Indian government to intercept, monitor, and decrypt citizens’ computers

And here is the natural born right to privacy that Americans have, as well as the rest of the world in my own opinion:<p>Bill of Rights, amendment 4:<p><i>&quot;The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.&quot;</i>

As someone on &#x2F;r&#x2F;sysadmin has correctly remarked - if you are outsourcing to India, you should assume that all data they have access to it is now also freely accessible to the Indian government.

Things like this is why I think India has a very flawed political system, the executive is having too much power, and the Constitutional guarantees to citizens are flimsy, and courts including the Supreme Court are temperamental and inconsistent.<p>Civil law protections are insufficient as they are presently. Govt can put you in jail on flimsy grounds, but you can&#x27;t sue for damages on wrongful imprisonment, etc. Most things are governed by criminal laws, where only remedy is punishment for the convicted, instead of having a strong tort law, where the aggrieved parties can extricate monetary damage claims.

Slightly off topic, but this order kind of defines the state of India. Whatever the issue is, there are always two sides both of which try to shape the narrative in their favour. One side arguing through twitter and some of self owned websites, what the implications could be, and other saying that the order already existed, and this is limiting the scope to only 10 agencies and doing it to curb terrorist activities, as if that makes it all ok.<p>The issue is that while this order is passed, there is no remedy for the citizens if their privacy is breached in any sense. The power is given to the home ministry, who at this point, think of themselves more as campaigner for next election, rather than an elected govt body, and hence it will be bad for political opponents in elections due in 2019. Since they made it concerning National Security, it is not covered under Right to Information either.<p>(The order and notification says that the interception and monitor could only be for certain citizens, or group of citizens, if they are deemed a threat for national security. Even Apple might be asked to break the encryption in this case.)

In less than decade both USA and EU will take lessons from these developing experiments (India, China, Russia, Australia) and will introduce the same locally. At first societies will be educated to stigmatise any resistance and ease the law change. Hiding data from govt will be like tax evasion or act of terrorism.

It&#x27;s very worrisome how things have been going on in India, more so in the last two decades. Regardless of which party is in power, mass surveillance is increasing, and ways to preserve privacy have been under attack (the government tried to force Blackberry to allow interception of all messages when BBM was a thing; now it wants the same with WhatsApp and other platforms; and then there&#x27;s the whole biometric based, unchangeable and irrevocable unique ID called Aadhaar...the list is long).<p>Unfortunately, most politicians here don&#x27;t understand (or don&#x27;t care about) the impact of any of these even to protect themselves from attack or suppression by authoritarian and untrustworthy people in power. Most states also have laws that allow them to detain people without a court order or presenting them in a court of law for up to a year, and the police can also make several laws and enforce them.<p>It&#x27;s just a matter of time that immigration officials and police will start asking people to reveal their social media passwords, go through their personal and private information, etc.<p>For all the positives that India as a country has, it has a lot to learn from other countries when it comes to privacy, freedom, freedom of speech, etc.<p>I believe big technology companies have a role to play in India and around the world to help defeat such dangerous (and often futile) moves by governments.

In India people call this &quot;Mitron&quot;<p>MITRON<p>1. A large group of unsuspecting people, about to be hit by something they will take a long time to recover from.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.urbandictionary.com&#x2F;define.php?term=MITRON" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.urbandictionary.com&#x2F;define.php?term=MITRON</a>

As an Indian, this is scary. In the name of national security, this can go either way.

The article was vague. How does this law compare to other countries? Is it NSA or Hemisphere level data dragnets, is it Australian style &quot;Australian law &gt; mathematical law&quot;, or is it something different?

First, it was Aadhaar and now this. Somehow Indian Govt wants to track every citizen and build their dictatorship.

Oh my! Who can imagine living in an environment where the government is known to be intercepting, monitoring, and decrypting your digital activity as their perfectly acceptable MO!?

Does using an app like cloudflare 1.1.1.1 protect us from this ?<p>Cloudflare app link - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.cloudflare.com&#x2F;1-thing-you-can-do-to-make-your-internet-safer-and-faster&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.cloudflare.com&#x2F;1-thing-you-can-do-to-make-your-...</a>

This will be an unpopular opinion, but I personally like highly oppressive and intrusive governments trying to impose their will on the internet and technology.<p>Usually when this happens, it results in substantial innovation around privacy, security and awareness. Such movements will ultimately force many people underground and into various forms of VPN&#x27;s, non standard operating systems and custom hardware.<p>To be clear, I am not condoning India&#x27;s actions and I have no doubt many people will be hurt by this. I am merely pointing out that there will also be many unintended consequences and I personally believe that their government will ultimately lose more trust, control and visibility than they gain.

I am surprised they are not simply mandating a keylogging software in all laptops&#x2F;phones and get it over with instead of trying to decrypt.

Every country who can afford to already does this. They&#x27;re simply admitting a little more about it than most.

As far as I know elections work quite well in India and Australia (which is moving in the same direction), so how do things like this happen? Do the people consider government spying on them Ok?

This is much worst than what we saw in Australia, current Indian govt headed by right wing political party with track record of human rights abuses have passed this order without passing through Parliament using a loop hole in the IT ACT.<p>This is likely aimed at upcoming elections for data analyses via ISP &amp; to target journalists critical of the current govt in India.<p>But I feel that the International community isn&#x27;t going to rally up for India like they did for Australia; I doubt even if expats would.

Frankly whether we agree or not, nearly all the government&#x27;s are actively spying on it&#x27;s citizens.. Buzzwords like Right to Privacy is just like that only a buzzword. So , if a government needs someone&#x27;s data, they will somehow take it.

This is basically part of a smear campaign against the government in power (NDA). The law was designed under the previous government and has been in existence before this government came to power. Nothing new was introduced since 2008.<p>As far as constitutional protections go, Indians have a right to privacy which has been held up in the courts as recently as this year. This has been affirmed several times in the recent past. So, no, India does not have weak protections for its citizens.<p>Finally, India is a place where mere WhatsApp forwards on the basis of rumors or made up stories cause people to go out and riot. Communal violence can be instigated using such means. So such laws are essential to track down the perpetrators.<p>NSA, CIA also silently spy on Americans without much oversight in the name of security. In fact it is done at a mass scale.

The first few lines of the story make it clear that there is not (necessarily) some physical seizing of computers going on here; it is the <i>data</i> that are being intercepted, monitored, and decrypted.

If you want to see where the USA will be politically in 10 years look no further than China and India with these draconian policies. We are in competition with them.

All governments do it. Some just do it in the open.

TL;DR This is a a decade old directive . This was a 2009 directive, if at all anything that has changed now it is instead of open ended notification in 2009 which said any company can access the data, this directive limits the number of companies to specific 10 agencies that can access that too after getting necassary permission. Details in <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.opindia.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;12&#x2F;fact-check-congress-lies-mha-circular-access-to-computers-says-bjp-wants-to-snoop&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.opindia.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;12&#x2F;fact-check-congress-lies-mha...</a>

Room 641A

I wonder what the implications will be for Western companies outsourcing there, anyone care to chime in?

It is easy to task authorities with intercept and decryption duties; actually doing it successfully is another matter entirely. Mathematics works both ways, friends.

<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linuxliveusb.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linuxliveusb.com&#x2F;</a> + <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;prism-break.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;all&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;prism-break.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;all&#x2F;</a> can insulate you.

The Indian journalist jailed for a year for Facebook posts<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;world-asia-india-46631911" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;world-asia-india-46631911</a>

In 2014 Modi campaign promised honest&#x2F;progressive govt.<p>Now,<p><pre><code> 50% ministers in his cabinet are facing corruption&#x2F;criminal charges in courts fulfilled just 9% poll promises http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.electionpromisestracker.in&#x2F;governments&#x2F;central-government and utter contempt for truth and knowledge https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.huffingtonpost.in&#x2F;entry&#x2F;smriti-irani-to-sharad-yadav-8-most-bizarre-statements-from-politicians-in-2018_in_5c18d2dfe4b08db990575cfc</code></pre>

Modi.

Even if I take the headline with grain of salt and assuming it&#x27;s meant to capture reader&#x27;s interest, it is rather surprising the Nation involved is not your run-of-the-mill authoritarian&#x2F;repressive nation but one that bills itself as the &#x27;World&#x27;s largest democracy&#x27;.