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India asks WhatsApp to withdraw new privacy policy over ‘grave concerns’

195 points by totaldude87 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
leroman 6y ago
This is no longer an individual rights issue, political powers targeting people to change national political choices is a government concern.
morekozhambu 6y ago
India has proposed a PDPB - Personal Data Protection Bill. https://iapp.org/news/a/indias-data-privacy-bill-under-committee-review/ https://iapp.org/news/a/indias-data-privacy-bill-under-commi... PDPB bill itself: https://iapp.org/media/pdf/resource_center/India_Draft_Personal_Data_Protection_Bill.pdf https://iapp.org/media/pdf/resource_center/India_Draft_Perso...
signal11 6y ago
As background, to set the scene for what the state of privacy is in India: India has no privacy legislation, and selling datasets seems to be a popular informal activity[1]. (That article is worth a read in its entirety.) It’s not unusual for shops to demand a telephone number during even small purchases, and your number will be spammed with SMS ads shortly thereafter. Also email spam if they somehow get your email. Chat archives (possibly backups?) of people under investigation have been leaked to the media with no consequence to the leaker. Essentially it’s an extreme “laissez-faire” environment, one almost out of a textbook example of what happens in the absence of any regulation whatsoever. The above doesn’t have anything to do with Facebook or WhatsApp (except tangentially), it’s just to note that privacy legislation would be a very helpful quality of life improvement for many Indians. Perhaps someone on HN who knows more about this can share why the efforts to have privacy legislation in India have so far been unsuccessful. [1] https://restofworld.org/2020/all-the-data-fit-to-sell/ https://restofworld.org/2020/all-the-data-fit-to-sell/
- s314159265358 6y ago
  Indian here There are some privacy laws, and some cyber-crime laws, but basically no one cares enough about those to implement them. I feel this is not an india only problem but with many developing nations as most people literally do not care... Also I have not been bombarded by spam except through SMS, but that's not a big problem either as no one uses SMS anymore Ah india also has anti piracy laws but that's a story for another time
  - clashmeifyoucan 6y ago
    Incidentally, it's weird to me how we lack internet laws in a lot of aspects yet have strong IT laws when it comes to blocking and censoring websites when needed (eg. porn¹) [1] https://internetfreedom.in/why-is-porn-being-blocked-in-india-whattheblock/ https://internetfreedom.in/why-is-porn-being-blocked-in-indi...
    - monadic3 6y ago
      Soapboxing over mundane morality will always be politically popular. Talking about the political economy is much more difficult.
- searchableguy 6y ago
  There is Personal Data Protection Bill in work: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Data_Protection_Bill,_2019 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Data_Protection_Bil... It exempts government and give them more power over data held by the private companies in later amendments. Proper enforcement capacity is also needed otherwise it will be abused to selectively target companies and startups but make little difference in privacy. Most Indians are not rich enough to afford paying for multiple software subscriptions monthly. They give away privacy as a substitute for that. Market forces at play.
  - revel 6y ago
    That bill is seriously hard to comply with. It's like GDPR but more stringent and there are data import / export mandates on top. Whenever that rule gets passed it's going to put a real squeeze on a lot of mid-large sized companies that have been playing fast and loose for a while. Facebook would definitely be violating many different parts of the law
cassianoleal 6y ago
> users in the EU are exempt from the new privacy policy How does this work if someone outside of the EU is in the same group or private chats as an EU user? Surely by sharing information about those chats they would be breaking the GDPR if that's the case.
- signal11 6y ago
  I don’t know the details and would love to know. However if I were asked to “get this done”, this is what I’d do: The user’s phone number is a unique ID as far as WhatsApp is concerned, so any metadata related to phone numbers in the “European region” (eg numbers starting with +33, +44, +49, etc) would be treated as if the 2020-era privacy policy applies.
  - cassianoleal 6y ago
    That wouldn't cover, for example, for people who are EU residents but still hold phone numbers from outside of the EU. That was my case until recently, and of many other expats I know.
    - signal11 6y ago
      I appreciate your quandary, but I wonder if most people realise how little explicit profile data WhatsApp has for its users. It doesn’t have a name, country of residence, ... anything really. Just a phone number. I know looking at a phone number’s country code is imperfect, but pretty much every other method is problematic too. * the most explicit would be for EU residents to contact WhatsApp with proof of residency. Unfortunately it creates a vast bureaucracy and most people should be wary of sharing scans of their documents, with Facebook of all companies. * The WhatsApp app could look at which network the phone it’s on is connected to. If it’s a EU network (say connected to a EU network for 6+ months to filter out tourists), protections could apply, but I this would probably adversely impact EU nationals in non-EU countries. So yes, a number of options are possible, each have pros and cons. How far Facebook would go would depend on regulatory direction, almost certainly.
- 6y ago
rtx 6y ago
Current Indian government had a positive outlook about Facebook. Events in US seems to have spooked many political parties. Facebook will have to spend a lot to control the narrative, though it will survive. Twitter on the other hand looks beyond saving, no strong man will trust it.
- chanmad29 6y ago
  what is the difference between Twitter and FB that you are alluding to? AFAIK Twitter is facing more troubles with censorship- banning some prominent faces, while FB has been more lenient overall.
  - chickenmonkey 6y ago
    There's a difference in perception. Twitter in India has a larger proportion of academics (who tend to be left leaning), intellectuals, and a larger portion of the English speaking urban professional population. There's more scope for speech critical of the government on Twitter. On the other hand, Facebook is far more popular, and captures a broader cross section of the population whose political views tend towards the mean in India.
dartharva 6y ago
Incidentally, WhatsApp as a platform contributed a lot towards the current ruling party's electoral successes. It was and remains the main focused platform for BJP's campaigns. In India, WhatsApp is much more ubiquitous than any other platform and penetrates even the lesser developed regions - if one has a smartphone in India, it almost always has WhatsApp on it. It is even available on some feature phones in the country. "Texting" in India means sending a WhatsApp message. Additionally, WhatsApp also acts as a mobile payments platform in India. Although not very popular yet, it is increasingly becoming a significant sales and support platform for many businesses.
- saos 6y ago
  > Additionally, WhatsApp also acts as a mobile payments platform in India I had no idea. Not something that’s in U.K. yet.
  - chupchap 6y ago
    It uses UPI payment system which is also used by Google Pay here. So irrespective of the app you use, you can do a direct bank to bank transfer.
  - vinay_ys 6y ago
    WhatsApp Payments is tiny right now (0.81 million transactions in December 2020) where as the top player did 1000x more. See the official stats here: https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-do/upi/upi-ecosystem-statistics https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-do/upi/upi-ecosystem-statist...
- obamaaccountooo 6y ago
  in cambridge analytica documentary they showed indian national congress was involved in manipulation facebook users and whatsapp groups. https://www.timesnownews.com/india/article/bbc-documentary-shows-congress-symbol-in-cambridge-analytica-office-smriti-irani-bharatiya-janata-party-rahul-gandhi-narendra-modi-christopher-wylie/211963 https://www.timesnownews.com/india/article/bbc-documentary-s...
2Gkashmiri 6y ago
This is silly on so many levels that its not even funny. In India whatsapp is used as a tool for public dissemination of govt propaganda but that is not even the whole thing. WhatsApp admins are made to "register" their groups with local police station and I have a relative who manages one group. Had to frequently visit the police because of his "posts" which are only news forwards but they want their views put to public. I read on twitter the police install that WhatsApp malware on their phones so it can propagate through these news groups. No confirmation on this but just saying. Then you have this crackdown on dissent whereby forwards and messages and statuses crticial to govt are arrested and literally tortured. I know because friends have taken a beating on more than one occasion. This is damage control by govt on behalf of the company because that allows their users to not jump ship and govt can maintain surveillance Edit1: https://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/big-crackdown-against-admins-bad-news-for-whatsapp-groups-spreading-rumours/1240789/ https://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/big-crackdown-ag... Edit 2: http://thekashmiriyat.co.uk/after-facebook-now-whatsapp-starts-censoring-kashmir-news-organizations/ http://thekashmiriyat.co.uk/after-facebook-now-whatsapp-star... https://kashmirlife.net/youth-arrested-for-misusing-social-media-police-240114/ https://kashmirlife.net/youth-arrested-for-misusing-social-m... > “He has been also found involved in misusing of social media platform by creating fake accounts and posting seditious and provocative posts for antinational activities which are highly prejudicial in maintaining law and order,” he added. So speak anything critical to govt means antinational and sedition and that needs arrests? https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/india-launches-fresh-crackdown-on-kashmiri-netizens/1944552 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/india-launches-fresh-c... This one while not directly related to WhatsApp does makes a point to explain how the govt is using social media in most productive manner which is benefical to the society.
Triv888 6y ago
Somewhat unrelated but, in the U.S., I believe that the government still doesn't need a warrant for emails stored 180+ days in the cloud, because the Email Privacy Act never passed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_Privacy_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_Privacy_Act .
fguerraz 6y ago
People jumping ship is super bad news for government surveillance as WhatsApp has a convenient backdoor that alternatives don't have: the majority of users don't disable unencrypted backups in the cloud. So until now, despite all their hand waving about how bad encryption is, governments had an easy judicial way of accessing messages.
wtmt 6y ago
This is just a show of power by poorly informed people and a gimmick to distract people. Don’t read too much into this as the government caring about privacy. The central government in India has no interest in the privacy of residents or citizens. This government argued in the Supreme Court that Indians do not have the right to privacy in the constitutional case about it a few years ago (fortunately, the Supreme Court disagreed and declared that privacy as a fundamental right is read in/through a few articles in the constitution). This government also sold vehicle registration and related data to several entities for money. It has pushed the poorly designed and poorly implemented Aadhaar biometric identity for residents for almost everything, resulting in denial of service and also deaths (including starvation deaths of kids) due to people not getting their entitlements. This government hurriedly got a couple of private companies (Make My Trip and 1mg) to develop a “contact tracing app” called Aarogya Setu for COVID-19 that requires 24/7 location access and Bluetooth to be on as well. The data from the apps is stored in central servers that these private companies have access to (a right to information request showed that the government isn’t really aware who engaged the companies or what the relationship with the government is). The application was declared to be open source but the sources have been old versions released a long time after, and have little bearing to what’s in the app stores. India still doesn’t have a privacy law (personal data protection law). It has been in the works for a very long time, though broad reasoning in the draft gives the government the power to compel anyone to provide data. The recent suspensions of prominent politicians in the U.S. by major tech companies has triggered the ruling party and the central government to worry about the “control” that these companies wield. The government is worried that its own propaganda troll armies (called “IT cell” locally) will start facing such issues. The ministry that wrote to WhatsApp to not implement the new policy wouldn’t even know that WhatsApp has been sharing information with Facebook since 2016 (when it temporarily allowed some users to opt out, which most didn’t because they didn’t understand or care about the implications). The government, faced with farmers agitating against recent laws and unwilling to accept anything but a repeal of those, seems to consider this as a time to gather some goodwill by making WhatsApp kneel to show who’s the boss in the country (both the carrot and the stick here are WhatsApp Pay’s sustainability and future). P.S.: I haven’t listed sources for the claims made above, because all of them, except for the personal speculation about why the government is doing this, can be verified from authentic news sources online.
victor106 6y ago
Dont worry too much about this. FB is an investor in Reliance. Reliance for those who don't know, is the most corrupt corporation in India and they own everything from the politicians to the judges. So this will get overturned very soon.
geodel 6y ago
Here is quote of IT minister: "The sanctity of personal communications needs to be maintained.." LOL. Seems govt IT cell has freaked out seeing one of their propped journalist whatsapp chat leaked.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
overqualified 6y ago
I have one word for you: IRC. Check it out. Start with freenode. You will like the freedom, as it was back in 1990x.

195 points by totaldude87 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

This is no longer an individual rights issue, political powers targeting people to change national political choices is a government concern.

morekozhambu 6y ago

India has proposed a PDPB - Personal Data Protection Bill. https://iapp.org/news/a/indias-data-privacy-bill-under-committee-review/ https://iapp.org/news/a/indias-data-privacy-bill-under-commi... PDPB bill itself: https://iapp.org/media/pdf/resource_center/India_Draft_Personal_Data_Protection_Bill.pdf https://iapp.org/media/pdf/resource_center/India_Draft_Perso...

signal11 6y ago

As background, to set the scene for what the state of privacy is in India: India has no privacy legislation, and selling datasets seems to be a popular informal activity[1]. (That article is worth a read in its entirety.) It’s not unusual for shops to demand a telephone number during even small purchases, and your number will be spammed with SMS ads shortly thereafter. Also email spam if they somehow get your email. Chat archives (possibly backups?) of people under investigation have been leaked to the media with no consequence to the leaker. Essentially it’s an extreme “laissez-faire” environment, one almost out of a textbook example of what happens in the absence of any regulation whatsoever. The above doesn’t have anything to do with Facebook or WhatsApp (except tangentially), it’s just to note that privacy legislation would be a very helpful quality of life improvement for many Indians. Perhaps someone on HN who knows more about this can share why the efforts to have privacy legislation in India have so far been unsuccessful. [1] https://restofworld.org/2020/all-the-data-fit-to-sell/ https://restofworld.org/2020/all-the-data-fit-to-sell/

s314159265358 6y ago
Indian here There are some privacy laws, and some cyber-crime laws, but basically no one cares enough about those to implement them. I feel this is not an india only problem but with many developing nations as most people literally do not care... Also I have not been bombarded by spam except through SMS, but that's not a big problem either as no one uses SMS anymore Ah india also has anti piracy laws but that's a story for another time
- clashmeifyoucan 6y ago
  Incidentally, it's weird to me how we lack internet laws in a lot of aspects yet have strong IT laws when it comes to blocking and censoring websites when needed (eg. porn¹) [1] https://internetfreedom.in/why-is-porn-being-blocked-in-india-whattheblock/ https://internetfreedom.in/why-is-porn-being-blocked-in-indi...
  - monadic3 6y ago
    Soapboxing over mundane morality will always be politically popular. Talking about the political economy is much more difficult.
searchableguy 6y ago
There is Personal Data Protection Bill in work: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Data_Protection_Bill,_2019 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Data_Protection_Bil... It exempts government and give them more power over data held by the private companies in later amendments. Proper enforcement capacity is also needed otherwise it will be abused to selectively target companies and startups but make little difference in privacy. Most Indians are not rich enough to afford paying for multiple software subscriptions monthly. They give away privacy as a substitute for that. Market forces at play.
- revel 6y ago
  That bill is seriously hard to comply with. It's like GDPR but more stringent and there are data import / export mandates on top. Whenever that rule gets passed it's going to put a real squeeze on a lot of mid-large sized companies that have been playing fast and loose for a while. Facebook would definitely be violating many different parts of the law

cassianoleal 6y ago

> users in the EU are exempt from the new privacy policy How does this work if someone outside of the EU is in the same group or private chats as an EU user? Surely by sharing information about those chats they would be breaking the GDPR if that's the case.

signal11 6y ago
I don’t know the details and would love to know. However if I were asked to “get this done”, this is what I’d do: The user’s phone number is a unique ID as far as WhatsApp is concerned, so any metadata related to phone numbers in the “European region” (eg numbers starting with +33, +44, +49, etc) would be treated as if the 2020-era privacy policy applies.
- cassianoleal 6y ago
  That wouldn't cover, for example, for people who are EU residents but still hold phone numbers from outside of the EU. That was my case until recently, and of many other expats I know.
  - signal11 6y ago
    I appreciate your quandary, but I wonder if most people realise how little explicit profile data WhatsApp has for its users. It doesn’t have a name, country of residence, ... anything really. Just a phone number. I know looking at a phone number’s country code is imperfect, but pretty much every other method is problematic too. * the most explicit would be for EU residents to contact WhatsApp with proof of residency. Unfortunately it creates a vast bureaucracy and most people should be wary of sharing scans of their documents, with Facebook of all companies. * The WhatsApp app could look at which network the phone it’s on is connected to. If it’s a EU network (say connected to a EU network for 6+ months to filter out tourists), protections could apply, but I this would probably adversely impact EU nationals in non-EU countries. So yes, a number of options are possible, each have pros and cons. How far Facebook would go would depend on regulatory direction, almost certainly.
6y ago

rtx 6y ago

Current Indian government had a positive outlook about Facebook. Events in US seems to have spooked many political parties. Facebook will have to spend a lot to control the narrative, though it will survive. Twitter on the other hand looks beyond saving, no strong man will trust it.

chanmad29 6y ago
what is the difference between Twitter and FB that you are alluding to? AFAIK Twitter is facing more troubles with censorship- banning some prominent faces, while FB has been more lenient overall.
- chickenmonkey 6y ago
  There's a difference in perception. Twitter in India has a larger proportion of academics (who tend to be left leaning), intellectuals, and a larger portion of the English speaking urban professional population. There's more scope for speech critical of the government on Twitter. On the other hand, Facebook is far more popular, and captures a broader cross section of the population whose political views tend towards the mean in India.

dartharva 6y ago

Incidentally, WhatsApp as a platform contributed a lot towards the current ruling party's electoral successes. It was and remains the main focused platform for BJP's campaigns. In India, WhatsApp is much more ubiquitous than any other platform and penetrates even the lesser developed regions - if one has a smartphone in India, it almost always has WhatsApp on it. It is even available on some feature phones in the country. "Texting" in India means sending a WhatsApp message. Additionally, WhatsApp also acts as a mobile payments platform in India. Although not very popular yet, it is increasingly becoming a significant sales and support platform for many businesses.

saos 6y ago
> Additionally, WhatsApp also acts as a mobile payments platform in India I had no idea. Not something that’s in U.K. yet.
- chupchap 6y ago
  It uses UPI payment system which is also used by Google Pay here. So irrespective of the app you use, you can do a direct bank to bank transfer.
- vinay_ys 6y ago
  WhatsApp Payments is tiny right now (0.81 million transactions in December 2020) where as the top player did 1000x more. See the official stats here: https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-do/upi/upi-ecosystem-statistics https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-do/upi/upi-ecosystem-statist...
obamaaccountooo 6y ago
in cambridge analytica documentary they showed indian national congress was involved in manipulation facebook users and whatsapp groups. https://www.timesnownews.com/india/article/bbc-documentary-shows-congress-symbol-in-cambridge-analytica-office-smriti-irani-bharatiya-janata-party-rahul-gandhi-narendra-modi-christopher-wylie/211963 https://www.timesnownews.com/india/article/bbc-documentary-s...

2Gkashmiri 6y ago

This is silly on so many levels that its not even funny. In India whatsapp is used as a tool for public dissemination of govt propaganda but that is not even the whole thing. WhatsApp admins are made to "register" their groups with local police station and I have a relative who manages one group. Had to frequently visit the police because of his "posts" which are only news forwards but they want their views put to public. I read on twitter the police install that WhatsApp malware on their phones so it can propagate through these news groups. No confirmation on this but just saying. Then you have this crackdown on dissent whereby forwards and messages and statuses crticial to govt are arrested and literally tortured. I know because friends have taken a beating on more than one occasion. This is damage control by govt on behalf of the company because that allows their users to not jump ship and govt can maintain surveillance Edit1: https://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/big-crackdown-against-admins-bad-news-for-whatsapp-groups-spreading-rumours/1240789/ https://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/big-crackdown-ag... Edit 2: http://thekashmiriyat.co.uk/after-facebook-now-whatsapp-starts-censoring-kashmir-news-organizations/ http://thekashmiriyat.co.uk/after-facebook-now-whatsapp-star... https://kashmirlife.net/youth-arrested-for-misusing-social-media-police-240114/ https://kashmirlife.net/youth-arrested-for-misusing-social-m... > “He has been also found involved in misusing of social media platform by creating fake accounts and posting seditious and provocative posts for antinational activities which are highly prejudicial in maintaining law and order,” he added. So speak anything critical to govt means antinational and sedition and that needs arrests? https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/india-launches-fresh-crackdown-on-kashmiri-netizens/1944552 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/india-launches-fresh-c... This one while not directly related to WhatsApp does makes a point to explain how the govt is using social media in most productive manner which is benefical to the society.

Triv888 6y ago

Somewhat unrelated but, in the U.S., I believe that the government still doesn't need a warrant for emails stored 180+ days in the cloud, because the Email Privacy Act never passed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_Privacy_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_Privacy_Act .

fguerraz 6y ago

People jumping ship is super bad news for government surveillance as WhatsApp has a convenient backdoor that alternatives don't have: the majority of users don't disable unencrypted backups in the cloud. So until now, despite all their hand waving about how bad encryption is, governments had an easy judicial way of accessing messages.

wtmt 6y ago

This is just a show of power by poorly informed people and a gimmick to distract people. Don’t read too much into this as the government caring about privacy. The central government in India has no interest in the privacy of residents or citizens. This government argued in the Supreme Court that Indians do not have the right to privacy in the constitutional case about it a few years ago (fortunately, the Supreme Court disagreed and declared that privacy as a fundamental right is read in/through a few articles in the constitution). This government also sold vehicle registration and related data to several entities for money. It has pushed the poorly designed and poorly implemented Aadhaar biometric identity for residents for almost everything, resulting in denial of service and also deaths (including starvation deaths of kids) due to people not getting their entitlements. This government hurriedly got a couple of private companies (Make My Trip and 1mg) to develop a “contact tracing app” called Aarogya Setu for COVID-19 that requires 24/7 location access and Bluetooth to be on as well. The data from the apps is stored in central servers that these private companies have access to (a right to information request showed that the government isn’t really aware who engaged the companies or what the relationship with the government is). The application was declared to be open source but the sources have been old versions released a long time after, and have little bearing to what’s in the app stores. India still doesn’t have a privacy law (personal data protection law). It has been in the works for a very long time, though broad reasoning in the draft gives the government the power to compel anyone to provide data. The recent suspensions of prominent politicians in the U.S. by major tech companies has triggered the ruling party and the central government to worry about the “control” that these companies wield. The government is worried that its own propaganda troll armies (called “IT cell” locally) will start facing such issues. The ministry that wrote to WhatsApp to not implement the new policy wouldn’t even know that WhatsApp has been sharing information with Facebook since 2016 (when it temporarily allowed some users to opt out, which most didn’t because they didn’t understand or care about the implications). The government, faced with farmers agitating against recent laws and unwilling to accept anything but a repeal of those, seems to consider this as a time to gather some goodwill by making WhatsApp kneel to show who’s the boss in the country (both the carrot and the stick here are WhatsApp Pay’s sustainability and future). P.S.: I haven’t listed sources for the claims made above, because all of them, except for the personal speculation about why the government is doing this, can be verified from authentic news sources online.

victor106 6y ago

Dont worry too much about this. FB is an investor in Reliance. Reliance for those who don't know, is the most corrupt corporation in India and they own everything from the politicians to the judges. So this will get overturned very soon.

geodel 6y ago

Here is quote of IT minister: "The sanctity of personal communications needs to be maintained.." LOL. Seems govt IT cell has freaked out seeing one of their propped journalist whatsapp chat leaked.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

overqualified 6y ago

I have one word for you: IRC. Check it out. Start with freenode. You will like the freedom, as it was back in 1990x.