7 ms·

Police linked to hacking campaign to frame Indian activists

165 points by Tozen 4y ago

known 4y ago
1sembiyan 4y ago
The police remains firmly in hands of the state in India. No matter the party in power. They don’t serve people, they serve politicians.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  > The police remains firmly in hands of the state in India. No matter the party in power. They don’t serve people, they serve politicians. The statement is confusing to me. Usually, to say they serve politicians means that they serve a party, not the state. They should serve the state, which is a creation of and responsible to the people. Serving a political party is corrupt and not serving the people; for example, in totalitarian and authoritarian countries, the police and other state institutions often serve the party. Regardless, is there evidence of the police doing such things for other political parties?
  - c0brac0bra 4y ago
    The state ceases to be responsible to the people and exists of and for itself.
    - wolverine876 4y ago
      I don't understand. Could you go into more detail on how that addresses the issues raised by the top comment?
      - GWBullshit 4y ago
        All institutions by design implicitly have a core, if unspoken "prime directive": self-preservation. You could start an institution with the best intentions known to mankind, but if that institution doesn't preserve itself first and foremost, then all other stated official objectives become mute. Now, if you have an institution that has a clearly stated objective (in addition to the core, unstated objective of self-preservation) like, "We discovered a cure for cancer and want to get it out to as many people affected by cancer in as quick and cost-effective manner as possible" ... this is all well and good. But what if you have an institution with vague and seemingly implied but not technically-stated objectives that in effect are more of a "free to imagine/interpret them as you wish" sort of deal – for example, what are the "objectives" of the Indian government/law enforcement arm of the government other than the vague and practically-useless-for-being-held-accountable-for-performance, "We want to govern shit"? What if you somewhere find on some Indian document an objective like, "To preserve law and order"? What laws, written by who, for whose benefit, and what order, and again, for who? Sounds like the caste system all over again. Now what if they got more specific like, "To preserve law and order in order to encourage social stability" ... again ... stability FOR WHO? Does the majority of the Indian population want "stability?" Obviously not as they would most likely indicate they want social mobility to rise out of poverty. The problem is ... their social mobility = overall social instability, especially for those aspects of Indian society who are "at the top of the social hierarchy" who also tend to correlate with "those who govern." It's relatively easy to govern when you have state-provided homes and vacation homes and so on and the majority of the population lives in shacks. Not so easy when the majority of the populace is relatively well off. This then introduces the theory that George Orwell addressed in 1984: that tyrannical states, as an institution, eventually degenerate into doing nothing but attending to their "core objective" of self-preservation at all costs, and will purposely do things to keep the majority of the population perpetually poor so that the discrepancies of relative wealth can be used as a power mechanism (most people won't be bothered to think about higher-order abstract social constructs like "government" if they're too busy worrying about job stability or even worse, where their next meal will come from). In furtherance of this "1984" approach to subduing the population, consider Modi's (and other politicians in that general area) constant "Oh no, another border skirmish with "the enemy" ... right around the times of internal political turmoil – basically, a convenient excuse to distract the internal populace and redirect it's attention to external "threats" to cultural homogeneity. So then, as (for example in this case, but not at all exclusive to, as this tends to happen to ALL institutions – for example Universities of "Higher Learning" that wind up hoarding donations intended to help students in increasingly massive investment funds that sometimes rival professional Wall Street institutions) the Indian government degenerates into simply securing the primary (if unspoken of) directive of "continual self-preservation" ... the very subject of the government's "governing", ie, the general populace ... becomes a factor external to the Indian government itself (as well as its law-enforcement mechanisms). Now, what is that "external factor" of the general populace itself most likely to be viewed as? 1.) An external aspect of the internal reality of government and it's mechanisms that needs to be further integrated 2.) An external oddity that can be viewed as an item of curiosity during times when the government has no particular urgent matters to attend to, or ignored when it does have other, more urgent matters (such as self-preservation) to attend to 3.) A possible threat to the continuity of "keeping things as they are"?
  - 1sembiyan 4y ago
    Regarding police and politicians and the state, you will find this paper from the 80s insightful: https://online.ucpress.edu/as/article-abstract/23/4/484/21949/The-Police-and-Political-Order-in-India?redirectedFrom=fulltext https://online.ucpress.edu/as/article-abstract/23/4/484/2194... Police in India serves the elected powers, always. The Indian state has always been authoritarian, more so in recent times. Given the nature of how power is shared and exercised at different levels in India, it’s easy to call Prime Minister a fool and get away with it - and many do. But you dare not publicly call your local municipal councilor that, or these days, the Chief Minister. A recent example from 1. West Bengal: https://m.thewire.in/article/culture/pure-or-profane-roddur-roys-arrest-can-be-a-defining-moment-for-bengals-social-grammar/amp https://m.thewire.in/article/culture/pure-or-profane-roddur-... 2. There’s no shortage of such vindictiveness from the UP government and its CM: https://m.thewire.in/article/government/up-police-arrests-19-year-old-for-social-media-post-against-adityanath/amp https://m.thewire.in/article/government/up-police-arrests-19... 3. From Maharashtra: https://groundreport.in/who-is-actress-ketaki-chitale-arrested-for-insulting-sharad-pawar/amp/ https://groundreport.in/who-is-actress-ketaki-chitale-arrest... A great recent movie exploring this aspect of the police and the state in India is Nayattu, available on Netflix: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayattu_(2021_film) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayattu_(2021_film) This movie was scripted by an ex-cop and makes a sympathetic case for the sort of daily negotiations the cops are involved in. The “hunted” from the title are literally other cops. Many Tamil movies have been exploring the police-politician nexus for a few decades now. Sathya (1989?) comes to my mind. This is an incomplete list, and doesn’t really explore the causes of the violence, but I think in many cases it can be linked to the parties in power: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cases_of_police_brutality_in_India https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cases_of_police_brut... Another overview of why the police in India are particularly susceptible to political pressure: https://www.fairobserver.com/region/central_south_asia/javeed-ahmad-india-police-service-reform-political-corruption-news-15261/?amp https://www.fairobserver.com/region/central_south_asia/javee... > They should serve the state, which is a creation of and responsible to the people. Serving a political party is corrupt and not serving the people; Well, that’s Indian police for you. Designed to be corruptible even before we had a republic.
    - wolverine876 4y ago
- ptato 4y ago
  This is true everywhere, not just India
  - siva7 4y ago
    Not at all.
    - smabie 4y ago
- crossroadsguy 4y ago
  In this case it’s different from “they are serving whoever is ruling”. This time they’re serving a particular party and a particular ideology.
- ComradePhil 4y ago
  Sounds like you have watched too much bollywood. Talk to one of your relatives or friends of friends who's in the police force and come back. For those who are unaware: one of the forces with big political interest in India is the middle east. The middle east runs a shadow government in India; its two arms are bollywood and the Indian mafia (look up D-company[1]). Before the rise of Modi, they used to churn out shitloads of bollywood movies where the mafia is humanized and police and politicians were always the bad guys... which serves as a recruiting tool for the mafia and demonizes the police and the government. While the Modi government has tried to take action against this, even as of 2018, movie like Sanju[2] was made which is based on the life of a bollywood actor who was charged for his involvement in the 1993 Bombay Bombings[3]... but the movie shows him as a good guy. In real life, the actor has served the mafia with various mafia-protagonist movies such as Munna Bhai MBBS and Vastaav and is one of the Indian superstars who has deep links with the mafia. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Company https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Company [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanju https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanju [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Bombay_bombings https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Bombay_bombings
  - nd 4y ago
    It might be helpful to back up your perspective with data, or better frame your argument. As it stands, your comment doesn’t add much to the conversation. A few things in particular: - Crime is a problem in India. The Wikipedia article has a decent overview (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_India https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_India). But so is police and government corruption. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_India https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_India) - To call a criminal organization a shadow government is hyperbolic. Similarly calling the romanticizing of crime — a common entertainment trope — a conspiracy, seems a bit much. - The actor you use as an example was convicted for acquiring weapons from people involved with the Bombay Bombings. He was never accused of being involved in the bombings himself (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanjay_Dutt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanjay_Dutt). I’m not sure I follow the accusation of serving the mafia by acting as a criminal in a movie.
    - 4y ago
ahmed_ds 4y ago
> security researcher Zeshan Aziz found the recovery email address and phone number tied to the Pune police official’s name in the leaked database of TrueCaller, a caller ID and call-blocking app Even though truecaller has accidentally done some good in this case, they are essentially a voluntary spyware. https://www.truecaller.com/unlisting https://www.truecaller.com/unlisting
wolverine876 4y ago
In my mind, it's a predictable outcome of nationalism, which puts the 'nation' (who is that, exactly?) ahead of individuals. Notice that the US Declaration of Independence says that goverment is instituted by the people to protect their human rights and liberty - government exists to serve individuals - that's the purpose, not some 'nation'. As soon as they start talking about a nation, it's an excuse to sacrifice others to the interests of 'the nation' - which of course means the interests of a few people, spun and presented to make them like it's the interests of a quasi-divine entity.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Georgelemental 4y ago
  Individualism is great, but people live in societies along with other people, and that's not going to change. And when people live near each other, mechanisms are needed to prevent their individual actions and desires from conflicting and causing problems for everyone. One such mechanism is the nation. A "nation" is when you take the instincts people naturally feel towards members of their family/tribe, and through education and propaganda you apply those instincts to a much larger group (the "people"). Doing this helps people get along and keeps society functioning by making its members feel responsible for their fellow citizens. But when the "nation"/fake tribe is given an "enemy" or a father figure, that's when the trouble starts.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    > Individualism is great, but people live in societies along with other people, and that's not going to change. And when people live near each other, mechanisms are needed to prevent their individual actions and desires from conflicting and causing problems for everyone. People have done that without nationalism very successfully! > instincts people naturally feel towards members of their family/tribe People can feel all sorts of things, and nationalists like to claim the special, irrefutable case of 'natural' - 'it's just nature, who can argue with that?' In truth they are just irrational prejudices of some people have at some moment, based on false assumptions and facts, having little to do with reality. For example, people 'naturally' discriminated against Catholics in the US, until they 'naturally' didn't! The prejudices change all the time, within and between people. > and through education and propaganda you apply those instincts to a much larger group (the "people") So you are advocating manipulating and lying to people? > Doing this helps people get along and keeps society functioning by making its members feel responsible for their fellow citizens. What is that based on? Most places get along fine without it. > But when the "nation"/fake tribe is given an "enemy" or a father figure, that's when the trouble starts. It's inevitable - as soon as you have a fake 'us', you have a fake 'them'.
IdEntities 4y ago
This was also how they got the guy who found evidence the CIA was behind the 2001 anthrax attacks. https://www.soundcloud.com/media-roots/amerithrax-the-cia-interview-with-with-matt-dehart https://www.soundcloud.com/media-roots/amerithrax-the-cia-in...
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  Just on practical grounds, it's essentially impossible for Bruce Ivins to have been the culprit in the 9/18 and 10/09 anthrax mailings (two separate events, the first round going to media outlets and the second to Congressional offices), as Fort Detrick didn't have the required material to manufacture the stuff. His convenient suicide prior to being named as a suspect made any risk moot of a repeat of the failed effort to blame Steven Hatfill (who won $6 million in a defamation lawsuit over the bogus allegations by Justice 7 FBI). If Hatfill had 'committed suicide' it's pretty clear they'd have closed the case then as well. As far as who did have the means, well, after the revelations about the scale of the Soviet bioweapons progam by a pair of defectors in the early 1990s, various US agencies worked to replicate some of their 'advances in the field', such as preparation of highly aerosilizable dry anthrax powder, in programs which ran through at least 2000, named Jefferson, Clear Vision, maybe a few others, in violation of BWC treaty obligations not to manufacture bioweapons (they claimed it was for 'studying defenses'). Notably Fort Detrick wasn't involved with any of that; it was a place in Ohio contracted to the CIA called Battelle Memorial Institue that did the actual work, apparently. That's likely where the material in the letters was sourced from, although it's anyone's guess whose bright idea it was. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Clear_Vision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Clear_Vision All of Ivin's colleagues at Fort Detrick know he didn't have the means and some said so publicly later, although the FBI slapped the whole place with a gag order for years.
  - lupire 4y ago
    Ironically, Hatfill turned into a Trump inside team member promoting hydroxychloroquine and the attempted 2020 election coup, causing more damage than the anthrax attacks.
walrus01 4y ago
worth providing (again) a list of the indian government's extensive fuckery with the internet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India
- amriksohata 4y ago
  Wait till you see CHina and other countries This is nothing new with Police forces worldwide, the UK police has been accused of infiltrating many environmental activists before and this happened last year too: Met police accused of using hackers to access protesters' emails https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/21/ipcc-investigates-claims-police-used-hackers-to-read-protesters-emails-jenny-jones https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/21/ipcc-investi...
  - Terry_Roll 4y ago
    >the UK police has been accused of infiltrating many environmental activists GCHQ does everybody, and it filters down through Special Branch to the lower levels of policing. The irony is, you have noone to turn to when you are being done over by the Police and the state in general. The NHS, educational system, every tentacle of the state is all interlinked to the security services, I've had it since primary school because the state can not lose. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/09/mi5-policy-agents-take-part-crimes-lawful-appeal-court-judges https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/09/mi5-policy-a... And they wonder why individuals get radicalised and massacres occur! If your parents were Govt employees, I sympathise, but there is a reason why Govt pay is so low, it keeps Govt employees lean and mean!
    - Terry_Roll 4y ago
      Growing up in the UK is like military basic training 24/7, I'm not surprised there are so many Private Pyle's.
  - feet 4y ago
    Wow its almost like the police are an institution designed purely to protect those with money and power from the poor who want to change things for the better
bobobob420 4y ago
Police in India are corrupt bastards for the most part. None of this suprises me, their power and actions have gone unchecked for a long time
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  I've lived in three countries that each couldn't have been more different from the others and in every one of them the police fucking suck. I don't know anything about the indian police specifically and never thought about them before but when I saw the title my first thought was "yeah sounds about right."
- amriksohata 4y ago
  Well, this is nothing new with Police forces worldwide, the UK police has been accused of infiltrating many environmental activists before and this happened last year too: Met police accused of using hackers to access protesters' emails https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/21/ipcc-investigates-claims-police-used-hackers-to-read-protesters-emails-jenny-jones https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/21/ipcc-investi...
known 4y ago
roenxi 4y ago
Although this particular case study is interesting, I don't think it makes sense to talk about these things as isolated. It seems quite likely that all police forces are likely to have small-to-large, naturally forming cells of corruption that frame activists. The authorities do not like activists. Consider that the US is running a massive, blatantly unconstitutional (unless unreasonable searches just doesn't mean anything) popularly disliked spying campaign. We seem to have reached the point where every opposition presidential candidate can assume they'll be targeted by the spy network (Trump was wiretapped, Biden has faced the investigation of his son & there are no hints that the politicians regret these moves). With that in the backdrop as what the president is being hit with, it seems pretty obvious that activists would be targeted with framing or at least parallel construction of frivolous charges. And that is in the US, bastion of liberty. The rest of the world is probably worse. The news here is that we can find out about it and get good records kept, I suppose.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
  Obama, also extensively wiretapped.
ComradePhil 4y ago
If you think the journalists reporting news to your population and the corporate-funded lobbies are bad, imagine the journalists and activists in foreign countries paid for by your corporate-political interests. They do not need to be "framed" to be caught. They are criminals in the target country even for doing their jobs. This is why China bans them outright... and India has been doing a pretty good job culling them.
amriksohata 4y ago
This is nothing new with Police forces worldwide, the UK police has been accused of infiltrating many environmental activists before and this happened last year too: Met police accused of using hackers to access protesters' emails https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/21/ipcc-investigates-claims-police-used-hackers-to-read-protesters-emails-jenny-jones https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/21/ipcc-investi...

165 points by Tozen 4y ago

The police remains firmly in hands of the state in India. No matter the party in power. They don’t serve people, they serve politicians.

wolverine876 4y ago
> The police remains firmly in hands of the state in India. No matter the party in power. They don’t serve people, they serve politicians. The statement is confusing to me. Usually, to say they serve politicians means that they serve a party, not the state. They should serve the state, which is a creation of and responsible to the people. Serving a political party is corrupt and not serving the people; for example, in totalitarian and authoritarian countries, the police and other state institutions often serve the party. Regardless, is there evidence of the police doing such things for other political parties?
- c0brac0bra 4y ago
  The state ceases to be responsible to the people and exists of and for itself.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    I don't understand. Could you go into more detail on how that addresses the issues raised by the top comment?
    - GWBullshit 4y ago
      All institutions by design implicitly have a core, if unspoken "prime directive": self-preservation. You could start an institution with the best intentions known to mankind, but if that institution doesn't preserve itself first and foremost, then all other stated official objectives become mute. Now, if you have an institution that has a clearly stated objective (in addition to the core, unstated objective of self-preservation) like, "We discovered a cure for cancer and want to get it out to as many people affected by cancer in as quick and cost-effective manner as possible" ... this is all well and good. But what if you have an institution with vague and seemingly implied but not technically-stated objectives that in effect are more of a "free to imagine/interpret them as you wish" sort of deal – for example, what are the "objectives" of the Indian government/law enforcement arm of the government other than the vague and practically-useless-for-being-held-accountable-for-performance, "We want to govern shit"? What if you somewhere find on some Indian document an objective like, "To preserve law and order"? What laws, written by who, for whose benefit, and what order, and again, for who? Sounds like the caste system all over again. Now what if they got more specific like, "To preserve law and order in order to encourage social stability" ... again ... stability FOR WHO? Does the majority of the Indian population want "stability?" Obviously not as they would most likely indicate they want social mobility to rise out of poverty. The problem is ... their social mobility = overall social instability, especially for those aspects of Indian society who are "at the top of the social hierarchy" who also tend to correlate with "those who govern." It's relatively easy to govern when you have state-provided homes and vacation homes and so on and the majority of the population lives in shacks. Not so easy when the majority of the populace is relatively well off. This then introduces the theory that George Orwell addressed in 1984: that tyrannical states, as an institution, eventually degenerate into doing nothing but attending to their "core objective" of self-preservation at all costs, and will purposely do things to keep the majority of the population perpetually poor so that the discrepancies of relative wealth can be used as a power mechanism (most people won't be bothered to think about higher-order abstract social constructs like "government" if they're too busy worrying about job stability or even worse, where their next meal will come from). In furtherance of this "1984" approach to subduing the population, consider Modi's (and other politicians in that general area) constant "Oh no, another border skirmish with "the enemy" ... right around the times of internal political turmoil – basically, a convenient excuse to distract the internal populace and redirect it's attention to external "threats" to cultural homogeneity. So then, as (for example in this case, but not at all exclusive to, as this tends to happen to ALL institutions – for example Universities of "Higher Learning" that wind up hoarding donations intended to help students in increasingly massive investment funds that sometimes rival professional Wall Street institutions) the Indian government degenerates into simply securing the primary (if unspoken of) directive of "continual self-preservation" ... the very subject of the government's "governing", ie, the general populace ... becomes a factor external to the Indian government itself (as well as its law-enforcement mechanisms). Now, what is that "external factor" of the general populace itself most likely to be viewed as? 1.) An external aspect of the internal reality of government and it's mechanisms that needs to be further integrated 2.) An external oddity that can be viewed as an item of curiosity during times when the government has no particular urgent matters to attend to, or ignored when it does have other, more urgent matters (such as self-preservation) to attend to 3.) A possible threat to the continuity of "keeping things as they are"?
- 1sembiyan 4y ago
  Regarding police and politicians and the state, you will find this paper from the 80s insightful: https://online.ucpress.edu/as/article-abstract/23/4/484/21949/The-Police-and-Political-Order-in-India?redirectedFrom=fulltext https://online.ucpress.edu/as/article-abstract/23/4/484/2194... Police in India serves the elected powers, always. The Indian state has always been authoritarian, more so in recent times. Given the nature of how power is shared and exercised at different levels in India, it’s easy to call Prime Minister a fool and get away with it - and many do. But you dare not publicly call your local municipal councilor that, or these days, the Chief Minister. A recent example from 1. West Bengal: https://m.thewire.in/article/culture/pure-or-profane-roddur-roys-arrest-can-be-a-defining-moment-for-bengals-social-grammar/amp https://m.thewire.in/article/culture/pure-or-profane-roddur-... 2. There’s no shortage of such vindictiveness from the UP government and its CM: https://m.thewire.in/article/government/up-police-arrests-19-year-old-for-social-media-post-against-adityanath/amp https://m.thewire.in/article/government/up-police-arrests-19... 3. From Maharashtra: https://groundreport.in/who-is-actress-ketaki-chitale-arrested-for-insulting-sharad-pawar/amp/ https://groundreport.in/who-is-actress-ketaki-chitale-arrest... A great recent movie exploring this aspect of the police and the state in India is Nayattu, available on Netflix: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayattu_(2021_film) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayattu_(2021_film) This movie was scripted by an ex-cop and makes a sympathetic case for the sort of daily negotiations the cops are involved in. The “hunted” from the title are literally other cops. Many Tamil movies have been exploring the police-politician nexus for a few decades now. Sathya (1989?) comes to my mind. This is an incomplete list, and doesn’t really explore the causes of the violence, but I think in many cases it can be linked to the parties in power: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cases_of_police_brutality_in_India https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cases_of_police_brut... Another overview of why the police in India are particularly susceptible to political pressure: https://www.fairobserver.com/region/central_south_asia/javeed-ahmad-india-police-service-reform-political-corruption-news-15261/?amp https://www.fairobserver.com/region/central_south_asia/javee... > They should serve the state, which is a creation of and responsible to the people. Serving a political party is corrupt and not serving the people; Well, that’s Indian police for you. Designed to be corruptible even before we had a republic.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
ptato 4y ago
This is true everywhere, not just India
- siva7 4y ago
  Not at all.
  - smabie 4y ago
crossroadsguy 4y ago
In this case it’s different from “they are serving whoever is ruling”. This time they’re serving a particular party and a particular ideology.
ComradePhil 4y ago
Sounds like you have watched too much bollywood. Talk to one of your relatives or friends of friends who's in the police force and come back. For those who are unaware: one of the forces with big political interest in India is the middle east. The middle east runs a shadow government in India; its two arms are bollywood and the Indian mafia (look up D-company[1]). Before the rise of Modi, they used to churn out shitloads of bollywood movies where the mafia is humanized and police and politicians were always the bad guys... which serves as a recruiting tool for the mafia and demonizes the police and the government. While the Modi government has tried to take action against this, even as of 2018, movie like Sanju[2] was made which is based on the life of a bollywood actor who was charged for his involvement in the 1993 Bombay Bombings[3]... but the movie shows him as a good guy. In real life, the actor has served the mafia with various mafia-protagonist movies such as Munna Bhai MBBS and Vastaav and is one of the Indian superstars who has deep links with the mafia. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Company https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Company [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanju https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanju [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Bombay_bombings https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Bombay_bombings
- nd 4y ago
  It might be helpful to back up your perspective with data, or better frame your argument. As it stands, your comment doesn’t add much to the conversation. A few things in particular: - Crime is a problem in India. The Wikipedia article has a decent overview (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_India https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_India). But so is police and government corruption. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_India https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_India) - To call a criminal organization a shadow government is hyperbolic. Similarly calling the romanticizing of crime — a common entertainment trope — a conspiracy, seems a bit much. - The actor you use as an example was convicted for acquiring weapons from people involved with the Bombay Bombings. He was never accused of being involved in the bombings himself (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanjay_Dutt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanjay_Dutt). I’m not sure I follow the accusation of serving the mafia by acting as a criminal in a movie.
  - 4y ago

ahmed_ds 4y ago

> security researcher Zeshan Aziz found the recovery email address and phone number tied to the Pune police official’s name in the leaked database of TrueCaller, a caller ID and call-blocking app Even though truecaller has accidentally done some good in this case, they are essentially a voluntary spyware. https://www.truecaller.com/unlisting https://www.truecaller.com/unlisting

wolverine876 4y ago

In my mind, it's a predictable outcome of nationalism, which puts the 'nation' (who is that, exactly?) ahead of individuals. Notice that the US Declaration of Independence says that goverment is instituted by the people to protect their human rights and liberty - government exists to serve individuals - that's the purpose, not some 'nation'. As soon as they start talking about a nation, it's an excuse to sacrifice others to the interests of 'the nation' - which of course means the interests of a few people, spun and presented to make them like it's the interests of a quasi-divine entity.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Georgelemental 4y ago
Individualism is great, but people live in societies along with other people, and that's not going to change. And when people live near each other, mechanisms are needed to prevent their individual actions and desires from conflicting and causing problems for everyone. One such mechanism is the nation. A "nation" is when you take the instincts people naturally feel towards members of their family/tribe, and through education and propaganda you apply those instincts to a much larger group (the "people"). Doing this helps people get along and keeps society functioning by making its members feel responsible for their fellow citizens. But when the "nation"/fake tribe is given an "enemy" or a father figure, that's when the trouble starts.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  > Individualism is great, but people live in societies along with other people, and that's not going to change. And when people live near each other, mechanisms are needed to prevent their individual actions and desires from conflicting and causing problems for everyone. People have done that without nationalism very successfully! > instincts people naturally feel towards members of their family/tribe People can feel all sorts of things, and nationalists like to claim the special, irrefutable case of 'natural' - 'it's just nature, who can argue with that?' In truth they are just irrational prejudices of some people have at some moment, based on false assumptions and facts, having little to do with reality. For example, people 'naturally' discriminated against Catholics in the US, until they 'naturally' didn't! The prejudices change all the time, within and between people. > and through education and propaganda you apply those instincts to a much larger group (the "people") So you are advocating manipulating and lying to people? > Doing this helps people get along and keeps society functioning by making its members feel responsible for their fellow citizens. What is that based on? Most places get along fine without it. > But when the "nation"/fake tribe is given an "enemy" or a father figure, that's when the trouble starts. It's inevitable - as soon as you have a fake 'us', you have a fake 'them'.

IdEntities 4y ago

This was also how they got the guy who found evidence the CIA was behind the 2001 anthrax attacks. https://www.soundcloud.com/media-roots/amerithrax-the-cia-interview-with-with-matt-dehart https://www.soundcloud.com/media-roots/amerithrax-the-cia-in...

photochemsyn 4y ago
Just on practical grounds, it's essentially impossible for Bruce Ivins to have been the culprit in the 9/18 and 10/09 anthrax mailings (two separate events, the first round going to media outlets and the second to Congressional offices), as Fort Detrick didn't have the required material to manufacture the stuff. His convenient suicide prior to being named as a suspect made any risk moot of a repeat of the failed effort to blame Steven Hatfill (who won $6 million in a defamation lawsuit over the bogus allegations by Justice 7 FBI). If Hatfill had 'committed suicide' it's pretty clear they'd have closed the case then as well. As far as who did have the means, well, after the revelations about the scale of the Soviet bioweapons progam by a pair of defectors in the early 1990s, various US agencies worked to replicate some of their 'advances in the field', such as preparation of highly aerosilizable dry anthrax powder, in programs which ran through at least 2000, named Jefferson, Clear Vision, maybe a few others, in violation of BWC treaty obligations not to manufacture bioweapons (they claimed it was for 'studying defenses'). Notably Fort Detrick wasn't involved with any of that; it was a place in Ohio contracted to the CIA called Battelle Memorial Institue that did the actual work, apparently. That's likely where the material in the letters was sourced from, although it's anyone's guess whose bright idea it was. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Clear_Vision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Clear_Vision All of Ivin's colleagues at Fort Detrick know he didn't have the means and some said so publicly later, although the FBI slapped the whole place with a gag order for years.
- lupire 4y ago
  Ironically, Hatfill turned into a Trump inside team member promoting hydroxychloroquine and the attempted 2020 election coup, causing more damage than the anthrax attacks.

walrus01 4y ago

worth providing (again) a list of the indian government's extensive fuckery with the internet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India

amriksohata 4y ago
Wait till you see CHina and other countries This is nothing new with Police forces worldwide, the UK police has been accused of infiltrating many environmental activists before and this happened last year too: Met police accused of using hackers to access protesters' emails https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/21/ipcc-investigates-claims-police-used-hackers-to-read-protesters-emails-jenny-jones https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/21/ipcc-investi...
- Terry_Roll 4y ago
  >the UK police has been accused of infiltrating many environmental activists GCHQ does everybody, and it filters down through Special Branch to the lower levels of policing. The irony is, you have noone to turn to when you are being done over by the Police and the state in general. The NHS, educational system, every tentacle of the state is all interlinked to the security services, I've had it since primary school because the state can not lose. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/09/mi5-policy-agents-take-part-crimes-lawful-appeal-court-judges https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/09/mi5-policy-a... And they wonder why individuals get radicalised and massacres occur! If your parents were Govt employees, I sympathise, but there is a reason why Govt pay is so low, it keeps Govt employees lean and mean!
  - Terry_Roll 4y ago
    Growing up in the UK is like military basic training 24/7, I'm not surprised there are so many Private Pyle's.
- feet 4y ago
  Wow its almost like the police are an institution designed purely to protect those with money and power from the poor who want to change things for the better

bobobob420 4y ago

Police in India are corrupt bastards for the most part. None of this suprises me, their power and actions have gone unchecked for a long time

giraffe_lady 4y ago
I've lived in three countries that each couldn't have been more different from the others and in every one of them the police fucking suck. I don't know anything about the indian police specifically and never thought about them before but when I saw the title my first thought was "yeah sounds about right."
amriksohata 4y ago
Well, this is nothing new with Police forces worldwide, the UK police has been accused of infiltrating many environmental activists before and this happened last year too: Met police accused of using hackers to access protesters' emails https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/21/ipcc-investigates-claims-police-used-hackers-to-read-protesters-emails-jenny-jones https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/21/ipcc-investi...

known 4y ago

roenxi 4y ago

Although this particular case study is interesting, I don't think it makes sense to talk about these things as isolated. It seems quite likely that all police forces are likely to have small-to-large, naturally forming cells of corruption that frame activists. The authorities do not like activists. Consider that the US is running a massive, blatantly unconstitutional (unless unreasonable searches just doesn't mean anything) popularly disliked spying campaign. We seem to have reached the point where every opposition presidential candidate can assume they'll be targeted by the spy network (Trump was wiretapped, Biden has faced the investigation of his son & there are no hints that the politicians regret these moves). With that in the backdrop as what the president is being hit with, it seems pretty obvious that activists would be targeted with framing or at least parallel construction of frivolous charges. And that is in the US, bastion of liberty. The rest of the world is probably worse. The news here is that we can find out about it and get good records kept, I suppose.

aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
Obama, also extensively wiretapped.

ComradePhil 4y ago

If you think the journalists reporting news to your population and the corporate-funded lobbies are bad, imagine the journalists and activists in foreign countries paid for by your corporate-political interests. They do not need to be "framed" to be caught. They are criminals in the target country even for doing their jobs. This is why China bans them outright... and India has been doing a pretty good job culling them.

amriksohata 4y ago

This is nothing new with Police forces worldwide, the UK police has been accused of infiltrating many environmental activists before and this happened last year too: Met police accused of using hackers to access protesters' emails https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/21/ipcc-investigates-claims-police-used-hackers-to-read-protesters-emails-jenny-jones https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/21/ipcc-investi...