[HN Gopher] India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owne...
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India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety
app
Author : jmsflknr
Score : 867 points
Date : 2025-12-01 06:30 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| qwerty59 wrote:
| Very concerning. I will be suprised if companies like apple
| comply though.
| goku12 wrote:
| As concerning as it is, this is just another addition to the
| pile of malware that a modern smartphone is. Everyone including
| SoC manufacturer, RF baseband manufacturer, OEM, OS developer,
| browser developer and app developers add their own opaque
| blobs, hidden executable rings, lockdown measures, attestation
| layers, telemetry, trojan apps, hidden permissions and more.
|
| We lost the game when we allowed these players to impose limits
| on us in the way we can use the device that we bought with our
| hard earned money. Even modifying the root image of these OSes
| is treated like some sort of criminal activity. And there are
| enough people around ready to gaslight us with the stories
| about grandma's security, RF regulations, etc. Yet, its the
| extensive custom mods like Lineage OS that offer any form of
| security. Their extensive lockdown only leads to higher usage
| costs and a mountain of malware.
|
| We really need to demand control over our own devices. We
| should fight to outlaw any restrictions on the ways we can use
| our own devices. We should strongly condemn and shame the
| people who try to gaslight us for their greed and duplicity.
| nunobrito wrote:
| Good to see someone well-informed. There is a lot being on
| that topic, you are not alone.
| goku12 wrote:
| Thank you for your kind words and solidarity! Those who
| understand this should definitely take a public stance,
| because we're far too apathetic towards such exploitation.
| It's even more disturbing to see some people supporting
| measures like these!
| charlie-83 wrote:
| I completely agree with you but I'm not sure I can really
| think of a solution for the RF baseband problem. I really
| don't want to live in a world where everyone's wifi signal is
| terrible because lots of stupid software devs decided to
| boost the RF power for their product to make it work better.
| goku12 wrote:
| Yes. That thought did cross my mind. However, the RF
| baseband is an independent opaque blackbox already. As far
| as I know, it even includes an entire hidden operating
| system. But opening up the rest of the system, leaving the
| BB as it is, will go a long way to an open user-controlled
| system. We could adopt that as a stop gap measure until a
| longer term solution is found.
|
| In the longer term however, we will need such a restriction
| on RF BB lifted too. Openness isn't just about
| modifiability. It's essential for security too. I'm someone
| who believes that security and granular restrictions can be
| implemented without being hostile towards users. This is
| why I don't buy Apple's argument that hardware lockdown
| measures like soldering on batteries, permanently gluing up
| ICs, etc are essential for miniaturization and security.
|
| One solution for the problem you mentioned (devs over-
| boosting the RF output) is to have a one-time programmable
| power limiter after one of the final fixed-gain RF power
| amplifiers. (An example of a one-time programmable device
| is an anti-fuse FPGA). Such a baseband can be programmed to
| conform to the market country's regulations (or something
| even stricter) before assembly. This way, the developer can
| boost the signal as much as they want, but the device
| simply won't respond beyond the permissible limit.
|
| Of course, all these are daydreams, because it has to be
| implemented by the baseband manufacturer. Unfortunately,
| their incentives don't align with our interests.
| hurutparittya wrote:
| Is there any person or organization out there doing
| significant work against remote attestation being a thing?
| I'd love to support them.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > I will be suprised if companies like apple comply though
|
| They will.
|
| All tech companies already comply with India's IT Act. And
| India now manufactures 44% of all iPhones sold in the US [0]
| while dangling the stick of a $38B anti-trust fine [6] but also
| the carrot of implementing China-style labor laws [10] that
| Apple lobbied for [11], so Apple doesn't have much of a choice
| because both China and Vietnam (the primary competitors for
| this segment of manufacturing) have similar regulations while
| not shielding them from Chinese competitors. Samsung is in the
| same boat at 25% of their manufacturing globally being done in
| India in CY24 [1] while is also trying to further entrench
| itself [2][8][9] due to existential competition from Chinese
| vendors [3][7].
|
| Heck, Apple complied with similar regulations in Russia [7]
| before the Ukraine War despite being a smaller market than
| India with no Apple manufacturing, engineering, or capex
| presence.
|
| All large companies who face existential threats from Chinese
| competitors have no choice but to entrench in India as it's the
| only large market with barriers against direct Chinese
| competition - ASEAN has an expansive FTA with China which has
| lead both South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan to lose their staying
| power in countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand where
| Chinese competitors are being given the red carpet, and Brazil
| is in the process of one as well.
|
| And the Indian government is taking full advantage of this to
| get large companies to bend to Indian laws, as can be seen with
| the damocles sword of tax enforcement on Volkswagen [4] while
| negotiating an FTA with the EU and a potential $38B anti-trust
| fine against Apple [5] while negotiating a BTA with the US.
| It's the same playbook China used when it was in India's
| current position in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
|
| Finally, India was in a de facto war earlier this year against
| Pakistan (Chinese manufactured missiles landed near my
| ancestral home along with plenty of Turkish and Chinese drones)
| along with a suicide bombing in India's Tiannamen Square (the
| Red Fort) a couple weeks ago [12], so anything national
| security has a _bit_ more credence and leeway.
|
| [0] - https://scw-mag.com/news/apples-supply-shift-to-india-
| speeds...
|
| [1] - https://www.techinasia.com/news/samsung-to-broaden-
| manufactu...
|
| [2] - https://www.chosun.com/english/industry-
| en/2025/11/25/SLEYWT...
|
| [3] -
| https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20251118VL205/2030-samsung-s...
|
| [4] -
| https://www.ft.com/content/6ec91d4a-2f37-4a01-9132-6c7ae5b06...
|
| [5] - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-
| regulat...
|
| [6] - https://www.macrumors.com/2021/03/16/apple-to-offer-
| governme...
|
| [7] -
| https://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=...
|
| [8] - https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20250903PD208/samsung-
| india-...
|
| [9] - https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20241212PR200/samsung-
| india-...
|
| [10] -
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-21/india-imp...
|
| [11] -
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-21/apple-see...
|
| [12] - https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/india-
| intensi...
| hparadiz wrote:
| This is the Achilles heel of having a closed platform.
| Eventually the government dictates what's supposed to be in
| it.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Even an open platform would do nothing. If you are a
| suspect, your phone would be checked in person (India
| doesn't have the concept of the 4th Amendment, and police
| demanding physical access to your phone during a search is
| routine) and if you were using something like GrapheneOS,
| it would be used as evidence against you. Indian law
| enforcement has already used access to Signal and Telegram
| as circumstantial evidence in various cases, and it's a
| simple hop to create a similar circumstantial evidence
| trail with someone using GrapheneOS.
|
| And anyhow, major Android vendors like Samsung have aligned
| with the policy as well.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| If it was open, truly open, wouldn't using GrapheneOS be
| easier and far more common than it is now?
| nunobrito wrote:
| That distro is seriously not good for your privacy.
|
| DYR (deeper) and support less dodgy options like
| LineageOS.
| handedness wrote:
| > That distro is seriously not good for your privacy.
|
| How so?
|
| > DYR (deeper)
|
| Care to help with that?
| nunobrito wrote:
| That distro is promoted ad nauseam here, most
| cybersecurity experts write their arguments to warn
| people but it gets tiresome to repeat the same arguments
| over and over again every week.
|
| There is a search box on the bottom of this page, just
| research for yourself and learn what this is about.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| FUD
| ivell wrote:
| > and it's a simple hop to create a similar
| circumstantial evidence trail with someone using
| GrapheneOS.
|
| I think this is a bit exaggerated for effect. No one in
| India considers having a Linux laptop as being
| circumstantial evidence in case of a crime. Whereas
| having Tor installed would be.
| iancarroll wrote:
| Even in mainland China, where iOS does have a large amount of
| changes to comply with local regulations, Apple does not pre-
| install any apps from anyone.
| alephnerd wrote:
| China doesn't require pre-installed apps but the Chinese
| government require all data processing and storage to be
| conducted within China with complete source code access.
|
| India chose to back off on data sovereignty [0] because it
| would have had a side effect of making Indian IT Offshoring
| less competitive plus to help make negotiating a US-India
| BTA easier [1].
|
| [0] - https://verfassungsblog.de/cross-border-data-flows-
| and-india...
|
| [1] -
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-25/us-
| seeks-...
| iancarroll wrote:
| I don't think there is any reason to assume they would
| allow forced code execution just because they allow data
| residency for mainland accounts. And unfortunately, China
| is likely a much larger and more profitable consumer
| market than India - presumably they can still export
| phones produced inside India without this.
| browningstreet wrote:
| > making Indian IT Offshoring less competitive
|
| So does a security backdoor in every mobile device used
| by said Indian offshoring staff.
| tacker2000 wrote:
| Most people in China install Wechat by choice, anyway
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| This is an interesting point. Is there anyone in mainland
| china that does do _not_ install WeChat plus AliPay
| installed? It is hard to live without it! Literally, you
| can buy a kilo of veg from a wet market stall and pay
| with AliPay.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| > _Even in mainland China [..] Apple does not pre-install
| any apps from anyone._
|
| That's because China has no regulation obliging them to do
| so.
|
| China takes the other, more comprehensive, route to privacy
| invasion. Sucking up every bit of data at the router.
| iancarroll wrote:
| The GFW is certainly looking for traffic to block, but it
| is not really going to invade much privacy, as it cannot
| decrypt anything using HTTPS/TLS.
| largbae wrote:
| GFW does indeed have man in the middle capabilities per
| the recent leaks of Geedge tech used in it. Your laptop
| might throw a warning for the fake signed cert, but
| devices in China that trust Chinese root CAs would not.
| wildylion wrote:
| And these mofos complied to the request to block VPN apps on
| iPhones in Russia. Think about companies that cooperated with
| the Nazis.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| From what I just heard on the Upgrade podcast, Apple only put
| a splash screen up when you first purchased your phone
| "encouraging" users in Russia to download the app. It didn't
| force you to.
| leshenka wrote:
| That's true, it opens a splash screen. But if I remember
| correctly even if you dismiss it it opens a corresponding
| AppStore section. Which was kinda annoying but that's it.
|
| In more recent developments of this story, looks like
| Russian authorities saw a success of EU's push for
| alternative stores and now want Apple to allow that in
| Russia too [1,2]. Sadly, the motivation is twofold: a. let
| authorities publish their spyware (Max messenger) and b.
| let sanctioned companies publish their apps (sberbank). I
| haven't heard a single word about caring for user freedom.
|
| P.S. just for laughs: Since it's currently
| (almost)impossible to install alternative appstores, stores
| and online marketplaces selling iphones now label them as
| "defective" [3]: below title "Imeetsia nedostatok tovara:
| nevozmozhno ustanovit' i ispol'zovat' RuStore" = "Defect:
| impossible to install and use RuStore"
|
| [1] (ru) https://www.ixbt.com/news/2025/07/07/apple-
| rustore-iphone-ip...
|
| [2] (en) https://meduza.io/en/feature/2025/06/27/an-app-
| store-ultimat...
|
| [3] https://re-store.ru/catalog/10117MAX512ORGN/
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| The same podcast episode - the latest one - said that
| Apple isn't selling in Russia right now so the point is
| moot.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Do they actually have a choice? Usually with laws and orders
| from the government, you can't do much than either go with the
| flow, try to lobby against it afterwards, or straight up refuse
| and leave the market. Considering Apple's ties to India, I feel
| like Apple is unlikely to leave, so that really only leaves
| Apple with the first; comply and complain.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Do they actually have a choice?_
|
| Yes. Apple's revenues are half as much as the government of
| India's [1][2]. That's a resource advantage that gives
| Cupertino real leverage against New Delhi.
|
| [1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/10/apple-reports-
| fourth-... _$102.5bn / quarter_
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_govern
| men... _$827bn / year_
| jonplackett wrote:
| Apple need India though. They're moving a lot of their
| manufacturing there to derisk from a China.
|
| Also, they gave in to the CCP and always say 'we obey the
| laws of the countries in which we operate'.
|
| Apple is, at the end of the day, just a business.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Apple need India though. They're moving a lot of their
| manufacturing there to derisk from a China_
|
| That creates obligations both ways. Put another way,
| Apple is an increasingly-major employer in India.
|
| The real carrot New Delhi has is its growing middle
| class. The real carrot Apple has is its aspirational
| branding.
|
| > _they gave in to the CCP and always say 'we obey the
| laws of the countries in which we operate '_
|
| Apple regularly negotiates and occasionally openly fights
| laws its disagrees with. This would be no different.
| Cupertino is anything but lazy and nihilistic. Mandated
| installation opens a door they've fought hard to keep
| shut because it carries global precedent.
| et-al wrote:
| I fear (Apple) will do something that allows the
| government to do what it wants (with a bit more work)
| without explicitly installing something.
|
| For example, with the UK encryption debacle, Apple
| removed Advanced Data Protections (e2e encryption) for
| iCloud users in the UK. So users' notes, photos, emails
| are possibly open.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _fear will do something that allows the government to
| do what it wants (with a bit more work) without
| explicitly installing something_
|
| Why this isn't being done at the SIM/baseband level is
| beyond me.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| "Leave us alone or we'll cancel our plans and move
| somewhere else"
| ivell wrote:
| Like any business Apple needs growth to satisfy the
| shareholders. New growth would come from India and China.
| Apple didn't leave China and neither it will leave India.
| India can and will survive without Apple. Though having it
| in the country would be good for optics.
|
| The moment mobile companies locked down sideloading,
| ability to uninstall bundled software, etc., they made it
| impossible to argue techincally against bundled,
| uninstallable software from the government.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Apple didn 't leave China and neither it will leave
| India. India can and will survive without Apple_
|
| They can both survive without each other. But neither is
| going to break the arrangement without a lot of pain.
| They have mutual leverage with each other, and that
| becomes particularly material when one stops treating
| India as a monolith.
|
| > _India can and will survive without Apple. Though
| having it in the country would be good for optics_
|
| Most people aren't content with merely surviving.
| ivell wrote:
| > Most people aren't content with merely surviving.
|
| I think you overestimate the importance of Apple to
| India. It is just a company. And actually not the biggest
| employer or most tax paying one either.
|
| Apple is not the only vendor in India and has also not
| the most sold phone.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _you overestimate the importance of Apple to India. It
| is just a company_
|
| If New Delhi wants to smite Apple it obviously can. That
| isn't the question. It's if Apple can bargain for a
| better deal. I think the answer is yes.
|
| The starting point would be finding the fault lines
| between the folks in India arguing for this policy and
| those who don't care or are hostile to it.
| wiz21c wrote:
| You say "Like any business Apple needs growth to satisfy
| the shareholders." like it is acceptable.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Apple has built an entire alternative iMessage+iCloud setup
| in China to comply with government regulation. They also
| bowed to the UK's demands to disable E2EE backups.
|
| They'll probably try to make the app as non-shitty as they
| possibly can, and will probably leverage all kinds of
| geographical restrictions and whatnot to isolate the impact
| of these changes, but when threatened with a large market
| share hit, Apple will comply.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| Why wouldn't they? If Apple doesn't comply, the Indian
| government could force them to withdraw from the market or
| otherwise make their lives difficult. I can't see Apple or
| their shareholders caring about privacy enough to abandon such
| a large market.
| fsflover wrote:
| You shouldn't be: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26644216
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| have you seen what Tim Apple has been up to lately with his own
| government?
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| They are doing this for US from the beginning so it is only
| matter of time or carefully applied pressure. This is only a
| PR.
| oldjim798 wrote:
| Honestly shocked it took this long for governments to start doing
| this; it seemed inevitable that governments would want all the
| data private entities have been enjoying.
|
| More and more it seems like the benefits of being connected are
| not worth the cost of being so visible to so many hostile (state
| and non-state) actors
| okokwhatever wrote:
| Yeah, internet is a dead star in so many ways this days.
| Repetitive, addictive and a private data sucker. I'm already
| starting to buy programming books and offline content preparing
| for a radical semi-disconnection.
| stickfigure wrote:
| What stops someone from loading GrapheneOS on their (Indian)
| Android phone?
| alephnerd wrote:
| It will be used as evidence that the person who has GrapheneOS
| on their phone is attempting to break the law. Telegram and
| Signal chats are often used as circumstantial evidence of
| malfeasance in Indian national security cases, so the jump to
| using GrapheneOS as evidence of malfesance is tiny.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| FUD
| nosianu wrote:
| "Cops in this country think everyone using a Google Pixel
| must be a drug dealer" (because of GrapheneOS)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44473694
|
| https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114784469162979608
|
| > _European authoritarians and their enablers in the media
| are misrepresenting GrapheneOS and even Pixel phones as if
| they 're something for criminals. GrapheneOS is opposed to
| the mass surveillance police state these people want to
| impose on everyone._
| Aachen wrote:
| I see it more as an extra reason to use it:
|
| - If only criminals want privacy, privacy becomes
| suspicious
|
| - If more people use an open OS, it's more profitable for
| commercial entities to not put in extra effort to block
| these devices due to the FUD going around about them being
| insecure
|
| So if someone suggests that using open source software is
| increasingly being seen as suspicious, the #1 thing to do
| is start using it
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| India already considers communications they can't monitor
| illegal. Specifically, satellite communication devices. Not
| just the crazy expensive satellite phones, but the satellite
| texting devices a lot of us backcountry types have. And some
| have been arrested for having them. Yeah, terrorists have
| used such stuff, but to us it's 911 for when we are far from
| the cell grid.
| numpad0 wrote:
| ... secure boot?
|
| I don't understand "just load GrapheneOS" sentiments. It only
| runs on extremely specific flagship devices with explicit
| features that allow it that are out of financial and technical
| reach for >99.9% of population of Earth and it still fully
| relies on AOSP. It's an escape hatch for mice. Or is it really
| not that way?
| nunobrito wrote:
| It is a dodgy Android distro for several reasons.
|
| LineageOS has no such shenanigans nor has a pattern of
| suspicious funding.
| handedness wrote:
| > It is a dodgy Android distro for several reasons.
|
| What are these reasons?
|
| > LineageOS has no such shenanigans nor has a pattern of
| suspicious funding.
|
| What pattern of suspicious funding?
| nunobrito wrote:
| There are threads on YC almost every week/month promoting
| that dodgy distro. Inside them are the comments with
| proper details from plenty of other YC users.
|
| For the sake of avoiding repetition or bias, just do your
| own research. There is a search box at the end of the
| page.
| snapcaster wrote:
| you're all over this thread saying this, can you link an
| article or at least explain what you mean?
| nunobrito wrote:
| It is tiresome to repeat every single time the arguments
| that so many other cyber experts have also mentioned
| including here on YC. This is quite the common knowledge
| by now.
|
| Kindly use the search box on the bottom of the page.
| mac-attack wrote:
| Can you see how you look like a bad faith actor by making
| claims and they telling others to research your facts?
| nunobrito wrote:
| It is tiresome to repeat the facts on each thread when
| this has already been thoroughly documented.
|
| I'm not your personal google search engine.
| saagarjha wrote:
| But you are perfectly content to comment on this. Strange
| priorities, I guess?
| fragmede wrote:
| That's because there aren't really any. Yes, it's kinda
| maddening that the best hardware to de-Google your life
| is to give Google even more money and buy a Google phone,
| but, after having used that search box, all I could find
| are complaints that it's not very usable because they
| disabled so much shit in the name of security and
| privacy, but I saw nothing where it fails at the
| technical details in protecting privacy. There's some
| purist bit about the timing of updates and availability
| of source due to embargoes, but even they are being
| practical in that case. So no, unless I missed something,
| it's not common knowledge, and you're just pretending
| there is to make it seem like there is something there
| when there isn't.
| nunobrito wrote:
| That is the first red flaming flag, yet you dismiss it
| like nothing albeit so many cybersec experts point out
| the same thing (references you can search them on
| previous discussions)
|
| The second is forgetting things like actively promoting
| the usage of US government developed and sponsored tech
| like signal and Tor.
|
| Then let's look at that availability of source code,
| which for some "reason" doesn't come out. Lest but not
| least, don't even wonder about their financing sources
| and constant spamming on sites like this as if there
| aren't better options.
|
| You can bot away and say none of this matters. It does
| matter, not everyone here is dumb and I'll keep
| complaining no matter how many times the other bots
| downvote what is obviously just another gov-sponsored
| operation.
| snapcaster wrote:
| In the time you've spent writing all these vague comments
| you could have just cleared up the confusion. I cared
| enough to read a comment you would write out, i really
| don't care enough to go research it
| bastard_op wrote:
| Mostly the fact that GrapheneOS only works on Google Pixel
| hardware currently and vendor unlock status. It's the only
| available phone hardware that provides full bootloader unlock
| capabilities AND suitable security protections baked into the
| secure enclave and boot process, including things like rate
| limiting in hardware like password cracking attempts via
| external brute-force input means, lockdown of usb ports until
| boot unlocked with a pin, etc. Their website spells out all the
| reasons.
|
| Other phone makers _could_ if they wanted to do the same, but
| _do not_ as an active choice, or at least _somebody 's_ choice
| above them.
| notRobot wrote:
| Custom ROMs fail device integrity, which means you cannot use
| banking, financial, government, payments and telcom apps, not
| to mention all the games that refuse to work.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| Google, the phone manufacturer and now the state running
| bloatware on my phone. I will have three dialers, calendars, etc.
| All of them uninstallable
| poly2it wrote:
| Get GrapheneOS. The installation is painless and the OS
| surperior. No mainstream phone OS is viable in the privacy and
| security nightmare of today.
|
| https://grapheneos.org/
| __rito__ wrote:
| I wouldn't venture in the direction that many here will take.
|
| I will point out that India have the highest number of victims of
| cyber-fraud. I personally know many people who have lost
| significant sums through social engineering attacks. The money is
| transferred to multiple mule accounts and physical cash is
| siphoned off to the fraudsters by the owners of those account.
| They choose helpless, illiterate, village dwelling account
| holders for this.
|
| Another huge issue is unregulated loan apps. There are horror
| stories of people installing apps in order to take high-interest
| loans and then those apps stealing their private photos and
| contacts or accessing camera to take photos in private moments,
| and then sending those photos to contacts via WhatsApp when
| interest payment is overdue.
|
| Then there are obvious security issues with terrorism and
| organized crime.
|
| The government wants data. It's clear why. There is huge
| potential for misuse.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I will point out that India have the highest number of
| victims of cyber-fraud_
|
| Based on what?
|
| > _Another huge issue is unregulated loan apps_
|
| You don't need to root everyone's phones to regulate financial
| crime.
|
| > _Then there are obvious security issues with terrorism and
| organized crime_
|
| India is building a centralised backdoor into every phone in
| the country. That's a _massive_ national security risk.
| lallysingh wrote:
| The way for the community to fight this is to keep finding
| holes in the app until they stop trying to put one on.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _way for the community to fight this is to keep finding
| holes in the app until they stop trying to put one on_
|
| I'm not familiar with Indian activist tradition. But if we
| look at other countries where this happened, the technical
| attacks didn't work. It had to be done through policy,
| instead.
| __rito__ wrote:
| > Based on what?
|
| Yahoo Finance report that's 3 years old, puts India at #4:
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/15-countries-most-cyber-
| crime...
|
| But 2024 data from PIB puts the number of occurrence much
| higher at 2.27 million: https://www.pib.gov.in/PressNoteDetai
| ls.aspx?NoteId=155384&M...
|
| > You don't need to root everyone's phones to regulate
| financial crime.
|
| Yes, I agree. Read this comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46113070
|
| > India is building a centralised backdoor into every phone
| in the country. That's a massive national security risk.
|
| Are these what backdoors are? It's an app. It can be
| uninstalled, right? Are there physical backdoors like
| American agency NSA tried to install? Or like the Chinese
| phones that many suspect?
|
| - https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/privacy-
| scandal-n...
|
| - https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/xiaomis-phones-had-a-
| securi...
| sateesh wrote:
| The mandate says the app can't be uninstalled.
| marginalx wrote:
| And you trust the government to only use it for good purposes?
| and not to track people who may be protesting or belong to
| opposing political/religious/cultural views? We know based on
| historical pegasus complaints that this trust has to be earned
| and can't be given.
|
| There are lots of ways to solve for this, mandating that these
| companies own the identification process through their systems,
| report misuse, govern apps. Why taken on the ownership of a
| process that is better handled outside of government while the
| government holds them to account via huge fines and timelines
| but giving these large companies ownership of protection from
| scams or stolen phones etc...? win win and I think these large
| companies are due spending extra money to protect their users
| anyway.
| roncesvalles wrote:
| Automatic mistrust of the government is a pretty juvenile
| take. Yes there are tons of ways, and having OEMs preload an
| app is the easiest one in a country of 1.1B mobile
| connections.
| crumpled wrote:
| > Automatic mistrust of the government is a pretty juvenile
| take.
|
| This statement seems naive at best and manipulative at
| worst.
| marginalx wrote:
| So, if you have tons of ways - you vote for the way that
| could lead to potentially the most exploitation of the
| population? No one is saying it "will" be exploited, but
| the potential itself should steer the solution clear off
| that direction.
| kragen wrote:
| Automatic mistrust of the government is the only sensible
| point of view and the bedrock foundation of liberalism and
| democracy. Any other attitude toward government is fatally
| naive.
| __rito__ wrote:
| I don't trust anyone blindly. The point of my comment was not
| to support the decision, but to show where it might be coming
| from.
|
| What's inherent in the comment is- there are simply too many
| people to educate, "made aware", etc. So, this might be a
| knee-jerk reaction to fight cyber fraud. Not Big Brother
| sensorship.
|
| I can say these because I know too much about the ground
| reality. An example from top of my head- SBI e-Rupee app
| doesn't launch in your phone if you have Discord installed.
| Yeah. Just because some scammers communicated through
| Discord.
|
| Of course, I cannot guarantee that something sinister is not
| being planned or that this app won't be utilized for
| something bad.
|
| There is also a small chance of some bureaucrat in management
| position taking this decision, so he can write in his report-
| "Made Sanchar Saathi app download soar up to X millions in 3
| months through diligent effort..." just like highly placed
| PMs/SVPs in large tech companies eyeing a promotion.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Gonna agree with you, even Singapore has announced several
| policy changes the past few weeks to deal with all the fraud -
| more severe punishment and forcing apple to change how iMessage
| spam with .gov.sg domains is handled.
|
| I don't think this new app will resolve India's fraud issues
| unfortunately, there probably needs to be more policy changes
| at banks/fincos. As much as India obsesses with KYC processes,
| it doesn't seem to be working/enough. I don't see this new app
| being required as something totalitarian, it would be much
| easier for the gov to ask for that type of stuff to be tacked
| on to UPI apps anyways.
| lallysingh wrote:
| Yeah this is the wrong audience for this argument, but it has
| merit. An app like this can be _both_ a massive government
| power grab _and_ useful to protect many, many people who are
| vulnerable to fraud.
|
| The number of my relatives that will just believe whatever
| someone tells them on the phone is terrifying.
| marginalx wrote:
| This is quite dismissive of the audience, how do you suggest
| this app protects the people from believing whatever someone
| says?
| thisisit wrote:
| > I will point out that India have the highest number of
| victims of cyber-fraud
|
| Combined with worst enforcement and investigation efforts to
| tackle this issue. The default resolution on a cyber crime
| report is : Fraudster's account is blocked and they are given a
| choice to plead forgiveness from the accuser. They often return
| the money in lieu of the complaint being rescinded. Then
| fraudster is free to con others. Fraudsters know this is a
| numbers game that is why they hit every morsel they can get a
| bite.
|
| Worse yet people use the cyber crime provision to take revenge.
| People can file frivolous cases without proof and ge others
| account locked. Banks will treat you with disdain and police
| will tell you to settle privately too.
|
| What about investigations you ask? Very few cases reach that
| level. Local police file the FIR and they don't even know what
| is "cyber" in cyber crime. Fraudsters can continue playing the
| numbers game.
|
| So, yes it is easy to talk about victims when the policies are
| lacking. And then this high number of victims can be used as a
| crutch to push insecure apps on everyone's phones. The worst
| part of it? They will get data and still remain clueless and
| inept in solving the high number of cyber crimes.
| __rito__ wrote:
| Local police stations often refuse to file even an FIR. The
| reason we have such good data, is possibly due to the banks
| reporting them.
|
| If it were up to the police, then we wouldn't even hear about
| 25% of the cases.
| kragen wrote:
| Having a single CrowdStrike-like point of failure will probably
| make these problems worse overall, but burstier.
| profsummergig wrote:
| ref: "the new tobacco"
|
| this last year i'm seeing very concerning behavior in students in
| the 14-20 range. complete addiction to their phones. very deep
| interests in things i was completely unaware that they existed.
| similar to how when i started noticing anime girlfriends/waifus
| in 2016.
|
| about 40% are deep in discord communities where i literally
| cannot figure out a single sentence of what they're talking
| about.
|
| if society doesn't do something, and soon, say goodbye to the
| cognitive ability of a large chunk of future generations.
| ikmckenz wrote:
| > very deep interests in things i was completely unaware that
| they existed ... say goodbye to the cognitive ability of a
| large chunk of future generations
|
| I would think very deep interests in niche or obscure topics is
| correlated with increased cognitive ability, not a decrease.
| profsummergig wrote:
| anime waifus?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > very deep interests in things i was completely unaware
| that they existed
|
| That's just a symptom of getting old. Young people always
| find stuff that baffles adults. When I was a teenager,
| Anime itself was like this - just being " _into_ " anime
| was considered some kind of bizarre, obscure affectation by
| adults.
|
| I think smartphones present real challenges (and I don't
| get how/why they're allowed in schools), but a lot of what
| you're describing is normal.
| krelas wrote:
| > about 40% are deep in discord communities where i literally
| cannot figure out a single sentence of what they're talking
| about.
|
| I feel like the same could be said of an at the time adult
| looking at my IRC or MSN Messenger logs from when I was a teen.
| malfist wrote:
| The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt
| for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter
| in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the
| servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders
| enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before
| company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and
| tyrannize their teachers.
| markdown wrote:
| - Sir Humphrey Applebee, 1773.
| Jordan-117 wrote:
| Got some example words or phrases? When I hear stuff like this
| I'm curious how much is just your standard "out of touch adult"
| stuff and how much is genuinely bizarre niche rabbitholes.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Is this an "old man yells at cloud" impersonation?
| pixelmelt wrote:
| > very deep interests in things i was completely unaware that
| they existed
|
| as one of said students, I would just call these hobbies!
| rjdj377dhabsn wrote:
| If by "society" you mean the state, I disagree.
|
| The world is changing quickly, and many people may run into
| problems, but I'd rather let cultural solutions to these
| problems naturally arise. Relying on a government to impose
| top-down solutions on these complicated and poorly understood
| problems is a recipe for a disaster of unintended consequences.
| marginalx wrote:
| "With 5 million total downloads - the app has saved 3.7 million
| lost phones", this somehow doesn't add up for me, as this implies
| more than 74% of phones are stolen? Or this this govt lying to
| pad the numbers to make the app look like a sheep in wolves
| clothing.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| People download it only when their phone is stolen.
| officerk wrote:
| They download it where? On a spare phone? How does that work?
| rishabhaiover wrote:
| I'm shocked by people and state using the crutch of cyber crime
| or scams to push a totalitarian solution to a problem that is
| better solved by improved education and targeted campaigns
| against common security pitfalls.
|
| I abhor any decision that robs even a grain of my individual
| freedom.
| djohnston wrote:
| I share your abhorrence but are you really shocked? "Think of
| the children", "Stop the terrorists," these have been the
| foundations for the erosion of personal liberty for the past
| thirty years.
| politelemon wrote:
| And long before that too, it's just taken different
| soundbites that play on people's fears at the time.
| nephihaha wrote:
| In the UK, they've used variously terrorism, illegal
| migration and pornography to push this.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| It's actually much more older argument. Hurr durr muh
| children is so common in history yet so effective that this
| is beyond absurd.
| energy123 wrote:
| I am unconvinced from a practical standpoint that this vision
| of the world that you wish to live in is even possible today
| due to the increase in sectarian communal tensions, dense
| cities, widely available cars/guns/etc and stresses from cost
| of living and income inequality, as well as the spread of
| ideas that mass casualty attacks might be a thing to do (the
| US did not have school attacks until it became an unfortunate
| "thing" in the culture that sick people glommed onto).
|
| An absence of surveillance causes increased frequency of
| terrorist attacks which causes people to demand solutions
| (necessarily involving surveillance and other authoritarian
| measures) which leads to increased surveillance. It's an
| unfortunate negative feedback loop.
|
| If you lack solutions for too long, the negative feedback
| loop becomes severe and instead of just surveillance within a
| liberal democratic context, you get public safety
| authoritarians like Bukele or Duterte.
|
| "Surveillance doesn't materially reduce terrorist attacks" -
| I am not sure about that based on the number of arrests of
| plotters and the lack of visibility I have into the tools and
| methods they used to find those plotters.
|
| "Terrorist attacks still happen even with surveillance" -
| Yes, but if they happen less frequently, this reduces the
| demand from the public to ratchet up authoritarianism. See
| the problem?
|
| "Terrorist attacks are a price worth paying for our freedom."
| - I mostly agree, but feeling like this doesn't make any
| difference to the negative feedback loop, does it? Regular
| people want public safety from physical danger almost as much
| as food and water.
| anonymous908213 wrote:
| In most countries, death by terrorist is at least an order
| of magnitude less likely than death by bee. Strangely, we
| do not seem to be on a campaign to lock all humans in-doors
| to protect them from bees, nor have we declared a global
| war on beeism. These stats hold from before the modern
| surveillance regime, and so can hardly be credited to it.
| It's not actually a problem in particular need of urgent
| solving. Regular people are safe from terrorism, much safer
| than they are against most kinds of tragic accidents. What
| regular people are actually in danger of is losing all of
| their human rights to fearmongerers, who constantly invoke
| terrorism to erode them further and further.
|
| Bukele and Duterte did not rise out of an environment of
| terrorism, so I don't know why you thought it relevant to
| bring them up. I think it is really sad to see comments on
| HN of all places advocating that if we don't implement chat
| control we'll spiral into a lawless hellscape.
| energy123 wrote:
| Sincerely, you misunderstand what I am saying, or you
| didn't read until the end where I said that some level of
| terrorism is a price worth paying in my subjective
| judgment.
|
| My point is that my subjective judgment counts for
| nothing, because the negative feedback loop that I
| described is a society-wide phenomenon beyond my control
| as an individual. Asking the majority of people to think
| the way you do about terrorism is somewhere between
| wishcasting and virtue signalling. It doesn't interrupt
| the causality behind the negative feedback loop, so it
| therefore fails to outline a path that can be trodden in
| the real world to achieve your desired vision of no
| surveillance.
|
| I urge everyone to banish this mode of thinking which
| fixates on what "should" happen without first checking
| whether that desired end state is a possible world we can
| exist in once you factor in the second and third order
| effects beyond the control of any individual.
|
| > Bukele and Duterte did not rise out of an environment
| of terrorism
|
| Move your abstraction one level higher. They arose out of
| public safety concerns around murder and drugs and gangs.
| Those are not terrorism, but they fit under the same
| umbrella of public safety concerns that motivate regular
| people to demand authoritarian solutions.
| intended wrote:
| India saw 779 million dollars lost to cyber fraud in the
| first 5 months of 2025.
|
| The degree of cyber fraud in India is beyond insane.
|
| Also - funnily enough - Indian telecom companies are
| meant to be fined for every SIM card given out under
| false data. There is already meant to be a check that
| stops this.
| x0x0 wrote:
| > improved education and targeted campaigns against common
| security pitfalls
|
| Which doesn't work. At all. A familiarity with the last 40
| years of computing makes that clear.
|
| The only things that have worked: ios/android walled gardens so
| users can't install spyware. yubikeys which can't be phished.
| etc.
| psychoslave wrote:
| The problem iscontrolling people at intimate thought level.
| Sure education is part of it. But state controlled device
| tracking everything they say, where they go and who they are
| exchanging with is also a tool to leverage on in that
| perspective.
| DeepSeaTortoise wrote:
| IMO the goal is a bit different. It'd be just way too much
| data to track people successfully, even with on-device
| filtering, especially because everyone with ill intentions
| would just use non-backdoored devices for their malicious
| activities.
|
| A much more achievable goal is digging up dirt on specific
| people and opponents. In the end governments can struggle to
| justify how they got their hands on info about an affair you
| had or that you shocked dogs ~~on stream~~.
|
| Such device backdoors are just a get-out-court-free card and
| a way for the media to justify not asking any serious
| questions.
| N_Lens wrote:
| I see that Hasan ref
| bfg_9k wrote:
| It's the old totalitarian playbook. Make everyone a
| criminal then selectively apply the law.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| First they came for the etc, etc...
| staplers wrote:
| You're assuming the problem the govt is referencing is their
| actual goal.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| > _improved education and targeted campaigns against common
| security pitfalls_
|
| Good one. Do you see how dumb the average consumer is? They
| don't know or care even if you try to educate them.
| dingnuts wrote:
| I shouldn't have to accept government surveillance just
| because 15% of the population is functionally illiterate. We
| should have support structures for those people as a society,
| but "dumb people exist" is a fucking horrible argument for
| why I should have my freedom restricted
| chasil wrote:
| You don't have to.
|
| This is the most secure option:
|
| https://grapheneos.org/
|
| This is more flexible and will give you root, at the cost
| of an unlocked bootloader:
|
| https://lineageos.org/
| satvikpendem wrote:
| You shouldn't, I agree with you, but what's the solution
| that works for everyone, not just the tech literate?
| bfg_9k wrote:
| There doesn't need to be a solution that works for
| everyone. It doesn't matter how many barriers you put in
| place, people will always get scammed - so don't punish
| the other capable 85%.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| You mean the capable 15%, not 85% as again users are
| dumb. That's why governments will always cater to the
| majority.
| aydyn wrote:
| You do in fact need a system that works for the vast
| majority. If your system flat out doesnt work for 15% of
| the population, you'd have mass riots and unrest.
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| Considering that AI companies are strategically/financially
| in the same position as other market cornering companies like
| uber, imagine how much dumber things can get.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Maybe but there's a fair amount of corruption going on in
| India. For example, they got caught spraying water near air
| quality monitors (at them?) to make the data seem better than
| it is instead of actually tackling the problem.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| That's sadly how the culture is in India. I wish it
| improved to be more like Japan or China but I'm not sure
| how one can solve this sort of issue.
| DeepSeaTortoise wrote:
| Require all people who received higher education to work
| for their country first for 15 to 20 years.
|
| There's no point in being able to buy an outrageously
| fancy toilet with remittances if there's no sewer to hook
| it up to.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| That would be a great way to make the brain drain even
| worse.
| matt_heimer wrote:
| That would discourage higher education, you are basically
| punishing people for it.
|
| Try giving free education to all government employees
| instead.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Same approach China is taking -- harsh penalties + heavy
| press broadcasting in the most egregious instances
| uncovered, with an emphasis on consequences for the high
| ranking folks involved.
|
| You don't want to try to catch everyone, as then people
| do worse things trying to cover their tracks, but you do
| want to establish a credible fear of consequences that
| will shift the default societal balance point between {do
| corruption} and {don't}.
|
| And it may take a generation, but it is possible.
| thisisit wrote:
| Same dumbness applies to people who are supposed to enforce
| these laws. Enforcement authorities will often tell you to
| settle privately - "just return the money and ask your victim
| to rescind the case". They don't care for average consumer.
| ponector wrote:
| Are they incentivized to care? Are they paid well?
|
| Usually for police it is much better to not register the
| case and push victim to settle privately.
|
| If they register they got more work and worse statistics.
| bigyabai wrote:
| It's articles like these that make me comfortable saying you
| are part of the problem. Your materialist fear of losing a
| wholly replaceable phone is manufacturing consent for
| disaster.
| et-al wrote:
| FYI two years ago, the Indian government shut down mobile
| service in the state of Punjab to catch one person:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35303486
| aussieguy1234 wrote:
| I don't buy their reasoning.
|
| With all the mobile tracking tech, I would have thought that
| it would have been easier to catch the person if they had a
| working phone on them.
| goku12 wrote:
| I assume that they weren't attempting to track him. They
| were trying to prevent the communication between the
| conspirators so that they can't coordinate his escape or
| organize an uprising to aid his escape. Suffice to say, the
| telecom networks and the internet service are fair game to
| them and they don't think twice about interfering with it
| for any reason.
| makingstuffs wrote:
| I was there during this, literally text my wife when got
| notice and said "I do not know when I will be able to text
| next so keep an eye on your email".
| croes wrote:
| > I abhor any decision that robs even a grain of my individual
| freedom.
|
| Living in a society already means giving up more than a grain
| of personal freedom.
|
| Try entering a store naked.
|
| The real deal is the balance between loss and gain
| eptcyka wrote:
| Ye, and this move is not balanced.
| croes wrote:
| They take more than a grain and the gain is debatable
| derac wrote:
| Is HN really so libertarian that this basic fact of being a
| part of the social contract is downvotable?
|
| I'm strongly against surveillance like this, but saying you
| won't give up a grain of freedom is not realistic.
| ridiculous_leke wrote:
| > problem that is better solved by improved education and
| targeted campaigns against common security pitfalls
|
| Will take decades if not more than a century to implement in
| India. Let alone old people, even the boomer generation is
| immensely tech illiterate.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| the fact that this is being done privately shows they know it's
| dirty and immoral.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| > I'm shocked
|
| India is currently run by a nationalist regime headed by the so
| called "butcher of Gujarat"[1], there isn't much that would
| shock me wrt to that lot's totalitarian tendencies.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_image_of_Narendra_Modi
| nephihaha wrote:
| Mate, this isn't even remotely "nationalist". This stuff is
| being pushed across the world. Digital ID? The only people
| really desperate for it are our rulers.
| smashah wrote:
| [flagged]
| tomhow wrote:
| Please don't post inflammatory rhetoric like this here,
| no matter the topic or the side. The guidelines ask:
|
| _Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive,
| not less, as a topic gets more divisive._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| observationist wrote:
| It's funny how it's all rolling out right around the same
| time. Almost like they get together and plot this stuff at
| big meetings multiple times a year, where they get lavish
| meals and entertainment, get wined and dined by the rich
| and elite, and... well. Must be good to be kings.
|
| It's really 4 horsemen of the infocalypse garbage being
| trotted out, and the general population is clueless and
| credulous. "They're in charge, surely they must know what
| they're doing! They wouldn't lie to us! They most assuredly
| have our collective best interests in mind, and they'll do
| the right thing!"
| brokenmachine wrote:
| >"They're in charge, surely they must know what they're
| doing! They wouldn't lie to us!
|
| Literally nobody thinks that.
|
| Unfortunately most people don't have the time or energy
| to fight every emerging attack on freedom.
|
| Everything is going to plan for the billionaire class.
|
| Eventually everything will burn, only time will tell if
| it will be from global warming or food riots.
| observationist wrote:
| Most average people assume competence and good faith from
| people in charge. Most people don't question, aren't
| skeptical, and go through life in a fog. That's not most
| people here, but it's like Gell-Mann amnesia applied to
| politics. 99% of the time, when politicians put forth a
| plan to do things in a domain you're competent in, they
| look like morons. It's exceedingly rare for them to do
| things well.
|
| People trust elected officials, they trust institutions,
| they trust "experts", the media, the academics. A vast
| majority of people don't realize the scale of ineptitude
| amongst the people who wield power. Most of the "elites"
| are not overqualified geniuses, but instead average
| bumbling idiots who stumbled their way into office, or
| sociopaths, or physically attractive. Most political
| systems do not reward competence and diligence.
|
| You could swap out all 535 congress people in the US for
| randomly selected citizens and I guarantee you that
| outcomes would improve. Things are going so badly because
| they're intended to go badly, because unethical people
| wield power for self enrichment and cronyism. The purpose
| of a system is what it does.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Having lived in lower trust vs higher trust societies,
| you can see it in how people assume their leaders think.
| High trust places like Sweden, people have pretty high
| faith in their leaders to do the right thing. Personally,
| I much prefer quality of life in a higher trust society.
| It is exhausting needing to second guess everyone
| everywhere all the time!
| immibis wrote:
| It's a situation of turkeys preferring to live on the
| farm, except in the lead-up to Thanksgiving. It's quite
| good until it's suddenly very bad. It's fine if it's used
| to track down murderers etc, but we are seeing this now
| with various countries tracking down people who don't
| like Israel.
| nephihaha wrote:
| In Sweden, something like 40% of the population work
| directly or indirectly for Wallenberg family owned
| companies according to one stat. That will exclude the
| businesses who make money off people employed by them. So
| who is really in charge of Sweden?
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Here is the exact quote from Wiki:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallenberg_family
| > In the 1970s, the Wallenberg family businesses employed
| 40% of Sweden's industrial workforce and represented 40%
| of the total worth of the Stockholm stock market.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Poll after poll in the US show a distrust in politicians
| and the governor. Our current president has a 37%
| approval rating.
|
| Between the electoral college, gerrymandering and 2
| Senators per state regardless of population, the minority
| control who gets elected.
|
| Not to mention that anyone who trusts the police is
| naive.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| >> "They're in charge, surely they must know what they're
| doing! They wouldn't lie to us!
|
| > Literally nobody thinks that.
|
| I'd have to disagree; I'd say this is the modal
| perspective.
| lxgr wrote:
| The lack of digital ID is a huge problem in many domains
| and enables a lot of scams and crime in the first place.
|
| _Requiring identification in situations that don 't need
| it_ is where the problems start, but that's possible with
| analog IDs as well, and is often even worse there (since
| these provide neither security against digital copies, nor
| privacy, which digital ID can, e.g. via zero knowledge
| proofs).
| nextos wrote:
| Personally, I liked the low-tech solution of code cards +
| password (2FA), used by e.g. Denmark as digital ID, now
| discontinued. I am aware that it is imperfect, and if you
| are not careful with MITM attacks you can get in trouble,
| but it was a good compromise to avoid the temptation to
| track citizens. Something like a hardware TAN generator,
| but with protection against MITM, would be an ideal
| compromise. The current trend of moving towards mobile
| apps that require hardware attestation is worrying.
| lxgr wrote:
| Definitely, requiring the entire smartphone to be
| "trusted" is way too much.
|
| Small external signers with a display and confirmation
| button are a nice compromise (and also largely solve
| MITM!), since I don't mind an external device being under
| somebody else's administrative control as long as I can
| run what I want on my smartphone or computer.
|
| But people don't want to carry two things... Hopefully we
| can at least have both as alternatives going forward.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >But people don't want to carry two things...
|
| It can be moved into a security processor within the
| smartphone's SOC.
| lxgr wrote:
| True, but that's already a much less clean separation
| between the credential issuer's and my domain on many
| dimensions other than security.
|
| As an example, this was the security model for mobile
| contactless payments for the longest time, and arguably
| as a result these never really took off until Google came
| up with a software-only alternative for Android. The
| potential for rent seeking of the hardware vendor is
| often too great, and even absent that, it requires close
| cooperation of too many distinct entities (hardware
| vendor, OS developer, bank, maybe a payment scheme etc).
|
| (Apple had no issues, because their ecosystem is already
| a fully walled garden, and they can usually get away with
| charging access fees even for non-security-relevant
| hardware interfaces.)
|
| With a contactless smartcard, I might have to carry one
| more plastic card than strictly necessary, but the
| technology for that is pretty mature (wallets), and I can
| migrate to a new phone without any hassle or use my
| credential on somebody else's device in a pinch.
| nextos wrote:
| Some of the current EU ID cards are actually smartcards,
| so in terms of privacy guarantees and separation of
| concerns, we are moving backwards. I am also more
| comfortable with a low-tech solution that is not linked
| to my personal devices. Something like a FIDO passkey
| would be ideal as those are also able to verify the
| identity of the other side, but are relatively low-tech
| and won't serve to track me.
| phatfish wrote:
| It's like people want to hand over scans of their
| passport and/or driving license to random businesses
| again and again, every time the need to prove who they
| are; and have their ID documents littered in Outlook
| mailboxes or company file shares with zero permissions.
|
| Or be forced to install yet another ID app from a private
| service that requires you have an iPhone or "compatible"
| Android.
|
| The debate about this in the UK is just crazy.
| Notwithstanding the current "febrile" state of politics.
| It has always received weirdly vitriolic push back.
|
| What really is the Government going to do with a digital
| ID service that they can't do already?
|
| I just want to be able to give estate agents, solicitors,
| a bank, etc my ID number and a time-limited code that
| proves I am in control of that ID (or however that might
| work), and be done with it.
| brigandish wrote:
| > It has always received weirdly vitriolic push back.
|
| Because, as the Home Secretary herself observed, it would
| fundamentally change the relationship between the
| individual and the state.
|
| > What really is the Government going to do with a
| digital ID service that they can't do already?
|
| This gives the impression of having done no research into
| a topic of which you now opine opposition to be "weirdly
| vitriolic". We live in an age of search engines and GPTs,
| free encyclopaedias and entire lecture series online, and
| even libraries are still open and free, but you've done
| _nothing_ to get past the very first thoughts you 've had
| on the subject.
|
| Was that _weirdly vitriolic_ , or someone pointing out
| that an argument to undermine everyone's rights should
| have some effort behind it?
| wholinator2 wrote:
| I dunno man, your reply doesn't sound _kind_. Maybe you
| could try to explain the point you're defending rather
| than ad hominem and overextrapolate a perceived insult. I
| genuinely want to learn and it's frustrating that your
| comment does not do that.
| jmye wrote:
| Calling their objections "weirdly vitriolic" belies both
| a complaint about "kindness", and shows an explicit
| desire to _not_ learn a single thing. Perhaps, if you
| have genuine curiosity in the future, you should be
| thoughtful about the questions you ask, and the ad
| hominem attacks _you_ make in the asking, rather than
| whining after the fact because people didn't excuse your
| lack of tactful interaction sufficiently?
|
| Or just complain about "kindness" more - it's easier to
| accuse others of being mean than to look in a mirror, I
| suppose.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| The person to whom you are replying is not the person who
| said the "weirdly vitriolic" remark. You're chastising
| someone who didn't do the thing you are (rightly)
| opposing.
| brigandish wrote:
| If what you say were to be true then an accusation of ad
| hominem would itself be ad hominem.
|
| I addressed _their_ unkind and ad hominem argument. If
| you think me unkind then I will shrug and say, in hacker
| parlance, they should RTFM. They have not put in the
| _slightest_ work before opining and criticising, and on
| something as important as this?
|
| May they receive such _weird vitriol_ until they learn to
| at least Google first. Doesn 't it automatically run a
| GPT for you now? They, and surely the people around them,
| will thank me for instilling such basic discipline.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Can anyone explain the history of "self ID" rules and
| laws in the UK? It seems like you do not have to prove
| your ID to the police. It is the reverse. As an outsider,
| I don't understand it.
| brigandish wrote:
| The fundamental proposition on which all of English
| culture flows from is that of _innocence_. For example,
| in court, you do not have to prove your innocence because
| you are _presumed_ innocent.
|
| In the case of ID cards and the like, the state does not
| rule over the populace, it rules on _behalf_ of the
| populace. I am _innocent_ and they work _for me_. Hence,
| I do not have to prove to some random government agent
| who I am _unless it is relevant to the task they perform_
| , e.g.
|
| - the police have a _reasonable_ and _justifiable_
| suspicion that I am engaged in criminal activity - an
| immigration officer may only ask for my details when I am
| crossing a border or, again, have some _reasonable_ and
| _justifiable_ suspicion that I am in need of deportation
| etc. - Or perhaps I just need some documents from my
| local municipal office, and they rightly ask who I am and
| to prove it before giving out my private info.
|
| Me going about my business is no business of the
| government's until I start abusing the rules.
|
| The opposite view is that:
|
| - I am ruled over - Any agent of the government can
| question me and prevent me from going about _my_ business
|
| Of course, in practice, the application of such liberal
| principles like not requiring ID to go about my day are
| often not done well, but to change the _principle_ is to
| change the entire character of the most fundamental
| aspects of Englishness. You 'll note, much of the
| continent lurches between different forms of collectivist
| oppressive government whereas, until of late, the UK has
| not. This is because of the lack of this fundamental
| principle there, I am sure of that, and those calling for
| these kind of ID laws, digital or otherwise, are not to
| be entertained.
|
| The most interesting case will be the USA, where they
| still care about the principles of English liberty, far
| more than the English do.
| schneehertz wrote:
| Oh, bro, you're practically living in 1689
| graemep wrote:
| Successive governments have been determined to change
| this.
|
| A good current example is the Children's Wellbeing and
| Schools Bill which very much is based on the idea that
| the state, rather than parents, is primarily responsible
| for children. The Online Safety Act reflects much the
| same thinking.
|
| I think there has been a cultural change. Both from the
| state, and from people who expect to be told what to do
| to a greater extent than the past.
| lxgr wrote:
| This theory mixes up the distinct concepts of the
| government, as a trusted entity (where applicable),
| issuing identity document _for the use of its citizens_
| (including in person-to-person or person-to-private-
| company scenarios), and that of the government _requiring
| its citizens to identify themselves to it on demand_.
|
| Sure, its slightly harder to have a government issue
| credentials to everybody and _not have them abuse the
| possibilities that come with it_ , but if a society can
| pull it of, there are vast benefits in many areas of
| life.
|
| On top of that, the flip side of people regularly not
| carrying any identification documents seems to be a
| police force much more eager to arrest people on the spot
| to figure out their identity. (Presented as an
| observation without value judgement: This way of doing
| things does lower the likelihood of the police arresting
| somebody _because of not carrying identification_.)
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > The fundamental proposition on which all of English
| culture flows from is that of innocence.
|
| Is this not true in all highly advanced democracies?
|
| One thing I have found true (and somewhat different from
| other countries), when UK folks talk about how they view
| the police, it is _generally_ beneficial. (Don 't throw
| your tomatoes at me just yet!) Versus other countries,
| the police are viewed as more neutral or negative
| (especially the US). I always thought the idea of having
| no regular police carrying guns is a pretty brave policy
| in the 21st century. In many ways, imperfect policy, but
| it works well, and ( _appears_ ) to reduce police
| violence against the public. On a more personal note, I
| also find the UK police are _incredibly_ restrained
| during heated protests. Imperfect, yes, but they make a
| real effort. As an outsider, when I watch a short YouTube
| clip of a heated protest in the UK, and the police are
| doing their best to keep cool and not antogise the
| crowds. (I promise: I 'm not here to shill for UK police;
| I'm sure they do _some_ bad stuff too.) The best phrase
| that I ever heard from a British person to describe UK
| police: "They police by consent (of the people)." It is
| a powerful phrase and idea.
| georgefrowny wrote:
| Basically there is no universal ID system. You are not
| required to have a passport or driving licence, which are
| the usual IDs. There is an optional kind of ID you can
| use to prove your age if you don't or can't have those.
| Even if you do have one of these, you don't have to show
| it to the police if they stop you. The police can ask
| your name, but unless the police has "reasonable grounds"
| to search you, you can just walk away.
|
| This is at odds to much of the EU where carrying ID is
| normal and you can be fined for not having it on you in
| public.
|
| Proving your identity to a company usually involves a
| copy of passport and a recent utility bill. Sometimes you
| need to get a "professional" (doctor, lawyer) to write "I
| certify this is a valid copy" on it. Financial systems
| often use your NI number (think SSN) as the ID factor for
| things like KYC, the NHS uses a separate number. There
| are several fairly mysterious companies that provide this
| service to companies who need to know like solicitors
| (you upload the photos, they authenticte it "somehow",
| hopefully they look after it, presumably they can be
| audited I turn out to be a money launderer using a fake
| document). Getting a passport is a bit of a performance
| as you have to bootstrap the trust chain by getting
| someone you know to submit their documents and vouch for
| your photos.
|
| It also means that, to use a hot-button subject recently,
| the police have limited practical ways to prove a right
| to work, unless they have strong intelligence that a
| particular place is using illegal labour and do a raid.
| The current tactic seems to be arresting people for
| illegal e-bikes, where they have reasonable grounds for
| an arrest and can then get the name and do the
| immigration checks at that point.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| This is a great post. I learned a lot. Thank you.
|
| I remember once seeing the UK passport application. It
| struck me as having utterly byzantine requirements. When
| I read your post and think about it again, the lack of a
| universal ID could make it very tricky to get a passport,
| which is _ultimately_ a national /universal ID.
| komali2 wrote:
| > What really is the Government going to do with a
| digital ID service that they can't do already?
|
| In 20 years, the UK suffers a terrorist attack just
| before an election, and then elects a ultra right wing
| government on a platform of "remigrating foreigners."
| You're a British born citizen but your mom fled from Iran
| in the 80s and immigrated to the UK.
|
| If you don't have digital ID, and the government decides
| to "remigrate all Iranians," they have to collect
| information from several different government groups,
| e.g. maybe your mom got a passport in which case one
| government agency may just know she's a non-native
| British citizen but nothing more. Maybe your immigration
| agency stands up to the government and engages in legal
| battles to prevent turning over immigration information.
|
| However if there's a digital ID system that lets the
| government instantly know everything about a person, you
| lose the protection of friction.
|
| I believe this is one of the fundamental premises of
| representative liberal democracy, and one of its most
| redeeming features: balance of power is spread not just
| between branches of government, but through
| ministries/departments/agencies, which makes it much
| harder for a despot to do despotism.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Being able to break the law is never a good thing.
| Immigration agencies can still fight whatever after
| people have been kicked out as has been decided.
| Government inefficiency should never be celebrated.
| komali2 wrote:
| > Immigration agencies can still fight whatever after
| people have been kicked out as has been decided.
|
| Given that dragnet operations result in all sorts of
| random people being deported, including citizens, and
| given that sometimes these people are deported to
| countries where they face violence or death, you are
| arguing for state-sponsored violence without due process.
| Other than people immigrating, what other circumstances
| do you feel justify the elimination of due process?
| charcircuit wrote:
| People should not be hiding in our country to escape
| death. If someone was willing to break the law that
| heavily, they should be deported and faced judgements as
| soon as possible as those are the people we should be
| removing from society as fast as possible.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Being able to break the law is never a good thing.
|
| Suppose there is a law against being Jewish.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Then I suggest Jewish people not visit the country.
| Trying to still visit despite being banned will not leed
| to a good outcome.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| They live there and it's also illegal for them to try to
| leave.
| Someone wrote:
| I don't think there is much "protection of friction". A
| despot may not bother checking citizenship. For example h
| ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_and_deportation_of
| _A... says:
|
| _"ICE was confirmed by independent review and U.S.
| judges to have violated laws including the Immigration
| Act of 1990 by interrogating and detaining people without
| warrants or review of their citizenship status"_
| georgefrowny wrote:
| > However if there's a digital ID system that lets the
| government instantly know everything about a person, you
| lose the protection of friction.
|
| "Digital ID" doesn't necessitate that all data is
| collected into one gigantic store with centralised
| access. Just that you can use the same attestation of
| identity to access the various systems. And you can also
| grant others access to a limited subset of the data.
|
| If the government wanted to they could _already_ have set
| up some direct access from (say) the passport office to
| HMRC. It 's all digital anyway, backwards as the UK
| government can be, they're not sending people to pore
| over paper ledgers in person like in The Jackal.
|
| Some of the system already works like this anyway with
| the share codes for permission to work for foreigners and
| proving your driving licence.
|
| Theoretically you would also be able to have an audit log
| of who asked for attestation for access to which system
| using that ID. Which you currently don't have when
| everyone is doing it by passport scans, NI numbers given
| over the phone and so on.
|
| What it does allow is a creeping over-attestation
| especially of non-government services where you need to
| use the ID to do things that were previously anonymous or
| at least potentially anonymous. But since you currently
| need to use a driving license or selfie to look at
| boobies, that's already a thing.
|
| It also, depending on cryptographic implementation, can
| leak information about attestations directly to the
| government. For example if I certify my identity at
| BumTickling.com, the website might only find out that I'm
| over 18, but the government may then know that BT.com's
| operator requested attestation of my ID's age field.
| Whereas currently, BT.com's (probably) shady identity
| service partner may have my selfie and know I tried to
| look at BT.com, but the government (probably, maybe they
| forward these things secretly) doesn't know about it
| unless they audit that partner.
|
| It also has the possibility to gate access to government
| services behind app installations which, when done
| lazily, means not only smartphones are required which is
| bad enough, but specifically Google and Apple devices.
| lxgr wrote:
| I broadly agree on the theory of administrative friction
| increasing the resiliency of societies against non-
| democratic government action, but I wonder if that ship
| hasn't sailed with the digitziation of most governments:
| All that data is already present in some database, public
| or private (with the government able to coerce access in
| many cases).
|
| So I get the historical aversion to IDs as _the stepping
| stone_ of governments to gaining access to potentially
| democracy-subverting informational hazmat, but these
| days, I feel like the downsides of not having a
| ubiquitous and privacy-preserving ID scheme vastly
| outweigh the little bit of extra friction of it will ever
| add.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > _Requiring identification in situations that don 't
| need it_ is where the problems start
|
| Which is exactly the argument against digital ID, because
| it reduces the friction to asking for ID in situations
| that don't need it, causing it to become epidemic.
|
| Meanwhile nearly all the instances where ID actually
| _should_ be required are also instances where showing up
| in person should be required, like taking out your first
| line of credit with a financial institution, or signing
| on to a new job. Because the entire point is to verify
| that that person is the person on the ID and not someone
| in Russia who managed to hack their phone.
| nephihaha wrote:
| The problem with digital ID is that it can be switched
| off in an instant. I was talking to some people in a
| strike picket line about this. They seemed unaware of it.
| Suddenly you would be unable to travel, pay your bills
| and access internet etc for doing the wrong thing.
| BDPW wrote:
| If an authoritarian state tells a bank to block you as a
| customer you get exactly the same result. All these
| options of blocking people are already available to
| states in general.
| lxgr wrote:
| Very different levels of friction, though, and that
| matters too in practice.
| Tor3 wrote:
| A digital ID is not doing all of that. The way it's
| implemented in Sweden, just to take an example already
| mentioned, is simply to identify you, and only for
| certain parts of society (mostly governmental services,
| banks, insurance and the like, and a few more). It's not
| about authorizing you for travel. If you need an ID for
| picking up your valuable shipment from the post office
| then you simply show your driver's license or passport,
| you don't use a digital ID for that. At all. If someone
| took away your digital ID then that would mean zero for
| your internet access, and zero for your ability to
| travel. It's not used for that at all. What _would_ be a
| problem is paying the bills, because the ID identifies
| you for using network banking. However, alternative ways
| for identifying you for the latter are far worse
| concerns.
| lxgr wrote:
| But GP raise a valid point: If IDs are ubiquitous and
| commonly used for non-government business, the government
| does implicitly gain substantial "veto power" over non-
| government transactions (by revoking existing credentials
| or not issuing new ones).
|
| Availability has to be ensured just as much as security
| and privacy in such a scenario, and that's not trivial.
| (I still personally think it's worth trying.)
| Tor3 wrote:
| In those places where a system like Sweden's has been
| implemented, the usage is constricted to certain areas.
| And in the case where it's used elsewhere, that's an
| option that is not mandatory (and in any case far and few
| between). A way to identify an individual is typically
| related to financial or contractual issues. So far, at
| least. Looking at you, the UK
| kube-system wrote:
| Yes, but those "certain areas" are mandatory for
| functioning in society. And that ID is managed by a
| single central authority.
|
| The US by contrast, has a distributed system where there
| are many authorities that can issue IDs that are valid
| for the activities of daily life.
|
| The only common nationally issued ID in the US is a
| passport and people only get that for international
| travel -- and it wasn't even until 2024 that a majority
| of Americans even had one.
| amarant wrote:
| How so? In Sweden we have digital ID and it's great! Super
| practical and I struggle to think of how it would be used
| to spy on citizens, given that it has the same legal
| protections as banks have regarding your account
| transactions etc.
|
| Like sure you could in theory see every document I've ever
| signed if you have a warrant for BankID servers, but you
| could probably glean most of that if you had a warrant for
| the banks servers anyway, so it's not really a new
| capability.
| gxs wrote:
| That's sort of how all this type of policy is pushed
| through
|
| Convenience - what you're describing is convenience
|
| It's totally fine if you prioritize that over everything
| else, but my only thought here is that everyone should be
| crystal clear in what they are trading off for
| convenience
|
| It's convenient for the government too, tk have a single
| identifier to thread a persons entire life
|
| We are, sadly, well beyond any expectation of privacy,
| but we should at least be aware of it and try to not make
| it worse
| amarant wrote:
| Again,I struggle to think of how it'd be used gather any
| data not already available.
|
| Yes it's selling point is convenience. Convenience is
| good.
|
| In this particular case I disagree that there's a price
| in privacy. At least currently, and the way the Swedish
| electronic ID is implemented, I don't see it.
|
| With other variations there might be problems of course,
| though I'd worry more about someone messing up the
| security of it rather than privacy
| zug_zug wrote:
| I used to think like that. Now in my country we have a
| president who would use that to deport or target
| political opponents, track people who criticize Israel,
| etc.
|
| You can never put the genie back in the bottle and you
| never know who will be in charge in 20 years
| amarant wrote:
| Yeah but the US was never a full democracy. Part of the
| problem with the US is that the president has way too
| much power to begin with.
|
| If trump was elected prime minister of Sweden, he
| wouldn't have been able to do half the stuff he's done.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| The president isn't supposed to have that much power in
| the US either. The federal government in general wasn't
| supposed to have much power; power is supposed to be
| reserved to the states except for specific scenarios
| enumerated in our constitution. Unfortunately, a century
| of blatantly illegal power grabs by the federal
| government, combined with Congress (which should've acted
| as a check upon the president) willingly giving their
| power over to the president, we are in a pretty bad spot.
| However, if it happened to us it could happen to any
| country. At the end of the day the constitution of a
| nation is only meaningful to the extent that people will
| actually _enforce_ it.
| refurb wrote:
| The President doesn't have that much power in the US.
| Head of the executive, yes, but that's it.
|
| And what has he done? Enforced immigration laws according
| to written law? Reorganized the executive branch?
|
| He can't pass any laws by himself. The judiciary can
| overturn his executive orders.
| zug_zug wrote:
| How about stacked the supreme court with sycophants (at
| least one of which has been caught taking bribes) whereby
| allowing his gross violations of the law to be tolerated
| on appeal to the supreme court (legal eagle has a great
| video on this).
|
| And then bullied executive who dare disagree with him
| (e.g. jan 6 commission, and his first impeachment) and
| even perform completely baseless criminal investigations
| that (e.g. against Comey) that are so ill-advised that he
| has to appoint unqualified prosecutors to even file these
| claims because no serious one would stand for it.
|
| He now wields enough scary-factor that even though we
| have handwritten proof of his involvement with Eepstein
| that his own party is too cowardly to impeach him or even
| release the files (the same party that freaked out about
| Clinton getting a blowjob now afraid to go after a
| pedophile, and one who flirts with the idea of pardoning
| Maxwell and moved her to a minimum security facility)
| hellojesus wrote:
| > He now wields enough scary-factor that even though we
| have handwritten proof of his involvement with Eepstein
| that his own party is too cowardly to impeach him or even
| release the files
|
| I think they're only cowardly because each elected
| individual's goal is to survive long enough to get a
| sweet exit deal. Voting to impeach Trump is the correct
| thing to do (blatant corruption, violation of due
| processes, etc.), but it will surely lessen their chances
| of reelection.
|
| I think Congress is full of a bunch of individuals trying
| to maximize personal gain agnostic of the outcome for the
| country, but I'm not sure how to realign the incentives
| to fix that.
| iamnothere wrote:
| I don't get it, so you're saying that the US isn't a full
| democracy and the leader has too much power, but you
| think the US should implement digital ID anyway ignoring
| that situation? As if that will help?
| ori_b wrote:
| There are many examples of democracies backsliding.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Now in my country we have a president who would use
| that to deport or target political opponents, track
| people who criticize Israel
|
| He can already do that?
| hexbin010 wrote:
| I struggle to see how it's a good thing for Sweden. I
| disagree convenience is a good thing.
|
| We can all play "I struggle to see" and throw out weak
| arguments but it does not advance the topic
| amarant wrote:
| You still haven't presented even a weak argument for how
| it infringes on privacy.
|
| You just said "privacy" and pretended that's an argument
| ahoka wrote:
| There's not a lot of privacy ins Sweden anyway. Way too
| much private stuff is public and continuously scraped by
| private companies.
|
| For those who don't know: by just looking up a name, you
| can find a persons birthday, address, who also lives
| there. Oh and the person's salary is public too.
|
| Ridiculous.
| hexbin010 wrote:
| > You still haven't presented even a weak argument for
| how it infringes on privacy.
|
| NB I was calling out your weak arguments. I wasn't
| attempting to do something that isn't my job ;)
|
| For countries introducing digital ID etc, it's for the
| _advocates_ to present a strong argument and evidence how
| it will respect privacy, how it will remain secure etc
| beyond "trust us bro" and "I can't see how it wouldn't
| be secure"
| komali2 wrote:
| > Like sure you could in theory see every document I've
| ever signed if you have a warrant for BankID servers, but
| you could probably glean most of that if you had a
| warrant for the banks servers anyway, so it's not really
| a new capability.
|
| It's a single point of failure. Digital ID servers on
| creation because as valuable to compromise as
| value_of_bank_hack*bank_count plus whatever other
| services are rolled in.
|
| Furthermore now only one warrant is needed, or one
| illegal executive order. Take the USA as a live example -
| legal protections aren't actually real, a government
| official with enough political power can just do whatever
| they want while the courts struggle to keep up, and then
| just ignore court orders.
|
| If your identity is spread out in many different ways, at
| least then there's more friction to compromise. Just
| because one bank capitulates doesn't mean the actor
| immediately has health information on you, for example.
| Just because the unemployment office capitulates doesn't
| mean the actor has your financial records.
| noduerme wrote:
| I think a lot of people in the US are clinging to the
| hope that this type of friction, along with judicial
| decisions, will cause the process of removing our legal
| protections to stall out. I'm not optimistic that this is
| the case, because the party currently driving the federal
| incursion on private and state-held data is the one that
| until recently was opposed to things like national ID.
| Anything can be done in the name of protecting people
| from N, if you can get a majority to be afraid of N.
| immibis wrote:
| Does the letter N stand for Democrats...?
| dylan604 wrote:
| No
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| I don't really get why people seem convinced that the
| government is removing protections for all citizens under
| a smokescreen of illegal immigration handling, as opposed
| to taking limited and temporary measures to deal with an
| unusual situation.
|
| My current interpretation is that they are fear mongering
| about violence because they are actually way more racist
| than they admit publicly, and might want to remove more
| people than they were letting on initially.
|
| So okay you can definitely disagree with that, and how
| you feel about it can definitely be influenced by how
| much you feel threatened (personally or network) and
| that's valid.
|
| But why do we think that they are using this as a ruse to
| like become despotically authoritarian in general? Do we
| think that the borders were opened intentionally to
| fabricate this "crisis"? If not, it would be such a huge
| coincidence, because there are a zillion reasons to be
| concerned about the demographic situation without needing
| to use it as a smokescreen, what are the odds that this
| problem organically appeared and then they happen to be
| able to take advantage of it?
|
| Note that I'm not asserting that the borders weren't
| opened intentionally to fabricate this problem to which
| they can react with a "solution", that sounds exactly
| like something a government would do. I just don't hear
| anyone saying that out loud, at least, and having
| personal network or moral values or whatever threatened
| and reacting to that just seems a lot more likely to me
| as a reason why people feel like the world is ending.
| komali2 wrote:
| > what are the odds that this problem organically
| appeared and then they happen to be able to take
| advantage of it?
|
| Quite low. Borders weren't open to fabricate an excuse to
| engage in authoritarianism - the excuse was simply
| fabricate, whole-cloth, with no basis in reality to
| justify it.
|
| There is no immigration problem in the USA. Large
| portions of the American economy are dependent on
| immigration, documented or otherwise. Immigrants,
| documented or otherwise, commit less crimes per-capita
| than USA citizens.
|
| So, the current government is using immigration as a
| flash-point to get themselves elected, and as an ongoing
| distraction away from their failure to address their
| other platform (affordability). Getting to be more
| authoritarian is the stated goal, based on the plan
| outlined in "Project 2025."
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| What is it about being a US citizen that increases
| criminality? Shouldn't we expect that crime comes down as
| the US has been a leader in immigration, considering
| immigrants commit less crime? Has crime come down in
| Europe as it became a leader?
|
| I've been trying to make sense of the statistics.
| Interested to hear any explanation that can reconcile
| these contrasting observations.
| bitfis wrote:
| Generally it seems to be more related that if you are an
| immigrant, you more likely try to keep your heads down.
| This comes from a video about immigration in sweden. For
| which the first generation of immigrants want to
| contribute to society in most cases, while the second
| generation seems to be more open to crime. The second
| generation does of course has then the citizenship and
| are not considered to be immigrants anymore. But this
| does does not need to correlate with immigration and
| culture per se, but also can have todo about second
| generations being badly integrated and/or having less
| oportunities then other citizens. Just seems citizens
| generally accept less shit from the government then
| immigrants do.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| > There is no immigration problem in the USA
|
| Well this is a controversial statement. Many people have
| thought there was an immigration problem in the USA since
| well before Trump entered politics.
|
| If I pretend to believe that there is definitely no
| immigration problem, though, then I agree with you. But
| like I said, that is a controversial statement.
|
| Would you believe that the people who support this just
| do believe there is an immigration problem? People are
| allowed to care about things other than the economy and
| crime stats, by the way.
| komali2 wrote:
| > Would you believe that the people who support this just
| do believe there is an immigration problem?
|
| Yes, of course I believe that there's people who believe
| there's an immigration problem.
|
| > People are allowed to care about things other than the
| economy and crime stats, by the way.
|
| What sort of problems would one believe can arise from
| immigration that aren't related to the economy or public
| safety?
| throaway123213 wrote:
| Illegal immigration is a problem whether you want to
| admit or or not. Just allow the amount of legal
| immigrants needed. Saying illegal immigration is not a
| problem is just as much of a smokescreen as saying
| immigrants are "the" problem.
| komali2 wrote:
| Ah, well if it's a problem, it should be trivially easy
| for you to illustrate how exactly it's a problem, using
| hard facts and numbers. I earnestly invite you to do so!
| hellojesus wrote:
| It's a problem insofar as it exists and is illegal. I'm
| no fan of the current administration, but the Biden admin
| just plain refused to execute the laws. That seems
| problematic to me for an executive branch.
|
| I have no problem with uncapped migration, but to flat
| out refuse to enforce the law is a bit ridiculous. What
| should be done is simple: Congress should just pass a law
| like is expected of the Legislative branch that says all
| immigrants are welcome.
|
| As an added benefit, it would get rid of the illegal
| wages overnight. Americans complain that illegals are
| taking their jobs, but they're only taking the ones that
| aren't filled by US laborers. And US laborers can't
| legally compete with illegals if illegals are being paid
| less than minimum wage.
|
| A single, simple, straight-forward law could fix all
| those issues with the stroke of a pen.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >but the Biden admin just plain refused to execute the
| laws.
|
| The Biden admin tried to pass the single most restrictive
| immigration law the US has ever seen with _bipartisan
| support_ from all but the most progressive democrats.
|
| Please tell me, who killed that bill?
|
| >As an added benefit, it would get rid of the illegal
| wages overnight
|
| Speaking of laws not being enforced, republicans have
| spent 30 years bitching about immigration while _utterly
| refusing_ to enforce existing laws punishing _primarily
| republican owned_ businesses for hiring illegal
| immigrants and suppressing wages. Gee, surely they care
| about fixing things right?
|
| Even Trump's admin is _still_ refusing to enforce those
| laws. Desantis spent five minutes suggesting he might
| finally enforce such laws and was _immediately_ stopped
| _by republicans_
|
| >That seems problematic to me for an executive branch.
|
| So you voted for an executive branch that demonstrably
| violates all sorts of laws, refuses to punish friends for
| violating laws, and pardons _literal war criminals_ or
| _literal scammers_ if they donate enough. Good job.
| Please tell me how pardoning the guy from Nikola Motors
| is enforcing the law and a good use of the executive
| branch.
|
| >What should be done is simple: Congress should just pass
| a law like is expected of the Legislative branch that
| says all immigrants are welcome.
|
| Again, democrats love nothing more than passing laws in
| congress and there is ample evidence of that. It is
| _republicans_ who have spent 50 years OPENLY not doing
| their jobs in congress. They are the ones saying, openly,
| that congress not passing anything is an intended
| outcome. They are the ones saying that preventing
| democrats from doing anything at all is intended.
| Democrats, despite such bad faith, _still_ cross the
| aisle and pass things republicans want, because the US
| system _requires_ bipartisanship as a feature.
|
| When the illegal migrant laborers come to cash their
| checks every week, those checks carry the signature of
| _republican_ families. If you 've ever bought potatoes
| that come from a Maine farm, they were picked by migrant
| labor, overseen by angry and lazy republicans who do
| nothing but bitch about migrant labor while smoking weed
| with the local cops, and choosing to hire that exact
| labor. LePage made zero effort to enforce laws on the
| book to stop those very republicans from using migrant
| labor.
|
| Why hire the politicians that have a _demonstrated_
| history of making no attempt to solve the problem, voted
| in by the people causing the problem in the first place?
|
| Meanwhile here in Maine, bulk asylum migration is pretty
| much the only reason why Lewiston is a functioning and
| thriving City, and migrants from former french colonies
| in africa are the only people who can still speak french
| and carry that culture after the KKK spent the early part
| of the 1900s stamping out my french ancestry and culture.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| See: demographic projections.
|
| Europeans are projected to numerically lose control of
| America, which in a democracy is equivalent to losing
| control functionally.
|
| It's very convenient for a lot of people to pretend this
| doesn't matter at all, and many or even most Europeans
| have at this point been brainwashed through childhood
| conditioning to not be able to go there even in their
| thoughts, lest they become the deepest evil, according to
| their conditioning.
|
| But, in a sane world, anything pre-1945, the statement
| "Europeans are projected to lose control of America
| within single digit decades" would spur a panic.
|
| Let me guess, I'm just a horrible immoral person and I'm
| not allowed to think about this, right? Do you have any
| arguments besides that one?
| noduerme wrote:
| I think it was a mistake of the left to brainwash white
| kids to think of themselves as belonging to a group of
| evil oppressive colonizers - precisely because a few
| decades of that type of over-the-top racial "justice"
| schooling has led (inevitably, and even understandably)
| to the white nationalist backlash we're seeing today.
|
| What should have happened was to stick with the
| individualist, civil rights notion that all men and women
| are created equal. Full stop.
|
| Your complaint about the brainwashing is valid _to a
| point_ , as no one should be raised having guilt for
| being born of a particular race/ethnicity, and in fact
| people should take pride in their heritage.
|
| However, you do not explain why you think it _matters_
| whether a majority of the US remains of European stock,
| (by which I guess you mean not mixed race as well). And
| this is where your argument is transparently, well,
| racist. Because to explain that, you would probably need
| to denigrate other races.
|
| I think you could make an argument that Europeans should
| stay a majority in Europe, on the basis that _it is
| Europe_. But America is not Europe, and never was.
| Europeans were a minority throughout the Americas when
| they showed up, and they will be a minority here again,
| and I don 't see a big problem with that.
|
| [edit] Just to add, there was nothing "sane" about the
| way Europeans conducted themselves either on the
| continent or here, especially in the decade prior to
| 1945. Also, prior to 1945, there was no general notion of
| "European", but rather many smaller nationalities. From
| 1941, it was a widely held idea that people of German
| descent for instance were a threat to America and should
| be deported. In the 19th century, a lot of people thought
| the same about the Irish, and you would have had to
| replace "European" with "English" in your statement to
| get some sort of nativist reaction.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >Europeans are projected to numerically lose control of
| America
|
| What does this even _mean_?
|
| You realize you descend from africans right? How african
| do you identify? Is it bad that you don't identify as
| african even though it is provable that you are descended
| from africans? Is it bad that the UK developed a culture
| that wasn't really african?
|
| >Let me guess, I'm just a horrible immoral person and I'm
| not allowed to think about this, right?
|
| You are allowed to think about it, and others are allowed
| to rightly point out how stupid, utterly unfounded, and
| abysmal, and utterly pathetic such a thought is. It's
| deeply _childish_. Grow up.
|
| Oh no, the UK might be more brown in 100 years, what a
| shame, anyway who wants Tikka Misala? No? Aw, well lets
| have a cuppa instead, freshly imported from asia!
|
| You know the Hamburger is german right? Or all that
| delicious cajun food is, not from white people, though it
| has some french influence thanks to the brits deporting
| my family 300 years ago. Or how saint patty's day isn't
| something the Irish Celebrate?
|
| Meanwhile, do you know where Algebra comes from? Not
| Europeans.
|
| Except, by leaning on European "control" of the US, it's
| a hundred times dumber! Your own logic is that each and
| every one of us should be violently deported because this
| country belongs to _Native Americans_.
|
| Fuck me, do you even know how the US got Texas? A bunch
| of Americans illegally settled in Mexican land (that was
| owned by the spanish at the time) and cried to Uncle Sam
| to "protect" them and the state that resulted from that
| behavior has the utter gall to assert that their state
| should "Stay European"!
|
| God forbid your children have to interact with other
| human beings who have different cultures than them, the
| utter horror. God forbid a "European" country have to
| learn a second language, that definitely isn't
| "European"!
|
| >But, in a sane world, anything pre-1945, the statement
| "Europeans are projected to lose control of America
| within single digit decades" would spur a panic.
|
| The US quite literally killed 600k of our own people to
| give some control to imported africans and their
| descendants. America _started_ as a multicultural nation
| sharing land with Native Americans, and supporting
| extremely varied immigrants basically without a formal
| process for hundreds of years. The KKK came back to life
| partially to oppress french and irish catholics because
| "European" wasn't actually what racists cared about. The
| Irish and Italians and Jews were "others" because racists
| DGAF about European ancestry or purity.
|
| Do you even see how trivially you are being played? Do
| you really think the administration full of first and
| second generation immigrants from Non European countries
| gives a single fuck about America becoming "Non
| European"?
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > I don't really get why people seem convinced that the
| government is removing protections for all citizens under
| a smokescreen of illegal immigration handling, as opposed
| to taking limited and temporary measures to deal with an
| unusual situation.
|
| Probably because the actions being taken are against
| people of every category; illegal immigrants, legal
| immigrants, and naturally born citizens.
|
| As has been noted, _anyone_ not being entitled due
| process means _nobody_ is entitled to due process.
| Because then can kidnap you, claim you're "of a group not
| entitled to due process", and do whatever they want to
| you. And you can't push back because you're not in that
| group... because you need due process to do that.
|
| > But why do we think that they are using this as a ruse
| to like become despotically authoritarian in general?
|
| At some point, you have to call a duck a duck. They're
| doing things that despotically authoritarian would do,
| over and over. They may or may not _think_ that's what
| their goal is, but it clearly is.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| What actions are being taken against legal immigrants and
| naturally born citizens?
|
| Are you referring to getting arrested and released due to
| some suspicion (let's say the suspicion is always
| fabricated for the sake of argument), or deported, or
| something else?
|
| On due process, if someone accidentally gets a free
| flight to a foreign country, that totally sucks and they
| should be paid compensation, but let's not pretend that
| deportation is the same as what authoritarian regimes
| typically do. Have people disappeared off the face of the
| earth? I think the Germans of the '30s would have a very
| different reputation if they had simply attempted to
| deport all the Jews...
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| Of course this is where it starts. If you ever find
| yourself in the situation of saying "at least it's not as
| bad as Nazi Germany" then you're probably not heading in
| a good direction.
| andrepd wrote:
| While being mistaken about what Nazi Germany did (they
| did not, in fact, start gassing people in 1933; it began
| precisely with deportations).
| dustractor wrote:
| > Have people disappeared off the face of the earth?
|
| It is established that hundreds of detainees from the
| July 2025 Alligator Alcatraz intake were unaccounted for
| in ICE's online system by late August and reported as
| such through September 2025, with recurring reporting of
| about 800 with no online record and some 450 with unclear
| location data.
| komali2 wrote:
| > On due process, if someone accidentally gets a free
| flight to a foreign country, that totally sucks and they
| should be paid compensation, but let's not pretend that
| deportation is the same as what authoritarian regimes
| typically do.
|
| Are you being facetious, or do you genuinely think so
| lightly of people being black bagged with no due process
| and deported to a random country that you'll joke about
| it being a "free flight?"
|
| Also, you seem to not be aware that deportation and
| "voluntary deportation (via various forms of pressure)"
| of Jewish people was the step Nazi Germany did before the
| concentration camps.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| The way I think about this is, let's say a lot of
| Americans are moving to Switzerland illegally by
| overstaying their visas. If I went along with that group,
| I would not be surprised to be deported by force. If I
| went there legally and got caught up in a raid or
| something, or even targeted personally because I sound
| American, and I get locked up for a bit and then sent
| back to America on an airplane, would I be upset?
| Absolutely I would be, that would be a terrible
| experience. But at the same time, I would understand that
| a lot of my countrymen are breaking Swiss law and the
| Swiss have to do something about it, and I can see why it
| might be hard to not make any mistakes. It would probably
| make me not want to go back to Switzerland.
|
| Is that not a valid take? Does it not apply somehow? If I
| put myself in their shoes, that is how I feel.
| andrepd wrote:
| > if someone accidentally gets a free flight to a foreign
| country
|
| It's practically a vacation, you're right. I really don't
| know what they're complaining about /s
|
| > think the Germans of the '30s would have a very
| different reputation if they had simply attempted to
| deport all the Jews...
|
| There's _no way_ you 've just written that. I urgently
| suggest you to pick a history book.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| There is quite a lot of daylight between "something to
| complain about" and "authoritarian regime". I never said
| they had "nothing to complain about".
|
| I'm not trying to _convince_ anyone that there isn't
| authoritarian regime behavior happening. I am just trying
| to figure out what people are talking about when they
| refer to that as if it is happening.
|
| I am using "Germans of the '30s" as a euphemism.
| Obviously I know the timeline of what happened, you are
| just misinterpreting as an opportunistic drama nitpick.
| Whether the misinterpretation is happening consciously or
| subconsciously, I don't know.
|
| If the "Germans of the '30s" had only ever done
| deportations, which they did do, i.e. had they stopped
| there, we would not view them in the same way. Ergo, if
| the current regime stops with deportations, which we have
| no evidence to show that they won't, then there is
| nothing to suggest that they will end up behaving in an
| authoritarian way, because further massive steps are
| required to get there. And besides, the current American
| regime has tremendously more legal justification for
| these deportations than the Nazis had for the Jews
| deportation. The Nazis presumably had to change German
| law to even deport the Jews. No change of law is required
| here, because it is perfectly congruent with the existing
| legal framework (and was done consistently for decades
| prior to this administration, just more quietly and I
| guess in smaller numbers).
|
| It's weird how slippery slope arguments are only valid in
| public discourse when it comes to the Nazis, and in that
| case it's so valid it is just taken as a fact. Just
| because someone is doing something that can be squinted
| at to look like something that happened prior to a
| genocide, does not mean that it will lead to genocide.
| The ad absurdum version of this line of thinking would
| suggest banning vegetarianism or painting, as genocidal
| mania soon followed.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| ICE themselves states that only 70% of the people they
| arrest are even illegal aliens. Only 44% have prior
| criminal records or pending accusations.
|
| Getting arrested with no valid cause doesn't "totally
| suck", it's a fundamental violation of the most basic
| rights of anyone living in a functioning country. As long
| as you can just pick up anyone you want, _nobody_ has
| rights. You have a basic right to not be arrested for
| doing nothing wrong, and yet that 's exactly what ICE is
| doing to tens of thousands of Americans.
|
| >I think the Germans of the '30s would have a very
| different reputation if they had simply attempted to
| deport all the Jews...
|
| Which is what they were literally doing. At first. But
| when you consider human beings as corrosive to your
| society, you will never be satisfied with just getting
| them out of your borders. The same people who treat
| prison rape as a good punishment for criminals will not
| be satisfied with illegal aliens just being removed,
| especially since they will "come back".
|
| We've been through all this before. We literally signed
| treaties with Native Americans, but letting them have all
| this land just wasn't acceptable because they were
| "savages" that don't deserve it, and weren't being as
| useful with it as we would be!
| UberFly wrote:
| You may personally have an issue with federal law
| enforcement detaining people who are in the US illegally,
| but nobody is being "kidnapped".
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| A citizen being rounded up by the state and bundled off
| to a foreign country illegally and with no process is
| absolutely kidnapping regardless of how much you want to
| pretend otherwise.
| chroma205 wrote:
| > A citizen being rounded up by the state and bundled off
| to a foreign country illegally and with no process is
| absolutely kidnapping regardless of how much you want to
| pretend otherwise.
|
| You realize half of Americans literally don't care right?
|
| But I respect your effort for trying. I will stay on my
| gaming chair and do nothing (won't vote, won't donate,
| won't raise awareness).
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > But why do we think that they are using this as a ruse
| to like become despotically authoritarian in general? Do
| we think that the borders were opened intentionally to
| fabricate this "crisis"?
|
| Maybe because many things Trump does and says are blatant
| lies and shameless despotic authoritarian ones? Ignoring
| courts, ignoring the constitution especially the first
| amendment, using his office for personal gain. I don't
| think I have to give examples because they're just too
| many. Only last week he pardoned a convicted drug dealer
| who was Hondurese president while planning to invade
| Venezuela and "just killing people" because of drugs for
| which there isn't even any evidence. It was just the last
| of many (including silk road captain Ross Ulbricht).
| Anyway that's just one of the recent things.
|
| And the borders were never actually open. It's really
| hard to migrate to the US and the illegals do all the
| work the Americans won't do for almost nothing.
|
| The real problem with public safety is the huge income
| gaps, leading to disenfranchised ghettos with festering
| organised crime gangs. A lot of them might be immigrants
| but many are born Americans. The thing they have in
| common that they are poor and have no upward
| opportunities.
| noduerme wrote:
| >> why do we think that they are using this as a ruse to
| like become despotically authoritarian in general
|
| You stated this very well.
|
| But I do think it's a ruse. I don't have a problem with
| enforcing the law on illegal immigration.[0] But I do
| think the deployment of National Guard and in some cases
| Marines on American streets, allegedly to disperse anti-
| ICE protests, is a long game to make sure that there will
| be no judicial obstacles in the way if MAGA loses the
| 2028 election fair and square, cries foul that the
| election was stolen, decides to send in their own slate
| of electors, and faces nationwide protests.
|
| I live in Portland. I see the ridiculous cosplay of
| protesters outside the ICE detention facility. I see the
| absurdity of deploying troops to face off against them.
| If these clowns can be used as a casus belli to declare
| war and use the US military against the civilian
| population, then it will be no stretch to do so when a
| large portion of the population rises up to demand a
| proper electoral count in 2028. That's the scenario I see
| when I see the willy-nilly, unnecessary use of
| federalized troops on American soil.
|
| And for the record, I'm a registered Republican and
| mostly libertarian.
|
| [0] I am not anti-immigration, and I don't view
| immigration as a "demographic problem". I don't care what
| race people are as long as they are coming here for the
| right reasons and want to integrate and be productive
| members of our society. I was also an illegal immigrant
| in Europe for years. I accept the fact that countries
| have the right to decide who they want to accept as
| citizens, and that breaking those rules may damage your
| ability to become a citizen of the country you want to be
| accepted into. And that going there illegally may carry
| certain risks.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| > _" If these clowns can be used as a casus belli to
| declare war and use the US military against the civilian
| population, then..."_
|
| That hasn't happened though. Deploying the national guard
| to stare down and maybe tear gas some clownish protestors
| is pretty typical stuff, not a civil war.
|
| By the way, I was in Seattle when the CHAZ stuff was
| happening and saw firsthand how both sides of the media
| were lying about the reality on the ground. Half the
| media wanted me to believe it was a violent insurrection
| and the other half wanted me to believe it was just a
| family friendly Woodstock situation. Reality as I
| observed it: it was just a bunch of losers huffing spray
| paint fumes, with the police hanging back a few blocks
| letting them make fools of themselves. I saw no violence,
| I wasn't stopped at an armed checkpoint by AK-47 wielding
| masked rebels like Fox News promised (I didn't seriously
| expect that, lmao.)
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| There are schemes, where e.g. KYC would require
| centralized storage of identifying information, which is
| equivalent or stronger than Digital ID. I'm not sure why
| Digital ID servers would store your health records.
| da_chicken wrote:
| Sweden's population is only around 11 million people, and
| you're geographically concentrated in the southern
| mainland provinces or near Stockholm. Both of those make
| thing a lot more practical to manage and make it a lot
| harder to abuse because you don't have the scale to make
| profit as attractive, or the distance to make oversight
| more difficult. You're also relatively culturally
| similar.
|
| It doesn't seem like those should matter so much, but it
| really does make everything about democracy easier.
|
| Things get much weirder when the population isn't so low
| or isn't relatively concentrated.
| amarant wrote:
| I mean, I can do all my voting, tax filings, etc. etc.
| All the way from Mexico, with no issues. You're right
| that most of that must of the Swedish population resides
| in the south, but, as someone who grew up in Northern
| Sweden, it's not like we're marginalised or anything, not
| really.
| lazylizard wrote:
| the singaporean "singpass" has been an amazing
| convenience. at this point its like why is any company
| still asking you to fill in personal particulars on
| forms? they should ask for access to singpass and you
| just authorize them.
|
| you apply to or for anything.. and they just give you the
| option of authorizing via singpass.. and you use your
| passkey-like singpass app to authorize it... and its
| done!
|
| you go to hospital and they need your medical records?
| singpass
|
| you go to university and they need your academic history?
| singpass
|
| you apply for bank loan? insurance? license? food
| handling permit? singpass
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| In the absence of a government solution like Singpass,
| the US and others will end up with an Apple/Alphabet
| solution.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Doesn't this mean that it's not only your hospital that
| sees your medical records, but... everyone who would
| otherwise only need your name and telephone number?
|
| Or is there some way to restrict which party gets which
| data?
| Gigablah wrote:
| There's data scoping per request:
|
| https://docs.developer.singpass.gov.sg/docs/getting-
| started/...
|
| https://docs.developer.singpass.gov.sg/docs/data-catalog-
| myi...
|
| As part of the flow you'll be shown the list of data
| that's being requested.
| broeng wrote:
| I don't think any of the national id services I've heard
| of stores all your data in a centralized place. Usually
| the national id service only provides identification to
| the service providers that request it. Each service
| provider (like, your bank, hospital, pension provider)
| will store their own data as they've always done, they
| just use the service to identify you.
| Ekaros wrote:
| In Finland there is centralized database of all medical
| records. Which makes information transfer simpler. There
| is ofc risk of untheorized access. But for that reason
| legal system exists. You get audit trail and then can
| prosecute or fire those who accessed information
| unnecessarily.
|
| It is trade-off, but probably lot more accountable than
| paper records in big hospitals.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Yeah that's a nightmare for privacy if someone decides to
| use it against you.
| amarant wrote:
| HOW would this hypothetical person use it against you?
|
| It's a driver's licence infringing on my privacy too?
| Cause they're mostly the same, at least the way they're
| implemented in Sweden
| bootsmann wrote:
| Note that the drivers license is actually worse because
| you cannot scope what information you present to the
| requester.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| How many ways can you slice a cake?
|
| The point is that the more identifiable information that
| the monopoly on violence has the easier it is for
| something, anything really, to be used against you should
| your tribal affiliation conflict with the ruling party.
|
| This is like politics 101
| dvdkon wrote:
| At least where I live, there's no extra information being
| gathered. The only difference is that I no longer have to
| physically go somewhere to deal with that information,
| because I can sign in to government services online.
|
| Information that was previously in paper form and
| scattered across various bureaus is now being digitised
| and centralised, but that's orthogonal to "digital ID"!
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Centralized consolidation of PII IS THE RISK
| dvdkon wrote:
| Yes, but that means digital ID isn't the thing to
| complain about.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Both. Digital ID is so threatening it would require a
| perfect organization
|
| Much like all technologies they have social impact at
| their roots and have to be evaluated together
| dvdkon wrote:
| I don't see how that's the case for digital ID by itself.
| I'm also pretty sure that we can analyse the impact of a
| single technology without also blaming it for the
| downsides of other, distinct policies.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| "Hey now guys we just voted this law, now you need to use
| your BankID to login to your phone the first time.
| Because, think of the children! And well, if you have
| pictures we deem forbidden, you'll be reported."
|
| Once the infrastructure for mass surveillance is
| available, States are tempted to use it.
|
| Also even if it may be ok in Sweden for cultural reasons,
| the rest of the world unfortunately isn't (but can enjoy
| private washing machines in exchange).
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| In addition to the requesting party information about
| your activity can be sent to other parties for your
| safety.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| "Legal" protections can disappear in one evening, and
| then you are left with a centralized system, very
| practical for population control.
| eru wrote:
| In the US (approximately) everyone has a social security
| number and a driver's license. In practice, those are
| equivalent to universal ID, just more annoying to use in
| everyday life.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| Digital ID is also an identification system, social
| security number isn't. For instance you can't ID people
| on porn sites using it.
| dvdkon wrote:
| You can't ID people on porn sites with what's implemented
| in most European countries either.
|
| I feel like what you mean by "digital ID" is very
| different to what others mean.
| rockskon wrote:
| How come not? I typically hear of some scammy Zero-
| Knowledge Proof promising the world and delivering either
| an easy-to-pass-around identifier or something readily
| able to be mapped back to you as a person.
| dvdkon wrote:
| I feel like we're talking about completely different
| things. What's currently implemented in various EU
| countries is basically OAuth, where user attributes are
| verified by the state. Being able to map that account
| back to a specific person isn't a bug, but the whole
| reason for the system's existence.
|
| Here's a marketing page for a WIP pan-EU project to
| implement this kind of digital ID:
| https://commission.europa.eu/topics/digital-economy-and-
| soci...
|
| There _are_ also various plans for age-verification
| schemes that should (partially) preserve anonymity, but
| those aren 't implemented and it's not what people mean
| by "digital ID".
| Saline9515 wrote:
| Yes you can, eID means that you can prove your identity
| online using your digital signature.
| dvdkon wrote:
| _Can_ is the key word here. As implemented today, users
| can choose whether to use digital ID. In my opinion,
| problems would only start if the users had no choice and
| the government was the one choosing for them.
| eru wrote:
| Yes, so you get all the downsides of
|
| > "Legal" protections can disappear in one evening, and
| then you are left with a centralized system, very
| practical for population control.
|
| but none of the upsides.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| No, because with classic ID documents, the government
| doesn't know if I went to a specific healthcare provider,
| if I opened a social media account, if I bought a train
| ticket, or even where my bank accounts are (reporting is
| yearly, not in real time). Accessing all of this data is
| possible but bears a lot of friction, which prevents mass
| surveillance (or at least increases the costs).
|
| Once the eID system is set up and becomes ubiquitous, it
| will be trivial for companies to use eID to open any
| online account or reserve plane/train tickets. Therefore,
| giving enforcement forces very convenient access to all
| of my activity and allowing automated monitoring. Just
| look at what is happening in China.
| fragmede wrote:
| What _is_ happening in China? I haven 't been there in
| many years. There have been stories in the West about a
| social credit score system they had, but it turns out
| they didn't really follow through with that one.
| iamnothere wrote:
| Services do not regularly query your SSN or DL to
| determine if it is actively "in service" or is blocked.
| In fact most types of businesses don't touch SSNs at all
| (the potential liability for mishandling it is
| radioactive). And the few that request licenses typically
| are only using it as part of a one-time KYC flow, there
| is no ongoing link to a central provider.
| bouncycastle wrote:
| For now you may need a warrant. However, after just a
| simple law change, it will all be available without a
| warrant. I'm not saying there will be a law change, only
| saying that it brings us one step closer to data.
| guyomes wrote:
| The best implementation I know of digital ID is the one
| in Estonia. It comes with a data tracker, such that each
| citizen can see who exactly has been looking at their
| data [1].
|
| [1]: https://e-estonia.com/digital-id-protecting-against-
| surveill...
| wiz21c wrote:
| Done more or less like that in Belgium too. Basically, if
| any civil servant look at your data, this is recorded in
| the "Banque Carrefour de la Securite Sociale". Your eid
| is used to authentify/authorize you on various state web
| site (which is OK)
| satyamkapoor wrote:
| Have been using this service in Belgium and it really
| helps you gain trust. Ofcourse no one knows if there is
| still a back door
| ekianjo wrote:
| You should totally assume by default that there is a
| backdoor. Makes no sense whatsoever for the authorities
| to grant themselves less power.
| kube-system wrote:
| US credit reports also show you who is looking at them.
| Does visibility really matter when mandatory
| participation is normalized as a part of functioning in
| society?
| p1dda wrote:
| BankID isn't what they are proposing. Not in any way
| shape or form. Try learning about a topic before you make
| stupid comments like that.
| nephihaha wrote:
| Oh, that will come. It all comes from the same mentality.
| BDPW wrote:
| What is so fundamentally different about DID proposed in
| the UK or the US then? I read through some of the
| documents about it and the data scoping that will be
| available, which isn't with something like BankID seem to
| be the only difference. What am I missing here?
| yehat wrote:
| Sweet how the OP is about something that exactly
| corresponds to what EU wants badly too - chat control -
| but you decide to talk about Digital ID. OK wait a bit
| more, then your beautiful DID will start making more
| sense.
| jeltz wrote:
| It was nephihaha who started talking about digital IDs.
| nephihaha wrote:
| It all amounts to the same thing, the use of tech to
| control the public.
| nephihaha wrote:
| The problem isn't where digital ID starts, it's where it
| ends. It will start by being benign enough, and end with
| the ability to cut off dissidents in an instant. I'm
| aware that some Swedes are already getting microchipped.
| If you want to be branded and tracked by the state, that
| is your choice... Don't force it on the rest of us.
| oblio wrote:
| > I'm aware that some Swedes are already getting
| microchipped.
|
| Source?
| nephihaha wrote:
| This from Newsweek in 2022 about Sweden.
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/people-get-microchips-implanted-
| tha...
|
| "In 2017, a railway company in Sweden began allowing
| travelers to load their ticket information onto the
| microchips implanted in their bodies, according to BBC
| News. Railway conductors were then able to use
| smartphones to detect the chip and confirm the travelers'
| tickets."
| vablings wrote:
| This has nothing to do with the "state microchipping
| people" this is biohackers loading NFC train tickets onto
| a chip they chose to have implanted? The level of
| intellectual dishonesty is gross. You don't have to have
| an NFC chip and even if you did how would that be any
| more of a UUID than a LIDAR scan of your face?
| oblio wrote:
| Buddy, you're talking about 4000 VOLUNTEERS in a country
| of 11 million people (0.04%).
|
| We can probably find more crack addicts in Sweden...
|
| Let put the brakes on these slippery slopes, otherwise
| we'll be afraid of our own shadows soon. Scepticism is
| fine, paranoia isn't.
| Tor3 wrote:
| "I'm aware that some Swedes are already getting
| microchipped."
|
| If you mean Swedish dogs and cats, then yes. Otherwise,
| no.
| nephihaha wrote:
| No, I meant people. There are people who have been
| chipped and boasting about it on YouTube.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| In CZ, we have a so-far-somewhat-nonintrusive digital
| identity that is mostly used to access government
| services.
|
| Yet we already had an interesting situation which shows
| just how complicated trust is. Sberbank, the Russian
| bank, was slated to issue digital identity certifications
| in March 2022. Then Russia invaded Ukraine and Sberbank
| got booted out of the country before actually gaining
| that capability.
|
| What if it was March 2021 instead? How would we treat
| signatures on documents verified by Sberbank a day before
| the invasion etc.? What if the content of that document
| was really suspicious? Etc.
| mananonhn wrote:
| You're comparing a developed, mature nation to a
| developing one? Good one! Let's try doing this in middle
| east too!
| greenavocado wrote:
| Your digital id is great until your leadership decides
| you need to be conscripted and sent to their meat grinder
| and the penalty for failing to appear for your death
| sentence is being cut off from food and water because
| everything is linked.
|
| The idea of all these digital documents is never a
| problem until you go through the exercise of figuring out
| what it will all be used for (controlling you).
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> Your digital id is great until your leadership decides
| you need to be conscripted and sent to their meat grinder
| and the penalty for failing to appear for your death
| sentence is being cut off from food and water because
| everything is linked._
|
| Ukraine is doing this without any digital ID. Just grab
| any man you see on the street, throw him in the van and
| ship him to the conscription office for processing.
| Requires zero technology just some big guys on a high
| protein diet and a 2005 diesel Ford transit.
|
| People from countries without efficient centralized
| digitalized bureaucracy, like Germany, foolishly assume
| they're somehow safer from tyrannical governments like
| that. Just Tweet to Merz or Starmer that he is a dickhead
| traitor destroying the country with his policies, and see
| how far you can get before you get summoned to court for
| breaking hate speech laws.
|
| In 2025, if the government in power sees you as a threat
| to its power and _REALLY_ wants to find you, they will
| with or without you having government digital ID. Your
| ISP, your SIM card, your IMEI, networked CCTV cameras,
| Pegasus Spyware, Anduril drones, court subpoenas to
| digital service providers that have your information,
| acquaintances or public snitches turning you in for
| reward money, etc all these connect together and create a
| virtual fingerprint of you that SW like Palantir can
| aggregate and be used to find you, without you explicitly
| giving your government all your details via a digital ID.
|
| Unless you're a Snowden level skilled operative at hiding
| your tracks, _THEY WILL_ get you since the government has
| virtually unlimited resources compared to you.
| greenavocado wrote:
| You missed the people that took what they could in cash
| and ran for the border
| jack_tripper wrote:
| I didn't miss anything. Lone deserters spread out, are
| more tricky and resource intensive to catch in the
| wilderness of mountainous border areas with rough
| terrain, than in flat densely populated areas like city
| or village streets that can be easily patrolled by vans.
| eitland wrote:
| 1. This is a wild exaggeration: There are lots of men
| walking in Ukrainian streets.
|
| 2. Why single out Ukraine here? Isn't this what any
| country does with people who don't appear for the draft?
| (Unless they can pay a doctor to diagnose them with bone
| spurs or something?)
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> 1. There are lots of men walking in Ukrainian
| streets._
|
| With the right papers clearing them of draft obligations,
| sure.
|
| _> 2. Why single out Ukraine here?_
|
| Because this is the best example right now that everyone
| knows and can somewhat relate to. Unless you happen to
| know any other western country currently doing this.
| eitland wrote:
| >>> Just grab any man you see on the street, throw him in
| the van and ship him to the conscription office for
| processing.
|
| >> 1. _This is a wild exaggeration:_ [1] There are lots
| of men walking in Ukrainian streets.
|
| > With the right papers clearing them of draft
| obligations, sure.
|
| So basically you agree with me that it was a wild
| exaggeration?
|
| [1] Also your computer seem to have a bug where its
| clipboard selectively remove words (see the part in
| italics) from the text you quote without inserting
| ellipsis or any kind of marker to indicate it. The
| alternative would be that you very deliberately
| misrepresent what I wrote and that wouldn't be a nice
| thing to accuse you of.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| 1. Nope, I do not agree that it's a wild exaggeration and
| I explained why.
|
| 2. No, my computer has no clipboard bug, I just don't
| want o clutter a thread by constantly quoting the
| previous entire conversation like you're doing just to
| only add one line of thought to it, especially given it's
| clear from the context what I'm referring to, given that
| you can just scroll up a bit and read the entire comment
| if you want to drive deep in the full context of the
| conversation.
|
| 3. And you can drop the mafia style _" it wouldn't be
| nice if I were to accuse you of X"_ tactics, since it's
| not a good strategy for arguments and I don't care what
| you want to accuse me of, I stand by what I say. By all
| means feel free to accuse me of anything you want, but
| don't be a coy weasel about it.
| oneshtein wrote:
| it's a wild exaggeration
| Quarrel wrote:
| Can I offer you a similar, and probably more palatable,
| example:
|
| https://united24media.com/latest-news/russia-starts-
| issuing-...
| fragmede wrote:
| HN truncated your link, so All I could see is
| https://united2... and thought you were linking to
| something like https://youtu.be/pl0WGFsY-6g
|
| Which is still grown men abducting people in broad
| daylight, just not in Ukraine.
| Quarrel wrote:
| Ah- the headline is "Russia Starts Issuing Draft Notices
| at Airports to New Citizens and Returning Expats".
|
| Basically the Russian's are conscripting people flying in
| to airports, both regional and international. With an
| added nuance of racism against non-Slavs.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| Why would you assume that's somehow more palpable? Is
| there a competition I'm not aware of?
|
| And my current EU country would also draft me by force
| after I applied and got citizenship, which is why I don't
| do it. Sure, unlike Russia or Ukraine, I wouldn't be sent
| to fight in a war (for now), but many countries have
| mandatory conscription for their male citizens.
|
| So there's nothing special or noteworthy about Russia's
| conscriptions of its own naturalized citizens, especially
| given its at war, so I don't get the point you were
| trying to make with that article you shared.
|
| Did you assume that naturalized citizens would somehow be
| spared obligations of military service just because they
| weren't born there? That's not how citizenship works.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| Have you even been to Ukraine lately? you can walk on the
| streets of Kyiv and there is so many men walking on the
| streets without getting picked up. I've been walking the
| street as a man and and from the looks of it you can't
| tell if I'm a foreigner or a Ukrainian and I never been
| stopped and they never tried to conscript me. Do some
| people get conscripted in Ukraine and Russia? Sure.
|
| But it's just an exaggeration claiming that anybody
| walking the streets are just grabbed and thrown into a
| van and shipped to a conscription office. That is not
| what is happening.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> Do some people get conscripted in Ukraine and Russia?
| Sure._
|
| It's not that they get conscripted that's the problem,
| it's that people are being chased and violently thrown
| into vans of the street without any kind of warning or
| check of conscription status beforehand, Which I argued
| is proof the government doesn't need any kind of digital
| ID to oppress you..
|
| There's video evidence of such events online, check X and
| Telegram. Just because it doesn't happen in the capital
| and places where tourists like you go to, doesn't mean
| it's somehow OK or that it's not happening in other
| regions like villages where it's less likely important
| people with influence live unlike the capital or large
| cities.
| oneshtein wrote:
| Russian FUD.
| vablings wrote:
| Video evidence is not a good standard anymore. This isn't
| the Iraq war where you can see the people who dress
| different and have a different skin color are the "enemy"
|
| Russia has faked videos in the past even prior to the
| whole video Gen AI slop.
|
| I will believe it when someone reputable runs a good
| investigation and does some real journalism rather than
| just sourcing Russian propaganda and suggesting reality
| is some lovecraftian nightmare
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| you are russian right so I doubt you been in Ukraine
| lately and you just get your knowledge from Russian
| propaganda. I bet you can't name a single person that
| been kidnapped of the streets.
| iamnothere wrote:
| Useless doomerism. There are many cracks to hide in, most
| investigations are closed without a conviction, etc. You
| don't need to have spy-level tradecraft to be a
| dissident.
|
| I wish this kind of nonsense "you are helpless" posting
| were forbidden by HN rules. It serves no useful purpose.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| Perfect HN comment: complains about useless doomerism in
| first sentence, then next sentence wishes for censorship
| of opposing options.
| ace32229 wrote:
| Digital ID makes no difference to this whatsoever. If a
| government wanted to cut you off from utilities they
| could make it happen within hours already.
|
| Same with conscription, which needless to say was
| invented and effectively implemented prior to the
| invention of digital anything.
| lambchoppers wrote:
| You should maybe read some articles about modern
| situations where people dodged conscription before
| assuming what is practical today. The average person who
| hasn't thought about it for a week is certainly in
| trouble but..
| theoreticalmal wrote:
| Why is the solution to avoiding conscription being able
| to hide rather than making the conscription not happen in
| the first place?
| iamnothere wrote:
| Governments in a position to conscript their citizens
| usually aren't taking a lot of feedback on the issue.
|
| Yes, fight in advance to prevent such a situation, but
| don't assume you will win. It's good to have a backup
| plan.
| Y_Y wrote:
| If the third world war were declared tomorrow I think
| there would be precious few governments who didn't get
| started on conscription.
| bloak wrote:
| I'm not sure about that. Maybe? But... Firstly, there are
| surprisingly many people who are insanely patriotic so
| would volunteer anyway (perhaps fewer than in the past
| but perhaps still enough; see point three). Secondly,
| there are surprisingly many people who enjoy violence and
| killing people so would volunteer anyway (this probably
| hasn't changed). Thirdly, modern warfare doesn't need
| large numbers of people (this has definitely changed over
| time). And fourthly, a lot of modern people rather object
| to being ordered around by the government (I think this
| has probably increased a bit, at least; I can imagine
| that there are even people who would volunteer for
| military service when it's optional but would resist
| being conscripted).
| Y_Y wrote:
| In fact I cant disagree with most of what you've said,
| except to say that I was thinking from the state
| perspective, rather than the cannon-fodder.
|
| Conscription has never been popular, and I think today in
| healthy industrialised nations it would be an
| exceptionally hard sell. Ukraine, Russia and (somewhat)
| Israel give us hints here of what might happen if the US
| or Germany or India started drafting all able-bodied
| young men.
|
| It would be a disaster, but my guess is that it wouldn't
| stop governments from trying.
| philipallstar wrote:
| You need to convince, what, 300 people in a country to
| vote in their voting system the right way, and then it
| affects millions of people.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Digital ID makes no difference to this whatsoever.
|
| Of course it does. It makes it possible to track exactly
| where you are and what you are doing. So it pushes the
| balance of power towards the authorities.
| sofixa wrote:
| > It makes it possible to track exactly where you are and
| what you are doing
|
| No??? What do you imagine, that every single transaction
| you make, like buying bread, will require a Digital ID?
| Why on earth would you imagine that?
| abc123abc123 wrote:
| Yes, it is the single most popular vector for scammers to
| fleece old people. Great! Add to that, that your identity
| is controlled by banks, not the government, and that
| banks can terminate you without any due process, and
| complaining can take weeks if not months, and there is no
| guaranteed positive outcome.
|
| No thank you, I'll take no ID over ID any day, and at
| worst, a physical plastic card over a bullsh*t digital
| solution that is used to lock you out off society.
|
| Sweden is really the worst possible approach, is
| authoritarian, and hands over the power to the banks
| controlling the digital ID system.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| Banks and fintechs turned really brazen with triggering
| invasive AML/KYC requests without any legal basis, even
| more invasive than tax offices. Nonchalantly freezing and
| locking funds and accounts. They oftentimes require the
| latest version of smartphone app working only on recent
| smartphones. I don't want my digital identity to depend
| on them.
| gclawes wrote:
| It's not really that a digital ID can be used to spy on
| people (governments can already do this to a pretty large
| degree without needing spyware). It's that it's a
| permission system that can be instantly updated and
| centrally managed by people that have legal authority to
| spy on you.
|
| If your digital ID is controlled centrally by the
| government (the guys that are watching most things you do
| already), and you need your digital ID to do most
| commercial interactions (banking, buying things, travel,
| etc), it means the government can revoke your ability to
| do any of those commercial interactions (or even other
| things that aren't strictly commercial, think "travel
| papers" for driving out of state).
|
| And it doesn't even have to be in response to criminal
| actions. You too too many trips this year? Well, you've
| used up your CO2 budget as a citizen, have fun not buying
| CO2-intensive food (meat). Said something racist online?
| Well we certainly can't let a person like you buy a car
| now, can we?
|
| And yes, things like credit cards and credit scores are
| centrally managed to a degree, and Visa/Mastercard can
| deny transactions for somewhat-arbitrary reasons (they're
| actually fairly legally limited in how they can do this,
| it's not totally arbitrary). But these things are not
| tied into every aspect of your life (your bank doesn't
| necessarily know how many miles you've driven this year),
| whereas states can (or can invent the legal authority to)
| tie a digital ID into everything.
| myrmidon wrote:
| I completely agree with your main point, but the state
| supervised CO2 budget strikes me as a bad example; I see
| no real way to prevent companies and citizens from
| "externalizing costs" in the form of environmental damage
| except by regulation that _restricts_ (historically, we
| did not get rid of leaded gas by gentle admonishment
| either).
| mcdonje wrote:
| I was with you until your 3rd paragraph. Why are you
| carrying water for climate change accelerationists and
| racists?
|
| The examples don't even make sense historically. Haven't
| you noticed that most governments are failing to
| decarbonize, and government force against citizens is
| usually against the left?
| Y_Y wrote:
| You don't have to be a racist to be accused of racism.
| sofixa wrote:
| "said something racist" is what OP said
| Y_Y wrote:
| Indeed, but I inferred the meaning of "something racist
| [in the judgement of the authorities]".
| pessimizer wrote:
| Racists deserve free speech, and our society is better
| for it. When racists are silenced, anti-racists become
| complacent, stupid, and ironically, racist because they
| lose the ability to recognize racism.
|
| Defend everyone's free speech. Don't require the
| necessity of unfair accusations. The destruction of
| people's lives over unfair accusations is simply a
| failure of due process and the desire of people to join a
| mob for safety. You should hate that no matter what you
| think about the right to free expression and belief.
| Anyone who would earnestly defend mob justice led by
| demagogues and supported by people afraid to be targeted
| next _has a particular demagogue who they back._
| mcdonje wrote:
| Wild how you're weaving a tale about mob justice when
| someone says something against racists.
|
| Also, it's logically incoherent how you're portraying mob
| justice as a bad thing while rejecting governmental
| regulation. The entire idea of the state having a
| monopoly on violence is to prevent mob justice, or
| individuals taking the law into their own hands. Basic
| civics.
|
| I'm generally in favor of free speech, but there are
| thorny issues associated with it that "free speech
| absolutists" aren't interrogating because they stop at
| "racists should be able to say what they want".
| sofixa wrote:
| > Racists deserve free speech, and our society is better
| for it
|
| The individual victims of racist speech would strongly
| disagree with that.
| nephihaha wrote:
| There are a lot of definitions of what that entails. Some
| people have landed in hot water for making comments about
| what's happened in Gaza and accused of that.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Racists deserve free speech, and our society is better
| for it.
|
| To the extent that our society is better for extending
| free speech to racists it has nothing to do with them
| deserving anything, but with the costs of empowering any
| fallible human institution to deny anyone things that
| that particular group of people do not deserve, and the
| cost of failing to make that distinction is being
| susceptible to being convinced that some other group
| truly does not deserve it and therefore some institution
| should be empowered to identify members of that group and
| deny it to them.
| carlCarlCarlCar wrote:
| Free speech is a circular right.
|
| One is free to say racist things. Others are free to mock
| them in return.
|
| Racists are not free from consequences. If they don't
| like others freely expressing themselves in return, at
| the rhetorical and emotional expense of the racist,
| racists can freely express themselves in their home.
|
| You're advocating a very reductive approach to free
| speech.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Because in a free country you have the right to be a
| climate skeptic and a racist?
|
| Being a racist is mostly useless and self-serving, but if
| you make any particular scientific position illegal, it's
| identical to having state defined science. That's how we
| got people passing bills to define pi and Lysenkoism.
| It's how we institutionalized chattel slavery and
| sometimes teaching black people to read punishable by
| death.
|
| The goal of government isn't to promote your "correct"
| opinions. The goal of government should be summarize the
| beliefs of a fully-informed public in order to act on
| their behalf.
| mcdonje wrote:
| You're kinda missing the point. It's quite common for
| "free speech absolutists" to defend racism and other
| forms of bigotry, but not much else.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| It is the most unpopular speech which is at the greatest
| risk of being censored, and so there is it also the best
| place to hold the line on free speech. If you don't
| defend the right to say racist things, then you've
| already conceded the fight for free speech and are now
| just negotiating your surrender.
| mcdonje wrote:
| Again, missing my point.
|
| I'm generally in favor of free speech, so your argument
| is not new to me. It's also not relevant to what I said,
| since you missed the point.
|
| Also, you think racism is unpopular?
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Racism will get you fired from virtually any company in
| America, thrown out of virtually any business or school,
| etc. If you don't think it's deeply unpopular then I
| don't know what to tell you. It is the speech which is
| closest to being outright banned everywhere. It already
| is in most developed countries, probably most of the
| developing ones too (at least on paper), America stands
| out as one place it remains technically legal even though
| it will get you blacklisted from almost everywhere. The
| only reason it's still legal here is because the first
| ammendment is unusually strong. Chip away at it, and I
| guarantee you'll lose more than you're bargaining for.
| nephihaha wrote:
| The problem is in the definition. The British Government
| has accused Pro-Palestine protestors of it in the last
| few months.
| mcdonje wrote:
| That example supports my position.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| >The goal of government should be summarize the beliefs
| of a fully-informed public in order to act on their
| behalf.
|
| I fully agree with your position here, but do you think
| the government has a roll in making sure the public is
| not misled or believes things that "experts" consider to
| be false? Do you think expert opinions should carry more
| weight that the average Joe?
|
| I think my position is that the government is a tool we,
| the taxpayer, should use to investigate things and
| educate us of its findings. That this should be done in
| an open and transparent way so that we can trust the
| results. I don't think for profit companies should
| responsible for educating people. (sorry for the tangent)
| matips wrote:
| Actually Visa and MasterCard used their position to
| influence on business like Steam or Pornhub.
| sofixa wrote:
| > It's that it's a permission system that can be
| instantly updated and centrally managed by people that
| have legal authority to spy on you.
|
| How is it a permission system? It's a way to prove your
| identity safely, online. No proposal/implementation that
| I'm aware of (maybe outside of China, but I'm not
| familiar enough) that actually conditionally does so
| based on preconditions and blocks you from actions. It
| would probably be actively illegal to do so in multiple
| countries.
|
| > But these things are not tied into every aspect of your
| life (your bank doesn't necessarily know how many miles
| you've driven this year)
|
| I mean, that's not true. LexisNexis is the company many
| car vendors send your driving data to, to be bought by
| insurance companies to do adaptive pricing. Banks don't
| necessarily need that data, but if they did, they could
| buy it too.
|
| Which is why it's better if it's the government - there
| can be laws, regulations, pressure, judicial reviews to
| ensure that only legitimate uses are fine, and no such
| discrimination is legal. Take a look at credit scores in
| the US - they're run by private for profit companies,
| sold to whoever wants them, so credit scores have become
| a genuine barrier to employment, housing, etc. If this
| were managed by a state entity (like in France, Banque de
| France stores all loan data, and when someone wants to
| give you a loan, they check with them what your current
| debts are, and if you have defaulted on any recently;
| that's the only data they can get and use), there could
| be strong controls on who accesses the data and uses it
| for what.
| ori_b wrote:
| > _How is it a permission system? It 's a way to prove
| your identity safely, online._
|
| Can someone revoke your ability to prove your identity?
| To pick an example, say, the far right wins an election
| and decides that trans people need to go back to their
| birth genders, and revokes the validity for the
| identifiers of anyone that has transitioned.
| vablings wrote:
| This has already happened without digital ID ?
| ori_b wrote:
| Sounds like a wonderful argument for centralizing it and
| making it a single button that a bureaucrat has to push.
| expedition32 wrote:
| We have a democratic system in place that decides what
| the government looks like.
|
| If you live in a country that runs the risk of being
| captured by fascists or religious fanatics digital ID is
| the least of your problem.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| > If your digital ID is controlled centrally by the
| government (the guys that are watching most things you do
| already), and you need your digital ID to do most
| commercial interactions (banking, buying things, travel,
| etc), it means the government can revoke your ability to
| do any of those commercial interactions (or even other
| things that aren't strictly commercial, think "travel
| papers" for driving out of state).
|
| The government can already do this today in the US, they
| can put your ID on a fly denylist, your passport on a
| "always go to secondary screening list" (ask anyone who's
| ever been to Iran on vacation and then decided to travel
| to the US) and your license plate on a wanted list.
| nephihaha wrote:
| The USA will probably get a lite version. The PRC already
| has the most severe version. The EU will introduce
| something severe and pretend otherwise. (And the UK will
| copy them while pretending not to.)
| amarant wrote:
| But my digital ID is in addition of my physical one, it's
| not a replacement.
|
| It provides convenience, and the only thing I'd lose of
| it was hypothetically revoked(the government has no such
| powers, and are unlikely to gain them, more on that
| later) is that convenience.
|
| The reason the government is unlikely to gain those
| powers is that it would require a change in the grundlag,
| and such changed has to be approved twice, and there has
| to be an election between the two approvals.
| brador wrote:
| Swedish police use Palantirs gotham software. Your data
| is in.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| There are downsides with it since you are at the mercy of
| the corporation that owns the Swedish Digital ID. ny
| services trying to use this Swedish digital ID who these
| banks don't like can be cut off at any point and you are
| not allowed to provide alternative logins so it's only
| allowed to use digital ID if you use it.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| > you are not allowed to provide alternative logins
|
| I can't speak for Sweden but that is not true in Norway
| where we also use BankID (I'm not sur but I think it
| originated in Norway).
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| It's true for Sweden and Norway. BankID is owned by the
| banks in both countries. Both charge money from sites and
| orgs that use it.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| But Sweden has not so far required that you install state
| owned spy ware on your devices.
|
| BankID is very convenient, I use it all the time here in
| Norway but, at least theoretically, it is a private
| initiative of the banks and not the state. It is not
| compulsory to have BankID.
| eru wrote:
| > Mate, this isn't even remotely "nationalist".
|
| India's government is not termed 'nationalist' because of
| this one policy.
| nephihaha wrote:
| I was talking about this one policy. The mentality is not
| particular to India. The abuse of the so called Fourth
| Industrial Revolution is everywhere to see.
| monerozcash wrote:
| Pretty much all passports in the world have been digital
| for years, and it seems ... fine?
|
| There's a signed blob on the RFID chip in your passport
| that could be easily copied to any phone, hardly any on-
| device implementation work to be done.
| vablings wrote:
| Every time someone fearmongers "Digital ID" I always tap
| this sign
|
| https://www.eid.admin.ch/en
|
| The issue is not about "Digital ID" it's about having a
| good ecosystem that is both open and secure. I don't want
| all my tax money being spent on a private company
| implementing a horrible software solution
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
|
| I trust my government more than mega software firms who
| have no accountability or recourse
| stinkbeetle wrote:
| Are you shocked by the EU similarly attacking the human
| rights of its own people?
| u_sama wrote:
| No it's kinda expected from the EU, Chat Control and other
| free speech restricting matters have been passed/trying to
| pass under the guise of protection.
| whatsupdog wrote:
| [flagged]
| hattimaTim wrote:
| [flagged]
| tomhow wrote:
| Please don't engage in nationalistic battle on HN. The
| guidelines ask us to be kind and to avoid flamebait and
| using HN for political battle. Please take a moment to
| read the guidelines and avoid this kind of thing when
| participating here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| hattimaTim wrote:
| Thank you. Will keep it in mind.
| tomhow wrote:
| Please don't engage in nationalistic battle on HN. The
| guidelines ask us to be kind and to avoid flamebait and
| using HN for political battle. Please take a moment to read
| the guidelines and avoid this kind of thing when
| participating here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| This allegation was dismissed by the Supreme Court completely
| after years of investigation.
| cheema33 wrote:
| Is the Supreme Court completely impartial in India? Is so,
| then this is credible.
|
| At least in the US, the Supreme Court is anything but
| impartial. Judges typically vote along party lines.
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| Difficult to say. For one, they aren't appointed by the
| government in power, but have created their own
| "collegium" system where one batch of judges selects
| their own replacements.
|
| They've also restricted the government's ability to
| change this system.
|
| See the NJAC debacle for example.
| ridiculous_leke wrote:
| Probably not. Though, for a decade after that the Federal
| government was controlled by a key opposition party.
| Essentially they(people who accused him) had all the time
| to investigate him.
| desi_ninja wrote:
| He has been the PM For last 11 years. Your so called
| labelling doesn't stand scrutiny. India is prospering, with
| problems, but prospering for every religion sect and culture
| 0x5FC3 wrote:
| How does being in power erase the past?
| ridiculous_leke wrote:
| It doesn't. But judicial scrutiny under a government
| clearly opposed to him does clear the mislabelling. And
| how does it even help the discussion here?
| 0x5FC3 wrote:
| You are either being disingenuous or ignorant if you
| think the courts or anything else for that matter are
| truly impartial in India. Judges get killed, politicians
| get bought out, law and other enforcement agencies become
| puppets.
|
| It does help the discussion here, the comment correctly
| points out how this literal 1984-esque action plays into
| the current regime's totalitarian tendencies which go way
| before the 2002 pogrom and of course their parent org,
| RSS which is a whole other can of worms.
| ridiculous_leke wrote:
| Impartiality factors less when the entire Federal
| government apparatus is used to investigate some one for
| more than a decade. Also, by that reasoning should we
| start believing in the principle "guilty before proven
| otherwise"?
|
| > It does help the discussion here, the comment correctly
| points out how this literal 1984-esque action plays into
| the current regime's totalitarian tendencies which go way
| before the 2002 pogrom and of course their parent org,
| RSS which is a whole other can of worms.
|
| Who decided that those riots were a progrom? That term
| itself is misleading.
|
| I am not fan of this step but the problems it's designed
| to tackle are huge in India and it's very much an option
| unless there are solid alternatives.
| 0x5FC3 wrote:
| > Impartiality factors less when the entire Federal
| government apparatus is used to investigate some one for
| more than a decade. Also, by that reasoning should we
| start believing in the principle "guilty before proven
| otherwise"?
|
| No, it was a 3 member "Special Investigation Team" and
| not the "entire federal apparatus" that acquitted him.
| [0]
|
| "According to R. B. Sreekumar, police officers who
| followed the rule of law and helped prevent the riots
| from spreading were punished by the Modi government. They
| were subjected to disciplinary proceedings and transfers
| with some having to leave the state. Sreekumar also
| claims it is common practice to intimidate whistleblowers
| and otherwise subvert the justice system, and that the
| state government issued "unconstitutional directives",
| with officials asking him to kill Muslims involved in
| rioting or disrupting a Hindu religious event." [1]
|
| > Who decided that those riots were a progrom? That term
| itself is misleading.
|
| Hundreds of historians and scholars. [2]
|
| > I am not fan of this step but the problems it's
| designed to tackle are huge in India and it's very much
| an option unless there are solid alternatives.
|
| There are students jailed from 2020 without a trail for
| protesting against CAA-NRC with the explicit purpose of a
| "chilling effect" against dissent. People are constantly
| jailed for simple memes, "hurting religious sentiments"
| and other vapid reasons on a daily basis and you think
| this is an end to the means type of situation?
|
| If I had to wager a guess, you don't live in India,
| advocating for oppression you don't have to go through.
|
| [0][1][2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Gujarat_violence
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The EU is not run by butchers of anything, but they push Chat
| Control nonetheless.
|
| Politicians crave power and control, it is that simple, and
| the current tech can give it to them quite easily. Not even
| Stalin could put a secret cop into every living room, but
| secret coppery can now be efficiently automated.
| amriksohata wrote:
| This was proven not true many years ago by the Supreme Court
| well before he was in power. Just rage bait.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| It's not rage bait, lol, this was a very famous incident,
| led to him being banned from the US, and he went on an
| extremely inflammatory "yatra" around mostly Northern India
| (where Hindutva has sway) further inflaming tensions right
| after the incident, which is shown very well in the
| documentary "Final Solution" (which was also banned in
| India)
| amriksohata wrote:
| yes and it was overturned when they realised it was faked
| by the opposition
| wongogue wrote:
| The investigation couldn't anything against the autogratic
| guy who said the following about the incident.
|
| - When asked if there is anything he regrets not doing
| during the riots to save lives? He answered: He could have
| managed the media better. The interviewer gave him a moment
| to say the right thing. He didn't change his statement.
|
| - When asked if he
| amriksohata wrote:
| yes because he felt they did everything they could to
| prevent islamists fanning the flames, next?
| baxtr wrote:
| Form your source:
|
| _Modi has often used a messianic tone in his speeches such
| as saying that his leadership qualities came from God. His
| latest claim to divinity was during the 2024 Lok Sabha
| elections when he said that while his mother was alive, he
| believed that he was born biologically but after her death he
| got convinced that God had sent him._
| rapatel0 wrote:
| Circumstances behind the event:
|
| - A group of local muslims were found to set fire to a train
| of Hindu pilgrims/kar sevaks returning from Ayodhya (Holy
| city in Hinduism)
|
| - There was a large scale riot (1000-2000 people) that broke
| out
|
| - Modi was accused of slow deployment of forces and tacit
| approval.
|
| - Modi was cleared of all charges after a multi year
| investigation.
|
| Ethnic tension between Hindus and Muslims goes back a
| millennia at least.
| rramadass wrote:
| Don't feed the troll.
|
| "MonkeyClub" has been downvoted and flagged in this thread.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| That's factually incorrect. Keep persecuting, and your
| allegiance is becoming clearer.
| philipov wrote:
| You might not be surprised, but you should still be shocked.
| Being struck by a heavy weight will shock you even if you
| expected it. We are allowed to be shocked by things that we
| abhor even when we understand their causes and probability
| distribution. Not being shocked suggests you no longer
| _despise_ it.
| artursapek wrote:
| wow even a grain? you must really love your freedom
| tecoholic wrote:
| Well, we are talking about a government that declared 95%
| currency in circulation as invalid to nullify "black money" and
| rationed out currency for months. Currently they are doing an
| electoral list validation by asking everyone to submit a form
| so they can keep their voting rights. The policies are made
| with a strong "ruler" attitude.
| whatsupdog wrote:
| The SIR has been carried out historically many times in
| India. In the recent years a lot of Bangladeshi illegal
| immigrants (who ironically hate India) have registered as
| voters. A lot of political parties have changed policies to
| cater to these illegals. So this was due for a long time.
| __1337__ wrote:
| This is propaganda from the fascist ruling party BJP/RSS.
| After the Bihar SIR exercise, not even a single illegal
| immigrant was found. All this talk of illegal immigrants is
| classic anti muslim dog whistle.
| manishsharan wrote:
| BS. I grew up in Delhi. We used to have a large open
| space where I and neighborhood kids used to play cricket
| . Eventually the whole area converted to slums with
| people from Bangladesh. They took over the whole area. I
| was too young to care about ethnicity but the loss of my
| cricket field still bothers me. My neighbor was a bank
| manager and he once said that the government politicians
| forced him to give "loans" to Bangladeshi people , with
| no documents and only their thumbprint,before elections
| to those people to ensure victory of the ruling party.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| What does any of this have to do with voter
| registrations?
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| Assuming it would do the stated job in addition to being a
| state way to your phone - it is a better solution, you ain't
| gonna educate you grandma easily, but if she can buy phone that
| protects her without having to look for it...
|
| ...of course, it won't work and even if they honestly tried it
| will be outpaced by scam industry. Or at worst case be state
| exploit that then will be exploited by other state (or just
| malicious actors) coz of lack of security in "security"
| software
| kumarvvr wrote:
| > solved by improved education
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Delhi_car_explosion
|
| Planned and executed by highly educated, qualified, doctors.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| I think the commenter meant educating people on how to not
| fall for scams.
| est wrote:
| > solved by improved education
|
| Now you have at least two problems
| llmthrow0827 wrote:
| As a non-Indian, the amount of scams and other external
| negative impacts coming from the country are extremely
| disproportionate, so if this evens things out a bit, I'm for
| it.
| rramadass wrote:
| > I abhor any decision that robs even a grain of my individual
| freedom.
|
| Silly goose.
|
| "Freedom" is always balanced against "Responsibility" (both
| Individual and Group); it can never be absolute. The latter
| needs State support.
|
| That is the reason my "freedom" to rob you is curtailed by the
| "State's (i.e. Group's) responsibility" enacting laws to
| prevent it.
|
| You also exercise "your (i.e. Individual) responsibility" when
| you put a lock on your valuables to prevent my robbing you.
| tempestn wrote:
| This comment would've been good without the pointless insult
| at the top.
| rramadass wrote:
| From Google;
|
| _" Silly goose" is a lighthearted, informal expression
| used to describe someone who is acting foolish, silly, or
| has made a silly mistake. It is a playful term that is not
| meant to be offensive and is often used affectionately. The
| phrase can also refer to a "silly person" or "simpleton" in
| an informal context._
| int_19h wrote:
| The state is not the group. It loves to pretend that it is,
| but the group it actually represents is far smaller than the
| group it rules.
| shevy-java wrote:
| It's especially annoying that democracies do that.
|
| Give it a few years and suddenly China is no longer worse than
| democracies.
|
| Modi and his clique are authoritarian though. It's interesting
| that so many indian vote for that clique. They seem to not
| understand the problem domain; similar to Hungary, too. (Don't
| even get me going on Trump's clique of superrich running the
| show. I recently watched CNN in the last days and I fail to see
| how CNN is any better than Foxnews - they manipulate people via
| what they broadcast. For instance, yesterday some random US
| general basically convincing people that nobody in the military
| would do double-tap, not even Hegseth, when the exact opposite
| has actually happened. Or some female today in a show trying to
| explain that the first attack on a fisher boat was "legal"
| anyway. People don't even realise how much they are manipulated
| by these private media entities. These are basically owned by
| superrich influencing people one way or the other.)
| goku12 wrote:
| > It's interesting that so many indian vote for that clique.
|
| This is what happens when the only lens through which people
| see politics is religion or race. It shows you how important
| scientific temper, fact checking skills, scientific
| knowledge, awareness of unrevised history, knowledge of civic
| duties, current affairs, critical thinking, etc are very
| important. And don't think that I'm talking about just India.
| int_19h wrote:
| Putin was originally elected by a genuine supermajority as
| well.
| globular-toast wrote:
| > I abhor any decision that robs even a grain of my individual
| freedom.
|
| This is extreme and just as bad as any other extreme.
|
| We have to find a way to maximise freedom across society. Being
| fixated on personal freedom won't turn out well. _Whose_
| personal freedom are we talking about? Should your neighbour be
| free to move the fence into your land? Didn 't think so.
|
| I will, however, give the benefit of the doubt and assume you
| mean giving up freedom without gaining anything. I don't see
| how this isn't a net loss for society.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| What about freedom from scams?
| epolanski wrote:
| We should ban or digitally identify every single knife so UK
| citizens will be free of knife crime.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| I'm just saying the "freedom" bit can be twisted any such
| way you like. It's a dumb ideal. There are more convincing
| reasons to fear a government.
| fsflover wrote:
| This has been a tendency for a long time. Nothing to be shocked
| about.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...
| DocTomoe wrote:
| I'm not shocked at all. It's the nature of things for people -
| on average - to not want to learn. How many of your peers have
| shouted 'no more school' or something similar during their
| graduation?
|
| How many people do you know who seem to be completely immune to
| learning? Go to any non-tech office an you will find shared
| passwords on post-it-notes, after 40 years of mantra-style 'Do
| not share your passwords' messaging.
|
| If something goes wrong, it's not their fault, it's the
| machine's fault. "Why was this possible in the first place?"
| they ask. "Build it so this becomes impossible." That mindset
| let to OSHA regulations, to ever-safer aircraft, and to
| encryption on the web. It's not necessary a bad thing, it just
| throws out our - tech folks' - baby with the bathwater. How
| often has the increasingly regulated tech environment made you
| stop an easy implementation of a completely legitimate use
| case?
|
| And yes, authoritarians thrive in this climate. Fear and
| promises of safety are the easiest paths to political power -
| and once in power, the demand for safety never ends.
| Politicians who genuinely prioritize individual freedom rarely
| get rewarded for it at the ballot box; the ones who win are
| simply better at wearing the right colours while expanding
| control.
| sneak wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...
| sharperguy wrote:
| I completely agree with the sentiment. I think from their
| perspective, it's just a case of what CAN be done vs what is
| morally acceptable.
|
| If knives were technologically sophisticated enough that they
| could be programmed to refuse to pierce particular materials,
| you know that the government would be forcing manufacturers to
| include human flesh in that list, and making liable anyone who
| sells one without that restriction.
|
| This is the first time we've had a device that we rely on for
| almost all our daily activities, produced by a small handful of
| businesses that are easy for states to pressure.
| goku12 wrote:
| > If knives were technologically sophisticated enough that
| they could be programmed to refuse to pierce particular
| materials, you know that the government would be forcing
| manufacturers to include human flesh in that list
|
| I have serious doubts that their intentions are nearly as
| harmless or sincere as you project it. The government through
| DoT has repeatedly shown their willingness to control,
| invade, impose arbitrary measures and harm the digital lives
| of the citizens with impunity. Remember how Aadhar was touted
| as a welfare support programme. They even promised in the
| supreme court that it wouldn't be made mandatory. But they
| just haughtily refused to honor that promise and linked it to
| every imaginable service. You can't live without it these
| days. On top of that, they were so careless with it that the
| entire biometric database of more than a billion individuals
| was leaked and published on the darkweb for sale. And despite
| several news media showing the evidence for it, the
| government just brazenly denied the leak.
|
| With such a dubious track record, let me say that I'm
| skeptical about their claims on 'cybersecurity' on the
| phones. It may start like that. But with their attitude it
| won't take much time for it to progress from a cybersecurity
| app to a cybersecurity nightmare. We already know what they
| did with the Pegasus malware that they bought with the
| taxpayers' money - another accusation they just denied
| blatantly, ignoring the evidence provided by the others. No
| avenue for abuse will be left unused. The real issue is that
| an omnipresent app that cannot be uninstalled is the most
| valuable target and the perfect vector for malware delivery.
| And this government has destroyed any reputation they may
| have had in the digital space, with their overtly hostile
| attitude towards the citizens who voted them in. This app is
| going to be a nightmare for the citizens in the not-too-
| distant future.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| If hypothetically they did have pure intentions, would that
| make it okay?
|
| I know very little about the politics of India, so I have
| no idea whether what you said is an objective assessment or
| if it's just the political talking points of one particular
| side, but at least in the US I find it very disappointing
| how the mainstream political opposition to creeping
| authoritarianism is often "Wow this is terrible, _those_
| guys totally shouldn 't have that much power." with the
| unstated implication being "Give it to me instead. _I 'm_ a
| good guy; you can trust me."
|
| I much prefer to emphasize principles which hold regardless
| of which tribe happens to be in power at the moment. In
| this case the overriding principle being that _device
| owners_ should have ultimate control over the software
| running on their phone - not companies, and _certainly_ not
| governments. Forcing people to run a particular piece of
| software on their phones is simply not a power the
| government should have, regardless of how good their
| intentions.
| goku12 wrote:
| > If hypothetically they did have pure intentions, would
| that make it okay?
|
| No. What if they decide to double cross later? Or, what
| about the next guy in power? Don't leave any loose ends.
| Technically, it's the zero-trust principle. Don't rely on
| any security measure that depends on the other party
| keeping their word. Always assume that they're hostile.
| (Though I've been in trouble for using this when
| designing procedures. People come with the 'don't you
| trust us?' question.)
|
| > Forcing people to run a particular piece of software on
| their phones is simply not a power the government should
| have, regardless of how good their intentions.
|
| Agreed completely. My answer would be the same even if a
| different party/alliance was in power (Mine is based on
| infosec principles. Partisan politics won't change that).
| I explained the politics only to show that this isn't a
| hypothetical scenario. The supporters will otherwise use
| excuses similar to what was thrown around in the US (eg:
| You need to worry only if you're an illegal alien).
| Indians have been making this mistake repeatedly. Those
| in power know how to play with their nationalistic
| sentiments to override such concerns.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| >I'm shocked by people and state using the crutch of cyber
| crime or scams to push a totalitarian solution to a problem
|
| You shouldn't be.
|
| You don't have to dig deep or search widely to see Americans
| complaining, loudly and often, about the US government using
| the 9/11 to create massive new state security initiatives, most
| of which were inimical to both privacy and liberty. And that
| was nearly a quarter century ago.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _is better solved by improved education_
|
| From the article, this has nothing to do with education. It's:
|
| > _The app is mainly designed to help users block and track
| lost or stolen smartphones across all telecom networks, using a
| central registry. It also lets them identify, and disconnect,
| fraudulent mobile connections._
|
| If your phone gets stolen, you can disable it.
|
| I'm not saying that a government app is necessarily the right
| or best way to go about this, but to suggest that this can be
| solved with education misses the point entirely. No amount of
| education is going to prevent someone on a bike swiping my
| phone from my hand and cycling off with it.
|
| And as long as the app isn't otherwise spying on you (and
| there's no mention of that), I don't see much of what this has
| to do with freedom either. The freedom to steal someone's phone
| and use it without being blocked? There are already a bunch of
| apps on my phone I can't uninstall, so that's not new.
| dmichulke wrote:
| > And as long as the app isn't otherwise spying on you (and
| there's no mention of that)
|
| I think the correlation between "spying" and "saying that
| you're spying" is 0 or negative
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Do we have a breakdown of what this app actually does?
| alephnerd wrote:
| https://sancharsaathi.gov.in/
|
| Basically IMEI stamping because sim card purchase with ID has
| come to be viewed as flawed/compromised by NatSec types in
| India. Here's some additional context from a previous thread on
| HN [0]
|
| [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40476498
|
| ------
|
| Edit: Can't reply
|
| Lots of old phones still exist, so a virtual/eSIM does nothing
| to give visibility into those devices.
|
| Also, India wants to own the complete end-to-end supply chain
| for electronics like what China did in the early 2010s, so
| India has been subsidizing legacy, highly commodified
| electronic component manufacturing [0] - of which physical SIMs
| are a major component because they both help subsidize
| semiconductor packaging as well as IoT/Smart Card
| manufacturing. A mix of international [1][2] and domestic
| players [3] have been leveraging physical SIM manufacturing in
| India as a way to climb up the value chain.
|
| On a separate note, this is why I keep harping about India
| constantly - I'm starting to see the same trends and strategies
| arising in Delhi like those we'd see the PRC use in the late
| 2000s and early 2010s, but no one listened to me about China
| back then because they all had their priors set to the 1990s.
|
| No one took the PRC seriously until it was too late, and a
| similar thing could arise with India - we as the US cannot win
| in a world where 3 continental countries (Russia, China, India)
| are ambivalent to antagonistic against us. Even Indian policy
| papers and makers increasingly reference and even copying the
| Chinese model when thinking about policy or industrial
| development, and I've started seeing Indian LEO types starting
| to operate abroad in major ASEAN and African countries helping
| their vendors build NatSec capacity (cough cough Proforce - not
| the American one - and their Offensive Sec teams).
|
| Ironically, I've found Chinese analysts to be much more
| realistic about India's capacity [4][5] unlike Western
| commentators - and China has taken action as a result [6][7][8]
|
| [0] - https://ecms.meity.gov.in/
|
| [1] - https://www.idemia.com/press-release/idemias-production-
| faci...
|
| [2] - https://www.trasna.io/blog/trasna-eyes-asian-iot-growth-
| as-i...
|
| [3] - https://seshaasai.com/products/esim-and-sim
|
| [4] - https://finance.sina.cn/china/gjcj/2022-06-08/detail-
| imizmsc...
|
| [5] - https://www.gingerriver.com/p/vietnam-or-india-which-one-
| wil...
|
| [6] -
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-02/foxconn-p...
|
| [7] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/india-taking-steps-
| mitig...
|
| [8] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-files-wto-
| complain...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Basically IMEI stamping because sim card purchase with ID
| has come to be viewed as flawed /compromised by NatSec types
| in India_
|
| Why not mandate virtual SIMs?
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| What about the low income people who cannot afford a new
| phone?
| Covenant0028 wrote:
| India has not been antagonistic or ambivalent in its recent
| past, until a Nobel Peace Prize aspirant in the WH decided to
| take a machete to relations that both countries had been
| building for the last 25 years, with largely bipartisan
| support in both countries. Even the current Indian govt is
| quite pro US until the aspirant tanked that relationship.
|
| And yes, there will be times India doesn't agree with the US,
| and that's normal. It's seeking to be a partner, not a vassal
| state.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > India has not been antagonistic or ambivalent in its
| recent past...
|
| Yep, but stuff can change rapidly.
|
| From 1972-1992 it was China that used to be the pillar of
| the America's Asia strategy as a bulwark against the USSR,
| with US soldiers posted in Xinjiang monitoring the USSR
| [0], US government sponsored tech transfers and scientific
| collaboration [1], American support for Chinese military
| modernization [2][3], and expanded economic cooperation
| [4].
|
| Yet by the late 2000s, that relation degraded into a
| competitive relationship that has become the cold war that
| it is today because by the 1990s US and Chinese ambitions
| became misaligned - especially following US sanctions due
| to the Tienanmen Massacre [5], Clinton's pivot to newly
| democratic Taiwan [6], and Chinese attempts at industrial
| espionage [7].
|
| The US and India are not fully aligned because neither
| American nor Indian policymakers have significant exposure
| to either and remain extremely insular (eg. Stanford and
| Penn are the only American universities with a competitive
| program on Contemporary Indian politics and foreign policy,
| and there are only at most 20 American scholars on
| contemporary Indian policy - it was the same during my time
| in the early 2010s with regards to China, except instead of
| Penn it was Harvard), and that's why the US-India
| relationship has been in a tailspin for the past couple
| years. The US-India relationship are now in the equivalent
| position as that of the US and China in the late 1990s to
| early 2000s era, and are largely predicated on mutual
| competition against China.
|
| Snafus like the RAW-backed Nijjar assassination as well as
| the US's support for Asim Munir highlights how the
| relationship is starting to fray. If alignment is not found
| within the next few years, the relationship will become
| competitive and potentially antagonistic in nature because
| India will start feeling that the US is encircling India
| just like China, and the US will start viewing India as
| "rocking the boat".
|
| [0] - https://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/18/world/us-and-
| peking-join-...
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.%E2%80%93China_Agre
| ement_o...
|
| [2] - https://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/17/world/us-decides-
| to-sell-...
|
| [3] - https://www.nytimes.com/1979/10/04/archives/study-
| urges-us-a...
|
| [4] - https://www.nytimes.com/1983/05/26/business/us-china-
| investm...
|
| [5] - https://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/05/world/the-west-
| condemns-t...
|
| [6] - https://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/10/world/clinton-is-
| expected...
|
| [7] - https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/w
| orld/as...
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| https://sancharsaathi.gov.in
|
| - Report fraud/scam calls and SMS directly from your phone.
|
| - Block or track lost/stolen phones by disabling their IMEI so
| they can't be misused.
|
| - View all mobile numbers registered under your ID and report
| any unauthorized SIM cards.
|
| - Verify if a phone is genuine with an IMEI/device authenticity
| check.
|
| - Report telecom misuse, such as spoofed calls or suspicious
| international numbers.
|
| The stated goal is protect users from digital fraud and safer
| telecom usage, who knows how good it'll be. Probably a PITA.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| So a pretty transparent way to tie IMEI to someone's identity
| and track their location under the guise of "finding lost
| phones" and "checking your phone's authenticity"
| mlmonkey wrote:
| IMEI is already tied to your identity. You need ID to buy a
| phone or a SIM.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| I think this is to crack down on sharing a SIM card which
| is registered to someone else. It ties identity +
| location + aggregates all SIMs registered to someone with
| their current location.
|
| Not to mention they can probably payload anything into
| the app whenever they want.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| That's already the case for most places around the world,
| unfortunately. Though, this does make the link rather
| obvious, which is a bit more surprising. Normally shady
| tracking just happens through a combination of data brokers
| and leaked databases.
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| I've been using it since it came out. It does its job.
|
| I was getting 5-6 scam calls per day, now down to maybe 1 in
| a month.
|
| It's just a wrapper around their website (for now).
|
| I think this app is harmless but I don't think it should be
| forced onto anyone.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| This is great first hand feedback. I like these kinds of HN
| posts.
|
| How do you think it works? Example: If enough people
| report, then some police agency investigates? Rinse and
| repeat enough times and the scam calls/SMS should fall?
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| It partially automates the process of lodging a complaint
| against a call, SMS, or WhatsApp communication.
|
| On IOS, you still have to copy/paste the incoming number
| into a form, provide a screenshot of the message,
| date/time and it uploads the complaint to their systems.
|
| They inform you that they will not send updates.
|
| What I've observed is a huge drop in scammers, and new
| scammers get tagged as potential spam by the operator
| upfront. So they're doing something on the back end.
|
| You can only file a police complaint if you actually
| suffered monetary loss. I haven't, so I don't know how
| that works.
|
| The other benefit is that you can keep an eye on id theft
| used to get connections using your info. This is a huge
| problem in rural India. Scammers use this to create bank
| accounts to move money.
| immibis wrote:
| Can you uninstall it? That's the litmus test.
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| At the moment, yes, as I installed it myself off the App
| Store.
|
| That's what the ruckus is: the govt wants to push it
| everywhere mandatorily.
|
| Right now it's harmless: it's just a way to report
| scammers and lost handsets.
|
| But who knows what they'll shovel into it tomorrow.
| cheema33 wrote:
| > I think this app is harmless..
|
| It may be today. And you have no way to know for sure. But
| there is also no way to know what the app will do down the
| road when a politician you do not trust is in control of
| it.
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| Agreed. But they already have massive tracking
| capabilities. I don't they are so stupid that they'd do
| this in such an obvious way: too much scrutiny.
|
| CDOT's CMS system already exists in the background.
| pdyc wrote:
| What should have happened is that they should have forced mobile
| vendors to allow users to uninstall all apps. What actually
| happened is that they are asking for their app to be installed as
| well, sigh.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| I assume that in the US, the major manufacturers of phones and
| their operating systems already have backdoors for national
| security reasons. I think back to the past leaks from Snowden
| regarding the PRISM program. That program specifically included
| Google and Apple cooperating with the government under the FISA
| Amendments Act of 2008.
|
| So while this state-owned cyber safety app is authoritarian, I
| wonder if it reflects just the most practical way India's
| government can achieve the same things that the US has.
| greycol wrote:
| I am not defending it's use but a secret program is a targeted
| program, you can't use it in sweeping arrests without parallel
| construction. Whereas with an openly existing program you can
| point out that someone has been talking to their friend about
| how to get abortion medication and arrest them.
|
| The real issue with 100% enforcement of law is it requires a
| society with differing values to not just agree on which laws
| exist but what just punishment is. Without leeway for differing
| social judgement or bifurcation.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Parallel construction is incredibly easy though with
| confidential informants and honeytraps/entrapment (for
| another crime, for example).
| mlmonkey wrote:
| These are just excuses to convince yourself that what the US
| is doing is "not bad" but what India is doing is "terrible".
|
| Both are doing similar things. You have no idea what the US
| is doing; I have some inkling, and it is terrible.
|
| At least India is publicly disclosing what this app does, and
| that the phone has this app. Do you have any idea what the US
| does?
|
| Hint: that big data center in Utah, what is it for?
|
| Another hint: the US has given many billions of dollars to US
| telecom companies under the guise of "rural broadband" and
| "rural cell service". Has the state of rural service really
| changed much in the last 30 years?? Why has all that money
| been given, then?
| rjdj377dhabsn wrote:
| Did you mean to reply to someone else?
|
| No one is claiming the US government is doing less terrible
| things than the Indian government.
| immibis wrote:
| greycol is
| greycol wrote:
| I very much am not. If I point out that bombing a wedding
| with no terrorists is awful that does not mean I think
| bombing a civilian building hosting a wedding that
| terrorists are actually using as a base is great, even if
| most people would find the later more justifiable (i.e.
| more justifiable doesn't mean justified).
| mcny wrote:
| I don't get it. Don't many if not most of these scams originate
| from India? Wouldn't it be better to stop the scammers directly?
| awestroke wrote:
| If their goal was to increase the security for their citizens,
| you would have a point
| orochimaaru wrote:
| Actually it's Cambodia now.
| marginalx wrote:
| Nothing in this app stops scammers, scammers use land
| lines/voip to make calls.
| lez wrote:
| It _is_ happening, in spite many won 't really deeply believe.
| Every day 33 brits are arrested for what they say online.
|
| It's happening, and it's time we say no. It's uncomfortable, but
| we need to do it en masse, right now.
|
| Do not buy backdoored hardware, help others get rid of the
| backdoors, use anonymous technology to organize protests.
|
| There has to be a line.
| logram-llc wrote:
| Do you have a source for the Brits being arrested?
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| A Liberty GB spokesman said: "Mr Weston was standing on the
| steps of Winchester Guildhall, addressing the passers-by in
| the street with a megaphone.
|
| "He quoted an excerpt about Islam from the book The River War
| by Winston Churchill.
|
| "Reportedly, a woman came out of the Guildhall and asked Mr
| Weston if he had the authorisation to make this speech.
|
| "When he answered that he didn't, she told him: 'It's
| disgusting', and then called the police.
|
| "Six or seven officers arrived. They talked with the people
| standing nearby, asking questions about what had happened.
|
| "The police had a long discussion with Mr Weston, lasting
| about 40 minutes.
|
| "At about 3pm he was arrested. They searched him, put him in
| a police van and took him away."
| rpcope1 wrote:
| You got a loiscence for that speech?
|
| If even half of that is true, I can't fathom why someone
| would willingly live in that total shithole of a country.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| willingly live in their homeland? yeah i don't know
| either bro
| guywithahat wrote:
| I'm not OP but a quick yandex search (google isn't great for
| conservative news) suggests ~12k people were arrested last
| year for speech. https://nypost.com/2025/08/19/world-news/uk-
| free-speech-stru...
|
| This article says 10k
| https://www.zerohedge.com/political/britains-speech-gulag-
| ex...
|
| More broadly it's been a huge issue for a while, tons of
| articles come out of the UK for people being arrested for
| criticizing politicians/policies. Even more dystopian is it's
| hard to report on, because the police might come after you
| for talking about it. Germany is having similar issues, it's
| easy to forget most of the world (including Europe) doesn't
| have free speech
| dietr1ch wrote:
| Brits get arrested for even supporting peace, I don't feel I
| need to verify this claim.
|
| https://www.instagram.com/p/DRkQRFdjWMm/
| theglenn88_ wrote:
| This is probably one of the best ones
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9dj1zlvxglo
|
| Edit: I believe they are now getting compensation for a
| 'wrongful arrest' which, sounds entirely deserved.
| phatfish wrote:
| I don't know. You can bet these people were being obnoxious
| sh*ts to teachers and trying to rally some online mob to
| get their way. No much sympathy from me, even if arrest
| (and not a stern telling off and being told to set a good
| example for their kids and behave like adults) was a bit
| much.
| theglenn88_ wrote:
| Yeah I can imagine, I know the sort, however you can't
| really assume that as you don't know them, people have a
| right to be upset if their children's education is at
| stake and in some cases the schools management can be the
| 'obnoxious sh*ts'.
|
| What is clear though is there has been some abuse of
| power by the police. I wondered if someone at the school
| 'knows' someone in the police, which made it go so far.
| Kelteseth wrote:
| I didn't find any context for your claim so here is some reddit
| comment:
|
| So it's true 3,300 people were arrested for posts online. What
| they don't tell you are the statistics or context. The actual
| law for these arrests covers EVERYTHING online. These arrests
| include those arrested for terrorism (if the planning/act of
| terror includes any online communication in the UK), threats of
| violence, racist abuse, hate speech and unwanted communication
| (including sending unsolicited sexual photos to strangers). It
| also includes spreading false information that could cause harm
| or affect an ingoing investigation.
|
| If you look at convictions, only 137 people were actually
| sentenced in 2024.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/DebunkThis/comments/1mmux6r/comment...
| more_corn wrote:
| It also includes traveling to the United States where gun
| ownership is legal, and posting a picture of yourself holding
| a gun.
| Aurornis wrote:
| This comment is getting downvoted, but another comment
| provide a real source for this having happened to someone:
| https://archive.is/bH56T
| jeroenhd wrote:
| ... following a police complaint about stalking, against a
| man involved in a business dispute, seemingly among other
| things. He may be innocent, but there's more to the story
| than the picture of the gun.
| aydyn wrote:
| The arrest is the punishment. Here is a man getting arrested
| and subsequently harassed by the Police for 13 weeks for just
| posting a picture of himself with a shotgun in America.
|
| https://archive.is/bH56T
| hypeatei wrote:
| Or the Tennessee man held in jail for over a month for a
| Facebook meme post: https://www.wtae.com/article/tennessee-
| facebook-post-felony-...
|
| Note: this occurred in the US and not the UK but it happens
| here, too.
| dommer wrote:
| We're basically seeing this story through media summaries
| and Richelieu-Booth's own account, which means the
| narrative reflects either what he says happened or brief
| police statements. There's very little publicly available
| that allows anyone to independently confirm or contradict
| either side.
|
| Stories like this are designed to provoke a reaction, but
| the truth could be far more mundane: he might be a
| completely unreasonable person who was genuinely stalking
| someone, and police might have had credible concerns. We
| simply don't have the full picture.
|
| For balance, West Yorkshire Police do have a reputation for
| being heavy handed. the same force that used drones during
| Covid to shame people walking alone on the moors.
|
| My point is: this isn't solid evidence of Orwellian
| decline. It's difficult to draw sweeping conclusions about
| Britain from a single case built on incomplete information
| and media amplification.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| This has a bit more info:
| https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/business/orwellian-
| nightmare...
|
| Notably:
|
| > with the situation causing him considerable stress at a
| point where he was also dealing with an inquest into the
| deaths of his parents, who had both died in a car crash in
| 2023
|
| so for some reason, there was something going on about his
| parents' death two years later. The article also states:
|
| > He said the complaint against him was linked to an
| ongoing business dispute.
|
| My take is that someone used his pictures of him holding
| guns (illegal in the UK) as support for a claim that he is
| an armed and dangerous stalker. Whatever got flagged
| regarding the inquest into his parents' deaths probably
| added suspicion. Police acted quickly (as they should, but
| probably too quickly) and made mistakes, but it looks like
| they couldn't accept that they were being used, so they
| decided to continue pressing onwards with the
| investigation, hoping they were still right and wouldn't be
| on the hook for a false arrest.
|
| Getting falsely arrested is always terrible, but the way
| the media spins this as some kind of witch hunt about a
| LinkedIn post is misleading at best.
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| oh well as long as it's only happening to some people no
| problem then huh? That's okay?
| mc32 wrote:
| Can you just imagine the amount of arrests we'd have in the
| US if simply saying really offensive things at officials was
| enough to get you arrested.
|
| Using Carlin's dirty words against others you dislike or
| quoting passages from historical books should not warrant
| arrests.
| rustystump wrote:
| Ahh yes reddit the most accurate location of truth finding.
| Could you at least link the source of the comment or are we
| supposed to take a random redditor as fact?
| Aurornis wrote:
| > These arrests include those arrested for terrorism (if the
| planning/act of terror includes any online communication in
| the UK), threats of violence, racist abuse, hate speech and
| unwanted communication
|
| All of these attempts to "debunk" this statistic feel like
| they're missing the mark. How did the UK get a point where
| planning terrorism and making mean comments online go into
| the same statistic for arrests? Does it not seem strange that
| the second half of that list is worthy of arrest?
|
| > If you look at convictions, only 137 people were actually
| sentenced in 2024.
|
| This, again, does not help. Being arrested isn't a casual
| thing. It threatens everything from your job to your
| reputation and your relationships, even if you aren't
| convicted.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| > How did the UK get a point where planning terrorism and
| making mean comments online go into the same statistic for
| arrests?
|
| In most publications: because the people reporting on these
| statistics can get more views and clicks that way. FUD
| sells. If someone online can defuse the statistics, the
| reporters that spread them also could've, but chose not to.
|
| As for the second half of the list, "racist abuse, hate
| speech, and unwanted communication" are pretty common
| things to incriminate. Even the extremely liberal freedom
| of speech laws in the USA do not permit stalking ("unwanted
| communication") and racist abuse is criminalized in all
| kinds of cases (i.e. firing someone because of their race).
| belorn wrote:
| In many countries you do not get charged with every
| possible crime if there is a larger crime involve. If
| someone rob a place, they don't also need to have separate
| charges for illegally entering the place, destroying
| property when they broke the window, selling stolen goods,
| wire fraud for using the banking system, and money
| laundering for concealing that it is illegal money, and tax
| evasion. Each step is illegal on their own, but time crime
| statistics won't be written like that. The prosecutor may
| argue that if the accused are not found guilty for the
| primary, then secondaries may then be used.
|
| The strange thing is that the UK are arresting people for
| abusing the telecom system, and not for the more serious
| crime like terrorism, death threats, harassment and sexual
| harassment.
| lez wrote:
| Thank you. I heard the number locally at a privacy
| conference. No hard data, but I saw them being terrified for
| 1984 becoming a reality. Even if there's no sentence, the
| real result is self-censorship, which is NOT shown up in ANY
| statistics.
| Angostura wrote:
| Is it your view that no-one should ever be arrested for
| anything they say, in any context?
|
| > There has to be a line.
|
| Where do you draw the line?
| theglenn88_ wrote:
| I'd like to think that we all agree that you would be
| arrested for saying things in person (hate crimes, etc) would
| be the same things you'd be arrested for saying online... i'd
| place the line about there.
|
| However, there are cases which do cross the line...
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9dj1zlvxglo
| happyopossum wrote:
| > we all agree that you would be arrested for saying things
| in person (hate crimes, etc) would be the same things you'd
| be arrested for saying online..
|
| And that's where you'd be wrong - lots of us belief that
| speech should not be a cause for arrest except in the most
| extreme circumstances. Hurting someone's feelings is not
| that
| theglenn88_ wrote:
| > And that's where you'd be wrong - lots of us belief
| that speech should not be a cause for arrest except in
| the most extreme circumstances. Hurting someone's
| feelings is not that
|
| what is an extreme circumstance?
|
| At least in the UK, hate speech is a crime and is
| punishable by law, whether people agree or disagree is
| irrelevant, I do believe that if it's illegal on the
| street it should be illegal online, obviously in the
| relevant jurisdiction.
| tokai wrote:
| UK has been self destructing for a looong time now. While
| things aren't great globally for free speech and privacy, I
| don't think pointing to UK as an example for anything makes
| sense. They have been on their path for many decades.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| the lowest resistance solution to e.g. cheating at school using
| ChatGPT will be spyware on kids' devices.
|
| while nobody should be arrested for speech online, here on
| hacker news, people are downvoted for saying something
| unpopular (as opposed to whatever, i don't even know what the
| criteria is, but maybe it should be "toxic") all the time. you
| are preaching to the wrong audience, not the choir.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| The price of freedom will only go up. People can't help but
| wait to buy at the last minute when it costs an arm and a leg.
| markdown wrote:
| I've seen what's said online these days. Open racism and
| bigotry. This has always been the case but now it's done
| without shame by prominent people and influencers using their
| real account. Twitter is as bad as Stormfront these days.
|
| We absolutely need to police hate speech.
|
| > There has to be a line.
|
| There is no line at all these days, with open hatred displayed.
| Fascism is on the rise across the world off the back of the
| hatred that's produced on social media.
|
| > Every day 33 brits are arrested for what they say online.
|
| They must be giving them tea and crumpets before releasing them
| to generate more hate online because it clearly isn't working.
| kwar13 wrote:
| I have to say I'm really surprised that I didn't find "fighting
| CP & terrorism" as the main push for this.
| quantum_state wrote:
| Horrible for a so-called democratic country ...
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The clipper chip was brought to us by the country that
| proclaims to spread democracy across the world. Democracies can
| be authoritarian if you scare the public enough.
| nxm wrote:
| Democrats in the US touting ,,combating hate speech" would love
| to do the same here
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| the good news is that I'm personally on my last few years online.
| I don't think there's anything really worthwhile in this space to
| do as a contributor or even as a consumer
| Animats wrote:
| What does this app actually do, in detail? Anyone know?
| more_corn wrote:
| It doesn't matter what the app does today it can be made to do
| anything they want after the fact. Monitor speech, location,
| contacts, content, preserve evidence for prosecution,
| inspection your dinner choices or your sexual habits.
|
| This is on the far end of the spectrum of bad.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| > It doesn't matter what the app does today it can be made to
| do anything they want after the fact.
|
| This is an extremely important point of universal application
| that can't be emphasized too much.
|
| Even if one agrees with a current politician's position, once
| the precedent is set, there's nothing stopping an
| administration down the line extending the reach of an
| already installed and by then socially accepted mechanism.
|
| Someone called this the "totalitarian tip toe"; that guy (who
| shall rename unnamed) was "a bit weird", but his concept
| stands anyway imo.
| nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote:
| When the app is mandated installed then user permissions are
| also moot. It will have full access an app can have.
| adrr wrote:
| Wouldn't that require Apple to sign the app with their own
| key to get low level API access? Has apple ever done that
| with anyone?
| ssivark wrote:
| This seems to be the app: https://www.sancharsaathi.gov.in/
|
| Looks like it's quire popular/established already, with over 10
| million downloads. Basically a "portal" for basic digital
| safety/hygiene related services.
|
| Quoting Perplexity regarding what facilities the app offers:
|
| 1. Chakshu: Report suspicious calls, SMS, or WhatsApp for scams
| like impersonation, fake investments, or KYC frauds.
|
| 2. Block Lost/Stolen Phones: Trace and block devices across all
| telecom networks using IMEI; track if reactivated.
|
| 3. Check Connections in Your Name: View and disconnect
| unauthorized numbers linked to your ID.
|
| 4. Verify Device Genuineness: Confirm if a phone (new or used)
| is authentic before purchase.
| papichulo2023 wrote:
| How does an app inspect other app's storage data (like
| whatsapp). I thought Android security model blocked that.
| Does it have root access?
| dotnet00 wrote:
| It probably just asks you to enter the associated WhatsApp
| number
| beefnugs wrote:
| Oh thats why india scams the rest of the world, we just dont
| have their apps to report it properly
| kabdib wrote:
| > 4. Verify Device Genuineness: Confirm if a phone (new or
| used) is authentic before purchase.
| DisplayDialog("Yup, perfectly genuine, trust me!");
|
| :-)
| captn3m0 wrote:
| Every single Indian SIM holder got dozens of SMS from the
| regulator to push the app installations. When your marketing
| campaign is "Notify every Indian SIM holder", 10M should be
| expected. Look at the reviews.
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| Sovereign tech stacks matter
|
| Without domestic silicon or OS, you're forced to mandate
| bloatware that users can see
|
| Real power operates at the silicon/firmware level, invisible,
| unremovable, and uncompromisable
|
| This is a cringe move from India
|
| https://www.centerforcybersecuritypolicy.org/insights-and-re...
| mk89 wrote:
| When the hell do we start to build these products here again like
| it was just 20 years ago? And let's stop with "it's too expensive
| here...". For God's sake, these are products we use every minute
| of our lives.
|
| Enough is enough...
| sharadov wrote:
| Indian government is big on pronouncements.
|
| It will be a garbage app that most likely will not work,
| considering the historical incompetence of the Indian
| government's expertise in all things tech.
|
| I am pretty certain Apple and Samsung will pay off someone in the
| government.
| lacy_tinpot wrote:
| Isn't one of the largest payment processors in the world made
| by the Indian Government?
|
| Personally I wouldn't risk my personal digital privacy on the
| incompetence of the government. I'd assume the opposite.
| aeyes wrote:
| Not really, UPI is developed and operated by several large
| banks.
|
| Maybe you were thinking about PIX in Brazil which is
| developed and operated by their central bank.
| chupchap wrote:
| I thought it was made by NPCI, which is owned by RBI, AND
| the IBA. It is ultimately a government organisation.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| NPCI ownership is not with RBI and IBA. RBI does not have
| any NPCI shares.
| lacy_tinpot wrote:
| No. UPI. It's an initiative by the Indian government.
|
| It's controlled by the RBI, just through a complex public-
| private corporate structure through NPCI.
|
| UPI is much larger and more international than PIX. It's
| currently processing iirc something like 200 billion
| transactions. UPI is also used in several countries, France
| being among the most recent examples.
|
| As such UPI has a broader scope than PIX and requires a
| public-private corporate structure with stakeholders from
| both sides.
|
| But this is off topic. The competence of the Indian
| government to at the very minimum partner with Industry
| shows that such software preloaded on phones is a threat to
| the civil liberties of people that the State shouldn't
| encroach on. This is a violation of individual privacy.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _It will be a garbage app that most likely will not work,
| considering the historical incompetence of the Indian
| government 's expertise in all things tech._
|
| Wait until "they" outsource it (on the pretext of national
| security interests) to countries that have deep talent in
| cybersecurity (like the US/Israel/Russia/China).
|
| Ex: https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2025/06/11/india-orders-new-
| fig...
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| I have this app installed on my phone, and it helped eliminate
| "digital arrest" scam calls from 5-6 calls per day to maybe one
| in 2 months.
|
| It makes filing an online complaint against the incoming call
| almost frictionless.
|
| Having said that, I don't believe it should be shoved down our
| throats.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_arrest
| unmole wrote:
| > I have this app installed on my phone, and it helped
| eliminate "digital arrest" scam calls from 5-6 calls per day
| to maybe one in 2 months.
|
| Yeah, no. Correlation is not causation. Having the app
| installed doesn't eliminate calls. The app doesn't have the
| ability to block calls.
|
| Operators like Airtel stepped up and started flagging
| spam/scam and now warn their users when they recieve a call
| from flagged numbers.
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| How do you think operators built a database of spammers?
|
| I've been reporting spammers since 2005, since DND rules
| came into place.
|
| Only in the last year have I seen the spam slow down.
| Earlier operators would dismiss the complaint saying to it
| was a "transactional communication," now it's logged with
| TRAI and the operator and they have less room to manipulate
| the complaint.
| unmole wrote:
| Reports submitted through the new TRAI DND app and
| Sanchar Sathi are handled identically.
|
| Simply installing Sanchar Sathi won't eliminate spam
| calls, which was my point.
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| That's not my understanding.
|
| The TRAI DND app, on IOS, generates a pre-formatted SMS
| which is sent to the operator on the standard number
| 1909.
|
| The Sanchar Sathi app sends it to a DOT entity which then
| routes it to the operator while updating the govt
| database of reported spammers and scammers. The options
| are much extensive than just a spam call/sms.
|
| You can report that the individual was impersonating a
| public official etc while you can not do than at all with
| the TRAI DND app.
|
| I suggest you try out the platform on their website first
| before commenting further.
| Covenant0028 wrote:
| So the problem was not with the app but with how the
| information was routed at the back end. The back end of
| the 1909 system could have been modified to write the
| data to a central registry as well.
| ajyotirmay wrote:
| All that couldn be as simple as educating people that there
| is no such thing as "digital arrest".
|
| You are just telling the whole world about the average IQ of
| an Indian and how they believe in foolish things like
| "digital arrest".
|
| And an app doesn't solve that. Digital literacy is a need for
| today, but the entire country is getting the latest
| smartphone, with dirt cheap data and zero knowledge of how to
| operate and own that technology.
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| And your point is what exactly?
| Aachen wrote:
| Presumably the point is what they wrote, e.g. "an app
| doesn't solve that. Digital literacy is a need for today"
|
| Not saying I agree or disagree but your reply comes
| across as passive aggressive to me. Not that the parent
| post makes pleasant insinuations either, to be fair...
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| When we're struggling with literacy itself, and people
| have lost huge amounts of money, and there have been
| several suicides linked to these scams, digital literacy
| in a passive mode is unlikely to work.
|
| Bangalore is supposedly the most digital literate place
| in India. The data below speaks for itself.
|
| Aggressive measures then might be justified.
|
| It's very easy to make virtuous comments without knowing
| anything of the ground realities.
|
| [0]
| https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/bengalureans-
| lose...
|
| [1] https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/bengaluru-
| man-lose...
| sateesh wrote:
| You are confounding intent with the implementation.It might be
| a garbage app to start with, but there is no opt out for the
| users. Given the payoff and endless iterations resources will
| be thrown at it and it would eventually get better.
| cheema33 wrote:
| > Given the payoff and endless iterations resources will be
| thrown at it and it would eventually get better.
|
| Allow the user to download and install it if it turns out to
| be great. Do not shove things down people's throat against
| their wishes, like an authoritarian govt. Otherwise you start
| to resemble Stalin's Soviet Union.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Stalin did not force anyone to install apps. He was
| actually a good ruler. He took over the country with a
| plough and left it with a nuclear missile.
| faidit wrote:
| The nuclear missile was developed under Khrushchev, who
| was actually decent.
|
| Stalin brought back the Czarist internal passport system,
| Russian chauvinism, racial discrimination and prison
| slavery, enriched a new oligarchy, his police killed most
| of Lenin's politburo and thousands of other good
| Communists on false charges, and he almost lost Moscow to
| a fascist incel armed with Panzer IIs, despite the
| superiority of the Red Army. Also he sold out revolutions
| in Spain, Greece, China etc. in pursuit of trade deals
| with capitalist countries that hated the USSR. The great
| achievements of the Soviet people and their planned
| economy were made in spite of Stalin's corrupt and
| oppressive mis-leadership.
|
| On the matter of India. Stalin also betrayed the Indian
| revolution by trying to sabotage Bose, ordering the CPI
| to collaborate with British imperialism, and murdering
| founders of the CPI like Virendranath Chattopadhyaya,
| Abani Mukherji and GAK Lokhani.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| RDS-1 (first nuclear bomb) was tested in 1949. Stalin
| died in 1953. So it was definitely under Stalin's rule
| that nuclear program was developed.
|
| It is fun to read about Russian chauvinism under Stalin
| rule, given the fact that he wasn't Russian himself.
| throaway123213 wrote:
| Stalin didn't need to claim any ethnicity. He was the man
| of Iron, not a silly human like you or me.
| faidit wrote:
| Your comment said "missile".
|
| Stalin ended socialist affirmative action programs
| (Korenizatsiya) that benefited Soviet minorities in
| education and local leadership. Russification policy and
| Cyrillization of local languages were enforced under him.
| Local Communist leaders who resisted the Russian
| chauvinist policies, like Fayzulla Khodjayev (the "Uzbek
| Lenin") and even the leaders of independent Mongolia,
| were dragged to Moscow and executed, which was a complete
| violation of socialist legality. Numerous Soviet
| minorities, from Chechens to Koreans, were forcibly
| deported to barren lands in Central Asia to make room for
| Russian settlers. NKVD records show that hundreds of
| thousands of forcibly migrated peoples died due to lack
| of food and shelter in the resettlement areas.
|
| Stalin also said "I drink in the first place to the
| health of the Russian people because it is the most
| outstanding nation of all the nations forming the Soviet
| Union"
| ponector wrote:
| Right! It's a known fact that good rulers are creating
| death camps, doing multiple acts of genocide and multiple
| unprovoked military invasions to the neighbors.
|
| Are saying Kim Jong Un is a good ruler as well? He ruled
| country during nuclear missile production.
|
| You should praise Hitler as good ruler as well as stalin.
| jfindper wrote:
| > _He was actually a good ruler._
|
| You've read stuff like this before, right?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin#Death_toll
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Sov
| iet...
| sbmthakur wrote:
| I don't think the government is going to treat it like a local
| district website. IRCTC, UPI, e-Filing portal seem to be
| working fine for the most part, so pretty sure they can make
| this work eventually.
| ajyotirmay wrote:
| IRCTC is a private company. UPI isn't government either.
| Which e-filling portal is working nicely for you? My ITR was
| stuck for more than a year because some lame ass dev couldn't
| show proper error message other than suggesting that
| something needed to be done by my bank (which wasn't the case
| and only a year later did I decide to dig into th3 dev
| tools).
|
| To praise Indian government is the most unlikely thing one
| should be doing for their mediocrity at developing things.
|
| Same is the case with Aadhar, Digiyatra, etc. My government
| is hella incompetent at safeguarding data and privacy (unless
| it's their own data). And this app is 100% going to be a huge
| security hole on every device.
|
| For me, ADB to the resuce.
| blackoil wrote:
| not work will also mean it will siphon all the data and then
| leak it to hackers from around the world.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| RBI pushed an entire new second level TLD to India's entire
| banking system with a 6 month deadline. It was a botched
| rollout but now every bank in India is using .bank.in, despite
| two of India's largest bank owning their own TLDs (.hdfc, and
| .sbi).
|
| It was a very insecure rollout with zero customer awareness,
| but it happened and almost every large bank moved. Sometimes
| silly pronouncements do result in silly change.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| I wonder if this will cause a reduction in remote jobs for
| citizens. Compliance with US laws like HIPAA and FERPA have
| strict requirements regarding access. Many employees use 2FA on
| their personal devices, which if passed this law would interfere
| with.
| tzs wrote:
| How would this interfere with 2FA?
| j16sdiz wrote:
| Depends on what permission this app have.
|
| - Is this a (voice) call blocker?
|
| - Can it intercept SMS?
|
| - Can it enumerate installed app and read data from other
| apps?
| MangoToupe wrote:
| Or, maybe it'll finally convince people that SMS is the worst
| of all worlds when it comes to security (and phone numbers for
| identity). Doubt it tho
| m3kw9 wrote:
| If the app requires an on device backdoor, Apple won't likely
| cave to it. If it's sandboxed, the amount of things it can do is
| limited to tracking user location, given Apple also disabled
| turning off location sharing
| nephihaha wrote:
| This is going to tie in with digital ID. Obviously the Indian
| government has never been corrupt or abusive.
| renewiltord wrote:
| These things are more a factor of aggregate risk handling. As an
| example, if you have tuberculosis it is possible even in the US
| for the country to mandate that a doctor watch you take the
| treatment. Totalitarian? Authoritarian? A tool that could be used
| to force someone to have to show up to where a state-controlled
| authority could confirm that they are? Yes, all of these things
| could be words you could assign to that.
|
| But societal combined risk is commonly handled in this way. In
| the US, if you employ someone you have to report that you paid
| them to a central federal government. Way to track someone?
| Surveillance state? All words you could use.
|
| And the government previously restricted gambling and so on. The
| question isn't "why would a bad government do these things?". The
| question is "would a benevolent government do these things?" and
| "if so, why?". And the answer is quite straightforward, I think:
|
| Someone in the government has observed that there is a great deal
| of cyber crime in India. A fairly uneducated population, with
| very high smart-phone penetration (85%+ apparently), and a large
| number of fraudulent actors that their federal government is
| unable to enforce against. So they're attempting to attack the
| problem where they can.
|
| This is ultimately India. They don't need insidious "app on your
| phone" / stingray / any other sophisticated solution. The local
| politicians can manipulate local authorities to get your cell
| tower association data and SMS. And if they want your comms
| devices they will rubber-hose the secrets out of you.
|
| Someone I know worked at a big FAANG. He's Indian so went back to
| Bangalore to see his ailing mother. One day he took an auto-
| rickshaw while wearing his FAANG sweatshirt. The driver took him
| to a makeshift jail where he, police officers, and a magistrate
| conspired to threaten the guy with prison unless he paid $10k.
| $10k is nothing to a FAANG engineer, so he paid up, was brought
| in front of court on some lesser charges and then had to pay a
| small fine (much less than $10k). And then he flew back to the
| West Coast and never returned to India. Trying to reason about
| this kind of place using the perspective of the West is
| meaningless.
|
| I think it unlikely they're trying to use this as cyber-
| surveillance. India simply does not have the infrastructure
| necessary to do that at scale. And they have the infrastructure
| for the rubber-hose, and Indians wear their identification on
| their sleeve, so to speak. Names point to ethnic groups and
| castes. Primarily endogamous marriage means if you want to
| perform violence against groups you can simply spread out from
| one member of the family unit being visibly of that group.
|
| Using an app to get access to someone's data there is sort of
| like using Heartbleed to get root on a machine on which you are
| in /etc/sudoers with NOPASSWD.
| marginalx wrote:
| All good goals - but this can be done by the government forcing
| the private companies (Apple/Goog/Samsung) to build tools,
| reporting, support services around helping with both Scamming
| applications or Stolen phones etc....
|
| This will keep the data out of governments hands, while pushing
| the cost burden to these companies and they would be better
| equipped to build around these goals than the government
| themselves.
|
| We all know the govt doesn't have a great track record with
| using Pegasus etc... Giving away control to apps that can
| decide your phone is stolen and lock it opens the door to any
| possibility including a totalitarian regime. It would be naive
| to believe that even if this is done with good intentions, such
| control could be easily mis used by opposition parties, one
| malicious individual etc...
| renewiltord wrote:
| I don't think the Indian government realistically has the
| ability to enforce on Apple/Google/Samsung like that.
| Regardless, even if they did, India has a diversity of (what
| we would probably consider) garbage smartphones. For anyone
| who lives in the West and is used to the kind of state
| legibility and control here, I think they'd find India quite
| surprising. The state has limited visibility and control
| there, simply because they never built a trustable
| bureaucratic network of data transmission.
|
| If you read the Internet, you will hear that India has strict
| controls on KYC for SIM cards and so on. But on my last trip
| there I acquired one without much fuss. I'm not sure how that
| happened but I didn't provide any ID! I suspect that in such
| an environment you can't really do the thing you're
| suggesting.
|
| The average mobile phone store there had an absolutely mind-
| blowing profusion of smartphone brands that all sound like
| those Amazon drop-shipped Chinese brands: Vivo, Poco, Realme,
| Oppo. And those are the good ones! There is a Cambrian-like
| explosion of brands there from various manufacturers. It's an
| unusual place.
|
| EDIT: I'm going to have to reply to you here because I'm
| rate-limited on comments. See below in response.
|
| Is it contradictory? I imagine saying "install this app on
| your phones from the factory when selling here" is a lot more
| achievable than coordinating what you suggested which is:
|
| > _...build tools, reporting, support services around helping
| with both Scamming applications or Stolen phones etc...._
|
| But perhaps you anticipate these to both require equivalent
| ability? If so, I think that's the crux of the disagreement.
| I don't think the Indian state has the power to set up a
| mechanism to set a standard for tools, reporting, and support
| services that meet some requirements to detect scammers etc.
|
| In fact, I think that's a really high bar. I think perhaps
| only highly developed nations would have any success
| designing such a program. I think even the smaller EU member
| nations would fail at it, and I don't think any of the
| developing nations (barring China).
| marginalx wrote:
| I feel like you are making a contradicting point, on one
| hand you say its all disorganized but "organized enough" to
| allow the govt to force install their app, but not enough
| so it can coordinate the same thing with the same people
| they are going to force to install the app?
| spoaceman7777 wrote:
| So, basically, this is just SIM card functionality for the age of
| eSIMs?
|
| A lot of people in this thread seem unaware of what SIM cards
| actually are and do.
| wosined wrote:
| Sounds so authoritarian. Luckily, in the UK you only have to scan
| your face and ID to access cat photos.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| It's all happening really quickly, so I haven't been able to
| keep up. I know Starmer said that digital ID will be mandatory
| to work in the UK. Did he mention how that would be
| implemented? Is the UK going to issue and official device to
| everyone in country, or are the people supposed to pay for it?
| What about homeless, poor, and the provisional residents?
| zarzavat wrote:
| I assume that almost everyone in the UK who is able to work
| has a smartphone already.
|
| If they were to require digital ID for pensions or disability
| benefits there would be more problems.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Even if that were the case, by what mechanism are they
| commandeering it? That's essentially what I was thinking
| about in this India case.
|
| Undoubtedly most people will comply, but there will be a
| few who don't, so I'm curious what the plan is to bring
| them in line.
| zarzavat wrote:
| UK isn't commandeering anything.
|
| The UK government hasn't decided yet how digital ID will
| work, currently it's just a talking point. Probably it
| will be an app that you install, like the NHS app. Nobody
| is proposing that it be installed by default.
|
| Apple separately announced that a Digital ID feature will
| be built into iOS[0] which the UK may use or not use.
|
| > few who don't, so I'm curious what the plan is to bring
| them in line
|
| They will be told by their employer to get it otherwise
| they will lose their job. Just the same as now, only at
| the moment you need a paper passport rather than a
| smartphone.
|
| [0] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/11/apple-
| introduces-digi...
| Aachen wrote:
| > Probably it will be an app that you install, like the
| NHS app. Nobody is proposing that it be installed by
| default.
|
| Whether it comes pre-installed or not is a distinction
| without difference if you need it for daily life
|
| Edit: In fact, it would be better if it came pre-
| installed (and be removable) because then you don't need
| to agree to Google's terms of service to get the APK
| file. You would get it straight from your OS vendor which
| is presumably a trusted party if you intend on using that
| device. (Governments are usually not so forward-thinking
| that they let you get the APK file from the govt website
| directly without needing to go through commercial
| entities for something as essential as a national
| healthcare app. That would be an even better solution...)
| graemep wrote:
| > Probably it will be an app that you install, like the
| NHS app.
|
| You do not have to use the NHS app. There is a website
| version.
|
| > Just the same as now, only at the moment you need a
| paper passport rather than a smartphone.
|
| Which demonstrates how little it achieves. People already
| need some form of ID for lots of things (notably work and
| renting housing). It does not have to be a passport
| though.
| peanut_merchant wrote:
| You do not need any form of photo or biometric id to work
| in the UK. I have never given anything of the sort, and
| have worked here for decades.
|
| All that is required is a national insurance number
| (equivalent of Social Security Number in US).
| monerozcash wrote:
| You don't even need a photo ID to open a bank account in
| the UK
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > Undoubtedly most people will comply, but there will be
| a few who don't, so I'm curious what the plan is to bring
| them in line.
|
| Can you elaborate on what you mean by non compliance?
| Without the ID you will have significantly worse access
| to services and employers. I think the pressure will be
| on the people, not the government, to comply.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| There's a famous article by Terence Eden about the kind of
| devices that people are forced to use to interact with the
| UK Government, written with his experiences working for the
| government.
|
| The devices include: A Playstation Portable. The latest
| stats include thousands of visits from XBox and Playstation
| consoles.
|
| All modern smartphone requirements boil down to Play
| Integrity and iOS AppStore attestations.
|
| https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-
| effectiven...
| modo_mario wrote:
| And if you have a pinephone or so?
| macleginn wrote:
| As a foreign national living in the UK on a long-term visa I
| can only say that the decision to discontinue physical BRP
| (residence permit) cards in favour of eVisas is singularly
| idiotic and harmful. One piece of evidence being that there
| are still things you can only do using expired BRPs, which
| will be in a some kind of zombie mode until mid 2026. After
| that, eternal misery.
|
| But this is basically nothing compared to what they are doing
| with their justice system, which mostly affects British
| citizens, so who am I to complain.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > Is the UK going to issue and official device to everyone in
| country, or are the people supposed to pay for it? What about
| homeless, poor, and the provisional residents?
|
| What about provisional residents? The digital ID proves
| identity. It is not a work authorization. Provisional
| residents can have a digital ID whether they work or not.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Digital ID isn't really an issue. Most people already have
| several government digital IDs (government gateway, unique
| taxpayer number, etc.)
|
| They should have branded it "simplified ID" or something like
| that.
|
| I'll probably get instinctive downvotes but I think it's
| important not to mix up the actually-fine stuff with stuff
| like chat control, otherwise the message becomes trivial to
| dismiss.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| > Luckily, in the UK you only have to scan your face and ID to
| access cat photos.
|
| Please wait for us, the relentless chat control legislation
| will make us (the EU) overtake you and mandatory age
| verification is pretty much a certainty at this point.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| Are you talking about downloading reddit, which is infested
| with the weirdest pornography that exists ?
|
| While I am very much against facial scanning etc, it is quite
| clear that something needs to be done about the access of porn
| to kids. It is a drug like any other that we do not allow kids
| to consume.
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| So what is your plan on dealing with wikipedia? I accessed
| porn in 2011 when I was 11. I played Postal 2 when I was 10.
| But no English skills at that age means not much came out of
| that game at that time except cat silencers.
|
| How many kids these days play 18+ rated games?
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| Do a few nude photographs on wikipedia hold the same
| addiction potential as an infinite stream of short form HD
| videos - specifically optimized for attention capture - on
| platforms like reddit ?
|
| I am not even sure whether I should take you seriously.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > a few nude photographs on wikipedia
|
| It's a wee bit more extensive than that. Videos, more
| than a few, and most of them not tied to a wiki page.
|
| As someone who tried to run a clean BBS and later a web
| forum, I'll never be surprised at the lengths people will
| go to share porn.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > So what is your plan on dealing with wikipedia?
|
| Im not sure I understand. Are you saying wikipedia has
| porn?
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| Yes. It even has articles dedicated to specific sex
| positions. I definitely looked at those articles fairly
| often as a young teen.
|
| But should I need to upload an ID to view that? I guess
| some people think North Korea has the right mindset with
| information control, so showing an ID to see who's seeing
| what makes sense. But I'm not of that mindset.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Yes. Not necessarily on any pages. Go to the commons and
| search with some obvious keywords.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I dont know why porn companies arent just sued into oblivion.
| There are already laws against distributing porn to minors in
| most places and porn companies do it routinely without any
| controls.
| tintor wrote:
| Does it apply to iPhones manufactured to India, which are meant
| for export to other countries?
| nbsande wrote:
| > With more than 5 million downloads since its launch, the app
| has helped block more than 3.7 million stolen or lost mobile
| phones, while more than 30 million fraudulent connections have
| also been terminated.
|
| I might be reading this wrong but these numbers seem very weird.
| Did more than half the people who downloaded the app block a
| stolen phone? And did each person who downloaded the app
| terminate 6 fraudulent connections?
| SSLy wrote:
| > _And did each person who downloaded the app terminate 6
| fraudulent connections?_
|
| That much is believable, if not on the low side. Spam there is
| intense.
| chloeburbank wrote:
| It's not rare to have multiple phone numbers registered to a
| person's name fraudulently in India. Therefore, in this aspect
| the app will list out all the connections under the user's
| Aadhar (Indian Digital ID).
| blackoil wrote:
| It's easy just use made up definitions for "helped",
| "fraudulent" and "terminated".
| semiquaver wrote:
| And also use made up numbers, just to be safe.
| HackerThemAll wrote:
| Soon in U.S.
|
| For the safety and security of children, of course.
| zkmon wrote:
| Does this mean visitors to India would also get this app
| installed on their phone as soon as they land in India?
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Apple's geotargetting was at least in the past tied to where
| device was sold. Example is FaceTime in UAE: phones sold there
| will never have working FaceTime anywhere but if you bring your
| American phone in, it seems to work.
|
| But easy enough to tie it to iCloud region - you have to set
| your device and iCloud to Indian region to be able to use many
| of their region specific payment methods (ie UPI)
| akg_67 wrote:
| I am visiting India. The app wasn't installed automatically. I
| received the SMS telling me to install the app but I am using
| an Indian sim borrowed from a friend. So I figured I got the
| SMS because of Indian sim. My wife didn't receive sms as she is
| using Airalo esim data service.
|
| I didn't know the SMS was legit or not and I just marked it as
| spam. The challenge I have found with mobile in India is the
| excess of sms spam. Also the sender is always some cryptic
| alphanumeric characters so authenticity is difficult to judge.
| alwinaugustin wrote:
| Want to check number of SIMs in your name? Download Sanchar
| Saathi to check:Links to Play store and App Store. Department of
| Telecom
|
| I was getting these messages for sometime and installed it
| finally. It is the same app that is mentioned in the article. My
| phone is already in the system then.
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| And this is why we need unlockable bootloaders and stuff like
| Graphene and LineageOs. Having only two mobile Os is very
| convenient until stuff like this happens.
| gnarlouse wrote:
| Totalitarianism is a form of class warfare. Make class warfare
| M.A.D.
| elia_is_me wrote:
| i thought 'india' here indicate china before i clicked in.
| rglover wrote:
| The more I see stuff like this, the more I think "you know, I
| don't think the world is collapsing, I think the _old_ world is
| collapsing. " Governments in their current form are increasingly
| becoming irrelevant (h/t to "The Fourth Turning") and actions
| like this prove it.
| fn-mote wrote:
| How is this demonstrating governments are irrelevant? It seems
| like it is demonstrating their continued power.
|
| Steelmanning the argument, perhaps you see this as a
| demonstration that corporate power has gotten so large the
| government is being forced to react. I might believe that, but
| I can't get from there to irrelevance.
| rglover wrote:
| Governments _in their current form_.
| sateesh wrote:
| Why you think so, pls elaborate. In the current form
| governments all over the world are increasingly having
| massive power over what citizens can do, don't and
| increasing it by degrees day after day.
| user3939382 wrote:
| I can actually not have a phone like I don't need one that bad if
| they want to make it a nightmare. I can go back to a dial tone.
| chloeburbank wrote:
| "cyber safety"
| 0ckpuppet wrote:
| If it can be abused, it will be abused. Corruption exists
| anywhere humans exist. Convenience and security are the bait. Why
| do people want to be caged?
| reactivematter wrote:
| How is it different from preloading apps like Netflix, GMail and
| other shady apps for profits that collects a lot of data.
|
| Considering India's low literacy, having a state owned cyber
| safety app shouldn't be much of an issue. It's not like a
| backdoor, but safety of citizens, which is the prime mandate of a
| sovereign state.
| cheema33 wrote:
| > It's not like a backdoor, but safety of citizens, which is
| the prime mandate of a sovereign state.
|
| This sounds great in theory. But in practice this sort of thing
| is rife for abuse. Say, I have complete control over what this
| app installed on your phone does in the background. And you
| were my political opponent. Would you trust me to not use this
| backdoor into your phone to my advantage?
|
| Apps like Netflix, GMail are not forced on users by a govt. It
| is an open marketplace. Users have options. They are free to
| buy phones that do not have those apps pre-installed.
| alabhyajindal wrote:
| The difference is restricting removal of the app. It takes away
| the user's choice. As far as I know all preloaded apps, at
| least on Android, can be disabled if not uninstalled.
|
| > The November 28 order, seen by Reuters, gives major
| smartphone companies 90 days to ensure that the government's
| Sanchar Saathi app is pre-installed on new mobile phones, with
| a provision that users cannot disable it.
| sanjayjc wrote:
| I found a directive[1]:
|
| > _Pre-installed App must be Visible, Functional, and Enabled
| for users at first setup. Manufacturers must ensure the App is
| easily accessible during device setup, with no disabling or
| restriction of its features_
|
| While I can get behind the stated goals, the lack of any
| technical details is frustrating. The spartan privacy policy
| page[2] lists the following required permissions:
|
| > _For Android: Following permission are taken in android
| device along with purpose:_
|
| > _- Make & Manage phone calls: To detect mobile numbers in
| your phone._
|
| > _- Send SMS: To complete registration by sending the SMS to
| DoT on 14422._
|
| > _- Call /SMS Logs: To report any Call/SMS in facilities
| offered by Sanchar Saathi App._
|
| > _- Photos & files: To upload the image of Call/SMS while
| reporting Call/SMS or report lost/stolen mobile handset._
|
| > _- Camera: While scanning the barcode of IMEI to check its
| genuineness._
|
| Only the last two are mentioned as required on iOS. From a
| newspaper article on the topic[3]:
|
| > _Apple, for instance, resisted TRAI's draft regulations to
| install a spam-reporting app, after the firm balked at the TRAI
| app's permissions requirements, which included access to SMS
| messages and call logs._
|
| Thinking aloud, might cryptographic schemes exist (zero
| knowledge proofs) which allow the OS to securely reveal limited
| and circumscribed attributes to the Govt without the "all or
| nothing", blanket permissions? To detect that an incoming call
| is likely from a spam number, a variant of HIBP's
| k-Anonymity[4] should seemingly suffice. I'm not a
| cryptographer but hope algorithms exist, or could be created,
| to cover other legitimate fraud prevent use cases.
|
| It is a common refrain, and a concern I share, that any
| centralized store of PII data is inherently an attractive
| target; innumerable breaches should've taught everyone that.
| After said data loss, (a) there's no cryptographically
| guaranteed way for victims to know it happened, to avoid taking
| on the risk of searching through the dark web; (b) they can't
| know whether some AI has been trained to impersonate them that
| much better; (c) there's no way to know which database was
| culpable; and (d) for this reason, there's no practical
| recourse.
|
| I recently explained my qualms with face id databases[5], for
| which similar arguments apply.
|
| [1]
| https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2197140&re...
|
| [2] https://sancharsaathi.gov.in/Home/app-privacy-policy.jsp
|
| [3] https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/pre-install-
| san...
|
| [4] https://www.troyhunt.com/understanding-have-i-been-pwneds-
| us...
|
| [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46054724
| Covenant0028 wrote:
| How do you know it isn't a backdoor? Do you have access to its
| source code?
|
| This kind of app should be be open source.
| gsky wrote:
| Google hands over gmail accounts to Ameriacan government but no
| outrage whatsoever. I bet everyone here uses gmail. First change
| it if you can
| sateesh wrote:
| You are drawing a false equivalence. Using Gmail is a choice,
| but having an app preloaded without an option to uninstall
| isn't.
| Aachen wrote:
| Hello I host my own email server. Your move...
|
| Do _you_ use gmail, is that why you assume everyone else does
| as well?
| mindaslab wrote:
| The government is afraid of its people.
| seatac76 wrote:
| Such a stupid move, I'd bet that it'll be withdrawn quietly.
| melvinodsa wrote:
| In wrong hands, this is a very dangerous tool.
| figmert wrote:
| Meanwhile the US has more than 4 different state owned cyber
| crime apps named after random things such as Google, Apple,
| Microsoft and Facebook, and many more. The kicker is they run all
| over the world.
|
| Anyway, that doesn't in any way negate that this is shit for the
| people of India.
| shevy-java wrote:
| It's always the same - governments suddenly wanting to spy on
| people.
|
| We need a world where this can be guaranteed to not happen. We
| need 3D printing everywhere, without restrictions or payload
| attached.
| b3lvedere wrote:
| "We need a world where this can be guaranteed to not happen"
|
| I doubt such a world exists in this current universe.
| squigz wrote:
| How is 3D printing supposed to help prevent this?
| Kanishk_Kumar wrote:
| When Deep State is doing this through Google and Apple's
| backdoor, its okay. But when a democratically elected entity does
| this in its own region, they start getting lectures on freedom.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Find one HN thread where consensus/majority is that
| Apple/Google backdoors are okay
| jamesnorden wrote:
| Literally nobody thinks that's ok besides the people doing it.
| petterroea wrote:
| I wish the article talked more about this app India wanted to
| pre-install. Forcing the pre-install of apps is worrisome in
| general, but there's some nuance that is missed by not explaining
| what is being forced on the citizens. "Cybersecurity app" can
| mean a lot. From the looks it's a government-sponsored "brick my
| phone"-kind of app for disabling stolen phones?
| batrat wrote:
| It's a dangerous trend that is happening. From EU chat control to
| this, is like everybody is so interested to know what the hell
| I'm doing with my life. The problem is with my kids, they likely
| will not enjoy freedom as we did it.
| radium3d wrote:
| Is this going to be a requirement for BRICS member countries?
| gblargg wrote:
| DO NOT PRELOAD! DO NOT PRELOAD!!!
| Lapsa wrote:
| reminder - there's tech out there that enables reading your mind
| choeger wrote:
| Just another round in the decades-long battle of who owns your
| device: Industry or state. It's never you, mind you, who owns
| your device.
|
| The perversion is that _you_ are legally responsible for what
| happens with _your_ device, but _you_ are unable to prevent
| others from using it as they wish. An app like this is automation
| for putting people into jail. Just upload some illegal content
| and then "detect it". There's literally nothing you can do to
| defend against this attack, and it will work until it's overused.
| SuperSandro2000 wrote:
| When do we find the first Critical CVE in it?
| holri wrote:
| The year of the Linux phone in India is coming.
| pete1302 wrote:
| OK: added to debloat list.
| bitlad wrote:
| Too bad, 90% traffic they will monitor would be porn.
| risfriend wrote:
| This is just bad PR from Indian government. Communication
| minister clarifies the app is optional
| https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/tel...
|
| Reuters/BBC have been famous to pounce and sensationalizing.
| piyushpr134 wrote:
| not really. you may read the official notification here
| https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2197140&re...
|
| "Manufacturers must ensure the App is easily accessible during
| device setup, with no disabling or restriction of its features"
| master-lincoln wrote:
| Sounds like both articles are right: There was a private
| government order to preload that app to smartphone makers. And
| it is not mandatory for citizens to use the app.
|
| No sensationalizing apart from you it seems
| hereme888 wrote:
| As "totalitarian" as it sounds, it actually makes sense that
| India's govt had to take such drastic steps. Telecom providers
| and smartphone manufacturers have criminally refused for decades
| to protect end-users, because it makes them money.
|
| Govt can't have their population at large being scammed by
| criminals and do relatively nothing about it. It's a huge
| economic and productivity drain people seem to have "accepted as
| normal".
|
| So how do you not shut down and arrest these greedy international
| corporations, which would disrupt a country's infrastructure,
| despite ongoing warnings? Force them.
|
| To me it's akin to the US govt mandating software that allows
| users to report any and all spam, fully traceable to criminals
| and providers, whom the govt could prosecute/heavily fine 100% of
| the time. Dangerous 2-edged sword, but if takes down that
| despicable scam industry, later it can transition to a law
| mandating the same protection but in a privacy a preserving
| manner.
| tedggh wrote:
| "greedy international corporations". I see where you coming
| from.
| tedggh wrote:
| "The welfare of the people has always been the alibi of tyrants."
| bilekas wrote:
| >With more than 5 million downloads since its launch, the app has
| helped block more than 3.7 million stolen or lost mobile phones
|
| Ah yes, so because someone has stolen MY phone, I should give up
| all my right to privacy and allow the government to have their
| claws in my phone.
|
| Logic. What a silly point to make when 'findmyphone' services,
| which are OPT-IN litterally do the same thing.
| HardwareLust wrote:
| Apple said this morning they will not comply.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| The only correct response.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| A government minister has clarified that the app is not mandatory
| but "optional" and can be deleted by the user is they don't want
| to use it - _Sanchar Saathi app optional, can be deleted, says
| Telecom Minister Scindia_ - https://www.thehindu.com/sci-
| tech/technology/sanchar-saathi-... .
| arunabha wrote:
| > A government minister has clarified that the app is not
| mandatory but "optional" and can be deleted by the user
|
| In India it doesn't really mean anything. As an example the
| biometric based id 'Aadhaar' is 'voluntary' on paper, The Modi
| govt had to concede this after a Supreme court judgement that
| made it clear that Aadhaar cannot be made mandatory. However in
| practice it's anything but. Govt officials will openly refuse
| to consider other forms of id. They have been informally told
| by the highest rungs of govt that they will be protected
| against any complaints and that they need to insist on Aadhaar.
|
| The whole point is to make daily life practically impossible
| without Aadhaar so that the citizens give in and 'voluntarily'
| give their biometrics.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| The order states:
|
| > Ensure that the pre-installed Sanchar Saathi application is
| readily visible and accessible to the end users at the time
| of first use or device setup and that its functionalities are
| not disabled or restricted.
|
| https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2197140&re.
| .. (Press Release)
|
| https://x.com/arvindgunasekar/status/1995540552205697079
| (Leaked Order)
|
| Does not sound optional. (I do not have an Aadhaar and have
| to fight across regulated domains - finance, insurance,
| banking, investments, even renting).
| nout wrote:
| Why would you give the government such power? Don't think about
| the current government that you may be happy about - think about
| the next one.
| albert_e wrote:
| The developers of this app have a @ gmail.com mailbox listed as
| the support contact.
|
| And they claim to protect people from fraud / phishing / scams.
|
| > https://x.com/shantanugoel/status/1995874411543671208
|
| >> sanchaarsaathi.dot AT gmail dot com >> broadbandmission AT
| gmail dot com
| whizzter wrote:
| The article mentions blocking phones with stolen IMEI's, but iirc
| that's mostly up to telecom network providers to block rather
| than some "app". Also doesn't Apple have their own locking
| technology?
|
| In short, the arguments for this seems to stink?
| jmonty900 wrote:
| > Apple's iOS powered an estimated 4.5% of 735 million
| smartphones in India by mid-2025, with the rest using Android,
| Counterpoint Research says.
|
| Sounds like Google should be the one leading the charge against
| this. Will be interesting to see what they do.
|
| > The app is mainly designed to help users block and track lost
| or stolen smartphones across all telecom networks, using a
| central registry.
|
| It's an app. That's all it does now (presumably). Once installed,
| it can be changed in the future to do all kinds of terrible
| things. This is big brother.
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