> the Indian government sent in troops and shut down the internet<p>How does this work on a practical level?<p>I have so many questions. Are there a bunch of armed squads kicking in datacenter doors with AK-47's and flashbangs? A group of (the Indian equivalent of) FBI agents in a room making phone calls to the CEO's of the ISP's, telling them to go dark or go to jail? Or does the Indian government have a killswitch that just turns it off whenever they feel like it?<p>What if someone's operating a node that continues forwarding traffic from the quarantine zone to outside? How do they locate it?<p>Also, I always thought India's a relatively free country, it's not like Iran or China where the government can just stomp on the people as hard as it wants. What does the Indian court system think about this?
I once heard about a mob killing a foregin engineer doing volunteer work at a rural school because a rumor spread on some IM platform that he was abducting children.<p>India sure is different. This action might have a very different context than what we Westerners assume. Or not. Maybe a local can explain if there is a difference.
India continues to push a cashless society paradigm. What the article neglects to mention is how these types of heavy handed obstructionist activities undermine faith in electronic finance which cannot continue normally with internet blackouts. Forcing people to return to utilizing the paper money which governments apparently do not want.