5 ms·

In India, Prism-like Surveillance Slips Under the Radar

114 points by gits1225 13y ago

scdoshi 13y ago
This makes all the difference: "Yet India’s Central Monitoring System, or CMS, was not shrouded in secrecy" Doesn't make collecting all that data ok, but the fact that it's not all cloak and dagger means that people know what the government is doing in their name and they can vote for a change if they disagree.
- geekam 13y ago
  India has a very bad history in dealing with such issues esp when they involve technology. Remember when they asked Google, Facebook, Twitter et. al. to preemptively delete undesired messages?
  - scdoshi 13y ago
    To clarify again, I am not saying this is a good thing. I was just pointing out what seemed to be a major point of difference between this and the US situation. A lot of the unrest and anger here is because mass surveillance was approved to be carried out in secret and the companies were not even allowed to talk about what type of data they were providing to the government.
    - gits1225 13y ago
      The Government is trying to do the same thing with similar tactics as the US counterpart. They don't make any noise, or put any effort into making people aware of what is actually going to be done to them. As a result, there is virtually no media coverage, and only a couple of vigilant people who care about it are even aware of this. They just barely mention it in passing, is ambiguous and can be interpreted however they want it to: http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=70747 http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=70747, like: "Hey, we are going to monitor every aspect of your life, and keep the records forever, and will be used against you for the interests of various corrupt people; in effect, shutting you up. No big deal :)"
- mpyne 13y ago
  The capability to engage in PRISM was not shrouded in secrecy either. As I have to keep reminding people, PRISM wasn't even the scary system; do you know what the FBI calls their automated system to track their other (normal) warrants? Or you scared of that system? Metadata collection on massive scale is scarier IMO, but that's been in the law and case law for years as well (as 'pen traps' or whatever they call it). AFAICS the only real 'innovative' parts are a) collecting data about a crime before the government knows the crime has happened, without so much as a specific suspicion of wrongdoing, and b) collecting all data and then grepping for the data they're legally allowed to have. Even b) above has precedent in law enforcement though; just not at this scale.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
thex86 13y ago
This is particularly bad for a country like India where the police already has too many powers: they don't need a warrant for many things. By "need", I mean it's not that the Constitution doesn't require them to, but it's not enforced. So much so, if you are a "no-one" (means you don't have any "political connections"), the police can come to your place, search it, and arrest you and put you in lockup. All without requiring a warrant. Good luck complaining. (Of course the police requires a warrant when dealing with politicians, since they can't touch them.) Now given the police state India already is, this is more dangerous. Why? Because the police has too many powers, they don't need warrants and now the state has the capability to spy completely on its citizens. I can only see glaring human rights violation coming out of this.
- mknits 13y ago
  Rightly said. If citizens don't raise such issues soon enough, politicians and other bad guys will make India fall.
sudhirj 13y ago
India has a very complicated relationship with censorship that's compounded by underlying communal and religious tension. It looks idiotic when you hear about people being arrested for tweets and likes, but what gets lost is the fundamentalist barbarianism that underlies it: the grim truth that people might die otherwise. That unemployed youth will take to the streets and violently protest at every imagined slight to their <insert religious ideal / figurehead / motto / policy here >. That leaders will tacitly encourage the violence and terrorism that their own minions commit. We don't care too much about privacy rights yet because we haven't got that far on whatever pyramid diagram of priorities you'd judge by. A majority of the population lives in poverty, is hungry and thirsty, does not have access to non-toxic food and water. The urban population is still very concerned with making ends meet, putting their kids through college and hoping that their dreams will be fulfilled through the lives of their offspring. Those with money, influence and clout don't care. They can either simply buy their way out of this kind of monitoring or laugh at it over dinner. Besides, we really don't have the capability to pull this off well enough to be a danger to anyone.
- npalli 13y ago
  Very true. I remember last year around this time, there was mass chaos in Bangalore due to some twitter images being sent around. Tens of thousands of people had to leave the city because of threats. All because rumors began to spread about some attacks. I would think most ordinary people would support censorship in such cases. http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/over-30-000-north-east-people-flee-bangalore_794366.html http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/over-30-000-north-east-...
- eshvk 13y ago
  The sad thing of course is that even when your country solves the lowest requirements on Maslow's pyramid, it will have lost a lot of learning as a society that needs to happen. Learning on how to accept that democracy comes with free speech, a requirement for privacy etc. These are not just matters of mere legislation but something a society should cherish and aggressively protect against the depredations of politicians.
- revelation 13y ago
amazedsaint 13y ago
The real problem is, recently there are lot of instances in India where government is trying to enforce restrictions around social media more or less to protect its own interests. There are no clear guidelines regarding how you'll classify something as free speech or hatred speech. Most politicians are too ignorant about internet, social media and the emerging crowd power, and they are very anxious about the same. Giving such a system for a set of people who don't really understand what it is and how it can be used, is the real danger. They'll always use it to protect their interests.
yashkadakia 13y ago
I am really not too worried about this because - I know that corruption and incompetence will ensure this system never comes into place effectively. On the few occasions that the government has tried to ban certain URLs - its almost always been simple DNS filters that can be bypassed by using Google DNS.
snambi 13y ago
can the indian govt can do anything? I haven't seen it can execute anything. so, don't worry about such programs, they will build something, which will be so useless, it will be only used to bill the govt.
- ankitml 13y ago
  yes they can do anything. Anything to protect their interests.
general_failure 13y ago
A lot of people here saying that the India govt is too incompetent to do this. This is naive thinking. The indian govt might be slow and corrupt but rest assured when it comes to implementation they are actually quite decent. See the amount of work that has gone into computerization of various things like personal tax, property tax, education etc. Other governments can move much more quickly because they only have 1% of India's population. India has so much paper records and most of them lost. For example, can you imagine what it takes to move the property tax system online? Most land records don't exist on paper with the goverment. This is not just a data entry and technology problem anymore. No, what I am worried about is that if they pull if off, you cannot keep the politicians off this. And it's guaranteed to be misused. It's dangerous to build a monitoring system because a security hole in such things endangers everyone. If the richest companies in the planet like apple, google, sony cannot build secure governments, I highly doubt government can.
asitkumar 13y ago
India's media is the only one allowed to openly lie on television. True stories are never shown. And me, who laughed on conspiracy theories like "Illuminati" as childish imagination, I know how foreigners are ruling India even today. To keep control over the population you have to first monitor their activities! This is what they do
- markdown 13y ago
  > India's media is the only one allowed to openly lie on television. USA's FOX News sued in court for the right to lie... and they won.
ppradhan 13y ago
Not exactly on this topic, but somewhat relevant when I see articles like these from Indian media. Media in India is weird in how it feels the need to emulate American events etc and draw parallels to illustrate their case. It's like they need a reinforcement framework to validate what they are saying. And for this, they love to look up to everything American (it's a complement to USA I guess, but also shows the insecurity india has towards modernisation). For example.. media routinely labels controversies as 'something-gate' when Watergate had nothing to do with india, and indeed most people in India probably don't know anything about it. The mumbai terrorist attacks are referred to as 26/11. Now their government surveillance is 'PRISM-like'. India is insecure like this and looks for validation by trying to find 'standard' versions of what they are talking about, in the form of an American parallel. It's regular enough that I thought it worth pointing out. India used to be like this before too, with British parallels. I guess the colonial hangover in India has proven to be a very long one. Be more confident in your own ways India; to improve and to progress, you don't always need to emulate.

114 points by gits1225 13y ago

This makes all the difference: "Yet India’s Central Monitoring System, or CMS, was not shrouded in secrecy" Doesn't make collecting all that data ok, but the fact that it's not all cloak and dagger means that people know what the government is doing in their name and they can vote for a change if they disagree.

geekam 13y ago
India has a very bad history in dealing with such issues esp when they involve technology. Remember when they asked Google, Facebook, Twitter et. al. to preemptively delete undesired messages?
- scdoshi 13y ago
  To clarify again, I am not saying this is a good thing. I was just pointing out what seemed to be a major point of difference between this and the US situation. A lot of the unrest and anger here is because mass surveillance was approved to be carried out in secret and the companies were not even allowed to talk about what type of data they were providing to the government.
  - gits1225 13y ago
    The Government is trying to do the same thing with similar tactics as the US counterpart. They don't make any noise, or put any effort into making people aware of what is actually going to be done to them. As a result, there is virtually no media coverage, and only a couple of vigilant people who care about it are even aware of this. They just barely mention it in passing, is ambiguous and can be interpreted however they want it to: http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=70747 http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=70747, like: "Hey, we are going to monitor every aspect of your life, and keep the records forever, and will be used against you for the interests of various corrupt people; in effect, shutting you up. No big deal :)"
mpyne 13y ago
The capability to engage in PRISM was not shrouded in secrecy either. As I have to keep reminding people, PRISM wasn't even the scary system; do you know what the FBI calls their automated system to track their other (normal) warrants? Or you scared of that system? Metadata collection on massive scale is scarier IMO, but that's been in the law and case law for years as well (as 'pen traps' or whatever they call it). AFAICS the only real 'innovative' parts are a) collecting data about a crime before the government knows the crime has happened, without so much as a specific suspicion of wrongdoing, and b) collecting all data and then grepping for the data they're legally allowed to have. Even b) above has precedent in law enforcement though; just not at this scale.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

thex86 13y ago

This is particularly bad for a country like India where the police already has too many powers: they don't need a warrant for many things. By "need", I mean it's not that the Constitution doesn't require them to, but it's not enforced. So much so, if you are a "no-one" (means you don't have any "political connections"), the police can come to your place, search it, and arrest you and put you in lockup. All without requiring a warrant. Good luck complaining. (Of course the police requires a warrant when dealing with politicians, since they can't touch them.) Now given the police state India already is, this is more dangerous. Why? Because the police has too many powers, they don't need warrants and now the state has the capability to spy completely on its citizens. I can only see glaring human rights violation coming out of this.

mknits 13y ago
Rightly said. If citizens don't raise such issues soon enough, politicians and other bad guys will make India fall.

sudhirj 13y ago

India has a very complicated relationship with censorship that's compounded by underlying communal and religious tension. It looks idiotic when you hear about people being arrested for tweets and likes, but what gets lost is the fundamentalist barbarianism that underlies it: the grim truth that people might die otherwise. That unemployed youth will take to the streets and violently protest at every imagined slight to their <insert religious ideal / figurehead / motto / policy here >. That leaders will tacitly encourage the violence and terrorism that their own minions commit. We don't care too much about privacy rights yet because we haven't got that far on whatever pyramid diagram of priorities you'd judge by. A majority of the population lives in poverty, is hungry and thirsty, does not have access to non-toxic food and water. The urban population is still very concerned with making ends meet, putting their kids through college and hoping that their dreams will be fulfilled through the lives of their offspring. Those with money, influence and clout don't care. They can either simply buy their way out of this kind of monitoring or laugh at it over dinner. Besides, we really don't have the capability to pull this off well enough to be a danger to anyone.

npalli 13y ago
Very true. I remember last year around this time, there was mass chaos in Bangalore due to some twitter images being sent around. Tens of thousands of people had to leave the city because of threats. All because rumors began to spread about some attacks. I would think most ordinary people would support censorship in such cases. http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/over-30-000-north-east-people-flee-bangalore_794366.html http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/over-30-000-north-east-...
eshvk 13y ago
The sad thing of course is that even when your country solves the lowest requirements on Maslow's pyramid, it will have lost a lot of learning as a society that needs to happen. Learning on how to accept that democracy comes with free speech, a requirement for privacy etc. These are not just matters of mere legislation but something a society should cherish and aggressively protect against the depredations of politicians.
revelation 13y ago

amazedsaint 13y ago

The real problem is, recently there are lot of instances in India where government is trying to enforce restrictions around social media more or less to protect its own interests. There are no clear guidelines regarding how you'll classify something as free speech or hatred speech. Most politicians are too ignorant about internet, social media and the emerging crowd power, and they are very anxious about the same. Giving such a system for a set of people who don't really understand what it is and how it can be used, is the real danger. They'll always use it to protect their interests.

yashkadakia 13y ago

I am really not too worried about this because - I know that corruption and incompetence will ensure this system never comes into place effectively. On the few occasions that the government has tried to ban certain URLs - its almost always been simple DNS filters that can be bypassed by using Google DNS.

snambi 13y ago

can the indian govt can do anything? I haven't seen it can execute anything. so, don't worry about such programs, they will build something, which will be so useless, it will be only used to bill the govt.

ankitml 13y ago
yes they can do anything. Anything to protect their interests.

general_failure 13y ago

A lot of people here saying that the India govt is too incompetent to do this. This is naive thinking. The indian govt might be slow and corrupt but rest assured when it comes to implementation they are actually quite decent. See the amount of work that has gone into computerization of various things like personal tax, property tax, education etc. Other governments can move much more quickly because they only have 1% of India's population. India has so much paper records and most of them lost. For example, can you imagine what it takes to move the property tax system online? Most land records don't exist on paper with the goverment. This is not just a data entry and technology problem anymore. No, what I am worried about is that if they pull if off, you cannot keep the politicians off this. And it's guaranteed to be misused. It's dangerous to build a monitoring system because a security hole in such things endangers everyone. If the richest companies in the planet like apple, google, sony cannot build secure governments, I highly doubt government can.

asitkumar 13y ago

India's media is the only one allowed to openly lie on television. True stories are never shown. And me, who laughed on conspiracy theories like "Illuminati" as childish imagination, I know how foreigners are ruling India even today. To keep control over the population you have to first monitor their activities! This is what they do

markdown 13y ago
> India's media is the only one allowed to openly lie on television. USA's FOX News sued in court for the right to lie... and they won.

ppradhan 13y ago

Not exactly on this topic, but somewhat relevant when I see articles like these from Indian media. Media in India is weird in how it feels the need to emulate American events etc and draw parallels to illustrate their case. It's like they need a reinforcement framework to validate what they are saying. And for this, they love to look up to everything American (it's a complement to USA I guess, but also shows the insecurity india has towards modernisation). For example.. media routinely labels controversies as 'something-gate' when Watergate had nothing to do with india, and indeed most people in India probably don't know anything about it. The mumbai terrorist attacks are referred to as 26/11. Now their government surveillance is 'PRISM-like'. India is insecure like this and looks for validation by trying to find 'standard' versions of what they are talking about, in the form of an American parallel. It's regular enough that I thought it worth pointing out. India used to be like this before too, with British parallels. I guess the colonial hangover in India has proven to be a very long one. Be more confident in your own ways India; to improve and to progress, you don't always need to emulate.