[HN Gopher] Evidence found on a second Indian activist's compute...
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Evidence found on a second Indian activist's computer was planted,
report says
Author : jbegley
Score : 178 points
Date : 2021-07-06 13:16 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| lazyninja987 wrote:
| This story was close to my heart. Having grown with naxalite-
| maoist ideals, I used to rever them.
|
| During 1940-1990s Moaists did an phenomenal job in fighting for
| oppressed, they were solely responsible for minimum wage
| enforcement, stopping the exploitation of tribals.
|
| They fought off razakars with armed guerilla groups and saved
| innocent women from getting raped and mutilated.
|
| Post 1990s, The land reforms, abolition of feudal landlord
| system, employment creation actually solved most of the problems
| the poor were facing. Migration of people to urban areas
| increased. Thus, The maoists lost their purpose, and started
| searching for monsters to fight.
|
| Post 1990, maoists are bunch of thugs living in forests doing
| contract killings in their free time. They claim to fight for
| poor, but they oppose anything that bring out poor tribal people
| out of their poverty. In the last 10 years there were hunderds of
| incidents of maoists killing contractors laying roads to remote
| villages fearing the tribals will be out of their grip.
|
| Hence I have zero sympathies for these 'activists' aka hired
| thugs.
| r00fus wrote:
| This presumes that the persons so implicated were in fact,
| naxalite-maoists.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| Yup. The naxalites have been reduced to isolated pockets in
| backward areas of the country, which, for various reasons have
| remained backward.
|
| The reason for their existence is being strained for past few
| decades.
|
| It would not be far fetched to think that they will be out of
| the minds of the public in another 20 years.
| srijith259 wrote:
| What has any of that got to do with the Indian government
| planting evidence on 'activists'?
| [deleted]
| random314 wrote:
| This reads like an apologia for state fabricating evidence to
| jail social workers.
|
| Labeling social workers or human rights activists Maoists,
| naxals, antinationals, planting evidence and jailing them
| without trial for years is the regime's modus operandi.
|
| I take it that you are fine with social workers being
| imprisoned via fabricated evidence.
| justshowpost wrote:
| Yeah, Maoism caused circa 74 millions of deaths at home. Its
| very hard to believe they are treasuring _human rights_ in any
| form. We should give India a break and let them fight terrorist
| incursion before people get hurt.
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| > Hence I have zero sympathies for these 'activists' aka hired
| thugs.
|
| This is a weird derail, since the point of the posted article
| is that the evidence implicating the accused in Maoist
| sympathies was illegally planted.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > maoists are bunch of thugs living in forests doing contract
| killings in their free time. They claim to fight for poor, but
| they oppose anything that bring out poor tribal people out of
| their poverty.
|
| This is a familiar dynamic, seen also with the Shining Path
| violence in Peru. A very well-regarded book, "The Other Path"
| was written by a Peruvian economist to refute the common
| radical narratives and lay down a pathway for development that
| actually provides wider benefits for the population.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| well india is a democracy so this is obviously not possible /s
|
| edit: yeah, one of the activits died yesterday while being
| incarcerated so yeah
| ChemSpider wrote:
| well india is a democracy and that is why you are able read
| about it here.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I'm unable to figure out how this has anything to do with
| "being a democracy". Can someone explain that please?
| news_user wrote:
| The evidence was most likely planted by the investigating
| government agency. This adds to the several cases of
| crackdown against dissent, activism and criticism against
| the government.
| barbazoo wrote:
| So are parents implying that this could not have happened
| in a democracy? If so, that's most likely wrong.
| FpUser wrote:
| India openly admits putting activists in prison on bogus
| charges. What a relief, a shining example of democracy in
| action.
|
| Although when planting false evidence in the computer I have
| a bad feeling that unless the victim is some kind of VIP they
| might have big problems even in the traditional democratic
| countries.
| blocked_again wrote:
| > India openly admits putting activists in prison on bogus
| charges. What a relief, a shining example of democracy in
| action.
|
| Name five democratic countries which has not done this?
| bierjunge wrote:
| Lichtenstein, Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, Luxembourg.
| Can I have a cookie now?
| blocked_again wrote:
| So the population of the countries you listed.
|
| San Marino - Around 33k
|
| Lichtenstein - Around 38k
|
| Monaco - 38k
|
| Andorra - Around 77k
|
| Luxembourg - 600k
|
| With population of 77k, Andorra won't even make it in the
| top 300 populated cities in India. I bet it's not even in
| top 500.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_India_by_
| pop...
|
| The population of least populated state in India is
| Around 600k. So Luxembourg would barely be a state in
| India. There are more than 70 cities with bigger
| population than Luxembourg in India
|
| Honestly it's not a great way to compare democaricies
| which are not even the size of big Indian cities to
| India. But yeah. You did come up with 5 democaries that
| seems like legit good when it comes to Human rights. I
| didn't investigate about the human right violations. But
| with population so low I won't be surprised if there are
| not many.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Textbook goalpost moving.
| blocked_again wrote:
| Can't deny. But to be fair I never said you can't come up
| with 5 countries either. Tiny nations which are even
| smaller than cities are always exceptions in all kind of
| stats. The fact that they had to come up with exceptions
| validates my point that India not the only democracy
| which does this. I am not justifying it obviously.
|
| The comment I replied back make it sounds like India is
| the only democracy which does this and is not a real
| democracy like the other democracies.
|
| Obviously it's stupid to put activists in jail for bogus
| claims. And there is no justification in doing it even
| though other countries are doing it. It's pretty obvious
| to anyone with a decent IQ.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I completely fail to see how this "Validates your point".
| blocked_again wrote:
| Point is pretty much all democrasies do this and it's not
| only India(Not justifying). The fact that the OP had to
| come up with nations with population less than large
| Universities and tech companies as counter examples
| validates it.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Point is this is the definition of whataboutism. Just
| because other countries may have done this does not make
| it right.
| blocked_again wrote:
| Never said that. The comment I replied back make it
| sounds like India is the only democracy which does this
| and is not a real democracy like the other democracies.
| Obviously it's stupid to put activists in jail for bogus
| claims. And there is no justification in doing it even
| though other countries are doing it. It's pretty obvious
| to anyone with a decent IQ.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The comment actually says the opposite, that even
| "traditional democratic countries" have big problems.
| That is to say, it's always possible to improve and all
| improvement is valuable. Already India, while
| unquestionably flawed, is regarded as more democratic
| than some European countries.
| blocked_again wrote:
| I agree. India has a lot to improve on. It's far from
| perfect. And it's very hard. 1.4 billion people. 20+
| languages. So many religions. So many castes. But it
| still continue to work. With its flaws. But it's one of
| the thing that I am the most happy about this country.
| That democracy is still alive. Some more alive in some
| states than the other. We have come a long way since the
| British Colonization and the times before that. I think
| the future would be more brighter for democracy than last
| 50 years.
| swiley wrote:
| Just because the US performs extralegal execution doesn't
| justify. The same goes for anything and anyone else.
| blocked_again wrote:
| Never said that. The comment I replied back make it
| sounds like India is the only democracy which does this
| and is not a real democracy like the other democracies.
| Obviously it's stupid to put activists in jail for bogus
| claims. And there is no justification in doing it even
| though other countries are doing it. It's pretty obvious
| to anyone with a decent IQ.
| swiley wrote:
| I'm actually going to agree with that. Any country
| jailing political activists on their position alone is
| not a democracy.
| blocked_again wrote:
| Sure. But by that definition there would be only a bunch
| of tiny nations qualified as democracy in the world we
| currently live in.
| hollerith wrote:
| Name one political activist jailed by any US court for
| their position alone.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| so according to you, your neighbors committing murder
| gives YOU the right to do the same because what ??
|
| why are you bringing other countries into it? the
| question is on india here. india does this and there
| should be consequences regardless of what anyone else
| does or does not do
| FpUser wrote:
| >"so according to you, your neighbors committing murder
| gives YOU the right to do the same because what ??"
|
| Problem is when said murderers assume self-righteous
| position and pontificate how bad everyone else is.
|
| If they punish the perpetrators and fix the situation
| than sure, full respect. But just for the fuck of it: who
| for example got punished in UK for deporting and
| otherwise ruining lives of their own citizens (Windrush
| scandal)? The answer is most likely zilch. Still they
| teach everyone else.
|
| And yes I agree that the scale of abuse is way smaller in
| the countries like the US. But they compensate by abusing
| citizens of the other countries by dropping democratic
| bombs.
| blocked_again wrote:
| Never said that. The comment I replied back make it
| sounds like India is the only democracy which does this
| and is not a real democracy like the other democracies.
|
| Obviously it's stupid to put activists in jail for bogus
| claims. And there is no justification in doing it even
| though other countries are doing it. It's pretty obvious
| to anyone with a decent IQ.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| India under BJP/Modi right now is as much a "democracy" as
| Victor Orban's Hungary (in name only):
|
| https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/india
| zozbot234 wrote:
| India has always been quite far from a perfect democracy.
| Do we even have proof that this targeting of dissenters and
| opposition activists only started with BJP/Modi?
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| doesn't matter because we can't change the past. what's
| relevant today is that technology has created
| opportunities for power structures to exploit and take
| advantage at a much bigger scale.
|
| Planting of evidence (as this title points to) is just
| one of many things that are a problem when we pretend
| digital roots of trusts are flawless as is the case with
| the totally broken Aadhaar: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateR
| ange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
| pjc50 wrote:
| "Democracy" is not a boolean, and trying to make it a yes/no
| criterion for any country just collapses into whataboutery.
| Sr_developer wrote:
| That's why you never learn about shenanigans in N Korea,
| Russia and China.Yep!
| zepto wrote:
| For the most part we don't.
| Sr_developer wrote:
| Your logic is impeccable. There is a lot going on that
| you dont know, but you know it is happening. I suppose
| you are doing a lot of shady stuff in your basement but
| we dont know it.
| FpUser wrote:
| Not sure about NL/China but being able to read Russian
| freely I'd say they make more than enough stink in the
| media when someone gets problems for political activity.
| Whether the person gets a relief is of course a different
| question.
| tinuviel wrote:
| The activist who died yesterday died in a multi-speciality
| hospital.
| lazyninja987 wrote:
| The weekly anti india rant.
| whycombinatore wrote:
| How so? You sound more like - how dare you criticize someone I
| blindly support? Do you even have an argument to make?
| lazyninja987 wrote:
| my comment is based on observation that, periodically
| articles criticizing indian govt is posted to a tech feed
| that too at a regular frequency as if its planned to push
| such articles to front page.
|
| Even if i take the tech part of the above article into
| consideration, the title hints its the govt planted it, which
| is again not proved yet.
|
| Hence my comment.
| news_user wrote:
| But there is tech involved here, isn't it? It has been
| established that the evidence was planted, regardless of
| who did it, this qualifies to be a tech post.
|
| And as courts usually say, if you don't like it, don't
| watch it :)
| lazyninja987 wrote:
| haha.
|
| the article does not shy away insinuating that govt
| planted it with out any evidence. Having watched maoists
| for the last 20 years, i doubt they are the good guys in
| this story.
| 8458e112e7b2 wrote:
| Funny, most of these stories originate from the legacy media.
| Wonder what axe they have to grind? Modi belongs in the same
| boat as Putin since he does not pander to globalist interests.
| [deleted]
| upofadown wrote:
| >Any of the recipients who opened the attachment would have
| installed malware capable of monitoring and controlling their
| computers.
|
| What kind of attachment? These articles tend to concentrate on
| trivia while omitting the actual attack.
| tyingq wrote:
| You can follow a chain of links and see the actual report here:
| https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/do...
|
| Amnesty International also has an article with a lot of
| technical detail:
| https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2020/06/india-hum...
|
| Scroll down to "Variant 1" for a pretty detailed answer to your
| question.
| rajup wrote:
| Not sure how or why this belongs on HN.
| unmole wrote:
| Let me get this straight. A story about state sponsored hackers
| is out of place on hacker news?
| [deleted]
| elliekelly wrote:
| It seems like state-sponsored hackers were used by a democratic
| government to plant digital evidence on the devices of people
| critical of high-ranking politicians. I think that's
| interesting because we know state-sponsored hacking is
| increasing but this is one of the first cases I've read about
| where the targets/victims are individuals _within_ the
| sponsoring country's borders as opposed to entities outside of
| their borders.
| rajup wrote:
| I didn't see any mention of state-sponsored hackers in the
| article apart from some hand wavy associations. Care to
| elaborate?
| lazyninja987 wrote:
| The whole process of discovery reeks of conflict of interest.
|
| The audit was done by a firm at the behest of defense lawyer.
|
| Is the security firm going to get paid if they claim their is
| no evidence of a plant ?
|
| Also, its not proven its a state sponsored plant.
| elliekelly wrote:
| > Is the security firm going to get paid if they claim
| their is no evidence of a plant ?
|
| No, they won't. The article says the security group has
| worked on the case pro bono so the consultants don't get
| paid either way.
| lazyninja987 wrote:
| still does not resolve the conflict of interest.
|
| the defendant lawyer hired a firm which found evidence
| the defendant is not guilty.
|
| The pro bono part raises more suspicions. One of the
| accused activist died of old age in a top tier hospital,
| not exactly a poor client requiring pro bono work.
| elliekelly wrote:
| So it was suspicious when you thought they were getting
| paid and now it's even _more_ suspicious when you learn
| they aren't getting paid?
|
| Your logic is... suspicious.
| curryst wrote:
| That is how the system works, conflicts of interest are
| presumed on both sides. The prosection wants people to
| say they're guilty, the defense wants people who say they
| aren't guilty.
|
| The balance of evidence is against the prosecution now,
| and they can find their own expert witness if they
| disagree.
|
| That being said, blatantly lying here would be a
| deathknell for the firm. Every case where they get
| involved will mean someone brings it up as a way to
| dismiss their testimony. It would take a staggering
| payment for most firms to even debate doing something
| like this intentionally. If it were my firm and I gave up
| all my morals, I would charge more than I could sell the
| firm for. I'm giving up basically all future revenue and
| tarnishing my own name; it wouldn't be something I
| casually did.
| maskedinvader wrote:
| The How : The Hacker in Hacker News (HN) means a computer
| hacker and this story is about hacking. The Why: Because a
| community of hackers and non hackers alike who use HN found it
| interesting and upvoted it enough to make it to the frontpage.
| Hope that helps answering the how and why.
| mkl95 wrote:
| I recently learned that a region known as the red corridor that
| spans over the eastern, central, and southern parts of India
| experiences considerable Naxalite-Maoist insurgency. These are
| also areas that suffer from the greatest illiteracy, poverty and
| overpopulation in modern India [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_corridor
| gen_greyface wrote:
| Not sure what you're getting at.
| mkl95 wrote:
| The news focuses on two activists who were jailed for
| allegedly plotting an insurgency in their country, and how
| the evidence is likely fake. However there is already a major
| insurgency in that country that is virtually unknown in the
| West.
| lazyninja987 wrote:
| i live in the red corridor you highlighted. I agree with
| illiteracy, povery, but not overpopulation.
|
| Naxalite's are popular for various reasons. . they are popular
| in telengana because of oppression by muslims. . they are
| popular in bihar because of cate based oppression. . they are
| popular in andhra because of exploitation by landlords. . also
| they are mainly dependent on forest area for shelter.
| unmole wrote:
| > are popular in telengana because of oppression by muslims
|
| I am from Telangana. My grandfather was a card carrying
| Communist who was jailed by the Nizam's government for
| _seditious activities_.
|
| Any pretense of Muslim hegemony ended in Hyderabad state
| after Operation Polo. That was 72 years ago. I have no idea
| what you're talking about.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| > they are popular in telengana because of oppression by
| muslims
|
| Yeah No. I am from Telangana.
|
| They are popular here because most of the land in not fertile
| enough and thus, there is poverty and general lack of
| development, compared to other parts of the state. Also, the
| workforce does not migrate much to other parts of the world
| for work.
|
| It's not a coincidence that large areas of Bihar have seen
| reduced Naxalism, because their labor and workers have moved
| across India in search of jobs.
|
| You will not find such thing happening in Odisha or
| Telangana.
| pm90 wrote:
| Being a responsible journalist today requires a certain amount of
| digital savvy especially if you're covering controversial topics.
| Not victim blaming or anything but stuff like this is why
| journalists try to use secure messaging apps (well at least those
| they think are secure). I wonder if this is something that should
| be taught in school...
| msravi wrote:
| Notice how that none of the reports mention how the sanctity of
| the chain of custody of the hard disk has been preserved.
|
| The forensics lab in Pune, which is the authorized lab for
| examining this kind of data, and which examined the disk when the
| chain of custody was preserved, found no such planted evidence
| when the hard disk was taken in.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| They didn't identify it? Or they are claiming it's not present?
| Those are two wildly different claims. Presumably if both labs
| did their documentation correctly, it should be easy to compare
| hashes and see whether they examined different filesystems,
| which would be a prerequisite for any claim that the malware
| was added at some point following the initial government
| custody chain.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Are you suggesting the consulting firm planted the planted
| evidence?
|
| FTA, I gather the chain of custody goes: police seized the hard
| drive, made a copy, and provided the copy to the defense
| attorney who (correctly) engaged outside experts investigate.
|
| State labs can (and do) make mistakes and miss evidence. State
| prosecutors can (and do) fail to turn over exculpatory
| evidence. The whole point of a trial is that we the people and
| the defendant _don't_ just have to take the state at their
| word. We _can_ ship evidence off to a lab of our liking and, if
| the results differ from the state's lab, ask them about it in
| open court.
|
| That's _exactly_ how the system works. The charges must be
| proven by the government, not merely asserted.
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