e.g. first search result
| https://www.hipaajournal.com/does-gdpr-apply-to-eu-
| citizens-... which suggests only that businesses might find
| it easier to give GDPR protections more widely. I would not
| expect that advice to be taken by Facebook.
| signal11 wrote:
| I don't know the details and would love to know. However if I
| were asked to "get this done", this is what I'd do:
|
| The user's phone number is a unique ID as far as WhatsApp is
| concerned, so any metadata related to phone numbers in the
| "European region" (eg numbers starting with +33, +44, +49, etc)
| would be treated as if the 2020-era privacy policy applies.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| That wouldn't cover, for example, for people who are EU
| residents but still hold phone numbers from outside of the
| EU.
|
| That was my case until recently, and of many other expats I
| know.
| veqz wrote:
| All PII (personally identifiable information) of EU/EEA
| citisens and residents would have to be filtered out, yes.
|
| Chat messages in themselves are not necessarily PII, but then
| again WhatsApp isn't claiming to freely read the messages. I
| suppose the messages in the chat could be mined for keywords to
| give ads to the non-EU/EEA persons.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| In theory those messages are E2EE so they don't have access
| to them anyway.
|
| The same is not true for all the metadata.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| While they were figuring out the EU's ePrivacy Directive,
| Facebook Messenger turned off certain features to all chats
| with an EU user in, whether or not there were non-EU users in
| that chat.
|
| (I assume they have or will come up with a work-around, as far
| as legally possible)
| [deleted]
| victor106 wrote:
| Dont worry too much about this. FB is an investor in Reliance.
| Reliance for those who don't know, is the most corrupt
| corporation in India and they own everything from the politicians
| to the judges. So this will get overturned very soon.
| [deleted]
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| This is silly on so many levels that its not even funny. In India
| whatsapp is used as a tool for public dissemination of govt
| propaganda but that is not even the whole thing.
|
| WhatsApp admins are made to "register" their groups with local
| police station and I have a relative who manages one group. Had
| to frequently visit the police because of his "posts" which are
| only news forwards but they want their views put to public. I
| read on twitter the police install that WhatsApp malware on their
| phones so it can propagate through these news groups. No
| confirmation on this but just saying.
|
| Then you have this crackdown on dissent whereby forwards and
| messages and statuses crticial to govt are arrested and literally
| tortured. I know because friends have taken a beating on more
| than one occasion.
|
| This is damage control by govt on behalf of the company because
| that allows their users to not jump ship and govt can maintain
| surveillance
|
| Edit1:
|
| https://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/big-crackdown-ag...
| Edit 2:
|
| http://thekashmiriyat.co.uk/after-facebook-now-whatsapp-star...
|
| https://kashmirlife.net/youth-arrested-for-misusing-social-m...
|
| > "He has been also found involved in misusing of social media
| platform by creating fake accounts and posting seditious and
| provocative posts for antinational activities which are highly
| prejudicial in maintaining law and order," he added.
|
| So speak anything critical to govt means antinational and
| sedition and that needs arrests?
|
| https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/india-launches-fresh-c...
|
| This one while not directly related to WhatsApp does makes a
| point to explain how the govt is using social media in most
| productive manner which is benefical to the society.
| rtx wrote:
| Current Indian government had a positive outlook about Facebook.
| Events in US seems to have spooked many political parties.
| Facebook will have to spend a lot to control the narrative,
| though it will survive. Twitter on the other hand looks beyond
| saving, no strong man will trust it.
| chanmad29 wrote:
| what is the difference between Twitter and FB that you are
| alluding to? AFAIK Twitter is facing more troubles with
| censorship- banning some prominent faces, while FB has been
| more lenient overall.
| chickenmonkey wrote:
| There's a difference in perception. Twitter in India has a
| larger proportion of academics (who tend to be left leaning),
| intellectuals, and a larger portion of the English speaking
| urban professional population. There's more scope for speech
| critical of the government on Twitter. On the other hand,
| Facebook is far more popular, and captures a broader cross
| section of the population whose political views tend towards
| the mean in India.
| dartharva wrote:
| Incidentally, WhatsApp as a platform contributed a lot towards
| the current ruling party's electoral successes. It was and
| remains the main focused platform for BJP's campaigns.
|
| In India, WhatsApp is much more ubiquitous than any other
| platform and penetrates even the lesser developed regions - if
| one has a smartphone in India, it almost always has WhatsApp on
| it. It is even available on some feature phones in the country.
| "Texting" in India means sending a WhatsApp message.
|
| Additionally, WhatsApp also acts as a mobile payments platform in
| India. Although not very popular yet, it is increasingly becoming
| a significant sales and support platform for many businesses.
| obamaaccountooo wrote:
| in cambridge analytica documentary they showed indian national
| congress was involved in manipulation facebook users and
| whatsapp groups.
| https://www.timesnownews.com/india/article/bbc-documentary-s...
| saos wrote:
| > Additionally, WhatsApp also acts as a mobile payments
| platform in India
|
| I had no idea. Not something that's in U.K. yet.
| chupchap wrote:
| It uses UPI payment system which is also used by Google Pay
| here. So irrespective of the app you use, you can do a direct
| bank to bank transfer.
| vinay_ys wrote:
| WhatsApp Payments is tiny right now (0.81 million
| transactions in December 2020) where as the top player did
| 1000x more.
|
| See the official stats here: https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-
| do/upi/upi-ecosystem-statist...
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(page generated 2021-01-20 23:02 UTC)