9 ms·

While there's a healthy debate in the US (and to a lesser extent in Europe perhaps) about the extent of spying being done by governments, I see hardly any conce

by r0h1n 13y ago

While there's a healthy debate in the US (and to a lesser extent in Europe perhaps) about the extent of spying being done by governments, I see hardly any concern in India among both media organizations (with probably the exception of The Hindu newspaper), businesses and citizens. Fed by the constant drip-drip of "free" features, people are almost blind to the true "cost" they're paying. I've tried my best to convince people I know to adopt even simple (not foolproof, which probably nothing is) countermeasures like VPNs or HTTPS-Everywhere...but nobody gives a damn. Reminds me of a Supernatural episode [1] featuring drugged Turducken sandwiches that turn people into passive, media-absorbing, harmless zombies. [1] - http://io9.com/5861160/turducken-and-the-rise-of-dick-make-one-helluva-supernatural-episode http://io9.com/5861160/turducken-and-the-rise-of-dick-make-o...

pavanred 13y ago
This is true, just days ago there was a proposal of a Google tie-up with Election Commission of India [1]. The proposal allowed Google to offer services for the General Elections in India to be held in 2014. Google proposed free online voter registration besides making available vital details of voter EPIC card numbers and polling station locations. While this did stir up a concern among the political parties and got some column inches and airtime in mainstream media, I think it should have deserved a lot more attention. I was quite surprised that many people I know don't even have a clue that this happened about a week ago. With all the recent spying revelations, this was seen as a huge security risk. Nevertheless, the Election Commission of India later dropped plans to partner with Google after spying fears [2]. [1] http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2014-01-07/india/45954589_1_voter-facilitation-security-concerns-tie-up http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2014-01-07/india... [2] http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/01/09/india-elections-google-idINDEEA080CQ20140109 http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/01/09/india-elections-goo...
- DannyBee 13y ago
  "The proposal allowed Google to offer services for the General Elections in India to be held in 2014. Google proposed free online voter registration besides making available vital details of voter EPIC card numbers and polling station locations." I started and used to run these programs for Google. I'm not sure what you are implying is done with this data, but security and privacy are always the highest priority. Google does this stuff for completely altruistic reasons. It's not even part of .com anymore, it's part of .org. The goal is to help people know where to vote. Nothing more, nothing less. If you'd like to tell me what conspiracy you think this is part of, ...
  - pavanred 13y ago
    The point I was trying to make was that when it comes to security, privacy etc there isn't as much debate and media interest as I think should be in India. In this case there were concerns voiced that the Election commission neither consulted all the stake holders nor consulted political parties to discuss this. And, of course with the revelations of US agencies indulging in widespread spying and intelligence gathering, sharing vital data pertaining to Indians citizens to a foreign company was perceived as a security risk. I did not imply that there is a conspiracy. I just think when there are concerns about security and privacy, as in this case, there should be a louder discussion.
    - DannyBee 13y ago
      "The point I was trying to make was that when it comes to security, privacy etc there isn't as much debate and media interest as I think should be in India." Fair enough. Note when I started this, Google was essentially one of the only players in this space who didn't want data that had PII in it (in the US, things like voter files get sold quite a lot). Still true, sadly For national ID systems, most of it was something like "ID xxx through zzz vote at YYY". where xxx to zzz was some very large range. For those systems that required fine grained data (like Peru, I believe), our design was to give them secure one way hashes to use on the data before giving it to us so that we never had any info, just something we could key on (we would then proxy api calls to do the actual national id lookups or something so again, we never saw the id's) AFAIK, none of these ever panned out for other reasons. At least when I was running it (and i doubt things have changed in the past 8 months, it's the same people other than me), there was a zero percent chance we would have ever agreed to receive any "vital data" at all. I haven't looked heavily into all this, but I have very strong doubts any info about people would have actually been asked for or given. You know how the press tends to understand nuanced technical detail. In most cases where these stories happen, sad truth is the real reason is losing control of voter suppression.
  - whatevsbro 13y ago
    > Google does this stuff for completely altruistic reasons. But of course. Just like they help the NSA rape people's privacy for purely altruistic reasons? Don't Be Evil and all, right? Does a country really need Google's help with running elections? Does it help, for example, that vote counts are just values in a database somewhere?
pizza234 13y ago
This is actually the structure of society imagined by Huxley in Brave New World - there was a post in HN just a week ago: http://onthepathofknowledge.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/amusing-ourselves-to-death/ http://onthepathofknowledge.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/amusing...
tn13 13y ago
No one actually cares about "freedom" in India may be one reason is they are getting too many things for free from the repressive government. The concept of privacy is non-existent. Consider the case of Aadhar card (similar to SSN but with biometric data collection). World's largest biometric database collection and maintenance was given to two foreign companies with roots in Middle East and United States. No debate about the background checks of this company.

by r0h1n 13y ago

pavanred 13y ago

This is true, just days ago there was a proposal of a Google tie-up with Election Commission of India [1]. The proposal allowed Google to offer services for the General Elections in India to be held in 2014. Google proposed free online voter registration besides making available vital details of voter EPIC card numbers and polling station locations. While this did stir up a concern among the political parties and got some column inches and airtime in mainstream media, I think it should have deserved a lot more attention. I was quite surprised that many people I know don't even have a clue that this happened about a week ago. With all the recent spying revelations, this was seen as a huge security risk. Nevertheless, the Election Commission of India later dropped plans to partner with Google after spying fears [2]. [1] http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2014-01-07/india/45954589_1_voter-facilitation-security-concerns-tie-up http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2014-01-07/india... [2] http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/01/09/india-elections-google-idINDEEA080CQ20140109 http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/01/09/india-elections-goo...

DannyBee 13y ago
"The proposal allowed Google to offer services for the General Elections in India to be held in 2014. Google proposed free online voter registration besides making available vital details of voter EPIC card numbers and polling station locations." I started and used to run these programs for Google. I'm not sure what you are implying is done with this data, but security and privacy are always the highest priority. Google does this stuff for completely altruistic reasons. It's not even part of .com anymore, it's part of .org. The goal is to help people know where to vote. Nothing more, nothing less. If you'd like to tell me what conspiracy you think this is part of, ...
- pavanred 13y ago
  The point I was trying to make was that when it comes to security, privacy etc there isn't as much debate and media interest as I think should be in India. In this case there were concerns voiced that the Election commission neither consulted all the stake holders nor consulted political parties to discuss this. And, of course with the revelations of US agencies indulging in widespread spying and intelligence gathering, sharing vital data pertaining to Indians citizens to a foreign company was perceived as a security risk. I did not imply that there is a conspiracy. I just think when there are concerns about security and privacy, as in this case, there should be a louder discussion.
  - DannyBee 13y ago
    "The point I was trying to make was that when it comes to security, privacy etc there isn't as much debate and media interest as I think should be in India." Fair enough. Note when I started this, Google was essentially one of the only players in this space who didn't want data that had PII in it (in the US, things like voter files get sold quite a lot). Still true, sadly For national ID systems, most of it was something like "ID xxx through zzz vote at YYY". where xxx to zzz was some very large range. For those systems that required fine grained data (like Peru, I believe), our design was to give them secure one way hashes to use on the data before giving it to us so that we never had any info, just something we could key on (we would then proxy api calls to do the actual national id lookups or something so again, we never saw the id's) AFAIK, none of these ever panned out for other reasons. At least when I was running it (and i doubt things have changed in the past 8 months, it's the same people other than me), there was a zero percent chance we would have ever agreed to receive any "vital data" at all. I haven't looked heavily into all this, but I have very strong doubts any info about people would have actually been asked for or given. You know how the press tends to understand nuanced technical detail. In most cases where these stories happen, sad truth is the real reason is losing control of voter suppression.
- whatevsbro 13y ago
  > Google does this stuff for completely altruistic reasons. But of course. Just like they help the NSA rape people's privacy for purely altruistic reasons? Don't Be Evil and all, right? Does a country really need Google's help with running elections? Does it help, for example, that vote counts are just values in a database somewhere?

pizza234 13y ago

This is actually the structure of society imagined by Huxley in Brave New World - there was a post in HN just a week ago: http://onthepathofknowledge.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/amusing-ourselves-to-death/ http://onthepathofknowledge.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/amusing...

tn13 13y ago

No one actually cares about "freedom" in India may be one reason is they are getting too many things for free from the repressive government. The concept of privacy is non-existent. Consider the case of Aadhar card (similar to SSN but with biometric data collection). World's largest biometric database collection and maintenance was given to two foreign companies with roots in Middle East and United States. No debate about the background checks of this company.