[HN Gopher] India bans MasterCard from adding new customers
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       India bans MasterCard from adding new customers
        
       Author : Garbage
       Score  : 191 points
       Date   : 2021-07-14 13:32 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
        
       | darth_avocado wrote:
       | It is really interesting that there's even a debate over this. US
       | and EU have long had similar policies in the name of "national
       | interest" or "protecting the consumers", but if other countries
       | have similar policies, it suddenly becomes a negative thing.
       | 
       | I think the hard reality of it is data needs to be localized, to
       | ensure companies comply with local laws. Every country has
       | independent authority on how they want to run things, and whether
       | it turns out to be good or bad, companies need to follow them.
        
         | throw998877123 wrote:
         | It would have been okay if the country had a good privacy
         | protection law. And a not-so-broken justice system. The legal
         | system wears you out starting right from the troubles of filing
         | a police report (when needed). Having worked with the govt,
         | they are pretty lame on security and high on convoluted
         | regulations and harassment. The rules are applied selectively.
         | As a fact, the govt (unintentionally) leaks the citizen's data
         | and then they absolutely deny and cover up stuff. And there is
         | zero accountability. Their departments regularly access stuff
         | without proper authorisation and then store/move it insecurely
         | elsewhere.
        
       | beezischillin wrote:
       | This is just a few thoughts I came up with while reading this,
       | they might not be completely accurate and are probably very
       | sloppy but here goes...
       | 
       | In the grand scheme of things these news are kind of interesting
       | to read. I see multiple ways to characterise these events but
       | it's a bit tough to because the only words I'm able to use kind
       | of project a moral judgement onto the sides which I do not intend
       | to make because history will have to be the judge of that.
       | Needless to say, though, that I assume extreme selfishness from
       | all sides as a given.
       | 
       | With that said, you could say that this a fight between: -
       | freedom and authoritarianism /banning things -or- giving people
       | the freedom to trade by allowing foreign companies to pave the
       | way/, - globalism and nationalism /promoting the interests of the
       | local government -vs- a foreign one/ - or simply a battle of
       | political interests.
       | 
       | Probably a strange mix of all of the above, in reality.. I have a
       | hard time figuring out who to root for, though, as these western
       | multi-nationals can act pretty maliciously, too. And so do
       | governments that turn authoritarian. I'd kinda prefer neither
       | with the freedoms of all myself, but I am being unrealistic,
       | sadly.
        
       | nazrulmum10 wrote:
       | The South Asian market's central bank said the new restrictions
       | will go into effect on July 22
        
       | whall6 wrote:
       | Same thing happened to Amex
        
       | kspacewalk2 wrote:
       | The obsession with where data physically sits at rest is so
       | amusing to me. Not limited to overzealous governments and
       | financial data; healthcare is singularly obsessed with this. It
       | makes no sense whatsoever, of course. I'd much rather store
       | properly encrypted personal information or financial data in
       | North Korea than storing it unencrypted in my home country.
       | 
       | I would understand if they demanded both storage and processing
       | be done in India. Then it's just about control, and the ability
       | to sever MC's India operations from the mother ship in case
       | things go _really_ sour and the US tries to cut India off from
       | the global financial system or something. But since it 's just
       | about data at rest, it's nonsensical.
       | 
       | Or am I missing something?
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | unknownOrigin wrote:
         | > I'd much rather store properly encrypted personal information
         | or financial data in North Korea
         | 
         | Ah, a fan of cold storage, are we.
        
         | gpm wrote:
         | All data is capable of being decrypted somewhere. Usually where
         | you are storing it. Otherwise you can't do anything with it.
         | 
         | Storing data encryped in north korea, with the capability to
         | fetch and decrypt that data in Sweden, is approximately
         | equivalent to storing the unencrypted data in Sweden (as far as
         | hackers, law enforcement, etc. are concerned), except you've
         | now added the additional risk that north korea only needs to
         | exfiltrate one encryption key to gain access to all your data.
         | 
         | More reasonably, if you're storing the data in north korea,
         | that's also where you have the compute, and therefore the
         | decryption keys, and therefore someone in north korea who knows
         | what they are doing can quitely steal the decryption keys, make
         | a copy of your data, and view all the data unencrypted.
         | 
         | Encryption is only foolproof(ish) when you are sending data
         | between two trusted endpoints. That's not the case for the
         | cloud, the place you are storing the data is also almost always
         | one of the "trusted" endpoints. Encrypting the data at rest has
         | some minor benefits (being a hurdle to accessing the data,
         | meaning that theft of a single hard disk doesn't get data) but
         | doesn't provide any form of unbreakable security.
        
           | dec0dedab0de wrote:
           | _Storing data encryped in north korea, with the capability to
           | fetch and decrypt that data in Sweden, is approximately
           | equivalent to storing the unencrypted data in Sweden_
           | 
           | Not if there is rate limiting, or other means of preventing
           | the entire set of data being dumped. That is to say, storing
           | it encrypted makes it harder to get the full set of data.
           | Though, I guess in practice the client application would
           | likely be able to request all of the data from storage.
        
           | kspacewalk2 wrote:
           | Usually where you're _processing_ it, not where you 're
           | storing it. That's when you need to do something with it.
           | 
           | Encrypting the data at rest has the major benefit of making
           | its physical location completely irrelevant. Transmitting the
           | data while encrypted has the major benefit of making the
           | physical location of all the nodes through which it passes
           | completely irrelevant. Hence the only thing that matters is
           | the geographic location of where the data is _processed_ ,
           | because that is where you decrypt it. All privacy laws should
           | be written with that understanding, but they are not. They
           | are written by people who are ignorant of this simple logic,
           | because they don't understand how Internet works, how
           | encryption works, how routing traffic works and how little it
           | has to do with borders of countries, etc etc.
           | 
           | Healthcare privacy laws in my country, for example, have this
           | exactly 100% backwards. They force me to store data in my
           | country, but say nothing about where it is processed. And of
           | course there's no hard requirement to encrypt data at rest.
           | It's hard to imagine how you can get this kind of law more
           | wrong.
        
             | josefx wrote:
             | Physical location and encryption should be treated as two
             | independent protection requirements, both of which have to
             | be met. Just because something is encrypted doesn't mean it
             | is protected, we already have a few encryption schemes that
             | are no longer considered secure and even if you cannot
             | crack a scheme right now there is always the weak link[1]
             | in the chain.
             | 
             | [1]https://xkcd.com/538/
        
               | kspacewalk2 wrote:
               | If you used an encryption scheme that is no longer
               | considered secure, the correct response is not to rely on
               | the fact that the server room is under lock and key and
               | your country has, like, really nice laws and stuff. It's
               | to change the encryption scheme.
               | 
               | The XKCD cartoon is another way of stating (part of) my
               | point - it doesn't matter where the stuff is stored
               | (provided you encrypt it properly), what matters is the
               | point at which it can be accessed. A dead owner's
               | encrypted iPhone in the FBI forensics lab is more secure
               | from intrusion by the FBI than an unencrypted hard drive
               | I locked in my basement. Even if I use, like, 10 locks,
               | and they don't (yet) know it's there.
        
               | ajdude wrote:
               | I think the point the parent comment was trying to make
               | was, consider if you are storing data in North Korea;
               | it's 2010 and your encryption scheme is considered
               | secure.
               | 
               | At some point, North Korea has copied the encrypted data
               | for later data mining.
               | 
               | In 2021 that encryption scheme for some reason is no
               | longer considered secure. Even if you stepped using it in
               | 2014, the data from the time you used it up until you
               | stopped may be compromised.
        
           | dannyw wrote:
           | No, I can store encrypted data in North Korea without storing
           | any decryption keys there.
           | 
           | I run a Filecoin node and I store the data of approximately
           | 200 clients in my homelab. I don't know who they are, or what
           | they store, because it's all end to end encrypted.
           | 
           | And no -- my clients don't trust me, it's crypto, it's
           | trustless :)
        
         | nacho2sweet wrote:
         | From my understanding (I could be wrong) and why I have to
         | follow all these rules here in Canada, is the USA made a
         | homeland security law in like 2007 that said law enforcement
         | can have access to any foreign individuals data without a
         | warrant/good reason.
         | 
         | So now when picking services I am not allowed to host on any
         | non Canadian servers if we are hosting personal information
         | about staff/users etc. It can be a simple event registration
         | system, survey, or just having to be really careful when using
         | cloud services. I even have to watch out when sharing a
         | innocuous file over Slack.
         | 
         | This really sucked when stuff was moving over to cloud and we
         | wanted to use a lot of hot new stuff, but most providers get it
         | now and provide Canadian servers so not as bad finding
         | compliant vendors.
        
           | 908B64B197 wrote:
           | Ultimately, isn't it the owner of the server who's targeted
           | by the laws? Where the server is really doesn't matter that
           | much.
        
             | PeterisP wrote:
             | One thing is that usually the local server would be owned
             | and managed by a local subsidiary of that foreign company -
             | it may even be a requirement, to have them be run by a
             | local company (even if fully owned by a foreign entity)
             | with local responsible officers.
             | 
             | Another issue is establishing jurisdiction; if the server
             | is held locally, then it's clear that local laws apply to
             | things done on that server - the owner of the server can't
             | claim that they e.g. got a US subpoena and did some stuff
             | in USA that fulfills all the USA legal requirements and
             | everything that's it; if the server was physically located
             | in e.g. Canadian soil, then it means that the violation (if
             | any) happened "in Canada" even if it was done by USA-
             | located USA citizens of USA company.
        
         | KorematsuFred wrote:
         | I have been a party to some discussion around the laws with mid
         | level government officials and this was a bit like an episode
         | of Yes Minister.
         | 
         | One of the government consultants spoke about "Data
         | sovereignty". When someone asked what it meant he spoke for
         | like 10 minutes without actually answering the question. "Data
         | of Indians must belong to Indians", "Data is the gold of modern
         | world" he then referred to various international reports
         | without actually telling what those reports say.
         | 
         | "We must protect our citizens data" one official said as others
         | nodded in agreement. What they imagined here (I think) was data
         | sitting on a hard drive and protected by people with guns
         | creating a parameter around it.
         | 
         | The files of these regulations moved across many tables and
         | many offices. I am told the real estate companies in India had
         | a big role and influence on these regulations.
         | 
         | Yes, ultimately it is a ridiculous law that does not help
         | anyone. It does not protect anything.
        
         | iamgopal wrote:
         | Also, All big company shows server expense from foreign country
         | and move profit earned from India to abroad. This way some part
         | of the profit stays in india.
        
         | passivate wrote:
         | Governments care about financial data for a lot of legitimate
         | reasons, including fraud, criminal activity, etc. Having the
         | data local makes sending legal notices for data access easier
         | and makes supervision easier. A country shouldn't rely on
         | sending international data-access petitions to random data
         | centers with possibly hostile governments who will fight them
         | on jurisdiction and non-treaty grounds.
         | 
         | I think what they're doing makes sense.
        
         | kube-system wrote:
         | There's multiple reasons. Mostly: jurisdiction and
         | protectionism.
        
         | rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
         | Will you always be able to access your data stored on North
         | Korean soil?
         | 
         | Sure, if it's properly encrypted, the North Korean government
         | may not be able to access it, but nothing's stopping them from
         | cutting you off and holding your data hostage.
         | 
         | I used to work for a company that made software for casinos.
         | Many of them were on tribal land, and refused to use any cloud
         | services because they didn't want any of their data on American
         | soil. All their software was on-prem, all their data was on-
         | prem. If Uncle Sam came a-knockin' with warrants and court
         | orders, they'd tell him to take it up with the tribal elders.
        
         | sneak wrote:
         | > _It makes no sense whatsoever, of course._
         | 
         | Silent, bulk, state-mandated surveillance.
         | 
         | Both for the at-home surveillance, as well as to counter the
         | effect of storing it elsewhere, and permitting _that_ state
         | silent, bulk surveillance of the data of your own subjects
         | /citizens.
        
         | EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
         | Of course they also require full unencrypted access to the
         | data. If the company doesn't surrender the keys to the server
         | data, they can just switch the server off.
        
         | spoonjim wrote:
         | The obsession with physical data residence comes from the
         | physical nature of government's power: the ability to apply
         | violence within its borders. The Indian government wants as
         | much data (and encryption keys) inside Indian borders as
         | possible because it can send in guys with guns to take it
         | whenever they want.
        
           | naruvimama wrote:
           | Providing guys with guns is the primary purpose of any
           | government.
        
         | argomo wrote:
         | > I'd much rather store properly encrypted personal information
         | or financial data in North Korea than storing it unencrypted in
         | my home country.
         | 
         | You might feel comfortable with that as an individual, but
         | geopolitically speaking, India would be giving North Korea a
         | pretty bargaining chip by letting payment processors store
         | their data there (if they were so inclined). Imagine the havoc
         | that could be caused! By requiring data residency, it is
         | instead India who gets a pretty bargaining chip against these
         | huge multi-national corporations.
        
         | bushbaba wrote:
         | Forcing the data to reside in India. Forces companies to build
         | data centers (jobs) in India. Forces the deployments to be in
         | India. And drives benefits to the local players over
         | international bodies.
        
           | kspacewalk2 wrote:
           | Yeah, I suspect that is the logic, such as it is. Quite
           | unburdened with an understanding of how trade works, and
           | seemingly susceptible to the greater fool theory of trade -
           | I'll do it because I'm so smart, but that guy over there
           | won't, and my companies will reap benefits. Not for long.
        
             | ngc248 wrote:
             | The Chinese great firewall, even though it is primarily to
             | not allow info flow from outside, one benefit has been
             | that, a lot of the internet companies that operate in china
             | have been local and they were able to develop without any
             | competition from western players. This has benefited china
             | and its companies. But in the rest of the world its mostly
             | the SV companies who rule the roost.
             | 
             | There are bith advantages and disadvantages to
             | protectionism I feel.
        
         | phoe-krk wrote:
         | _> I 'd much rather store properly encrypted personal
         | information or financial data in North Korea than storing it
         | unencrypted in my home country._
         | 
         | What do you mean by "properly encrypted"? MasterCard is not
         | going to let you be the sole holder of your encryption keys.
         | And if you aren't holding them, then they they hold it, and
         | then they must be holding in at least one given country. And
         | that country has the power to force them to turn these keys
         | over.
         | 
         | The power to do this is the goal of this game.
        
           | kspacewalk2 wrote:
           | That country _already_ has the power to force them to turn
           | these keys over (or use the keys to decrypt data of
           | interest). Every non-tax-haven country which regulates its
           | financial sector does (so, every country). It 's unclear what
           | is added by forcing them to store data locally.
        
             | phoe-krk wrote:
             | In most cases you can't easily tell that company to hand
             | over data that is held in another country though.
        
         | ko27 wrote:
         | > I'd much rather store properly encrypted personal information
         | or financial data in North Korea than storing it unencrypted in
         | my home country
         | 
         | That encryption is pointlesss. North Korea can just demand the
         | key and decrypt your data (assuming the company has presence in
         | that country). Very few services have true end to end
         | encryption. Currently it's not even feasible for healthcare
         | data (homomorphic encryption is not practical yet).
        
           | kspacewalk2 wrote:
           | North Korea can demand what it wants. I'm not in North Korea.
           | 
           | For North Koreans, all encryption is indeed pointless if the
           | goal is to hide it from the government, regardless of where
           | they want to store data, for this very reason.
           | 
           | I can implement true end-to-end encryption in about 30
           | minutes (only because I gotta look up where I implemented it
           | last). I will encrypt my data using well known and validated
           | libraries, send it over to the cloud. Retrieve when I need it
           | and decrypt it then. Not sure what about this is not
           | feasible.
        
             | ko27 wrote:
             | You are moving the goal posts. Of course simple data
             | storage can be made secure, because you have the key. But
             | the article is talking about financial data that is
             | processed by companies. And you mentioned healthcare data,
             | which would also be processed. The companies have the key
             | and they can be forced to hand it over easily.
             | 
             | What use is end to end encryption for your healthcare data,
             | if nobody except you can process that data? In that case,
             | why don't you just put it on some external hard drive?
        
               | derenge wrote:
               | I think the point they are making hinges on the fact that
               | the data just has to be _stored_ there. You can do the
               | processing outside of India, so a company can store the
               | encrypted data in India but process the decrypted data
               | elsewhere.
        
         | herbst wrote:
         | > I'd much rather store properly encrypted personal information
         | or financial data in North Korea than storing it unencrypted in
         | my home country.
         | 
         | How about it gets encrypted same way in North Korea or South
         | Korea. Which one would you prefer?
         | 
         | What if North Korea says it is properly encrypted and gov has
         | no easy access, but we all know that could be just as well
         | wrong?
         | 
         | The U.S. Not exactly enjoys a lot of trust internationally when
         | it comes to customer protection and privacy.
        
           | kspacewalk2 wrote:
           | >How about it gets encrypted same way in North Korea or South
           | Korea. Which one would you prefer?
           | 
           | Whichever is cheaper and/or more reliable. If I trust
           | encryption, all other answers are bogus.
           | 
           | >What if North Korea says it is properly encrypted and gov
           | has no easy access, but we all know that could be just as
           | well wrong?
           | 
           | In this scenario, I decide how to encrypt my data. The
           | storage service is just dumb disk space for me to rent. Call
           | it The People's Democratic B2. Otherwise, it's not really
           | secure no matter who gives you assurances.
        
             | herbst wrote:
             | I doubt it would be an option for MasterCard that countries
             | get to decide how they encrypt the related data. But I get
             | your point :)
        
         | signal11 wrote:
         | India wants data residency because it wants to apply its own
         | somewhat unique approach to law enforcement to all digital data
         | -- financial and otherwise.
         | 
         | This is a country that switches off mobile data (3G and 4G) at
         | the drop of a hat[1], and switched off an entire state's mobile
         | Internet access for _18 months_ [2].
         | 
         | This may appear unnecessary and capricious to some especially
         | in the West. However I'm sure pro-Indian government commenters
         | will say "we're sovereign, our government can do as it likes as
         | it has a democratic mandate" and that is of course true. _And
         | that is, in my view, the driver for India's interest in data
         | residency_. Its laws allow its government an enormous degree of
         | latitude to do what it likes. When it has to access foreign
         | data it is often thwarted by EU or US privacy  & legal rules,
         | which it feels is unbecoming of a nation as geopolitically
         | important as India.
         | 
         | What I feel about this is that of course India has the
         | sovereign right to do as it pleases, but its messy, adhoc
         | approach to digital governance won't win it any laurels and
         | will actually tarnish its reputation. Also, it would be on a
         | much better footing if it passed a decent law on digital
         | privacy, which many have been saying is long overdue -- leading
         | to a flourishing unregulated economy in selling Indians'
         | data[3].
         | 
         | [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-50819905
         | 
         | [2] https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/05/india-is-
         | restoring-4g-inte...
         | 
         | [3] https://restofworld.org/2020/all-the-data-fit-to-sell/
        
           | alienthrowaway wrote:
           | > And that is, in my view, the driver for India's interest in
           | data residency.
           | 
           | I thought you were going to go further with that thought. I'm
           | from an African country where the government tried to block
           | social media during protests at DNS level. These efforts were
           | trivially thwarted by using VPNs. The next trick was to _cut
           | off the internet entirely_ - unfortunately for the
           | government, this broke electronic payments and ground the
           | economy to a halt, so the internet blackout lasted a day.
           | 
           | I suspect one of the factors is that India wants to be able
           | to cut itself off from the internet without breaking
           | (payment) systems that have data stored offshore.
        
           | DaiPlusPlus wrote:
           | > leading to a flourishing unregulated economy in selling
           | Indians' data
           | 
           | At risk of being incredibly inflammatory - this is the first
           | I've heard of bulk Indian citizens' data being worth enough
           | to harvest in the first place - what's changed?
        
             | signal11 wrote:
             | You can see datasets purporting to be, for instance,
             | details about students appearing for various Indian
             | competitive exams for as little as $50-100[1]. Other
             | datasets are costlier, of course.
             | 
             | If you're marketing to that demographic (e.g. potential ads
             | for private colleges, or other courses), your budget won't
             | be super high, but you might well spend a little for a
             | bunch of emails of potential leads.
             | 
             | [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/63s18q/student_
             | data_...
        
           | passivate wrote:
           | >What I feel about this is that of course India has the
           | sovereign right to do as it pleases, but its messy, adhoc
           | approach to digital governance won't win it any laurels and
           | will actually tarnish its reputation. Also, it would be on a
           | much better footing if it passed a decent law on digital
           | privacy, which many have been saying is long overdue --
           | leading to a flourishing unregulated economy in selling
           | Indians' data[3].
           | 
           | You seem to be on a general critique of Indian policy, and
           | also applying it to this specific case. If we untangle those
           | two for a moment, what exactly is messy, adhoc about this
           | financial data residency requirement? It seems logical to me
           | that local financial data should remain local for legitimate
           | legal reasons (supervision of fraud/criminality being the
           | most obvious ones). Why would this tarnish their reputation?
        
           | mdasen wrote:
           | To expand on this a bit, if you want leverage over companies
           | like MasterCard, Visa, and American Express, it definitely
           | helps to have the data in your jurisdiction. As you noted,
           | they will shut off mobile internet to support the state. If
           | Visa decides that it doesn't want to give the government data
           | on someone's transactions, it helps to have that data in the
           | country.
           | 
           | "Oh, but the data is encrypted." Sure, but the country could
           | literally seize all of the servers and shut down the payment
           | processor. "Hey, American Express, if you don't give us the
           | data we want, we'll simply take your whole payment network
           | offline."
           | 
           | It's a lot harder to pressure a payment network when you
           | don't have physical control - especially if that payment
           | network can challenge you in court. It's easy for the
           | government to shut off mobile networks that are physically
           | present. It's harder for the government to stop traffic from
           | routing to a payment processor whose servers are outside of
           | the country - especially if they have a half-decent
           | security/threat team ready to avoid blocks.
           | 
           | I don't know the laws of India, but it seems likely that the
           | Executive has a certain amount of discretion that can be
           | challenged. However, it's a lot harder to challenge that
           | discretion if your business is offline for a year while you
           | challenge it. Payment processors need to comply with local
           | laws, but if you're a country where the Executive doesn't
           | mind disrupting services, that gives them a huge amount of
           | leverage to get your compliance beyond local laws. If the
           | data is hosted outside of India, it's a lot easier to to
           | simply comply with the laws rather than the laws _plus_
           | whatever the Executive thinks they can claim the laws
           | support.
           | 
           | Ultimately, if the data is stored within India, the Indian
           | government can be an existential threat to their business in
           | the country beyond what the law allows. A company will hand
           | over data rather than seeing its servers seized for a year
           | while a trial ensues. During that year, they'd lose all their
           | customers to competitors and they'd be shut out of the
           | market. Likewise, what if the government "accidentally"
           | damages the data when they lose the trial? If you have 100M
           | customers in a country and each is carrying a balance of
           | $100, that's $10B that people owe. If the government has
           | seized all those records and then damages them, your business
           | is in a lot of trouble.
           | 
           | Data residency gives a government willing to bully companies
           | a lot of power. It's simply a lot harder to access
           | information stored abroad and you have a lot less leverage.
        
             | kspacewalk2 wrote:
             | Still not really buying the physical control of data
             | argument. If you need to force a company like MC to comply,
             | you can always solve that problem at the point of sale, or
             | (like they're doing right now) stop banks, which are firmly
             | under your jurisdiction, from issuing cards. A company will
             | hand over data rather than be banned from operating in the
             | country, just the same.
             | 
             | The amount of leverage you have with data being abroad is
             | approximately the same - you can decree that your financial
             | institutions or businesses are committing a crime when
             | transacting with said company, and that is all.
        
               | r9 wrote:
               | As far as I can tell, there's a fair bit of difference
               | between "decreed a crime" and "we've backed up a truck to
               | the DC, and physically seized your data, do as we say if
               | want it back"
        
             | KorematsuFred wrote:
             | > Data residency gives a government willing to bully
             | companies a lot of power. It's simply a lot harder to
             | access information stored abroad and you have a lot less
             | leverage.
             | 
             | You have no clue how much uncontrolled power Indian
             | government has today. This law is brought in to benefit
             | telecom companies and real estate companies.
             | https://www.business-
             | standard.com/article/companies/hiranand...
        
       | rowland66 wrote:
       | There has been alot of innovation in digital payments in India
       | over the last 10 years. There are a number of local alternatives
       | to traditional card brands. This might be a combination of
       | protectionism to support local payment alternatives, and
       | international card network unwillingness to invest in India given
       | declining market share.
        
       | IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
       | we have known for some time since well before the Tiktok ban in
       | the US, that the world wide web was heading to the fractured web.
       | 
       | It started with china. The moment the world accepted their
       | firewall conditions, it was the moment that we said we are OK
       | with letting you earn the benefits of the web, without the cost
       | of openness.
       | 
       | Open countries could set a marker on this issue. Either you are
       | open or your are not. And if you aren't , you will be dooned to
       | rot in your protectionist web.
       | 
       | We didnt set the marker, so here we are.
        
         | eunos wrote:
         | I argue that Snowden's disclosure accelerated the trends.
        
       | yawaworht1978 wrote:
       | I don't see the problem. When in Rome...
       | 
       | It will create job in India. The government doesn't allow
       | multinational companies to get away with having all the market
       | access and data control while evading taxes.
        
       | naruvimama wrote:
       | Banking is highly regulated, AFAIK the government even gets to
       | audit you server deployment and security measures.
       | 
       | Nothing but yet another American company that would like India to
       | behave like a colony.
        
       | ramshanker wrote:
       | Let us not forget, rules were formulated in 2018. Planned to be
       | implemented by Dec 2018. Companies kept requesting extension of
       | deadline. Finally RBI had enough. They have been given
       | substantial time. At this point, non-compliance simply means un-
       | willingness. Whether for political or technical reason.
       | 
       | It is not a surprise-everyone move. Indian central bank is
       | following consistent long term policy. I feel overall it is good.
        
       | asaddhamani wrote:
       | Data from Indian transactions should be stored and ideally even
       | processed in India. This seems fair and reasonable to me.
        
         | spankalee wrote:
         | There are 196 countries in the world.
        
         | zohch wrote:
         | What makes it fair and reasonable and does whatever rationale
         | you use here not open up the door to further nativism?
         | 
         | I mean if it is fair and reasonable that Indian transactions
         | should be stored and processed in India, is it not also fair
         | and reasonable that goods sold in India should be made in
         | India, that movies that show in India should be made in India,
         | that all news consumed in India should be written in India?
         | 
         | I get these are not the same, but what is the real difference
         | here? Where does it become unreasonable in my examples and why?
        
           | strategyanalyst wrote:
           | There is not a single country in the world where largest bank
           | is not a bank based in that country. Like money, data is
           | something sovereign nations want to control.
           | 
           | EU, China and India all have areas where they want US based
           | firms to store data in a specific way. This isn't changing
           | anytime soon.
        
           | passivate wrote:
           | > is it not also fair and reasonable that goods sold in India
           | should be made in India, that movies that show in India
           | should be made in India, that all news consumed in India
           | should be written in India?
           | 
           | Of course, thats what every country wants, and they develop
           | policies that give tax breaks or concessions to local
           | businesses. That's why tariffs were enacted.
           | 
           | I'm sorry, I don't really get your point, maybe you can
           | restate it?
        
           | herbst wrote:
           | There is a huge difference to your other examples. The US
           | does not actually have a good track record with protecting
           | their customers with proper privacy laws.
        
             | thayne wrote:
             | I'm not sure what that has to do with this. There could be
             | laws requiring that the data be kept secure and private
             | without specifying that it has to be kept in a certain
             | location.
             | 
             | Besides which, India doesn't have a good track record of
             | protecting privacy either.
        
               | herbst wrote:
               | True, but if it's not hosted under your own control it
               | basically is fully out of your control. Doesn't the US
               | gov / the 3 letter agencies basically have access to
               | everything hosted within the US?
               | 
               | Sure there are other ways, but India seems to like to go
               | for the most radical solutions at times
        
               | Shorel wrote:
               | They also seem to have access to everything that goes
               | through the submarine cables near their shores.
               | 
               | So data is spied on just by being routed near them, it is
               | not needed for them to be the destination.
        
               | NotEvil wrote:
               | US having access to indian date has limited impact on
               | india while Indian govt having same data have major
               | impact on india
        
               | herbst wrote:
               | I don't disagree. It is dystopian, but so is a single
               | country having access to the majority of the world's
               | transactions.
        
         | thunderbong wrote:
         | Why does it matter where the data is located?
        
           | sn41 wrote:
           | It matters which jurisdiction can order the data to be
           | decrypted.
        
         | thayne wrote:
         | You think it is fair for companies to be required to run
         | servers in every country they operate in? That seems pretty
         | wasteful and inefficient to me.
        
           | gpm wrote:
           | It's a billion person country.
           | 
           | It might not make sense for _every_ country to demand things
           | like this, but that doesn 't mean it doesn't make sense for
           | giant countries too, and it doesn't make it inefficient.
           | 
           | At India's scale costs are already amortized anyways, but
           | worse, consider India's physical location. It's surrounded by
           | hostile nations (Myanmar, China, Pakistan, make a wall around
           | it). To get data out of the country you're talking about
           | moving it through hostile territory, or moving it through
           | vulnerable subsea cables. Not only is the bandwidth probably
           | more wasteful than the extra compute needed to spin up
           | another set of servers to serve the billion people in India,
           | but the network cannot be relied on to keep working during
           | any sort of crisis.
           | 
           | Luxembourg or whatever demanding all data processing
           | happening internally would be meaningfully different. It's
           | less than a million people to amortize over instead of more
           | than a billion. It's next door to allies which the data could
           | reasonably be stored and processed in, instead of isolated.
           | But we're not talking about whether or not Luxembourg should
           | demand this, we're talking about whether or not India should.
        
             | nradov wrote:
             | Data can also move by satellite.
        
               | isatty wrote:
               | Nowhere near enough.
        
               | gpm wrote:
               | Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe
               | there is meaningful amounts of bandwidth available via
               | satellite today. Even something like starlink today is
               | just a bent pipe from ground station to ground station
               | (and is super recent).
               | 
               | Whatever bandwidth is available would undoubtedly be
               | quickly consumed if the land lines were cut...
        
             | actuator wrote:
             | Afaik, Myanmar is not a hostile country. Neither the
             | elected government nor the military dictatorship has
             | animosity at the state level.
        
               | gpm wrote:
               | To be honest I know next to nothing about Myanmar<->India
               | relations. Everyone has been suggesting that the new
               | Myanmar government is closely related to China, so I was
               | substituting in the China<->India relations.
        
               | 0xcafecafe wrote:
               | Right now yes. However any neighboring country with a
               | recent coup doesn't fill you with confidence.
        
               | anticodon wrote:
               | China and India are not friends. China needs Myanmar
               | because it would allow it to transfer its goods faster
               | and cheaper: no need to go around through Strait of
               | Malacca.
               | 
               | If pro-China government is installed in Myanmar it means
               | that it automatically becomes hostile to India.
               | 
               | Controlling trade routes explains many wars and coups.
        
           | Shorel wrote:
           | If it was wasteful, then there would be no CDNs like Akamai
           | and Cloudflare.
           | 
           | And Netflix would not have data centers in virtually every
           | ISP in the world.
           | 
           | Ohh poor Netflix, the bandwidth costs are so unfair to them!
        
             | thayne wrote:
             | Mastercard isn't Netflix. The amount of bandwidth is likely
             | orders of magnitude less.
        
           | passivate wrote:
           | We require businesses to register themselves, to file taxes
           | in every country, etc, etc. We don't have global governments,
           | and supervision of local financial data for fraud/criminal
           | activity should be done locally. It sounds to me like its
           | more efficient compared to the alternative.
        
       | kyrra wrote:
       | FYI, American Express and Diners Club have already been banned
       | from adding new customers in India due to the same thing.
       | 
       | https://www.reuters.com/article/india-banking-american-expre...
        
         | vishnugupta wrote:
         | > the subscriptions are now required to be paid monthly by
         | people
         | 
         | I have a bunch of subscriptions (App Store, JetBrains, AWS
         | etc.,) which continue to seamlessly go through without me
         | having to explicitly authorise each month.
         | 
         | I suspect there is a fine print/subtext to that subscriptions
         | rule that isn't accessible to public.
        
           | kyrra wrote:
           | Sorry, I deleted that part of the comment as it didn't apply
           | to this topic at hand. Multiple companies have dropped
           | subscription support in india or changed things due to the
           | recent RBI rules around mandates.
           | 
           | https://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/amazon-prime-
           | membership-o...
           | 
           | https://help.ads.microsoft.com/#apex/ads/en/52003/3
           | 
           | EDIT: Another useful one:
           | https://support.google.com/pay/india/answer/10710851?hl=en
           | 
           | It looks like existing subscriptions were grandfathered until
           | Sept 30, which is why you haven't seen a change. But new
           | accounts cannot use subscriptions until the company has
           | properly implemented e-mandates.
        
             | vishnugupta wrote:
             | You are right in that I haven't seen any Indian merchants
             | offer subscriptions anymore. And yes that e-mandate, I
             | believe that UX is not ideal so there's not much adoption.
             | E-Mandates were launched as part of UPI 2.0 but there are
             | hardly any merchant offering them. I wonder what's holding
             | them back besides bad UX.
             | 
             | But I have a gut feeling that international merchants are
             | exempted from this rule. Because I can go to JetBrains even
             | now and subscribe to their products.
        
         | r-w wrote:
         | Third paragraph from the bottom in the post you're literally
         | commenting on :)
        
       | bloniac wrote:
       | All the tech people in this thread arguing how it makes no
       | difference technically where the data resides etc etc. really
       | guys can you not think further than that? It's simple and obvious
       | the Indian government is exercising total control over its
       | affairs. Naming technical distinctions completely misses the
       | point.
       | 
       | This is not a technical issue and has zero to do with tech. It's
       | political.
        
         | lou1306 wrote:
         | Data residency absolutely makes a difference, and I find it
         | stunning that people don't see it.
         | 
         | Ok, so you decide to store your nation's sensitive data in
         | another country, $nation. If things get awry, there is a
         | (pretty remote) risk that $nation will break your encryption.
         | But there's also a much less remote risk that $nation will
         | simply block all connections from your country and prevent you
         | from accessing your own data. How do you deal with such a
         | threat?
        
       | hnbad wrote:
       | I find it interesting that the card companies are concerned
       | storing the data in India could allow the government access to it
       | when the data apparently currently resides in the US. Either
       | they're doing something with the data in the US that prevents the
       | US from accessing it the way India could or they're just
       | accepting the US being able to access it as a given and don't see
       | why Indian customers wouldn't want that.
        
       | bserge wrote:
       | Is this hard to implement for MasterCard?
       | 
       | Otherwise, it seems reasonable to me, but I'm not that
       | knowledgeable in this area.
        
         | kyrra wrote:
         | Yes, it is. You either need to entirely fork your operation to
         | have it operate entirely within India, or be extremely careful
         | with how you store your data, and store the data only in India,
         | but process it in other data centers without ever having it
         | touched disk. Which I believed means you can never even log the
         | data.
        
           | passivate wrote:
           | How long do you think it will take to do it?
        
           | ntrz wrote:
           | The rule[0] says that you can process the data abroad,
           | including storing it on disk temporarily for purposes of
           | processing, as long as it is deleted within 24 hours. So it's
           | not quite as strict as requiring it be kept in memory the
           | whole time without ever writing to disk, but it does sound
           | like you probably couldn't keep detailed logs.
           | 
           | [0] https://rbi.org.in/CommonPerson/english/Scripts/FAQs.aspx
           | ?Id...
        
             | KineticLensman wrote:
             | > but it does sound like you probably couldn't keep
             | detailed logs.
             | 
             | Or backups.
        
               | toomuchtodo wrote:
               | Backups for India can be kept in India. It is a big
               | country.
        
           | BitwiseFool wrote:
           | As difficult as this will be to implement, I suspect it will
           | be a boon for the Indian IT industry. I suspect MasterCard
           | and others will comply with the new law in due time simply
           | because the Indian market is so vast and full of revenue
           | potential.
        
           | captn3m0 wrote:
           | The original RBI circular was in 2018[1] with a audit date
           | set for December 2018. That wasn't met as most companies
           | requested for an extension, which the RBI gave multiple
           | times.
           | 
           | So yes, it is difficult - but it has been years since
           | MasterCard knew about this.
           | 
           | [1]: https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=
           | 1124...
        
         | vishnugupta wrote:
         | The physical hosting while not trivial is not a big challenge.
         | They need to find a reliable hosting provider in India and
         | there are many.
         | 
         | Where it gets really hairy is routing. Example - handling
         | payments of Indian international travellers; or card details
         | entered on websites that are hosted outside of India.
         | 
         | I worked on a similar project but 1/10th of scale and even then
         | it was extremely tricky to cover all the edge cases.
        
       | sudhirj wrote:
       | I can't make out if these rules are specific to India. Doesn't
       | the EU have the same data residency rules as well? Why are
       | Mastercard and Amex struggling with this?
        
         | 1024core wrote:
         | You see, it's an issue only when the "filthy Indians" do it.
         | It's perfectly fine when EU or the US do it. /s
        
         | herbst wrote:
         | It's not a non issue either. Several countries already use
         | different systems that do not depend on US credit card
         | companies anymore. Not because it is banned, but because it
         | obviously is a suboptimal solution.
        
         | elliekelly wrote:
         | I suspect this is more a case of "unwilling" rather than
         | "unable". Slightly related, China recently passed a similar law
         | :https://www.ropesgray.com/en/newsroom/alerts/2021/July/China..
         | .
        
         | ntrz wrote:
         | The Indian rule seems to require all data be stored strictly
         | inside India, without any of it being stored outside the
         | country. The EU permits data to be transferred outside the EU
         | under a number of circumstances: e.g. if the other country has
         | equivalent data protection laws, if the non-EU company you're
         | transferring the data to has promised to abide by the EU rules,
         | stuff like that. Take this with a grain of salt, of course,
         | because I'm not a lawyer, but that's how I understand it.
        
           | rjzzleep wrote:
           | Actually the European courts struck down Privacy Shield. So
           | any company transferring data to the US is doing it
           | illegally. Plenty of active lawsuits against google. But as
           | much as HN likes to bash google, people here are pretty
           | submissive when one is asking for advice on legal options
           | against these companies.
           | 
           | https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53418898
        
             | ntrz wrote:
             | As far as I know it's still possible to transfer data from
             | the EU to the US under the GDPR if the companies involved
             | have signed a ``standard contractual clause''[0] (the
             | article says this was also a target of the Privacy Shield
             | suit but the courts chose to continue to allow it).
             | 
             | [0] https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-
             | protection/inte...
        
               | johncolanduoni wrote:
               | Right, which Google[1], Amazon[2], and Microsoft[3] even
               | offer to third parties on their cloud platforms. That
               | ruling was mostly just a quibbling about the legal
               | particulars, it didn't change anything on the ground.
               | 
               | [1]: https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/10042247
               | ?hl=en [2]:
               | https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/customer-update-
               | aws-an... [3]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
               | us/compliance/regulatory/offer...
        
             | tristor wrote:
             | > people here are pretty submissive when one is asking for
             | advice on legal options against these companies.
             | 
             | I think to be fair to the HN community on this topic, most
             | of us are not lawyers and shouldn't be providing legal
             | advice. And maybe more importantly, at least in the US, the
             | most rational advice starts with step one being "have at
             | least $500M in a legal fund", which precludes most people
             | from being able to effectively execute a suit against
             | Google.
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | petre wrote:
           | Does Indian controlled AJK and Ladakh qualify as "inside
           | India"?
        
             | tusharpandey13 wrote:
             | I can't imagine any servers being set up in AJK or Ladakh
             | in the near future.
        
             | selimthegrim wrote:
             | Indian controlled AJK is like two villages in Kargil.
        
             | damn_trolls wrote:
             | Yes. Do you have a point?
        
             | actuator wrote:
             | Do they have control of the lands you mentioned at present?
             | That's the only reality that counts to make it within the
             | country.
             | 
             | Also, Ladakh is hardly a troubled area from within.
        
       | vxNsr wrote:
       | India's been on a tear lately, first sci-hub, then Twitter now
       | this... seems they're growing up.
        
       | debacle wrote:
       | It is good to see India growing as a world power as the largest
       | democracy in the world.
        
         | pavs wrote:
         | They have been "growing" and "becoming" the next world leader
         | for a while now.
         | 
         | Anyone who have lived in india long enough will tell you how
         | far from the truth this is.
         | 
         | The only Stick India has, besides their nuclear arsenal, is the
         | size of their domestic market (aka population). I dont think
         | the purchasing power of their domestic market is that lucrative
         | compare to actual superpowers (Economic or Military). Buy just
         | large enough for International companies to bother to invest.
         | 
         | The whole political platform for Modi is religious fanaticism,
         | nationalosm and jingoism. Any sane, rational Indian leader
         | would not be so Anti international investment. (I am not only
         | talking about the incident mentioned in this article, but
         | generally speaking).
         | 
         | If you can look past the billionaires and the prosperous cities
         | of India (however few), it eirily feels like the whole country
         | is for most part still stuck in the 80s.
         | 
         | Most people tout india as the largest democracy with diverse
         | relious population. The reality on the ground could not have
         | been farther from truth.
         | 
         | In reality the country feels like its always in the state of
         | experiment by their political leaders, competing with each
         | other to find the best way to fuck things up without actually
         | blowing up the country. Yet.
        
           | eklavya wrote:
           | Yeah Modi is pretty anti international investment, just look
           | here since he got into power FDI has dropped in India by
           | almost -100%
           | https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IND/india/foreign-
           | dire...
           | 
           | Also all the PLI schemes for companies are pretty anti
           | international investment, so companies from Samsung to Apple
           | are all investing big.
        
             | m0llusk wrote:
             | There are a lot of factors involved with all of that. I
             | would argue that what has happened is that Modi's policies,
             | even ones that might seem reasonable at the start like
             | reforming the currency, have as executed ended up creating
             | enormous difficulties for business in India and that
             | investment has dropped primarily as a result of Indian
             | business struggling amid their current circumstances.
        
               | xNeil wrote:
               | Demonetization in 2016 turned out to be a horrible move,
               | that backfired a bit, although I supported it when it
               | came out.
               | 
               | GST implementation has been quite successful, FDI has
               | increased since Modi came to power. The pandemic, of
               | course, has been pretty bad, with the GDP contracting 8%
               | in 2020.
        
             | xNeil wrote:
             | FDI in India was $35 Billion when Modi came to power, and
             | is >$50 Billion today. Are you being sarcastic?
        
               | not2b wrote:
               | Obviously: 'dropped by -100%' means 'increased by 100%'.
               | Looks like you missed the minus sign.
        
           | addicted wrote:
           | To be fair, there was a strong bull case to be made for India
           | till the early 2010s, especially in how well it recovered
           | from the financial crisis.
           | 
           | The problem is that Modi has brought an insane blend of pre
           | liberalization economic policy, centralized authoritarian
           | control, and british inspired religion based divide and
           | conquer policies that have set India back a couple of
           | generations at least, possibly permanently if he remains in
           | power and continues down this path.
        
       | ntrz wrote:
       | So, the reason is that the entirety of the customer data must be
       | stored locally in India, rather than on a server located
       | elsewhere[0]? Does anyone know why the rule in India is so much
       | stricter than the equivalent GDPR rule[1], which allows transfer
       | of data outside the EU in various circumstances (basically if
       | it's assured that it won't lead to the data being subject to much
       | laxer standards of protection)?
       | 
       | According to the article, the banks are saying the reason it's
       | much stricter than the equivalent EU data residency requirements
       | is to ensure the Indian government can spy on customer data. Is
       | there a more reasonable, less malicious reason they may have
       | written the requirements this way?
       | 
       | [0]
       | https://rbi.org.in/CommonPerson/english/Scripts/FAQs.aspx?Id...
       | 
       | [1] https://gdpr.eu/article-44-transfer-of-personal-data/
        
         | naruvimama wrote:
         | This applies to a critical infrastructure one of national
         | security.
         | 
         | GDPR is about privacy.
        
         | frabcus wrote:
         | If I was running a large country, I'd want transactions to be
         | entirely local for national security reasons. Generally, in the
         | event of a world war, I wouldn't want it to be trivial for
         | other countries to remotely cut off my whole economy.
        
           | ntrz wrote:
           | From the text of the rule:
           | 
           | > There is no bar on processing of payment transactions
           | outside India if so desired by the PSOs. However, the data
           | shall be stored only in India after the processing. The
           | complete end-to-end transaction details should be part of the
           | data.
           | 
           | So this only applies to the customer data, not the actual
           | systems that do the transaction processing and verification.
           | The systems that actually do the work could still be cut off
           | from India, leaving them with nothing but a database of
           | customer transactions.
        
           | seunosewa wrote:
           | How about just avoiding wars? Global interdependence of
           | countries is beneficial for this reason. Also, India's
           | military is no match for and unlikely to have any reason to
           | fight the external countries where MasterCard's data is
           | likely to be stored (US, UK, etc).
        
             | jessedhillon wrote:
             | In the case of MasterCard that might be true, but the law
             | applies generally. It's not inconceivable that another
             | piece of critical infrastructure could be provided by a
             | country who has a data center in a more likely adversary,
             | say, China. In general, the Indian approach is not to
             | whitelist everything and then blacklist whatever specific
             | exceptions become necessary, but the reverse.
             | 
             | As for avoiding war: sure, but how should we conduct things
             | _until_ utopia arrives?
        
             | ncallaway wrote:
             | > How about just avoiding wars?
             | 
             | Countries simply do not have the unilateral ability to
             | avoid wars.
        
               | rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
               | The easiest way to prevent war is to make it uneconomical
               | -- like it was in the past. War should bankrupt a
               | country. Years long fighting like we saw in the 20th
               | century is a product of loose monetary policy.
               | 
               | When a country can print itself out of debt (or more
               | accurately, kick the can down the road for the next
               | generation), war is inevitable. If we remove the ability
               | to do this, a prolonged war becomes far less likely.
        
               | ncallaway wrote:
               | But, again, that's not something a country can
               | unilaterally control.
               | 
               | If a nation's neighbors have the capability to fight a
               | years long war, but that same war would bankrupt the
               | nation, then the
               | 
               | The game theory of the situation (again, from an
               | individual nation's perspective) means no one nation will
               | "remove the ability to do this" unless there's a massive
               | collective action.
        
               | qwytw wrote:
               | Have you heard about the 100, 70 and 30 years wars? The
               | massive death toll and destruction in the world wars was
               | largely a result of much more effective military
               | technology. There was simply no way to kill as much
               | people and destroy as much property in such a short time
               | frame in any preceding wars.
               | 
               | And I don't really see what a loose monetary policy could
               | have anything to do with this. Before the 20th century
               | countries rarely had the means to mobilize their
               | economies by directing most of the output to the war
               | effort, they had no capacity to enforce this and in any
               | case there wasn't enough surplus produced to a wage total
               | war without everyone starving to death and/or the central
               | government collapsing.
        
               | rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
               | I am advocating hard monetary policy (ala a gold
               | standard, a bitcoin standard) as a method for
               | disincentivizing war.
               | 
               | When you cannot replace the capital spent on war via
               | inflation, war is less likely to occur. I acknowledge
               | this is a fringe philosophy, but time will tell.
        
               | qwytw wrote:
               | > but time will tell
               | 
               | Well the gold (or silver) standard had been a thing for
               | thousands of years and I don't think there is much
               | empirical evidence to suggest that a country's inability
               | to control it's monetary policy somehow inherently
               | disincentivizes it's government from waging wars.
               | 
               | Talking about inflation specifically, there was
               | relatively little of it during both WW1 and WW2 since all
               | countries implemented price controls and rationing and
               | pretty much nationalized all the available production
               | capacity.
        
               | rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
               | There was the debasement of the currency of the Roman
               | Empire, which lead to its failure. This was done for
               | reasons of waging war.
               | 
               | I am arguing that if you remove the ability for a state
               | to create money (or at least debase it), it removes the
               | ability for it to wage war. Continuous war requires
               | continuous capital to wage. If this continuity is ended,
               | wars end.
        
               | qwytw wrote:
               | Then you're arguing for abolishing the state in general.
               | Because otherwise individuals would have no way of
               | preventing the state from either taking away their non-
               | inflationary money/coins or banning which would result in
               | significant reduction it's value.
               | 
               | > There was the debasement of the currency of the Roman
               | Empire, War was the reason why Roman empire existed in
               | the first place. In fact some argue that the Roman
               | economy was only sustainable as long as Rome continued
               | conquering new lands, enslaving their populations and
               | taking away their property. As soon as the empire stopped
               | expanding they were long able to maintain their army.
               | Arguably, without debasement the collapse might have
               | happened sooner they would have ran out of gold to pay
               | their soldiers anyway.
        
               | qwytw wrote:
               | Prior to the revolution of 1789 the French state was
               | pretty much in a permanent state of bankruptcy for the
               | past several hundreds of years (and unlike the Romans
               | they couldn't really debase their currency). Did that
               | prevent them from waging wars?
        
               | rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
               | Not the state in general, just the ability to create
               | money. The state can still raise funds via taxation, but
               | they need to be more careful in how it is spent, as it
               | cannot be magic'd into existence.
        
               | qwytw wrote:
               | And how would you enforce this if the state continues to
               | have the monopoly on violence? Who would prevent it from
               | banning doing the same thing Roosevelt did in 1933
               | (banning the private ownership of gold) (of course for
               | crypto currencies they would ban the usage and ownership)
               | or suspending the free market itself like in 1941?
        
               | rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
               | And that is what is so wonderful about Satoshis great
               | invention. The state has far less power over Mathematics,
               | Cryptography and Game Theory.
               | 
               | A gun is useless against ECDSA. A government cannot stop
               | a person holding, saving, spending or transacting in
               | bitcoin. As long as there is a channel, anywhere in the
               | universe that allows submission of valid, signed
               | transactions to peers, the state cannot stop it.
        
               | seunosewa wrote:
               | Countries rarely go to war with countries that they don't
               | share borders with. For India, that's China, Bhutan,
               | Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar.
               | Making sure that MasterCard does not store their
               | transaction data in any of those countries should be
               | sufficient.
        
               | ncallaway wrote:
               | There are many rare events that a country would still
               | want to protect itself against.
               | 
               | "Should be sufficient" and "Will be sufficient" are
               | different enough to cause anxiety for people who have to
               | safeguard against those kinds of outcomes.
        
             | DesiLurker wrote:
             | >How about just avoiding wars?
             | 
             | that's a silly remark. are you suggesting that countries
             | can simply avoid wars and accept the consequences just
             | because some credit cards will stop working ?
             | 
             | edit: formatting
        
               | qwytw wrote:
               | Yes, if they believe that the cost of waging the war
               | would outweigh anything that they might gain even if they
               | win it. Why would any two countries wage a war against
               | each other if their governments knew that both countries
               | economies (and most of their capacity to produce military
               | material) would immediately collapse?
        
         | addicted wrote:
         | The GDPR didn't give a 6 month timeline.
         | 
         | And GDPR had a long transparent process that in addition to the
         | official implementation time, gave companies a lot of time to
         | see what sort of rules they would likely be working under even
         | before it was approved.
         | 
         | The worst government since liberalization, however, makes
         | capricious rules, without input or deliberations, drops them on
         | the world like they are a JayZ album, and then gives atrocious
         | timelines for compliance.
         | 
         | More often than not they will then backtrack on those rules
         | once enough time has passed so people will forget how atrocious
         | those rules are (like during COVID), or in some cases (such as
         | demonetization), they will double down never mind the
         | generational economic damage and direct death toll.
        
           | ngc248 wrote:
           | >>> The GDPR didn't give a 6 month timeline.
           | 
           | This ruling came out in 2018 and they were given an extension
           | until now, 3 years is sufficient enough to implement most
           | things
        
       | fukd wrote:
       | Netbanking and UPI is so popular here. I last used debit card
       | about 3 years ago.
       | 
       | I do not think its not even concern if MC is entirely banned
        
       | redandblack wrote:
       | The regulations on this has been in play for a while - I remember
       | discussions in fall 2019 on this on asks by indian regulators to
       | all multinational banks, payment processors, etc. The push to
       | segregate local data within national boundaries needs to be
       | addressed soon. Local data meaning transactions between 2 parties
       | within the same country
        
       | obiwanpallav1 wrote:
       | What are/was the effects of GDPR in EU? Also, did it lead to a
       | huge increase in the spendings for MasterCard?
        
         | mtmail wrote:
         | I'd imagine a bigger loss for MasterCard was the EU capping
         | their interchange fees to 0.3% with a regulation in 2015. "At
         | present, credit card interchange fees in the UK are typically
         | around 0.85% per transaction"
         | (https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/jul/27/cap-on-card-
         | fe...). After Brexit MasterCard will increase it to 1.5%
         | (https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/jan/25/mastercard-
         | to-...) Loosing out on 0.55% fee on every transaction is
         | significant at MasterCard's scale.
        
           | IshKebab wrote:
           | I agree that will have a bigger effect, and boo Brexit. But
           | it's actually only transactions on EU shops by UK cards that
           | face higher fees, which is a really small percentage of
           | purchases. Definitely not every transaction.
           | 
           | I'm sure they'll raise the other fees later though. Probably
           | just dipping their toes.
        
             | toomuchtodo wrote:
             | Even more reason to accelerate instant payment system
             | rollouts to avoid private payment systems that charge
             | interchange fees.
        
               | IshKebab wrote:
               | What instant payment systems? Are there actually viable
               | competitors to Visa/MasterCard?
        
       | lazyninja987 wrote:
       | MC & Amex are so small, nobody cares.
       | 
       | Its probably the reason why they did not even bother to implement
       | the new guidelines.
        
       | naruvimama wrote:
       | Let us imagine a scenario where Mastercard holds EU or US
       | citizens data in China or Russia and refuses to move it to EU/US.
       | 
       | If it is a bit hard to digest, perhaps one needs to extend the
       | same respect to India's sovereignty.
        
         | 8note wrote:
         | Generally HN thinks highly of that, and will never visit the EU
         | so they don't have to face punishments for GDPR violations
        
           | decadancer wrote:
           | How real are these laws at all, by the way? Is it really a
           | case when one company has to store their data separately and
           | (inaccessible from other places). What do these laws enforce,
           | networking-wise only?
        
         | draw_down wrote:
         | "One"?
         | 
         | MC likely hasn't done this because it's kind of a huge
         | undertaking. I say this only as explanation, not as an excuse.
         | India warned firms of this years ago so there is no excuse. It
         | doesn't really have anything to do with respect.
        
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