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Did I say they should do without expensive luxuries and internet privacy? No. I did say that prioritising using typerwriters for internal communications of a ha

Did I say they should do without expensive luxuries and internet privacy? No. I did say that prioritising using typerwriters for internal communications of a handful of their government offices above the fundamental issues that affect hundreds of millions of their countrymen is ridiculous. The article isn't about internet privacy for their residents. if it were, are you saying that the rights of women and the starving population is fine as long as no sneaky NSA is reading your emails?

r0h1n 13y ago
Allow me to quote you: > In a country that's stricken with extreme poverty, a caste system that births you into such a fate until death, where women can't walk the street at night without the fear of getting brutally raped or molested, a country that starves while massive stockpiles of food reserves perish due to kafkaesque bureaucracy and corruption; I hardly think that privacy breaches are India's top concern. Your infering that privacy should hardly be India's top concern is a non-sequitur. Privacy doesn't need to be India's "top concern" for its government to fix it. And neither is there a link between fixing it and all the other (valid) ills you described prior to it.
- redact207 13y ago
  Exactly, privacy shouldn't be India's top concern - but evidently it's the only item on the checklist that they've ticked. I'll add it's also one that doesn't help address any of the fundamental issues, and as I mentioned only slows things down in an already burdened government.
  - codelust 13y ago
    Privacy, or security, or both? Nations can rarely afford to have mutually exclusive streams of work. You don't see the U.S waiting till they solve their economic crisis to figure out what to do in Syria. One of the major problems with the rank generalizations in both domestic and international media about India is that it reduces the problem to a simple combination of inept leadership, useless bureaucracy and abject poverty. The fact, though, is that there also a lot of good people doing good work at levels (government, leadership etc.), but there is also a large number of people who are doing crappy jobs. And as far as something like poverty goes, the causes, extent and solution for it differ from region to region. The concept of India is one of the greatest abstractions the world has ever seen. Take away the tricolour, cricket and the movie industry and you'll find people who rarely have much to identify with each other at a national level. Consequently, any solution will take time and it will be chaotic; at least until a better genuinely progressive leader emerges, which looks unlikely for a long time to come. Waiting for all that to fall in place till measures are taken to ensure data security and privacy may well mean those won't happen in my lifetime. p.s: The state of IT in the government is terrible in India. Any smart citizen have to live under the assumption that everything is compromised, by the state itself and by other states.
alphakappa 13y ago
> I did say that prioritising using typerwriters for internal communications of a handful of their government offices above the fundamental issues that affect hundreds of millions of their countrymen is ridiculous. Your comment is mind-boggling. Using typewriters for better security is somehow a prioritization over solving fundamental issues? As in, if they spent some effort over security at their embassies, it affects their ability to solve other problems? You should get over yourself.
- redact207 13y ago
  You misread, I wrote the opposite to what you're saying.

r0h1n 13y ago

Allow me to quote you: > In a country that's stricken with extreme poverty, a caste system that births you into such a fate until death, where women can't walk the street at night without the fear of getting brutally raped or molested, a country that starves while massive stockpiles of food reserves perish due to kafkaesque bureaucracy and corruption; I hardly think that privacy breaches are India's top concern. Your infering that privacy should hardly be India's top concern is a non-sequitur. Privacy doesn't need to be India's "top concern" for its government to fix it. And neither is there a link between fixing it and all the other (valid) ills you described prior to it.

redact207 13y ago
Exactly, privacy shouldn't be India's top concern - but evidently it's the only item on the checklist that they've ticked. I'll add it's also one that doesn't help address any of the fundamental issues, and as I mentioned only slows things down in an already burdened government.
- codelust 13y ago
  Privacy, or security, or both? Nations can rarely afford to have mutually exclusive streams of work. You don't see the U.S waiting till they solve their economic crisis to figure out what to do in Syria. One of the major problems with the rank generalizations in both domestic and international media about India is that it reduces the problem to a simple combination of inept leadership, useless bureaucracy and abject poverty. The fact, though, is that there also a lot of good people doing good work at levels (government, leadership etc.), but there is also a large number of people who are doing crappy jobs. And as far as something like poverty goes, the causes, extent and solution for it differ from region to region. The concept of India is one of the greatest abstractions the world has ever seen. Take away the tricolour, cricket and the movie industry and you'll find people who rarely have much to identify with each other at a national level. Consequently, any solution will take time and it will be chaotic; at least until a better genuinely progressive leader emerges, which looks unlikely for a long time to come. Waiting for all that to fall in place till measures are taken to ensure data security and privacy may well mean those won't happen in my lifetime. p.s: The state of IT in the government is terrible in India. Any smart citizen have to live under the assumption that everything is compromised, by the state itself and by other states.

alphakappa 13y ago

> I did say that prioritising using typerwriters for internal communications of a handful of their government offices above the fundamental issues that affect hundreds of millions of their countrymen is ridiculous. Your comment is mind-boggling. Using typewriters for better security is somehow a prioritization over solving fundamental issues? As in, if they spent some effort over security at their embassies, it affects their ability to solve other problems? You should get over yourself.

redact207 13y ago
You misread, I wrote the opposite to what you're saying.