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Comment by hunglee2 | Hacker News Reader

Big govt vs big tech, a battle that is being played out all over the world.

Any country that value sovereignty and sees itself as an independent actor rather than a vassal state, must take the position India is taking, or else be susceptible to foreign owned apps influencing its citizenry. The only alternative would be to insist Signal hire its security agents into product / moderator roles, so that oversight can be conducted in more implicit ways.

Not great for the users, but the world where globalised technology makes everyone friends is over

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Two mathematicians could literraly communicate encrypted on a piece of paper, and there would be no way to stop them other than scaring them put of doing it with threats of violence, jail or similar.

There is an aspect ro this we have to acknowledge: we live in a world where everybody who knows how can create encrypted communications that are impossible or at least very costly to break. You cannot stop them from doing it.

If we ban that kind of communications, the only persons making use of it will be people who really have something to hide. Criminals, drug cartels, financial fraudsters, terrorists and the likes. Which also means they are the only ones who got to get safe communication channels.

Banning a safe and private way to communicate for billions of people because of some criminals that you cannot deal with is very bad deal to strike. The way I see it criminals most of the time have to interface with the real, physical world in some places and that's were you would catch them if that was your goal: money transactions, buying selling things, shipping, production, etc. Hell if you check any police report ever this is where they catch the people.

That makes you wonder if banning encrypted communications for a whole population is not rather a thing you do for politicial (power) considerations.

I agree with you when it comes to regular crime, and I'm not finding it difficult to defend my right to privately communicate with other individuals and small groups. We have always been able to do that, one way or another.

Publishing is a more difficult matter though. Wouldn't you say that governments should be able to demand transparency when someone distributes information to entire populations?

If someone was calling on millions of followers to kill members of some minority, would you still take the position that the distribution channel must remain off limits to governments trying to enforce encitement laws?

I also agree that publishing is a different thing, it is very much the difference between private and public communication.

Where a private group becomws of the size that posting there constitutes an act of publication is a matter of discussion, but I'd argue below a certain size any group chat can still be seen as private communications.

This means Signal groups with their lower size are in less jeopardy than a one-to-many telegram group.

>If we ban that kind of communications, the only persons making use of it will be people who really have something to hide. Criminals, drug cartels, financial fraudsters, terrorists and the likes. Which also means they are the only ones who got to get safe communication channels.

They wouldn't be safe, though. Merely using encrypted communication would be enough to warrant attention. Encryption only provides plausible deniability if everyone uses it for mundane stuff.

> They wouldn't be safe, though

Provided they are using the same channels as the rest of us. Which they will not do, unless they are stupid.

> be susceptible to foreign owned apps influencing its citizenry

Are they banning all of the internet, books, movies and everything else too? Your position is that a state needs to control what the citizens can consume otherwise it's a vassal state?

My country lived under dictatorship with hard censorship before, and reading your comment that was the vibes I got.

nothing is getting banned, governments are asking for access, which Signal is signalling it will refuse and withdraw service.

India is a democracy, like the US, which makes similar requests for access for its domestic tech / media firms, as well demand the same for the few foreign owned ones which have had success in the country.

> Big govt vs big tech

Signal has 40 employees.

It does give the impression that the parent has no clue what their talking about.

Signal does not have the keys either, so how could they accept moderators? Moderators of what, encrypted data streams?

I mean ok, but Signal is not big tech and provides orders of magnitude more positive value to society than say Facebook.

> Any country that value sovereignty and sees itself as an independent actor rather than a vassal state, must take the position India is taking, or else be susceptible to foreign owned apps influencing its citizenry. The only alternative would be to insist Signal hire its security agents into product / moderator roles, so that oversight can be conducted in more implicit ways.

Horrifying take: The implications from such a stance means that the State has ultimate power over the Individual, and that when in conflict, the State's desires for control & order override the civil liberties that the Individual should have, including the right to privacy.

When it comes to privacy, it should be difficult for the State to peek into the private lives of the Individual without explicit consent from said Individual. If not, the private rights of the Individual are as ephemeral as the State's rulings on said rights (e.g. LGBTQ+ rights, abortions, rights to firearms, civil asset forfeiture, eminent domain, government bailouts/loans, etc).

would the US accept an Indian owned app, which was not subject to US legal jurisdiction?.

The issue at stake is one of national security - we have seen that this trumps individual rights whenever the two are in conflict. Look at the creation of NSA post 9/11 - the people broadly accepted this in order to avoid another terrorist attack - and have continued to accept it even as the natsec apparatus continues to expand

> Look at the creation of NSA post 9/11

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA was created during World War II, renamed to its current name in 01952, and played a key role in weakening DES in the 01970s.

Except Government of India seems to want more (unchecked) foreign influence.

>> Lok Sabha passes Bill to exempt political parties from scrutiny on foreign funds, without debate

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/lok-sabha-passes-bill...

... so you're saying any country that is independent must violate basic human rights to privacy ?

no such thing as 'human rights to privacy' I am afraid. Rights needs to inviolable, otherwise they are temporary privileges which can be withdrawn at any time. The countries which talk most about human rights have a verifiable track record of transgressing them when convenient

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