India is currently run by a nationalist regime headed by the so called "butcher of Gujarat"[1], there isn't much that would shock me wrt to that lot's totalitarian tendencies.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_image_of_Narendra_Modi
Like sure you could in theory see every document I've ever signed if you have a warrant for BankID servers, but you could probably glean most of that if you had a warrant for the banks servers anyway, so it's not really a new capability.
If your digital ID is controlled centrally by the government (the guys that are watching most things you do already), and you need your digital ID to do most commercial interactions (banking, buying things, travel, etc), it means the government can revoke your ability to do any of those commercial interactions (or even other things that aren't strictly commercial, think "travel papers" for driving out of state).
And it doesn't even have to be in response to criminal actions. You too too many trips this year? Well, you've used up your CO2 budget as a citizen, have fun not buying CO2-intensive food (meat). Said something racist online? Well we certainly can't let a person like you buy a car now, can we?
And yes, things like credit cards and credit scores are centrally managed to a degree, and Visa/Mastercard can deny transactions for somewhat-arbitrary reasons (they're actually fairly legally limited in how they can do this, it's not totally arbitrary). But these things are not tied into every aspect of your life (your bank doesn't necessarily know how many miles you've driven this year), whereas states can (or can invent the legal authority to) tie a digital ID into everything.
The government can already do this today in the US, they can put your ID on a fly denylist, your passport on a "always go to secondary screening list" (ask anyone who's ever been to Iran on vacation and then decided to travel to the US) and your license plate on a wanted list.
It provides convenience, and the only thing I'd lose of it was hypothetically revoked(the government has no such powers, and are unlikely to gain them, more on that later) is that convenience.
The reason the government is unlikely to gain those powers is that it would require a change in the grundlag, and such changed has to be approved twice, and there has to be an election between the two approvals.
How is it a permission system? It's a way to prove your identity safely, online. No proposal/implementation that I'm aware of (maybe outside of China, but I'm not familiar enough) that actually conditionally does so based on preconditions and blocks you from actions. It would probably be actively illegal to do so in multiple countries.
> But these things are not tied into every aspect of your life (your bank doesn't necessarily know how many miles you've driven this year)
I mean, that's not true. LexisNexis is the company many car vendors send your driving data to, to be bought by insurance companies to do adaptive pricing. Banks don't necessarily need that data, but if they did, they could buy it too.
Which is why it's better if it's the government - there can be laws, regulations, pressure, judicial reviews to ensure that only legitimate uses are fine, and no such discrimination is legal. Take a look at credit scores in the US - they're run by private for profit companies, sold to whoever wants them, so credit scores have become a genuine barrier to employment, housing, etc. If this were managed by a state entity (like in France, Banque de France stores all loan data, and when someone wants to give you a loan, they check with them what your current debts are, and if you have defaulted on any recently; that's the only data they can get and use), there could be strong controls on who accesses the data and uses it for what.
Can someone revoke your ability to prove your identity? To pick an example, say, the far right wins an election and decides that trans people need to go back to their birth genders, and revokes the validity for the identifiers of anyone that has transitioned.
If you live in a country that runs the risk of being captured by fascists or religious fanatics digital ID is the least of your problem.
The examples don't even make sense historically. Haven't you noticed that most governments are failing to decarbonize, and government force against citizens is usually against the left?
Defend everyone's free speech. Don't require the necessity of unfair accusations. The destruction of people's lives over unfair accusations is simply a failure of due process and the desire of people to join a mob for safety. You should hate that no matter what you think about the right to free expression and belief. Anyone who would earnestly defend mob justice led by demagogues and supported by people afraid to be targeted next has a particular demagogue who they back.
To the extent that our society is better for extending free speech to racists it has nothing to do with them deserving anything, but with the costs of empowering any fallible human institution to deny anyone things that that particular group of people do not deserve, and the cost of failing to make that distinction is being susceptible to being convinced that some other group truly does not deserve it and therefore some institution should be empowered to identify members of that group and deny it to them.
Also, it's logically incoherent how you're portraying mob justice as a bad thing while rejecting governmental regulation. The entire idea of the state having a monopoly on violence is to prevent mob justice, or individuals taking the law into their own hands. Basic civics.
I'm generally in favor of free speech, but there are thorny issues associated with it that "free speech absolutists" aren't interrogating because they stop at "racists should be able to say what they want".
One is free to say racist things. Others are free to mock them in return.
Racists are not free from consequences. If they don't like others freely expressing themselves in return, at the rhetorical and emotional expense of the racist, racists can freely express themselves in their home.
You're advocating a very reductive approach to free speech.
The individual victims of racist speech would strongly disagree with that.
Being a racist is mostly useless and self-serving, but if you make any particular scientific position illegal, it's identical to having state defined science. That's how we got people passing bills to define pi and Lysenkoism. It's how we institutionalized chattel slavery and sometimes teaching black people to read punishable by death.
The goal of government isn't to promote your "correct" opinions. The goal of government should be summarize the beliefs of a fully-informed public in order to act on their behalf.
I fully agree with your position here, but do you think the government has a roll in making sure the public is not misled or believes things that "experts" consider to be false? Do you think expert opinions should carry more weight that the average Joe?
I think my position is that the government is a tool we, the taxpayer, should use to investigate things and educate us of its findings. That this should be done in an open and transparent way so that we can trust the results. I don't think for profit companies should responsible for educating people. (sorry for the tangent)
I'm generally in favor of free speech, so your argument is not new to me. It's also not relevant to what I said, since you missed the point.
Also, you think racism is unpopular?
These days, bigots are getting their teachers thrown out of school. It just happened at OU.
Universities are dropping DEI because Trump asked them to. Many companies are acting similarly, obviously in some sectors more than others.
Ask minorities if racism and other forms of bigotry are unpopular. You'll probably get a different perspective than the one you gave me. That is unless the only minority folks you know are Clarence Thomas and Vivek Ramaswamy.
It's a single point of failure. Digital ID servers on creation because as valuable to compromise as value_of_bank_hack*bank_count plus whatever other services are rolled in.
Furthermore now only one warrant is needed, or one illegal executive order. Take the USA as a live example - legal protections aren't actually real, a government official with enough political power can just do whatever they want while the courts struggle to keep up, and then just ignore court orders.
If your identity is spread out in many different ways, at least then there's more friction to compromise. Just because one bank capitulates doesn't mean the actor immediately has health information on you, for example. Just because the unemployment office capitulates doesn't mean the actor has your financial records.
My current interpretation is that they are fear mongering about violence because they are actually way more racist than they admit publicly, and might want to remove more people than they were letting on initially.
So okay you can definitely disagree with that, and how you feel about it can definitely be influenced by how much you feel threatened (personally or network) and that’s valid.
But why do we think that they are using this as a ruse to like become despotically authoritarian in general? Do we think that the borders were opened intentionally to fabricate this “crisis”? If not, it would be such a huge coincidence, because there are a zillion reasons to be concerned about the demographic situation without needing to use it as a smokescreen, what are the odds that this problem organically appeared and then they happen to be able to take advantage of it?
Note that I’m not asserting that the borders weren’t opened intentionally to fabricate this problem to which they can react with a “solution”, that sounds exactly like something a government would do. I just don’t hear anyone saying that out loud, at least, and having personal network or moral values or whatever threatened and reacting to that just seems a lot more likely to me as a reason why people feel like the world is ending.
Probably because the actions being taken are against people of every category; illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, and naturally born citizens.
As has been noted, _anyone_ not being entitled due process means _nobody_ is entitled to due process. Because then can kidnap you, claim you're "of a group not entitled to due process", and do whatever they want to you. And you can't push back because you're not in that group... because you need due process to do that.
> But why do we think that they are using this as a ruse to like become despotically authoritarian in general?
At some point, you have to call a duck a duck. They're doing things that despotically authoritarian would do, over and over. They may or may not _think_ that's what their goal is, but it clearly is.
Are you referring to getting arrested and released due to some suspicion (let’s say the suspicion is always fabricated for the sake of argument), or deported, or something else?
On due process, if someone accidentally gets a free flight to a foreign country, that totally sucks and they should be paid compensation, but let’s not pretend that deportation is the same as what authoritarian regimes typically do. Have people disappeared off the face of the earth? I think the Germans of the ‘30s would have a very different reputation if they had simply attempted to deport all the Jews…
Getting arrested with no valid cause doesn't "totally suck", it's a fundamental violation of the most basic rights of anyone living in a functioning country. As long as you can just pick up anyone you want, nobody has rights. You have a basic right to not be arrested for doing nothing wrong, and yet that's exactly what ICE is doing to tens of thousands of Americans.
>I think the Germans of the ‘30s would have a very different reputation if they had simply attempted to deport all the Jews…
Which is what they were literally doing. At first. But when you consider human beings as corrosive to your society, you will never be satisfied with just getting them out of your borders. The same people who treat prison rape as a good punishment for criminals will not be satisfied with illegal aliens just being removed, especially since they will "come back".
We've been through all this before. We literally signed treaties with Native Americans, but letting them have all this land just wasn't acceptable because they were "savages" that don't deserve it, and weren't being as useful with it as we would be!
It is established that hundreds of detainees from the July 2025 Alligator Alcatraz intake were unaccounted for in ICE’s online system by late August and reported as such through September 2025, with recurring reporting of about 800 with no online record and some 450 with unclear location data.
Are you being facetious, or do you genuinely think so lightly of people being black bagged with no due process and deported to a random country that you'll joke about it being a "free flight?"
Also, you seem to not be aware that deportation and "voluntary deportation (via various forms of pressure)" of Jewish people was the step Nazi Germany did before the concentration camps.
Is that not a valid take? Does it not apply somehow? If I put myself in their shoes, that is how I feel.
First off, maybe Americans do move to Sweden, and maybe sometimes they overstay their visas. On the other hand, for decades, various aspects of Sweden encourage this, such as the economic environment - turns out Swedes don't like picking apples, and if some Americans (a small percentage) don't overstay their visas, the apples don't get picked, and Sweden's apple industry collapses within a single season. So the society implicitly approves of having as many Americans as they can get, even if the government goes back and forth on the issue. As a result of this you have Americans with two generations of descendants that have lived in Sweden for decades and are undocumented or perhaps documented under some program that the new government of Sweden just decides it doesn't like. Or maybe they're citizens and the new government just wants to start denaturalizing.
> or even targeted personally because I sound American
I challenge you to really think deeply about this position. Think about what it means for a State to decide that all people from a whole bunch of different countries kinda look the same because of the color of their skin, or kinda have similar accents, and then just start arresting people based off of that. What does that mean for other people who happen to have accents? Who happen to have that one color of skin? Just typing it out makes me feel disgusted, it's flagrantly racist. Why don't you feel that way?
Finally, I really deeply wish to impress upon you the critical importance of due process. It genuinely is All or None. There is no "due process for people who immigrated legally and no due process for people who immigrated illegally," because due process is the method that determines that. If due process is gone, there is no "oopsies we deported you by accident," and there is no "hang on a second, I'm an American, I don't even have a passport, just look at my driver's license!" Do you understand that when due process is suspended, nobody is safe from being black bagged? How could you justify that? How do you not immediately think of the SS?
And all this for what? People being black bagged at the streets, people stuck in traffic tear gassed by high strung ICE agents, businesses being raided, all this violence because why? What actual problems were there from undocumented immigrants? Because deporting them is hurting the economy rather than helping it, so it wasn't the economy. Nobody's taking up the low paid fruit picking jobs that undocumented immigrants worked, so it wasn't for the jobs. Crime isn't going down, so it wasn't public safety. It's so transparently been a distraction from the failure of the ruling class to improve affordability that even my most stalwart of Trump supporting relatives are turning against it and looking to left economic populists like Mamdani.
I the number of people who just do not get this staggering.
It's practically a vacation, you're right. I really don't know what they're complaining about /s
> think the Germans of the ‘30s would have a very different reputation if they had simply attempted to deport all the Jews...
There's no way you've just written that. I urgently suggest you to pick a history book.
I’m not trying to convince anyone that there isn’t authoritarian regime behavior happening. I am just trying to figure out what people are talking about when they refer to that as if it is happening.
I am using “Germans of the ‘30s” as a euphemism. Obviously I know the timeline of what happened, you are just misinterpreting as an opportunistic drama nitpick. Whether the misinterpretation is happening consciously or subconsciously, I don’t know.
If the “Germans of the ‘30s” had only ever done deportations, which they did do, i.e. had they stopped there, we would not view them in the same way. Ergo, if the current regime stops with deportations, which we have no evidence to show that they won’t, then there is nothing to suggest that they will end up behaving in an authoritarian way, because further massive steps are required to get there. And besides, the current American regime has tremendously more legal justification for these deportations than the Nazis had for the Jews deportation. The Nazis presumably had to change German law to even deport the Jews. No change of law is required here, because it is perfectly congruent with the existing legal framework (and was done consistently for decades prior to this administration, just more quietly and I guess in smaller numbers).
It’s weird how slippery slope arguments are only valid in public discourse when it comes to the Nazis, and in that case it’s so valid it is just taken as a fact. Just because someone is doing something that can be squinted at to look like something that happened prior to a genocide, does not mean that it will lead to genocide. The ad absurdum version of this line of thinking would suggest banning vegetarianism or painting, as genocidal mania soon followed.
You realize half of Americans literally don’t care right?
But I respect your effort for trying. I will stay on my gaming chair and do nothing (won’t vote, won’t donate, won’t raise awareness).
> That didn’t happen.
> And if it did, it wasn’t that bad.
> And if it was, that’s not a big deal.
> And if it is, that’s not my fault.
> And if it was, I didn’t mean it.
> And if I did, you deserved it.
You've checked off the first 3 so far. The government has checked off all 6 of them.
Quite low. Borders weren't open to fabricate an excuse to engage in authoritarianism - the excuse was simply fabricate, whole-cloth, with no basis in reality to justify it.
There is no immigration problem in the USA. Large portions of the American economy are dependent on immigration, documented or otherwise. Immigrants, documented or otherwise, commit less crimes per-capita than USA citizens.
So, the current government is using immigration as a flash-point to get themselves elected, and as an ongoing distraction away from their failure to address their other platform (affordability). Getting to be more authoritarian is the stated goal, based on the plan outlined in "Project 2025."
Europeans are projected to numerically lose control of America, which in a democracy is equivalent to losing control functionally.
It’s very convenient for a lot of people to pretend this doesn’t matter at all, and many or even most Europeans have at this point been brainwashed through childhood conditioning to not be able to go there even in their thoughts, lest they become the deepest evil, according to their conditioning.
But, in a sane world, anything pre-1945, the statement “Europeans are projected to lose control of America within single digit decades” would spur a panic.
Let me guess, I’m just a horrible immoral person and I’m not allowed to think about this, right? Do you have any arguments besides that one?
What should have happened was to stick with the individualist, civil rights notion that all men and women are created equal. Full stop.
Your complaint about the brainwashing is valid to a point, as no one should be raised having guilt for being born of a particular race/ethnicity, and in fact people should take pride in their heritage.
However, you do not explain why you think it matters whether a majority of the US remains of European stock, (by which I guess you mean not mixed race as well). And this is where your argument is transparently, well, racist. Because to explain that, you would probably need to denigrate other races.
I think you could make an argument that Europeans should stay a majority in Europe, on the basis that it is Europe. But America is not Europe, and never was. Europeans were a minority throughout the Americas when they showed up, and they will be a minority here again, and I don't see a big problem with that.
[edit] Just to add, there was nothing "sane" about the way Europeans conducted themselves either on the continent or here, especially in the decade prior to 1945. Also, prior to 1945, there was no general notion of "European", but rather many smaller nationalities. From 1941, it was a widely held idea that people of German descent for instance were a threat to America and should be deported. In the 19th century, a lot of people thought the same about the Irish, and you would have had to replace "European" with "English" in your statement to get some sort of nativist reaction.
This is incomprehensible to me, since there are no European Americans, there's just... Americans.
> Let me guess, I’m just a horrible immoral person and I’m not allowed to think about this, right?
Yes, you correctly intuit that there's something inherently wrong about being a racist. I support you in following this thread to figure out why people are disgusted when you talk this way.
What does this even mean?
You realize you descend from africans right? How african do you identify? Is it bad that you don't identify as african even though it is provable that you are descended from africans? Is it bad that the UK developed a culture that wasn't really african?
>Let me guess, I’m just a horrible immoral person and I’m not allowed to think about this, right?
You are allowed to think about it, and others are allowed to rightly point out how stupid, utterly unfounded, and abysmal, and utterly pathetic such a thought is. It's deeply childish. Grow up.
Oh no, the UK might be more brown in 100 years, what a shame, anyway who wants Tikka Misala? No? Aw, well lets have a cuppa instead, freshly imported from asia!
You know the Hamburger is german right? Or all that delicious cajun food is, not from white people, though it has some french influence thanks to the brits deporting my family 300 years ago. Or how saint patty's day isn't something the Irish Celebrate?
Meanwhile, do you know where Algebra comes from? Not Europeans.
Except, by leaning on European "control" of the US, it's a hundred times dumber! Your own logic is that each and every one of us should be violently deported because this country belongs to Native Americans.
Fuck me, do you even know how the US got Texas? A bunch of Americans illegally settled in Mexican land (that was owned by the spanish at the time) and cried to Uncle Sam to "protect" them and the state that resulted from that behavior has the utter gall to assert that their state should "Stay European"!
God forbid your children have to interact with other human beings who have different cultures than them, the utter horror. God forbid a "European" country have to learn a second language, that definitely isn't "European"!
>But, in a sane world, anything pre-1945, the statement “Europeans are projected to lose control of America within single digit decades” would spur a panic.
The US quite literally killed 600k of our own people to give some control to imported africans and their descendants. America started as a multicultural nation sharing land with Native Americans, and supporting extremely varied immigrants basically without a formal process for hundreds of years. The KKK came back to life partially to oppress french and irish catholics because "European" wasn't actually what racists cared about. The Irish and Italians and Jews were "others" because racists DGAF about European ancestry or purity.
Do you even see how trivially you are being played? Do you really think the administration full of first and second generation immigrants from Non European countries gives a single fuck about America becoming "Non European"?
I have no problem with uncapped migration, but to flat out refuse to enforce the law is a bit ridiculous. What should be done is simple: Congress should just pass a law like is expected of the Legislative branch that says all immigrants are welcome.
As an added benefit, it would get rid of the illegal wages overnight. Americans complain that illegals are taking their jobs, but they're only taking the ones that aren't filled by US laborers. And US laborers can't legally compete with illegals if illegals are being paid less than minimum wage.
A single, simple, straight-forward law could fix all those issues with the stroke of a pen.
The Biden admin tried to pass the single most restrictive immigration law the US has ever seen with bipartisan support from all but the most progressive democrats.
Please tell me, who killed that bill?
>As an added benefit, it would get rid of the illegal wages overnight
Speaking of laws not being enforced, republicans have spent 30 years bitching about immigration while utterly refusing to enforce existing laws punishing primarily republican owned businesses for hiring illegal immigrants and suppressing wages. Gee, surely they care about fixing things right?
Even Trump's admin is still refusing to enforce those laws. Desantis spent five minutes suggesting he might finally enforce such laws and was immediately stopped by republicans
>That seems problematic to me for an executive branch.
So you voted for an executive branch that demonstrably violates all sorts of laws, refuses to punish friends for violating laws, and pardons literal war criminals or literal scammers if they donate enough. Good job. Please tell me how pardoning the guy from Nikola Motors is enforcing the law and a good use of the executive branch.
>What should be done is simple: Congress should just pass a law like is expected of the Legislative branch that says all immigrants are welcome.
Again, democrats love nothing more than passing laws in congress and there is ample evidence of that. It is republicans who have spent 50 years OPENLY not doing their jobs in congress. They are the ones saying, openly, that congress not passing anything is an intended outcome. They are the ones saying that preventing democrats from doing anything at all is intended. Democrats, despite such bad faith, still cross the aisle and pass things republicans want, because the US system requires bipartisanship as a feature.
When the illegal migrant laborers come to cash their checks every week, those checks carry the signature of republican families. If you've ever bought potatoes that come from a Maine farm, they were picked by migrant labor, overseen by angry and lazy republicans who do nothing but bitch about migrant labor while smoking weed with the local cops, and choosing to hire that exact labor. LePage made zero effort to enforce laws on the book to stop those very republicans from using migrant labor.
Why hire the politicians that have a demonstrated history of making no attempt to solve the problem, voted in by the people causing the problem in the first place?
Meanwhile here in Maine, bulk asylum migration is pretty much the only reason why Lewiston is a functioning and thriving City, and migrants from former french colonies in africa are the only people who can still speak french and carry that culture after the KKK spent the early part of the 1900s stamping out my french ancestry and culture.
Also, I understand why you presume I voted for the republican candidate during the most recent presidential election, but I assure you I did not. Trump's interview with Bloomberg Business solidified beyond any doubt that he was a fool that had no idea how tarrifs worked.
I am equally dissatisfied with the lack of enforcement against employers of illegal migrants and agree wholeheartedly with your sentiment. My initial response was to point out that somehow Trump has quelled the rush of migrants without new legislation as a reference against what Biden's administration seemed not to be able to do. But you make a very good point about the unreasonable unwillingness of republicans to pass legislation that would likely have dramatically helped the situation.
Thanks again.
Well this is a controversial statement. Many people have thought there was an immigration problem in the USA since well before Trump entered politics.
If I pretend to believe that there is definitely no immigration problem, though, then I agree with you. But like I said, that is a controversial statement.
Would you believe that the people who support this just do believe there is an immigration problem? People are allowed to care about things other than the economy and crime stats, by the way.
Yes, of course I believe that there's people who believe there's an immigration problem.
> People are allowed to care about things other than the economy and crime stats, by the way.
What sort of problems would one believe can arise from immigration that aren't related to the economy or public safety?
I've been trying to make sense of the statistics. Interested to hear any explanation that can reconcile these contrasting observations.
You stated this very well.
But I do think it's a ruse. I don't have a problem with enforcing the law on illegal immigration.[0] But I do think the deployment of National Guard and in some cases Marines on American streets, allegedly to disperse anti-ICE protests, is a long game to make sure that there will be no judicial obstacles in the way if MAGA loses the 2028 election fair and square, cries foul that the election was stolen, decides to send in their own slate of electors, and faces nationwide protests.
I live in Portland. I see the ridiculous cosplay of protesters outside the ICE detention facility. I see the absurdity of deploying troops to face off against them. If these clowns can be used as a casus belli to declare war and use the US military against the civilian population, then it will be no stretch to do so when a large portion of the population rises up to demand a proper electoral count in 2028. That's the scenario I see when I see the willy-nilly, unnecessary use of federalized troops on American soil.
And for the record, I'm a registered Republican and mostly libertarian.
[0] I am not anti-immigration, and I don't view immigration as a "demographic problem". I don't care what race people are as long as they are coming here for the right reasons and want to integrate and be productive members of our society. I was also an illegal immigrant in Europe for years. I accept the fact that countries have the right to decide who they want to accept as citizens, and that breaking those rules may damage your ability to become a citizen of the country you want to be accepted into. And that going there illegally may carry certain risks.
That hasn't happened though. Deploying the national guard to stare down and maybe tear gas some clownish protestors is pretty typical stuff, not a civil war.
By the way, I was in Seattle when the CHAZ stuff was happening and saw firsthand how both sides of the media were lying about the reality on the ground. Half the media wanted me to believe it was a violent insurrection and the other half wanted me to believe it was just a family friendly Woodstock situation. Reality as I observed it: it was just a bunch of losers huffing spray paint fumes, with the police hanging back a few blocks letting them make fools of themselves. I saw no violence, I wasn't stopped at an armed checkpoint by AK-47 wielding masked rebels like Fox News promised (I didn't seriously expect that, lmao.)
Maybe because many things Trump does and says are blatant lies and shameless despotic authoritarian ones? Ignoring courts, ignoring the constitution especially the first amendment, using his office for personal gain. I don't think I have to give examples because they're just too many. Only last week he pardoned a convicted drug dealer who was Hondurese president while planning to invade Venezuela and "just killing people" because of drugs for which there isn't even any evidence. It was just the last of many (including silk road captain Ross Ulbricht). Anyway that's just one of the recent things.
And the borders were never actually open. It's really hard to migrate to the US and the illegals do all the work the Americans won't do for almost nothing.
The real problem with public safety is the huge income gaps, leading to disenfranchised ghettos with festering organised crime gangs. A lot of them might be immigrants but many are born Americans. The thing they have in common that they are poor and have no upward opportunities.
[1]: https://e-estonia.com/digital-id-protecting-against-surveill...
The idea of all these digital documents is never a problem until you go through the exercise of figuring out what it will all be used for (controlling you).
Same with conscription, which needless to say was invented and effectively implemented prior to the invention of digital anything.
Yes, fight in advance to prevent such a situation, but don’t assume you will win. It’s good to have a backup plan.
Conscription has never been popular, and I think today in healthy industrialised nations it would be an exceptionally hard sell. Ukraine, Russia and (somewhat) Israel give us hints here of what might happen if the US or Germany or India started drafting all able-bodied young men.
It would be a disaster, but my guess is that it wouldn't stop governments from trying.
Of course it does. It makes it possible to track exactly where you are and what you are doing. So it pushes the balance of power towards the authorities.
No??? What do you imagine, that every single transaction you make, like buying bread, will require a Digital ID? Why on earth would you imagine that?
Why would anyone propose, and why would anyone agree to, Digital/Physical ID becoming mandatory for mundane transactions? It doesn't make any sense and it would never fly.
2. Why single out Ukraine here? Isn't this what any country does with people who don't appear for the draft? (Unless they can pay a doctor to diagnose them with bone spurs or something?)
With the right papers clearing them of draft obligations, sure.
>2. Why single out Ukraine here?
Because this is the best example right now that everyone knows and can somewhat relate to. Unless you happen to know any other western country currently doing this.
https://united24media.com/latest-news/russia-starts-issuing-...
And my current EU country would also draft me by force after I applied and got citizenship, which is why I don't do it. Sure, unlike Russia or Ukraine, I wouldn't be sent to fight in a war (for now), but many countries have mandatory conscription for their male citizens.
So there's nothing special or noteworthy about Russia's conscriptions of its own naturalized citizens, especially given its at war, so I don't get the point you were trying to make with that article you shared.
Did you assume that naturalized citizens would somehow be spared obligations of military service just because they weren't born there? That's not how citizenship works.
Which is still grown men abducting people in broad daylight, just not in Ukraine.
Basically the Russian's are conscripting people flying in to airports, both regional and international. With an added nuance of racism against non-Slavs.
>> 1. This is a wild exaggeration:[1] There are lots of men walking in Ukrainian streets.
> With the right papers clearing them of draft obligations, sure.
So basically you agree with me that it was a wild exaggeration?
[1] Also your computer seem to have a bug where its clipboard selectively remove words (see the part in italics) from the text you quote without inserting ellipsis or any kind of marker to indicate it. The alternative would be that you very deliberately misrepresent what I wrote and that wouldn't be a nice thing to accuse you of.
2. No, my computer has no clipboard bug, I just don't want o clutter a thread by constantly quoting the previous entire conversation like you're doing just to only add one line of thought to it, especially given it's clear from the context what I'm referring to, given that you can just scroll up a bit and read the entire comment if you want to drive deep in the full context of the conversation.
3. And you can drop the mafia style "it wouldn't be nice if I were to accuse you of X" tactics, since it's not a good strategy for arguments and I don't care what you want to accuse me of, I stand by what I say. By all means feel free to accuse me of anything you want, but don't be a coy weasel about it.
But it's just an exaggeration claiming that anybody walking the streets are just grabbed and thrown into a van and shipped to a conscription office. That is not what is happening.
It's not that they get conscripted that's the problem, it's that people are being chased and violently thrown into vans of the street without any kind of warning or check of conscription status beforehand, Which I argued is proof the government doesn't need any kind of digital ID to oppress you..
There's video evidence of such events online, check X and Telegram. Just because it doesn't happen in the capital and places where tourists like you go to, doesn't mean it's somehow OK or that it's not happening in other regions like villages where it's less likely important people with influence live unlike the capital or large cities.
Russia has faked videos in the past even prior to the whole video Gen AI slop.
I will believe it when someone reputable runs a good investigation and does some real journalism rather than just sourcing Russian propaganda and suggesting reality is some lovecraftian nightmare
I wish this kind of nonsense “you are helpless” posting were forbidden by HN rules. It serves no useful purpose.
you apply to or for anything.. and they just give you the option of authorizing via singpass.. and you use your passkey-like singpass app to authorize it... and its done!
you go to hospital and they need your medical records? singpass
you go to university and they need your academic history? singpass
you apply for bank loan? insurance? license? food handling permit? singpass
Or is there some way to restrict which party gets which data?
https://docs.developer.singpass.gov.sg/docs/getting-started/...
https://docs.developer.singpass.gov.sg/docs/data-catalog-myi...
As part of the flow you’ll be shown the list of data that’s being requested.
It is trade-off, but probably lot more accountable than paper records in big hospitals.
Yet we already had an interesting situation which shows just how complicated trust is. Sberbank, the Russian bank, was slated to issue digital identity certifications in March 2022. Then Russia invaded Ukraine and Sberbank got booted out of the country before actually gaining that capability.
What if it was March 2021 instead? How would we treat signatures on documents verified by Sberbank a day before the invasion etc.? What if the content of that document was really suspicious? Etc.
Hacker News has a unique user base. Professional Software Engineers, many of whom are Senior or Principal or Staff in level. Leaders and Managers and Architects.
I think, anytime we design a new system, we need to carefully think about how it can be used and what can go wrong. Not just with the current owners and users of that system, but future users and owners too.
Discrimination is one of those areas where identity management can go wrong. Discrimination and deliberate but undetectable Denial of Service "bugs" that always seem to hit the same types of users in the legs.
And getting evidence of wrongdoing like that takes years. It's nothing to an institution, but a lifetime to an individual. Sometimes there aren't even recordings or logs of individuals trying to ensure service and legal contracts are upheld. And again, the legal process is nothing for a large institution but soul crushing for an individual. And the solution always seems to be more institutional power, not individual power.
That kind of education in Engineering Ethics is common nowadays in University and College.
A lot of us who grew up self-educated in the early days or specialized in other schools may have missed out on those lessons early in our career.
And a person who goes through a Brazil-esque nightmare like that comes out at the end with a broken reputation. And always whispers and subtext floating around even after justice.
And there may be technically sophisticated intelligence services that can detect that kind of subtle tampering. But it's not the responsibility of other country's intelligence services to protect citizens of countries other than theie own.
Going through that I can say strength wouldn't be enough.
It doesn't seem like those should matter so much, but it really does make everything about democracy easier.
Things get much weirder when the population isn't so low or isn't relatively concentrated.
BankID is very convenient, I use it all the time here in Norway but, at least theoretically, it is a private initiative of the banks and not the state. It is not compulsory to have BankID.
No thank you, I'll take no ID over ID any day, and at worst, a physical plastic card over a bullsh*t digital solution that is used to lock you out off society.
Sweden is really the worst possible approach, is authoritarian, and hands over the power to the banks controlling the digital ID system.
I believe you'll find that no ID, which is the American approach, is, in actual fact, worse than digital ID.
Also, authoritarian? You're not forced to use BankID, what are you even on about?
Convenience - what you’re describing is convenience
It’s totally fine if you prioritize that over everything else, but my only thought here is that everyone should be crystal clear in what they are trading off for convenience
It’s convenient for the government too, tk have a single identifier to thread a persons entire life
We are, sadly, well beyond any expectation of privacy, but we should at least be aware of it and try to not make it worse
Yes it's selling point is convenience. Convenience is good.
In this particular case I disagree that there's a price in privacy. At least currently, and the way the Swedish electronic ID is implemented, I don't see it.
With other variations there might be problems of course, though I'd worry more about someone messing up the security of it rather than privacy
You can never put the genie back in the bottle and you never know who will be in charge in 20 years
If trump was elected prime minister of Sweden, he wouldn't have been able to do half the stuff he's done.
And what has he done? Enforced immigration laws according to written law? Reorganized the executive branch?
He can't pass any laws by himself. The judiciary can overturn his executive orders.
And then bullied executive who dare disagree with him (e.g. jan 6 commission, and his first impeachment) and even perform completely baseless criminal investigations that (e.g. against Comey) that are so ill-advised that he has to appoint unqualified prosecutors to even file these claims because no serious one would stand for it.
He now wields enough scary-factor that even though we have handwritten proof of his involvement with Eepstein that his own party is too cowardly to impeach him or even release the files (the same party that freaked out about Clinton getting a blowjob now afraid to go after a pedophile, and one who flirts with the idea of pardoning Maxwell and moved her to a minimum security facility)
The President nominates but the Senate approves Supreme Court appointees.
And just because you disagree with rulings doesn’t mean they are “violations of the law”.
The President is also head of the executive, as in they have direct authority for all executive functions. Yes they can fire anyone they want. Trump is hardly the first to do that.
In Parliamentary systems the Prime Minister has far more power. Their party has a majority to pass whatever law they please, combined with a rubber stamp senate.
I think they're only cowardly because each elected individual's goal is to survive long enough to get a sweet exit deal. Voting to impeach Trump is the correct thing to do (blatant corruption, violation of due processes, etc.), but it will surely lessen their chances of reelection.
I think Congress is full of a bunch of individuals trying to maximize personal gain agnostic of the outcome for the country, but I'm not sure how to realign the incentives to fix that.
He can already do that?
We can all play "I struggle to see" and throw out weak arguments but it does not advance the topic
You just said "privacy" and pretended that's an argument
For those who don’t know: by just looking up a name, you can find a persons birthday, address, who also lives there. Oh and the person’s salary is public too.
Ridiculous.
Try lying about your wealth during an election in Sweden!
Did trump's tax filings ever get published by the way? I recall there was a lot of outcry for them during the last election cycle........
NB I was calling out your weak arguments. I wasn't attempting to do something that isn't my job ;)
For countries introducing digital ID etc, it's for the advocates to present a strong argument and evidence how it will respect privacy, how it will remain secure etc beyond "trust us bro" and "I can't see how it wouldn't be secure"
There have been 0 incidents of any of the hysterical hypotheticals y'all are on about actually happening, maybe it's time for a reality check?
I can't speak for Sweden but that is not true in Norway where we also use BankID (I'm not sur but I think it originated in Norway).
Source?
https://www.newsweek.com/people-get-microchips-implanted-tha...
"In 2017, a railway company in Sweden began allowing travelers to load their ticket information onto the microchips implanted in their bodies, according to BBC News. Railway conductors were then able to use smartphones to detect the chip and confirm the travelers' tickets."
We can probably find more crack addicts in Sweden...
Let put the brakes on these slippery slopes, otherwise we'll be afraid of our own shadows soon. Scepticism is fine, paranoia isn't.
You mention crack addicts there. Yeah, they're kind of similar. With a new drug like cocaine, it starts with a handful of impressionable people who get given it cheap. Then they influence other people who take it up, and before you know it you have drug epidemic on your hands. (As most developed countries do.? The difference is that the ruling class doesn't openly encourage cocaine use, because it doesn't benefit them in anyway (other than doping up potential troublemakers).
You should read some of the Fourth Industrial Revolution material that governments and their advisers put out. They are quite plain about where they want this to head. Transhumanism is sold as a means to improve us, but it can also be used as a means of control. (There is a lot of hypocrisy in such documents — how can one argue that we need to lower carbon emissions and at the same time engage in project which increase electricity usage? That seems contradictory at least for now, because even renewables generate have environmental issues. These data centres will gobble up more energy than people's homes do.)
Governments are far from perfect, but why attack governments when - again - this is about private individuals and businesses?
Don't put ideology ahead of logic.
If you mean Swedish dogs and cats, then yes. Otherwise, no.
You shouldn't believe everything they say on YouTube.
Also, the Bible is mostly lies, don't trust that either.
I'm sure some idiot put a dog microchip in their hand for shits and giggles, but so what? Their hand their choice.
Similar scenario here. The old boiling a frog scenario. Some company trying to persuade its employees to get microchipped. Also other interests trying to push it. The dog thing is not unconnected, even with that, doing it to pets is partly a soft sell to saying humans can get one too. It has been normalised in science fiction films for decades.
"Their hand, their choice" turns into "they got a microchip, and why don't you?" into "everyone's got a microchip, why don't you?" and then "why the hell don't you have a microchip?" and eventually legal consequences for not having one. Of course microchips are only one possibility for tagging people... And the idea won't go away.
https://www.newsweek.com/people-get-microchips-implanted-tha...
Mandatory microchipping people is firmly in sci-fi land, and, as many other things first tried out in sci-fi land it's not something particularly relevant for a very long time, I suspect. It's not very useful, to start with (compared to what we use already).
Online banking vs physical buildings.. that's a purely economic issue, and can't be compared to something like chipping.
Dogs and cats are microchipped because they can't talk, and for other non-human reasons.
It's a driver's licence infringing on my privacy too? Cause they're mostly the same, at least the way they're implemented in Sweden
The point is that the more identifiable information that the monopoly on violence has the easier it is for something, anything really, to be used against you should your tribal affiliation conflict with the ruling party.
This is like politics 101
Information that was previously in paper form and scattered across various bureaus is now being digitised and centralised, but that's orthogonal to "digital ID"!
Much like all technologies they have social impact at their roots and have to be evaluated together
Once the infrastructure for mass surveillance is available, States are tempted to use it.
Also even if it may be ok in Sweden for cultural reasons, the rest of the world unfortunately isn't (but can enjoy private washing machines in exchange).
> "Legal" protections can disappear in one evening, and then you are left with a centralized system, very practical for population control.
but none of the upsides.
> "Legal" protections can disappear in one evening, and then you are left with a centralized system, very practical for population control.
but none of the upsides.
Once the eID system is set up and becomes ubiquitous, it will be trivial for companies to use eID to open any online account or reserve plane/train tickets. Therefore, giving enforcement forces very convenient access to all of my activity and allowing automated monitoring. Just look at what is happening in China.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/01/china-bans-23m...
I feel like what you mean by "digital ID" is very different to what others mean.
Here's a marketing page for a WIP pan-EU project to implement this kind of digital ID: https://commission.europa.eu/topics/digital-economy-and-soci...
There are also various plans for age-verification schemes that should (partially) preserve anonymity, but those aren't implemented and it's not what people mean by "digital ID".
Why would a porn site pay ten cents per visitor to get a legally binding id of its visitors? But even more importantly, why would anyone sign it?
Y'all seem to think digital ID is some kind of super-cookie that tracks your every move online.
It's not.
Requiring identification in situations that don't need it is where the problems start, but that's possible with analog IDs as well, and is often even worse there (since these provide neither security against digital copies, nor privacy, which digital ID can, e.g. via zero knowledge proofs).
Small external signers with a display and confirmation button are a nice compromise (and also largely solve MITM!), since I don't mind an external device being under somebody else's administrative control as long as I can run what I want on my smartphone or computer.
But people don't want to carry two things... Hopefully we can at least have both as alternatives going forward.
It can be moved into a security processor within the smartphone's SOC.
As an example, this was the security model for mobile contactless payments for the longest time, and arguably as a result these never really took off until Google came up with a software-only alternative for Android. The potential for rent seeking of the hardware vendor is often too great, and even absent that, it requires close cooperation of too many distinct entities (hardware vendor, OS developer, bank, maybe a payment scheme etc).
(Apple had no issues, because their ecosystem is already a fully walled garden, and they can usually get away with charging access fees even for non-security-relevant hardware interfaces.)
With a contactless smartcard, I might have to carry one more plastic card than strictly necessary, but the technology for that is pretty mature (wallets), and I can migrate to a new phone without any hassle or use my credential on somebody else's device in a pinch.
Selfie or video face verification is susceptible to deepfakes, and remote fingerprint reads would also require trusted reader hardware.
Some countries have domestic schemes implemented on the same cards (e.g. Germany), but these are not interoperable across the EU, and many countries just don't have any non-ICAO scheme on their cards to begin with, and are instead implementing eIDAS (the current EU digital signature scheme) using some alternate scheme.
Which is exactly the argument against digital ID, because it reduces the friction to asking for ID in situations that don't need it, causing it to become epidemic.
Meanwhile nearly all the instances where ID actually should be required are also instances where showing up in person should be required, like taking out your first line of credit with a financial institution, or signing on to a new job. Because the entire point is to verify that that person is the person on the ID and not someone in Russia who managed to hack their phone.
Availability has to be ensured just as much as security and privacy in such a scenario, and that's not trivial. (I still personally think it's worth trying.)
The US by contrast, has a distributed system where there are many authorities that can issue IDs that are valid for the activities of daily life.
The only common nationally issued ID in the US is a passport and people only get that for international travel -- and it wasn't even until 2024 that a majority of Americans even had one.
There are many instances throughout history of ID requirements being weaponized to suppress minority groups, from Apartheid Pass Laws, Jim Crow, or recent US suppression of minority, young, or transgender voters.
Of course, these things certainly aren't fixed by simply having more options to get a valid ID, but they are mitigated to some degree.
Or be forced to install yet another ID app from a private service that requires you have an iPhone or "compatible" Android.
The debate about this in the UK is just crazy. Notwithstanding the current "febrile" state of politics. It has always received weirdly vitriolic push back.
What really is the Government going to do with a digital ID service that they can't do already?
I just want to be able to give estate agents, solicitors, a bank, etc my ID number and a time-limited code that proves I am in control of that ID (or however that might work), and be done with it.
Because, as the Home Secretary herself observed, it would fundamentally change the relationship between the individual and the state.
> What really is the Government going to do with a digital ID service that they can't do already?
This gives the impression of having done no research into a topic of which you now opine opposition to be "weirdly vitriolic". We live in an age of search engines and GPTs, free encyclopaedias and entire lecture series online, and even libraries are still open and free, but you've done nothing to get past the very first thoughts you've had on the subject.
Was that weirdly vitriolic, or someone pointing out that an argument to undermine everyone's rights should have some effort behind it?
I addressed their unkind and ad hominem argument. If you think me unkind then I will shrug and say, in hacker parlance, they should RTFM. They have not put in the slightest work before opining and criticising, and on something as important as this?
May they receive such weird vitriol until they learn to at least Google first. Doesn't it automatically run a GPT for you now? They, and surely the people around them, will thank me for instilling such basic discipline.
Or just complain about “kindness” more - it’s easier to accuse others of being mean than to look in a mirror, I suppose.
In 20 years, the UK suffers a terrorist attack just before an election, and then elects a ultra right wing government on a platform of "remigrating foreigners." You're a British born citizen but your mom fled from Iran in the 80s and immigrated to the UK.
If you don't have digital ID, and the government decides to "remigrate all Iranians," they have to collect information from several different government groups, e.g. maybe your mom got a passport in which case one government agency may just know she's a non-native British citizen but nothing more. Maybe your immigration agency stands up to the government and engages in legal battles to prevent turning over immigration information.
However if there's a digital ID system that lets the government instantly know everything about a person, you lose the protection of friction.
I believe this is one of the fundamental premises of representative liberal democracy, and one of its most redeeming features: balance of power is spread not just between branches of government, but through ministries/departments/agencies, which makes it much harder for a despot to do despotism.
So I get the historical aversion to IDs as the stepping stone of governments to gaining access to potentially democracy-subverting informational hazmat, but these days, I feel like the downsides of not having a ubiquitous and privacy-preserving ID scheme vastly outweigh the little bit of extra friction of it will ever add.
"Digital ID" doesn't necessitate that all data is collected into one gigantic store with centralised access. Just that you can use the same attestation of identity to access the various systems. And you can also grant others access to a limited subset of the data.
If the government wanted to they could already have set up some direct access from (say) the passport office to HMRC. It's all digital anyway, backwards as the UK government can be, they're not sending people to pore over paper ledgers in person like in The Jackal.
Some of the system already works like this anyway with the share codes for permission to work for foreigners and proving your driving licence.
Theoretically you would also be able to have an audit log of who asked for attestation for access to which system using that ID. Which you currently don't have when everyone is doing it by passport scans, NI numbers given over the phone and so on.
What it does allow is a creeping over-attestation especially of non-government services where you need to use the ID to do things that were previously anonymous or at least potentially anonymous. But since you currently need to use a driving license or selfie to look at boobies, that's already a thing.
It also, depending on cryptographic implementation, can leak information about attestations directly to the government. For example if I certify my identity at BumTickling.com, the website might only find out that I'm over 18, but the government may then know that BT.com's operator requested attestation of my ID's age field. Whereas currently, BT.com's (probably) shady identity service partner may have my selfie and know I tried to look at BT.com, but the government (probably, maybe they forward these things secretly) doesn't know about it unless they audit that partner.
It also has the possibility to gate access to government services behind app installations which, when done lazily, means not only smartphones are required which is bad enough, but specifically Google and Apple devices.
“ICE was confirmed by independent review and U.S. judges to have violated laws including the Immigration Act of 1990 by interrogating and detaining people without warrants or review of their citizenship status”
Given that dragnet operations result in all sorts of random people being deported, including citizens, and given that sometimes these people are deported to countries where they face violence or death, you are arguing for state-sponsored violence without due process. Other than people immigrating, what other circumstances do you feel justify the elimination of due process?
You're presuming people that face death in other countries do so because they're criminals or something? Sometimes it's because they're the wrong religion or wrong political ideology. I really can't understand your psychopathy here.
I take quite seriously our American value of "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free." It's what made America the land of opportunity. For your country as well I recommend promoting this value, it's the ethically good position.
Suppose there is a law against being Jewish.
Also in what world would the answer to "making an ethnicity illegal" be "don't visit that country" instead of "that country has an unethical law and should change it?"
In the case of ID cards and the like, the state does not rule over the populace, it rules on behalf of the populace. I am innocent and they work for me. Hence, I do not have to prove to some random government agent who I am unless it is relevant to the task they perform, e.g.
- the police have a reasonable and justifiable suspicion that I am engaged in criminal activity - an immigration officer may only ask for my details when I am crossing a border or, again, have some reasonable and justifiable suspicion that I am in need of deportation etc. - Or perhaps I just need some documents from my local municipal office, and they rightly ask who I am and to prove it before giving out my private info.
Me going about my business is no business of the government's until I start abusing the rules.
The opposite view is that:
- I am ruled over - Any agent of the government can question me and prevent me from going about my business
Of course, in practice, the application of such liberal principles like not requiring ID to go about my day are often not done well, but to change the principle is to change the entire character of the most fundamental aspects of Englishness. You'll note, much of the continent lurches between different forms of collectivist oppressive government whereas, until of late, the UK has not. This is because of the lack of this fundamental principle there, I am sure of that, and those calling for these kind of ID laws, digital or otherwise, are not to be entertained.
The most interesting case will be the USA, where they still care about the principles of English liberty, far more than the English do.
> The fundamental proposition on which all of English culture flows from is that of innocence.
One thing I have found true (and somewhat different from other countries), when UK folks talk about how they view the police, it is generally beneficial. (Don't throw your tomatoes at me just yet!) Versus other countries, the police are viewed as more neutral or negative (especially the US). I always thought the idea of having no regular police carrying guns is a pretty brave policy in the 21st century. In many ways, imperfect policy, but it works well, and (appears) to reduce police violence against the public. On a more personal note, I also find the UK police are incredibly restrained during heated protests. Imperfect, yes, but they make a real effort. As an outsider, when I watch a short YouTube clip of a heated protest in the UK, and the police are doing their best to keep cool and not antogise the crowds. (I promise: I'm not here to shill for UK police; I'm sure they do some bad stuff too.) The best phrase that I ever heard from a British person to describe UK police: "They police by consent (of the people)." It is a powerful phrase and idea.
> Is this not true in all highly advanced democracies?
Been to Japan?
Sure, its slightly harder to have a government issue credentials to everybody and not have them abuse the possibilities that come with it, but if a society can pull it of, there are vast benefits in many areas of life.
On top of that, the flip side of people regularly not carrying any identification documents seems to be a police force much more eager to arrest people on the spot to figure out their identity. (Presented as an observation without value judgement: This way of doing things does lower the likelihood of the police arresting somebody because of not carrying identification.)
I don't agree that there is any such mix up, you'd need to point to the actual mix up.
> Sure, its slightly harder to have a government issue credentials to everybody and not have them abuse the possibilities that come with it, but if a society can pull it of, there are vast benefits in many areas of life.
There are lots of things that may benefit the group at the expense of individuals, but that is exactly why any group that values individual liberty should be opposed to it.
> On top of that, the flip side of people regularly not carrying any identification documents seems to be a police force much more eager to arrest people on the spot to figure out their identity.
The police in the UK aren't allowed to arrest people simply for not providing ID, and they are sued and lose when they do. I used to enjoy watching the Crimebodge account on Youtube where there are plenty of such scenarios. It's especially fun watching teenagers who know the law frustrate authoritarian rozzers.
So no, the way to lower the risk of the police arresting people for not having ID is to make not having ID a normal thing and increase the rights the individual has against persecution by the police.
A good current example is the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill which very much is based on the idea that the state, rather than parents, is primarily responsible for children. The Online Safety Act reflects much the same thinking.
I think there has been a cultural change. Both from the state, and from people who expect to be told what to do to a greater extent than the past.
This is at odds to much of the EU where carrying ID is normal and you can be fined for not having it on you in public.
Proving your identity to a company usually involves a copy of passport and a recent utility bill. Sometimes you need to get a "professional" (doctor, lawyer) to write "I certify this is a valid copy" on it. Financial systems often use your NI number (think SSN) as the ID factor for things like KYC, the NHS uses a separate number. There are several fairly mysterious companies that provide this service to companies who need to know like solicitors (you upload the photos, they authenticte it "somehow", hopefully they look after it, presumably they can be audited I turn out to be a money launderer using a fake document). Getting a passport is a bit of a performance as you have to bootstrap the trust chain by getting someone you know to submit their documents and vouch for your photos.
It also means that, to use a hot-button subject recently, the police have limited practical ways to prove a right to work, unless they have strong intelligence that a particular place is using illegal labour and do a raid. The current tactic seems to be arresting people for illegal e-bikes, where they have reasonable grounds for an arrest and can then get the name and do the immigration checks at that point.
I remember once seeing the UK passport application. It struck me as having utterly byzantine requirements. When I read your post and think about it again, the lack of a universal ID could make it very tricky to get a passport, which is ultimately a national/universal ID.
It's really 4 horsemen of the infocalypse garbage being trotted out, and the general population is clueless and credulous. "They're in charge, surely they must know what they're doing! They wouldn't lie to us! They most assuredly have our collective best interests in mind, and they'll do the right thing!"
Literally nobody thinks that.
Unfortunately most people don't have the time or energy to fight every emerging attack on freedom.
Everything is going to plan for the billionaire class.
Eventually everything will burn, only time will tell if it will be from global warming or food riots.
> Literally nobody thinks that.
I'd have to disagree; I'd say this is the modal perspective.
I must live in a more rational bubble.
People trust elected officials, they trust institutions, they trust "experts", the media, the academics. A vast majority of people don't realize the scale of ineptitude amongst the people who wield power. Most of the "elites" are not overqualified geniuses, but instead average bumbling idiots who stumbled their way into office, or sociopaths, or physically attractive. Most political systems do not reward competence and diligence.
You could swap out all 535 congress people in the US for randomly selected citizens and I guarantee you that outcomes would improve. Things are going so badly because they're intended to go badly, because unethical people wield power for self enrichment and cronyism. The purpose of a system is what it does.
> In the 1970s, the Wallenberg family businesses employed 40% of Sweden's industrial workforce and represented 40% of the total worth of the Stockholm stock market.Between the electoral college, gerrymandering and 2 Senators per state regardless of population, the minority control who gets elected.
Not to mention that anyone who trusts the police is naive.
There's a signed blob on the RFID chip in your passport that could be easily copied to any phone, hardly any on-device implementation work to be done.
India's government is not termed 'nationalist' because of this one policy.
The issue is not about "Digital ID" it's about having a good ecosystem that is both open and secure. I don't want all my tax money being spent on a private company implementing a horrible software solution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
I trust my government more than mega software firms who have no accountability or recourse
You are correct, of course: it is.
As i pointed out in my other comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46120239 you are just a "troll" trying to misdirect in a totally irrelevant direction.
Well done, totally normal behavior.
Meanwhile, here on planet earth, India (by far the worlds largest democracy) is run by out and out ethno-nationalists.
The claim that there aren’t other religions is not true because a lot of lower caste folks have explicitly converted to Christianity and or Dalit Buddhism as promoted by Ambedkar who was the driving force behind rights for lower castes in India.
> Founded on 27 September 1925,[18] the initial impetus of the organisation was to provide character training and instil "Hindu discipline" in order to unite the Hindu community and establish a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu nation).
> ....After reading Vinayak Damodar Savarkar's ideological pamphlet, Essentials of Hindutva, published in Nagpur in 1923, and meeting Savarkar in the Ratnagiri prison in 1925, Hedgewar was extremely influenced by him, and he founded the RSS with the objective of "strengthening" Hindu society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashtriya_Swayamsevak_Sangh
Please stop spreading baseless opinions as fact when you yourself know no better. And for matters involving communal issues, I would much rather trust a crowd-sourced knowledge base rather than the opinions of a half-assed biography.
I do think Hedgewar won and Gandhi lost. Also please do understand all sources have biases including Wikipedia.
I note that you are posting under an anonymous id.
I mean, it's one thing to parrot stuff like "inflammatory, biased, agenda driven and totally irrelevant", and another thing to state your point of contention.
After all, is it "inflammatory" to underscore discrimination and call it out?
And, yes, I am posting under an anonymous I'd - and so are you, as far as anyone is concerned. I came to the internet in the era of nicknames, not of full PII social networks, and I like it that way more.
Would it make the RSS and the BJP less far right if I posted under a real name?
All that you have posted are totally irrelevant to the topic under discussion. The only possible reason for it is if you have a personal instigatory agenda so as to try and steer the discussion in another totally negative direction.
As Slashdot named it, you are just a "Anonymous Coward" (i.e. Someone too cowardly to post their real name next to what they write) and a troll.
Here's another possible reason: I actively dislike totalitarianism.
If you're able to make a substantiated comment beyond the trope of "totally irrelevant", I'd be happy to entertain your opinion.
> As Slashdot named it, you are just a "Anonymous Coward" [...] and a troll.
Again, resorting to name calling and equating anonymity with trolling doesn't promote your opinion, it doesn't even elucidate it, it just puts you up as someone who'd rather go for ad hominems rather than genuine dialogue.
I mean, are you pro-Modi and BJP? Do you even have a reasoning for it that manages to elide all their shortcomings, or is it just fitting in with the crowd?
To repeat myself;
All that you have posted are totally irrelevant to the topic under discussion. The only possible reason for it is if you have a personal instigatory agenda ...
That is exactly what a "troll"/anonymous coward" does. It is the accepted nomenclature in the Interwebs for such behaviour.
I don't think you have an actual personal opinion, you just feel the need to tow a line (you know, due to some personal agenda probably), but don't have the data to back it up.
"No, my side is right and yours wrong" isn't a counter-argument, it's just boring.
None of your comments have anything to do with the topic under discussion i.e. you are just "trolling".
Your own comment here is proof of that - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46120134
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Modi has often used a messianic tone in his speeches such as saying that his leadership qualities came from God. His latest claim to divinity was during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections when he said that while his mother was alive, he believed that he was born biologically but after her death he got convinced that God had sent him.
- A group of local muslims were found to set fire to a train of Hindu pilgrims/kar sevaks returning from Ayodhya (Holy city in Hinduism)
- There was a large scale riot (1000-2000 people) that broke out
- Modi was accused of slow deployment of forces and tacit approval.
- Modi was cleared of all charges after a multi year investigation.
Ethnic tension between Hindus and Muslims goes back a millennia at least.
"MonkeyClub" has been downvoted and flagged in this thread.
All your attempts to make this discussion into a negative political one instead of Cybersecurity related have failed.
- When asked if there is anything he regrets not doing during the riots to save lives? He answered: He could have managed the media better. The interviewer gave him a moment to say the right thing. He didn’t change his statement.
- When asked if he
Even if he truly was never involved, it's not a hit job or a con or a conspiracy to frame him, his political party members were involved personally and he promoted rhetoric very close to theirs. Any normal person would connect the two
At least in the US, the Supreme Court is anything but impartial. Judges typically vote along party lines.
They've also restricted the government's ability to change this system.
See the NJAC debacle for example.
> It does help the discussion here, the comment correctly points out how this literal 1984-esque action plays into the current regime's totalitarian tendencies which go way before the 2002 pogrom and of course their parent org, RSS which is a whole other can of worms.
Who decided that those riots were a progrom? That term itself is misleading.
I am not fan of this step but the problems it's designed to tackle are huge in India and it's very much an option unless there are solid alternatives.
No, it was a 3 member "Special Investigation Team" and not the "entire federal apparatus" that acquitted him. [0]
"According to R. B. Sreekumar, police officers who followed the rule of law and helped prevent the riots from spreading were punished by the Modi government. They were subjected to disciplinary proceedings and transfers with some having to leave the state. Sreekumar also claims it is common practice to intimidate whistleblowers and otherwise subvert the justice system, and that the state government issued "unconstitutional directives", with officials asking him to kill Muslims involved in rioting or disrupting a Hindu religious event." [1]
> Who decided that those riots were a progrom? That term itself is misleading.
Hundreds of historians and scholars. [2]
> I am not fan of this step but the problems it's designed to tackle are huge in India and it's very much an option unless there are solid alternatives.
There are students jailed from 2020 without a trail for protesting against CAA-NRC with the explicit purpose of a "chilling effect" against dissent. People are constantly jailed for simple memes, "hurting religious sentiments" and other vapid reasons on a daily basis and you think this is an end to the means type of situation?
If I had to wager a guess, you don't live in India, advocating for oppression you don't have to go through.
[0][1][2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Gujarat_violence
Politicians crave power and control, it is that simple, and the current tech can give it to them quite easily. Not even Stalin could put a secret cop into every living room, but secret coppery can now be efficiently automated.
Have you ever spoken to people from islamic countries and about their views towards the west?
Also out of curiosity, does a person with a white skin counts as "normal people" to you?
The Govt. of India has already clarified that the app can be deactivated/deleted by the user if they don't want to keep it.
Given the huge second-hand market for mobile phones in India (especially amongst the large uneducated/unskilled subset of the populace) and their troubling use for all sorts of Scams/Frauds/Terrorism-related activities etc. you need State help to manage the problem.
https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2197140&re... - Does NOT say anywhere that the app cannot be unregistered/deactivated/deleted. This is what the Telecom Minister was referring to.
https://www.pib.gov.in/PressNoteDetails.aspx?id=156294&NoteI... (pdf download popup which you can cancel) - Note the following excerpts;
Democratic, fully voluntary, user-driven platform and privacy-first app, activates only with user consent.
Sanchar Saathi app puts citizens first and protects their privacy at every step. It works only with user’s consent and gives full control over its activation and use.
Activates only after user chooses to register
User may activate, deactivate, or delete it any time
Designed to strengthen India’s cybersecurity without compromising privacyWith all the mobile tracking tech, I would have thought that it would have been easier to catch the person if they had a working phone on them.
Good one. Do you see how dumb the average consumer is? They don't know or care even if you try to educate them.
There's no point in being able to buy an outrageously fancy toilet with remittances if there's no sewer to hook it up to.
Try giving free education to all government employees instead.
This resulted in higher ed becoming a defacto requirement for many professions that could have been open to professionally trained or experienced people. Employers need to draw their baseline requirements somewhere and if expensive credentials are too ubiquitous, it's understandable they rather select from those who achieved them than from those who didn't (or couldn't afford to).
And it's frankly disgusting how many doors remain closed to yourself unless you got access to an .edu email. More people with academic interests not having acquired one might open the door to many more who discovered their academic interests later in life but can no longer find a way to enter that garden.
You don't want to try to catch everyone, as then people do worse things trying to cover their tracks, but you do want to establish a credible fear of consequences that will shift the default societal balance point between {do corruption} and {don't}.
And it may take a generation, but it is possible.
Usually for police it is much better to not register the case and push victim to settle privately.
If they register they got more work and worse statistics.
This is the most secure option:
This is more flexible and will give you root, at the cost of an unlocked bootloader:
Which doesn't work. At all. A familiarity with the last 40 years of computing makes that clear.
The only things that have worked: ios/android walled gardens so users can't install spyware. yubikeys which can't be phished. etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Delhi_car_explosion
Planned and executed by highly educated, qualified, doctors.
If knives were technologically sophisticated enough that they could be programmed to refuse to pierce particular materials, you know that the government would be forcing manufacturers to include human flesh in that list, and making liable anyone who sells one without that restriction.
This is the first time we've had a device that we rely on for almost all our daily activities, produced by a small handful of businesses that are easy for states to pressure.
I have serious doubts that their intentions are nearly as harmless or sincere as you project it. The government through DoT has repeatedly shown their willingness to control, invade, impose arbitrary measures and harm the digital lives of the citizens with impunity. Remember how Aadhar was touted as a welfare support programme. They even promised in the supreme court that it wouldn't be made mandatory. But they just haughtily refused to honor that promise and linked it to every imaginable service. You can't live without it these days. On top of that, they were so careless with it that the entire biometric database of more than a billion individuals was leaked and published on the darkweb for sale. And despite several news media showing the evidence for it, the government just brazenly denied the leak.
With such a dubious track record, let me say that I'm skeptical about their claims on 'cybersecurity' on the phones. It may start like that. But with their attitude it won't take much time for it to progress from a cybersecurity app to a cybersecurity nightmare. We already know what they did with the Pegasus malware that they bought with the taxpayers' money - another accusation they just denied blatantly, ignoring the evidence provided by the others. No avenue for abuse will be left unused. The real issue is that an omnipresent app that cannot be uninstalled is the most valuable target and the perfect vector for malware delivery. And this government has destroyed any reputation they may have had in the digital space, with their overtly hostile attitude towards the citizens who voted them in. This app is going to be a nightmare for the citizens in the not-too-distant future.
Governments have to juggle a lot of different factors in order to maintain order and stay in office. It's natural that they would resort to less than scrupulous methods to attain this.
To go back to the knife example, once they have established preventing the piercing of human flesh as a mandate, it would be easy to extend this to preventing any kind of action using a knife that is inconvenient to them.
I'm struggling to come up with a reasonable sounding example though given the analogy. Perhaps... it gets extended to animals under the guise of protecting animal rights, but also prevents people from butchering their own hunt and animals killed must be submitted to a central processor who takes a large cut and have financial ties to particular politicians. I guess it's a stretch.
My point is just that the natural economics of the situation will cause governments to use all means at their disposal to achieve their end goals, whatever they may be. And so having these devices with their capabilities and our reliance on them is a huge hole in the defenses of freedom advocates just begging to be exploited.
I see your point. They'll bring it in the guise of a noble intent and stealthily slip in the nefarious functions later. I agree. That's exactly what they did with Aadhar too. And that project was introduced by the current government's rival alliance too. Really shows that the entire political class is against the citizens.
> It's natural that they would resort to less than scrupulous methods to attain this.
It's a bit more serious than this. This measure has the potential to sabotage India's democracy and constitution. And there is still the whole SIM-Binding issue to deal with. These are scandals serious enough to consider the government as a hostile usurper.
> And so having these devices with their capabilities and our reliance on them is a huge hole in the defenses of freedom advocates just begging to be exploited.
Abandoning the smart phone isn't an option anymore since that would mean a serious disadvantage in this information economy. That brings me to the same point as another comment of mine: We need fully user-controlled devices. We should be able to install and uninstall what we want, or even wipe it clean and start from scratch. And no hidden rings or blobs either.
We need to start demanding that this be established in the law of the land. Nothing less will be a step forward against such power greedy crowd.
I know very little about the politics of India, so I have no idea whether what you said is an objective assessment or if it's just the political talking points of one particular side, but at least in the US I find it very disappointing how the mainstream political opposition to creeping authoritarianism is often "Wow this is terrible, those guys totally shouldn't have that much power." with the unstated implication being "Give it to me instead. I'm a good guy; you can trust me."
I much prefer to emphasize principles which hold regardless of which tribe happens to be in power at the moment. In this case the overriding principle being that device owners should have ultimate control over the software running on their phone - not companies, and certainly not governments. Forcing people to run a particular piece of software on their phones is simply not a power the government should have, regardless of how good their intentions.
No. What if they decide to double cross later? Or, what about the next guy in power? Don't leave any loose ends. Technically, it's the zero-trust principle. Don't rely on any security measure that depends on the other party keeping their word. Always assume that they're hostile. (Though I've been in trouble for using this when designing procedures. People come with the 'don't you trust us?' question.)
> Forcing people to run a particular piece of software on their phones is simply not a power the government should have, regardless of how good their intentions.
Agreed completely. My answer would be the same even if a different party/alliance was in power (Mine is based on infosec principles. Partisan politics won't change that). I explained the politics only to show that this isn't a hypothetical scenario. The supporters will otherwise use excuses similar to what was thrown around in the US (eg: You need to worry only if you're an illegal alien). Indians have been making this mistake repeatedly. Those in power know how to play with their nationalistic sentiments to override such concerns.
A much more achievable goal is digging up dirt on specific people and opponents. In the end governments can struggle to justify how they got their hands on info about an affair you had or that you shocked dogs ~~on stream~~.
Such device backdoors are just a get-out-court-free card and a way for the media to justify not asking any serious questions.
How many people do you know who seem to be completely immune to learning? Go to any non-tech office an you will find shared passwords on post-it-notes, after 40 years of mantra-style 'Do not share your passwords' messaging.
If something goes wrong, it's not their fault, it's the machine's fault. "Why was this possible in the first place?" they ask. "Build it so this becomes impossible." That mindset let to OSHA regulations, to ever-safer aircraft, and to encryption on the web. It's not necessary a bad thing, it just throws out our - tech folks' - baby with the bathwater. How often has the increasingly regulated tech environment made you stop an easy implementation of a completely legitimate use case?
And yes, authoritarians thrive in this climate. Fear and promises of safety are the easiest paths to political power - and once in power, the demand for safety never ends. Politicians who genuinely prioritize individual freedom rarely get rewarded for it at the ballot box; the ones who win are simply better at wearing the right colours while expanding control.
Living in a society already means giving up more than a grain of personal freedom.
Try entering a store naked.
The real deal is the balance between loss and gain
I'm strongly against surveillance like this, but saying you won't give up a grain of freedom is not realistic.
An absence of surveillance causes increased frequency of terrorist attacks which causes people to demand solutions (necessarily involving surveillance and other authoritarian measures) which leads to increased surveillance. It's an unfortunate negative feedback loop.
If you lack solutions for too long, the negative feedback loop becomes severe and instead of just surveillance within a liberal democratic context, you get public safety authoritarians like Bukele or Duterte.
"Surveillance doesn't materially reduce terrorist attacks" - I am not sure about that based on the number of arrests of plotters and the lack of visibility I have into the tools and methods they used to find those plotters.
"Terrorist attacks still happen even with surveillance" - Yes, but if they happen less frequently, this reduces the demand from the public to ratchet up authoritarianism. See the problem?
"Terrorist attacks are a price worth paying for our freedom." - I mostly agree, but feeling like this doesn't make any difference to the negative feedback loop, does it? Regular people want public safety from physical danger almost as much as food and water.
Bukele and Duterte did not rise out of an environment of terrorism, so I don't know why you thought it relevant to bring them up. I think it is really sad to see comments on HN of all places advocating that if we don't implement chat control we'll spiral into a lawless hellscape.
The degree of cyber fraud in India is beyond insane.
Also - funnily enough - Indian telecom companies are meant to be fined for every SIM card given out under false data. There is already meant to be a check that stops this.
My point is that my subjective judgment counts for nothing, because the negative feedback loop that I described is a society-wide phenomenon beyond my control as an individual. Asking the majority of people to think the way you do about terrorism is somewhere between wishcasting and virtue signalling. It doesn't interrupt the causality behind the negative feedback loop, so it therefore fails to outline a path that can be trodden in the real world to achieve your desired vision of no surveillance.
I urge everyone to banish this mode of thinking which fixates on what "should" happen without first checking whether that desired end state is a possible world we can exist in once you factor in the second and third order effects beyond the control of any individual.
> Bukele and Duterte did not rise out of an environment of terrorism
Move your abstraction one level higher. They arose out of public safety concerns around murder and drugs and gangs. Those are not terrorism, but they fit under the same umbrella of public safety concerns that motivate regular people to demand authoritarian solutions.
Give it a few years and suddenly China is no longer worse than democracies.
Modi and his clique are authoritarian though. It's interesting that so many indian vote for that clique. They seem to not understand the problem domain; similar to Hungary, too. (Don't even get me going on Trump's clique of superrich running the show. I recently watched CNN in the last days and I fail to see how CNN is any better than Foxnews - they manipulate people via what they broadcast. For instance, yesterday some random US general basically convincing people that nobody in the military would do double-tap, not even Hegseth, when the exact opposite has actually happened. Or some female today in a show trying to explain that the first attack on a fisher boat was "legal" anyway. People don't even realise how much they are manipulated by these private media entities. These are basically owned by superrich influencing people one way or the other.)
This is what happens when the only lens through which people see politics is religion or race. It shows you how important scientific temper, fact checking skills, scientific knowledge, awareness of unrevised history, knowledge of civic duties, current affairs, critical thinking, etc are very important. And don't think that I'm talking about just India.
This is extreme and just as bad as any other extreme.
We have to find a way to maximise freedom across society. Being fixated on personal freedom won't turn out well. Whose personal freedom are we talking about? Should your neighbour be free to move the fence into your land? Didn't think so.
I will, however, give the benefit of the doubt and assume you mean giving up freedom without gaining anything. I don't see how this isn't a net loss for society.
You shouldn't be.
You don't have to dig deep or search widely to see Americans complaining, loudly and often, about the US government using the 9/11 to create massive new state security initiatives, most of which were inimical to both privacy and liberty. And that was nearly a quarter century ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...
From the article, this has nothing to do with education. It's:
> The app is mainly designed to help users block and track lost or stolen smartphones across all telecom networks, using a central registry. It also lets them identify, and disconnect, fraudulent mobile connections.
If your phone gets stolen, you can disable it.
I'm not saying that a government app is necessarily the right or best way to go about this, but to suggest that this can be solved with education misses the point entirely. No amount of education is going to prevent someone on a bike swiping my phone from my hand and cycling off with it.
And as long as the app isn't otherwise spying on you (and there's no mention of that), I don't see much of what this has to do with freedom either. The freedom to steal someone's phone and use it without being blocked? There are already a bunch of apps on my phone I can't uninstall, so that's not new.
I think the correlation between "spying" and "saying that you're spying" is 0 or negative
There's no value in assuming everything is conspiratorial. You'll go crazy.
Will take decades if not more than a century to implement in India. Let alone old people, even the boomer generation is immensely tech illiterate.
...of course, it won't work and even if they honestly tried it will be outpaced by scam industry. Or at worst case be state exploit that then will be exploited by other state (or just malicious actors) coz of lack of security in "security" software
Now you have at least two problems
Silly goose.
"Freedom" is always balanced against "Responsibility" (both Individual and Group); it can never be absolute. The latter needs State support.
That is the reason my "freedom" to rob you is curtailed by the "State's (i.e. Group's) responsibility" enacting laws to prevent it.
You also exercise "your (i.e. Individual) responsibility" when you put a lock on your valuables to prevent my robbing you.
"Silly goose" is a lighthearted, informal expression used to describe someone who is acting foolish, silly, or has made a silly mistake. It is a playful term that is not meant to be offensive and is often used affectionately. The phrase can also refer to a "silly person" or "simpleton" in an informal context.
What about provisional residents? The digital ID proves identity. It is not a work authorization. Provisional residents can have a digital ID whether they work or not.
But this is basically nothing compared to what they are doing with their justice system, which mostly affects British citizens, so who am I to complain.
They should have branded it "simplified ID" or something like that.
I'll probably get instinctive downvotes but I think it's important not to mix up the actually-fine stuff with stuff like chat control, otherwise the message becomes trivial to dismiss.
If they were to require digital ID for pensions or disability benefits there would be more problems.
The devices include: A Playstation Portable. The latest stats include thousands of visits from XBox and Playstation consoles.
All modern smartphone requirements boil down to Play Integrity and iOS AppStore attestations.
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiven...
Undoubtedly most people will comply, but there will be a few who don't, so I'm curious what the plan is to bring them in line.
The UK government hasn't decided yet how digital ID will work, currently it's just a talking point. Probably it will be an app that you install, like the NHS app. Nobody is proposing that it be installed by default.
Apple separately announced that a Digital ID feature will be built into iOS[0] which the UK may use or not use.
> few who don't, so I'm curious what the plan is to bring them in line
They will be told by their employer to get it otherwise they will lose their job. Just the same as now, only at the moment you need a paper passport rather than a smartphone.
[0] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/11/apple-introduces-digi...
Whether it comes pre-installed or not is a distinction without difference if you need it for daily life
Edit: In fact, it would be better if it came pre-installed (and be removable) because then you don't need to agree to Google's terms of service to get the APK file. You would get it straight from your OS vendor which is presumably a trusted party if you intend on using that device. (Governments are usually not so forward-thinking that they let you get the APK file from the govt website directly without needing to go through commercial entities for something as essential as a national healthcare app. That would be an even better solution...)
You do not have to use the NHS app. There is a website version.
> Just the same as now, only at the moment you need a paper passport rather than a smartphone.
Which demonstrates how little it achieves. People already need some form of ID for lots of things (notably work and renting housing). It does not have to be a passport though.
All that is required is a national insurance number (equivalent of Social Security Number in US).
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/right-to-work-che...
Can you elaborate on what you mean by non compliance? Without the ID you will have significantly worse access to services and employers. I think the pressure will be on the people, not the government, to comply.
While I am very much against facial scanning etc, it is quite clear that something needs to be done about the access of porn to kids. It is a drug like any other that we do not allow kids to consume.
I get that intuitively porn is bad, but we are creatures with thousands of years of baggage. Practically every institution, everywhere, has spent trillions of dollars across hundreds of years to convince people sex is bad as a control mechanism. We don't even know if sex is addictive, there's a lot of disagreement about that among experts, let alone porn. All we have, really, is some anecdotes from people on Reddit that they stopped touching themselves and now they're not suicidal. Frankly, I don't think that's much of anything.
I'm not sure it's worth it giving up everything for a problem that we're not even sure exists.
How many kids these days play 18+ rated games?
Im not sure I understand. Are you saying wikipedia has porn?
But should I need to upload an ID to view that? I guess some people think North Korea has the right mindset with information control, so showing an ID to see who's seeing what makes sense. But I'm not of that mindset.
I am not even sure whether I should take you seriously.
It’s a wee bit more extensive than that. Videos, more than a few, and most of them not tied to a wiki page.
As someone who tried to run a clean BBS and later a web forum, I’ll never be surprised at the lengths people will go to share porn.
Of course people go to great lengths to share porn. But we should also go to great lengths to protect kids (and adults) from incredibly addictive things like hard drugs, porn, gambling, lootboxes etc.
Please wait for us, the relentless chat control legislation will make us (the EU) overtake you and mandatory age verification is pretty much a certainty at this point.
I might be reading this wrong but these numbers seem very weird. Did more than half the people who downloaded the app block a stolen phone? And did each person who downloaded the app terminate 6 fraudulent connections?
That much is believable, if not on the low side. Spam there is intense.
It will be a garbage app that most likely will not work, considering the historical incompetence of the Indian government's expertise in all things tech.
I am pretty certain Apple and Samsung will pay off someone in the government.
Allow the user to download and install it if it turns out to be great. Do not shove things down people's throat against their wishes, like an authoritarian govt. Otherwise you start to resemble Stalin's Soviet Union.
Are saying Kim Jong Un is a good ruler as well? He ruled country during nuclear missile production.
You should praise Hitler as good ruler as well as stalin.
You've read stuff like this before, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin#Death_toll
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet...
Stalin brought back the Czarist internal passport system, Russian chauvinism, racial discrimination and prison slavery, enriched a new oligarchy, his police killed most of Lenin's politburo and thousands of other good Communists on false charges, and he almost lost Moscow to a fascist incel armed with Panzer IIs, despite the superiority of the Red Army. Also he sold out revolutions in Spain, Greece, China etc. in pursuit of trade deals with capitalist countries that hated the USSR. The great achievements of the Soviet people and their planned economy were made in spite of Stalin's corrupt and oppressive mis-leadership.
On the matter of India. Stalin also betrayed the Indian revolution by trying to sabotage Bose, ordering the CPI to collaborate with British imperialism, and murdering founders of the CPI like Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, Abani Mukherji and GAK Lokhani.
It is fun to read about Russian chauvinism under Stalin rule, given the fact that he wasn't Russian himself.
Stalin ended socialist affirmative action programs (Korenizatsiya) that benefited Soviet minorities in education and local leadership. Russification policy and Cyrillization of local languages were enforced under him. Local Communist leaders who resisted the Russian chauvinist policies, like Fayzulla Khodjayev (the "Uzbek Lenin") and even the leaders of independent Mongolia, were dragged to Moscow and executed, which was a complete violation of socialist legality. Numerous Soviet minorities, from Chechens to Koreans, were forcibly deported to barren lands in Central Asia to make room for Russian settlers. NKVD records show that hundreds of thousands of forcibly migrated peoples died due to lack of food and shelter in the resettlement areas.
Stalin also said "I drink in the first place to the health of the Russian people because it is the most outstanding nation of all the nations forming the Soviet Union"
Personally I wouldn't risk my personal digital privacy on the incompetence of the government. I'd assume the opposite.
Maybe you were thinking about PIX in Brazil which is developed and operated by their central bank.
It's controlled by the RBI, just through a complex public-private corporate structure through NPCI.
UPI is much larger and more international than PIX. It's currently processing iirc something like 200 billion transactions. UPI is also used in several countries, France being among the most recent examples.
As such UPI has a broader scope than PIX and requires a public-private corporate structure with stakeholders from both sides.
But this is off topic. The competence of the Indian government to at the very minimum partner with Industry shows that such software preloaded on phones is a threat to the civil liberties of people that the State shouldn't encroach on. This is a violation of individual privacy.
It was a very insecure rollout with zero customer awareness, but it happened and almost every large bank moved. Sometimes silly pronouncements do result in silly change.
It makes filing an online complaint against the incoming call almost frictionless.
Having said that, I don't believe it should be shoved down our throats.
You are just telling the whole world about the average IQ of an Indian and how they believe in foolish things like "digital arrest".
And an app doesn't solve that. Digital literacy is a need for today, but the entire country is getting the latest smartphone, with dirt cheap data and zero knowledge of how to operate and own that technology.
Not saying I agree or disagree but your reply comes across as passive aggressive to me. Not that the parent post makes pleasant insinuations either, to be fair...
Bangalore is supposedly the most digital literate place in India. The data below speaks for itself.
Aggressive measures then might be justified.
It's very easy to make virtuous comments without knowing anything of the ground realities.
[0] https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/bengalureans-lose...
[1] https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/bengaluru-man-lose...
Yeah, no. Correlation is not causation. Having the app installed doesn't eliminate calls. The app doesn't have the ability to block calls.
Operators like Airtel stepped up and started flagging spam/scam and now warn their users when they recieve a call from flagged numbers.
I've been reporting spammers since 2005, since DND rules came into place.
Only in the last year have I seen the spam slow down. Earlier operators would dismiss the complaint saying to it was a "transactional communication," now it's logged with TRAI and the operator and they have less room to manipulate the complaint.
Simply installing Sanchar Sathi won’t eliminate spam calls, which was my point.
The TRAI DND app, on IOS, generates a pre-formatted SMS which is sent to the operator on the standard number 1909.
The Sanchar Sathi app sends it to a DOT entity which then routes it to the operator while updating the govt database of reported spammers and scammers. The options are much extensive than just a spam call/sms.
You can report that the individual was impersonating a public official etc while you can not do than at all with the TRAI DND app.
I suggest you try out the platform on their website first before commenting further.
To praise Indian government is the most unlikely thing one should be doing for their mediocrity at developing things.
Same is the case with Aadhar, Digiyatra, etc. My government is hella incompetent at safeguarding data and privacy (unless it's their own data). And this app is 100% going to be a huge security hole on every device.
For me, ADB to the resuce.
Lol, at least do your research before writing random things.
Wait until "they" outsource it (on the pretext of national security interests) to countries that have deep talent in cybersecurity (like the US/Israel/Russia/China).
Ex: https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2025/06/11/india-orders-new-fig...
I will point out that India have the highest number of victims of cyber-fraud. I personally know many people who have lost significant sums through social engineering attacks. The money is transferred to multiple mule accounts and physical cash is siphoned off to the fraudsters by the owners of those account. They choose helpless, illiterate, village dwelling account holders for this.
Another huge issue is unregulated loan apps. There are horror stories of people installing apps in order to take high-interest loans and then those apps stealing their private photos and contacts or accessing camera to take photos in private moments, and then sending those photos to contacts via WhatsApp when interest payment is overdue.
Then there are obvious security issues with terrorism and organized crime.
The government wants data. It's clear why. There is huge potential for misuse.
Combined with worst enforcement and investigation efforts to tackle this issue. The default resolution on a cyber crime report is : Fraudster's account is blocked and they are given a choice to plead forgiveness from the accuser. They often return the money in lieu of the complaint being rescinded. Then fraudster is free to con others. Fraudsters know this is a numbers game that is why they hit every morsel they can get a bite.
Worse yet people use the cyber crime provision to take revenge. People can file frivolous cases without proof and ge others account locked. Banks will treat you with disdain and police will tell you to settle privately too.
What about investigations you ask? Very few cases reach that level. Local police file the FIR and they don't even know what is "cyber" in cyber crime. Fraudsters can continue playing the numbers game.
So, yes it is easy to talk about victims when the policies are lacking. And then this high number of victims can be used as a crutch to push insecure apps on everyone's phones. The worst part of it? They will get data and still remain clueless and inept in solving the high number of cyber crimes.
If it were up to the police, then we wouldn’t even hear about 25% of the cases.
There are lots of ways to solve for this, mandating that these companies own the identification process through their systems, report misuse, govern apps. Why taken on the ownership of a process that is better handled outside of government while the government holds them to account via huge fines and timelines but giving these large companies ownership of protection from scams or stolen phones etc...? win win and I think these large companies are due spending extra money to protect their users anyway.
What's inherent in the comment is- there are simply too many people to educate, "made aware", etc. So, this might be a knee-jerk reaction to fight cyber fraud. Not Big Brother sensorship.
I can say these because I know too much about the ground reality. An example from top of my head- SBI e-Rupee app doesn't launch in your phone if you have Discord installed. Yeah. Just because some scammers communicated through Discord.
Of course, I cannot guarantee that something sinister is not being planned or that this app won't be utilized for something bad.
There is also a small chance of some bureaucrat in management position taking this decision, so he can write in his report- "Made Sanchar Saathi app download soar up to X millions in 3 months through diligent effort..." just like highly placed PMs/SVPs in large tech companies eyeing a promotion.
This statement seems naive at best and manipulative at worst.
I don't think this new app will resolve India's fraud issues unfortunately, there probably needs to be more policy changes at banks/fincos. As much as India obsesses with KYC processes, it doesn't seem to be working/enough. I don't see this new app being required as something totalitarian, it would be much easier for the gov to ask for that type of stuff to be tacked on to UPI apps anyways.
The number of my relatives that will just believe whatever someone tells them on the phone is terrifying.
Based on what?
> Another huge issue is unregulated loan apps
You don't need to root everyone's phones to regulate financial crime.
> Then there are obvious security issues with terrorism and organized crime
India is building a centralised backdoor into every phone in the country. That's a massive national security risk.
Yahoo Finance report that's 3 years old, puts India at #4: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/15-countries-most-cyber-crime...
But 2024 data from PIB puts the number of occurrence much higher at 2.27 million: https://www.pib.gov.in/PressNoteDetails.aspx?NoteId=155384&M...
> You don't need to root everyone's phones to regulate financial crime.
Yes, I agree. Read this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46113070
> India is building a centralised backdoor into every phone in the country. That's a massive national security risk.
Are these what backdoors are? It's an app. It can be uninstalled, right? Are there physical backdoors like American agency NSA tried to install? Or like the Chinese phones that many suspect?
- https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/privacy-scandal-n...
- https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/xiaomis-phones-had-a-securi...
I'm not familiar with Indian activist tradition. But if we look at other countries where this happened, the technical attacks didn't work. It had to be done through policy, instead.
- Is this a (voice) call blocker?
- Can it intercept SMS?
- Can it enumerate installed app and read data from other apps?
Steelmanning the argument, perhaps you see this as a demonstration that corporate power has gotten so large the government is being forced to react. I might believe that, but I can’t get from there to irrelevance.
This is on the far end of the spectrum of bad.
This is an extremely important point of universal application that can't be emphasized too much.
Even if one agrees with a current politician's position, once the precedent is set, there's nothing stopping an administration down the line extending the reach of an already installed and by then socially accepted mechanism.
Someone called this the "totalitarian tip toe"; that guy (who shall rename unnamed) was "a bit weird", but his concept stands anyway imo.
Looks like it's quire popular/established already, with over 10 million downloads. Basically a "portal" for basic digital safety/hygiene related services.
Quoting Perplexity regarding what facilities the app offers:
1. Chakshu: Report suspicious calls, SMS, or WhatsApp for scams like impersonation, fake investments, or KYC frauds.
2. Block Lost/Stolen Phones: Trace and block devices across all telecom networks using IMEI; track if reactivated.
3. Check Connections in Your Name: View and disconnect unauthorized numbers linked to your ID.
4. Verify Device Genuineness: Confirm if a phone (new or used) is authentic before purchase.
DisplayDialog("Yup, perfectly genuine, trust me!");
We need a world where this can be guaranteed to not happen. We need 3D printing everywhere, without restrictions or payload attached.
I doubt such a world exists in this current universe.
- Report fraud/scam calls and SMS directly from your phone.
- Block or track lost/stolen phones by disabling their IMEI so they can’t be misused.
- View all mobile numbers registered under your ID and report any unauthorized SIM cards.
- Verify if a phone is genuine with an IMEI/device authenticity check.
- Report telecom misuse, such as spoofed calls or suspicious international numbers.
The stated goal is protect users from digital fraud and safer telecom usage, who knows how good it’ll be. Probably a PITA.
Not to mention they can probably payload anything into the app whenever they want.
I was getting 5-6 scam calls per day, now down to maybe 1 in a month.
It's just a wrapper around their website (for now).
I think this app is harmless but I don't think it should be forced onto anyone.
It may be today. And you have no way to know for sure. But there is also no way to know what the app will do down the road when a politician you do not trust is in control of it.
CDOT's CMS system already exists in the background.
How do you think it works? Example: If enough people report, then some police agency investigates? Rinse and repeat enough times and the scam calls/SMS should fall?
On IOS, you still have to copy/paste the incoming number into a form, provide a screenshot of the message, date/time and it uploads the complaint to their systems.
They inform you that they will not send updates.
What I've observed is a huge drop in scammers, and new scammers get tagged as potential spam by the operator upfront. So they're doing something on the back end.
You can only file a police complaint if you actually suffered monetary loss. I haven't, so I don't know how that works.
The other benefit is that you can keep an eye on id theft used to get connections using your info. This is a huge problem in rural India. Scammers use this to create bank accounts to move money.
I have a "dumb" follow-up question: (Honestly, I don't understand the pushback here on HN against this app.) Do you feel it is invasive or acts as gov't surveillance on your mobile phone? What you describe sounds pretty good to me.
For example, we have a DND (Do Not Disturb) system which is opt-in. Most people don't know about this. Originally signing up required a new user to send a series of text messages to register (opt-in) and select what kind of ads (spam) they would tolerate. For example you could say block everything except bank offers.
This app walks you through the process.
I keep a close watch on permissions etc which apps ask for. This app doesn't really want access to anything unusual.
This on IOS, I know nothing about Android.
That's what the ruckus is: the govt wants to push it everywhere mandatorily.
Right now it's harmless: it's just a way to report scammers and lost handsets.
But who knows what they'll shovel into it tomorrow.
Basically IMEI stamping because sim card purchase with ID has come to be viewed as flawed/compromised by NatSec types in India. Here's some additional context from a previous thread on HN [0]
[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40476498
------
Edit: Can't reply
Lots of old phones still exist, so a virtual/eSIM does nothing to give visibility into those devices.
Also, India wants to own the complete end-to-end supply chain for electronics like what China did in the early 2010s, so India has been subsidizing legacy, highly commodified electronic component manufacturing [0] - of which physical SIMs are a major component because they both help subsidize semiconductor packaging as well as IoT/Smart Card manufacturing. A mix of international [1][2] and domestic players [3] have been leveraging physical SIM manufacturing in India as a way to climb up the value chain.
On a separate note, this is why I keep harping about India constantly - I'm starting to see the same trends and strategies arising in Delhi like those we'd see the PRC use in the late 2000s and early 2010s, but no one listened to me about China back then because they all had their priors set to the 1990s.
No one took the PRC seriously until it was too late, and a similar thing could arise with India - we as the US cannot win in a world where 3 continental countries (Russia, China, India) are ambivalent to antagonistic against us. Even Indian policy papers and makers increasingly reference and even copying the Chinese model when thinking about policy or industrial development, and I've started seeing Indian LEO types starting to operate abroad in major ASEAN and African countries helping their vendors build NatSec capacity (cough cough Proforce - not the American one - and their Offensive Sec teams).
Ironically, I've found Chinese analysts to be much more realistic about India's capacity [4][5] unlike Western commentators - and China has taken action as a result [6][7][8]
[0] - https://ecms.meity.gov.in/
[1] - https://www.idemia.com/press-release/idemias-production-faci...
[2] - https://www.trasna.io/blog/trasna-eyes-asian-iot-growth-as-i...
[3] - https://seshaasai.com/products/esim-and-sim
[4] - https://finance.sina.cn/china/gjcj/2022-06-08/detail-imizmsc...
[5] - https://www.gingerriver.com/p/vietnam-or-india-which-one-wil...
[6] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-02/foxconn-p...
[7] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/india-taking-steps-mitig...
[8] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-files-wto-complain...
And yes, there will be times India doesn't agree with the US, and that's normal. It's seeking to be a partner, not a vassal state.
Yep, but stuff can change rapidly.
From 1972-1992 it was China that used to be the pillar of the America's Asia strategy as a bulwark against the USSR, with US soldiers posted in Xinjiang monitoring the USSR [0], US government sponsored tech transfers and scientific collaboration [1], American support for Chinese military modernization [2][3], and expanded economic cooperation [4].
Yet by the late 2000s, that relation degraded into a competitive relationship that has become the cold war that it is today because by the 1990s US and Chinese ambitions became misaligned - especially following US sanctions due to the Tienanmen Massacre [5], Clinton's pivot to newly democratic Taiwan [6], and Chinese attempts at industrial espionage [7].
The US and India are not fully aligned because neither American nor Indian policymakers have significant exposure to either and remain extremely insular (eg. Stanford and Penn are the only American universities with a competitive program on Contemporary Indian politics and foreign policy, and there are only at most 20 American scholars on contemporary Indian policy - it was the same during my time in the early 2010s with regards to China, except instead of Penn it was Harvard), and that's why the US-India relationship has been in a tailspin for the past couple years. The US-India relationship are now in the equivalent position as that of the US and China in the late 1990s to early 2000s era, and are largely predicated on mutual competition against China.
Snafus like the RAW-backed Nijjar assassination as well as the US's support for Asim Munir highlights how the relationship is starting to fray. If alignment is not found within the next few years, the relationship will become competitive and potentially antagonistic in nature because India will start feeling that the US is encircling India just like China, and the US will start viewing India as "rocking the boat".
[0] - https://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/18/world/us-and-peking-join-...
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.%E2%80%93China_Agreement_o...
[2] - https://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/17/world/us-decides-to-sell-...
[3] - https://www.nytimes.com/1979/10/04/archives/study-urges-us-a...
[4] - https://www.nytimes.com/1983/05/26/business/us-china-investm...
[5] - https://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/05/world/the-west-condemns-t...
[6] - https://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/10/world/clinton-is-expected...
[7] - https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/world/as...
Why not mandate virtual SIMs?
Considering India's low literacy, having a state owned cyber safety app shouldn't be much of an issue. It's not like a backdoor, but safety of citizens, which is the prime mandate of a sovereign state.
> The November 28 order, seen by Reuters, gives major smartphone companies 90 days to ensure that the government's Sanchar Saathi app is pre-installed on new mobile phones, with a provision that users cannot disable it.
This sounds great in theory. But in practice this sort of thing is rife for abuse. Say, I have complete control over what this app installed on your phone does in the background. And you were my political opponent. Would you trust me to not use this backdoor into your phone to my advantage?
Apps like Netflix, GMail are not forced on users by a govt. It is an open marketplace. Users have options. They are free to buy phones that do not have those apps pre-installed.
This kind of app should be be open source.
> Pre-installed App must be Visible, Functional, and Enabled for users at first setup. Manufacturers must ensure the App is easily accessible during device setup, with no disabling or restriction of its features
While I can get behind the stated goals, the lack of any technical details is frustrating. The spartan privacy policy page[2] lists the following required permissions:
> For Android: Following permission are taken in android device along with purpose:
> - Make & Manage phone calls: To detect mobile numbers in your phone.
> - Send SMS: To complete registration by sending the SMS to DoT on 14422.
> - Call/SMS Logs: To report any Call/SMS in facilities offered by Sanchar Saathi App.
> - Photos & files: To upload the image of Call/SMS while reporting Call/SMS or report lost/stolen mobile handset.
> - Camera: While scanning the barcode of IMEI to check its genuineness.
Only the last two are mentioned as required on iOS. From a newspaper article on the topic[3]:
> Apple, for instance, resisted TRAI’s draft regulations to install a spam-reporting app, after the firm balked at the TRAI app’s permissions requirements, which included access to SMS messages and call logs.
Thinking aloud, might cryptographic schemes exist (zero knowledge proofs) which allow the OS to securely reveal limited and circumscribed attributes to the Govt without the "all or nothing", blanket permissions? To detect that an incoming call is likely from a spam number, a variant of HIBP's k-Anonymity[4] should seemingly suffice. I'm not a cryptographer but hope algorithms exist, or could be created, to cover other legitimate fraud prevent use cases.
It is a common refrain, and a concern I share, that any centralized store of PII data is inherently an attractive target; innumerable breaches should've taught everyone that. After said data loss, (a) there's no cryptographically guaranteed way for victims to know it happened, to avoid taking on the risk of searching through the dark web; (b) they can't know whether some AI has been trained to impersonate them that much better; (c) there's no way to know which database was culpable; and (d) for this reason, there's no practical recourse.
I recently explained my qualms with face id databases[5], for which similar arguments apply.
[1] https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2197140&re...
[2] https://sancharsaathi.gov.in/Home/app-privacy-policy.jsp
[3] https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/pre-install-san...
[4] https://www.troyhunt.com/understanding-have-i-been-pwneds-us...
Yes. Apple's revenues are half as much as the government of India's [1][2]. That's a resource advantage that gives Cupertino real leverage against New Delhi.
[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/10/apple-reports-fourth-... $102.5bn / quarter
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen... $827bn / year
The moment mobile companies locked down sideloading, ability to uninstall bundled software, etc., they made it impossible to argue techincally against bundled, uninstallable software from the government.
They can both survive without each other. But neither is going to break the arrangement without a lot of pain. They have mutual leverage with each other, and that becomes particularly material when one stops treating India as a monolith.
> India can and will survive without Apple. Though having it in the country would be good for optics
Most people aren't content with merely surviving.
I think you overestimate the importance of Apple to India. It is just a company. And actually not the biggest employer or most tax paying one either.
Apple is not the only vendor in India and has also not the most sold phone.
If New Delhi wants to smite Apple it obviously can. That isn’t the question. It’s if Apple can bargain for a better deal. I think the answer is yes.
The starting point would be finding the fault lines between the folks in India arguing for this policy and those who don’t care or are hostile to it.
They'll probably try to make the app as non-shitty as they possibly can, and will probably leverage all kinds of geographical restrictions and whatnot to isolate the impact of these changes, but when threatened with a large market share hit, Apple will comply.
Also, they gave in to the CCP and always say ‘we obey the laws of the countries in which we operate’.
Apple is, at the end of the day, just a business.
That creates obligations both ways. Put another way, Apple is an increasingly-major employer in India.
The real carrot New Delhi has is its growing middle class. The real carrot Apple has is its aspirational branding.
> they gave in to the CCP and always say ‘we obey the laws of the countries in which we operate'
Apple regularly negotiates and occasionally openly fights laws its disagrees with. This would be no different. Cupertino is anything but lazy and nihilistic. Mandated installation opens a door they've fought hard to keep shut because it carries global precedent.
For example, with the UK encryption debacle, Apple removed Advanced Data Protections (e2e encryption) for iCloud users in the UK. So users' notes, photos, emails are possibly open.
Why this isn’t being done at the SIM/baseband level is beyond me.
We lost the game when we allowed these players to impose limits on us in the way we can use the device that we bought with our hard earned money. Even modifying the root image of these OSes is treated like some sort of criminal activity. And there are enough people around ready to gaslight us with the stories about grandma's security, RF regulations, etc. Yet, its the extensive custom mods like Lineage OS that offer any form of security. Their extensive lockdown only leads to higher usage costs and a mountain of malware.
We really need to demand control over our own devices. We should fight to outlaw any restrictions on the ways we can use our own devices. We should strongly condemn and shame the people who try to gaslight us for their greed and duplicity.
In the longer term however, we will need such a restriction on RF BB lifted too. Openness isn't just about modifiability. It's essential for security too. I'm someone who believes that security and granular restrictions can be implemented without being hostile towards users. This is why I don't buy Apple's argument that hardware lockdown measures like soldering on batteries, permanently gluing up ICs, etc are essential for miniaturization and security.
One solution for the problem you mentioned (devs over-boosting the RF output) is to have a one-time programmable power limiter after one of the final fixed-gain RF power amplifiers. (An example of a one-time programmable device is an anti-fuse FPGA). Such a baseband can be programmed to conform to the market country's regulations (or something even stricter) before assembly. This way, the developer can boost the signal as much as they want, but the device simply won't respond beyond the permissible limit.
Of course, all these are daydreams, because it has to be implemented by the baseband manufacturer. Unfortunately, their incentives don't align with our interests.
They will.
All tech companies already comply with India's IT Act. And India now manufactures 44% of all iPhones sold in the US [0] while dangling the stick of a $38B anti-trust fine [6] but also the carrot of implementing China-style labor laws [10] that Apple lobbied for [11], so Apple doesn't have much of a choice because both China and Vietnam (the primary competitors for this segment of manufacturing) have similar regulations while not shielding them from Chinese competitors. Samsung is in the same boat at 25% of their manufacturing globally being done in India in CY24 [1] while is also trying to further entrench itself [2][8][9] due to existential competition from Chinese vendors [3][7].
Heck, Apple complied with similar regulations in Russia [7] before the Ukraine War despite being a smaller market than India with no Apple manufacturing, engineering, or capex presence.
All large companies who face existential threats from Chinese competitors have no choice but to entrench in India as it's the only large market with barriers against direct Chinese competition - ASEAN has an expansive FTA with China which has lead both South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan to lose their staying power in countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand where Chinese competitors are being given the red carpet, and Brazil is in the process of one as well.
And the Indian government is taking full advantage of this to get large companies to bend to Indian laws, as can be seen with the damocles sword of tax enforcement on Volkswagen [4] while negotiating an FTA with the EU and a potential $38B anti-trust fine against Apple [5] while negotiating a BTA with the US. It's the same playbook China used when it was in India's current position in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
Finally, India was in a de facto war earlier this year against Pakistan (Chinese manufactured missiles landed near my ancestral home along with plenty of Turkish and Chinese drones) along with a suicide bombing in India's Tiannamen Square (the Red Fort) a couple weeks ago [12], so anything national security has a bit more credence and leeway.
[0] - https://scw-mag.com/news/apples-supply-shift-to-india-speeds...
[1] - https://www.techinasia.com/news/samsung-to-broaden-manufactu...
[2] - https://www.chosun.com/english/industry-en/2025/11/25/SLEYWT...
[3] - https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20251118VL205/2030-samsung-s...
[4] - https://www.ft.com/content/6ec91d4a-2f37-4a01-9132-6c7ae5b06...
[5] - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
[6] - https://www.macrumors.com/2021/03/16/apple-to-offer-governme...
[7] - https://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=...
[8] - https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20250903PD208/samsung-india-...
[9] - https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20241212PR200/samsung-india-...
[10] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-21/india-imp...
[11] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-21/apple-see...
[12] - https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/india-intensi...
And anyhow, major Android vendors like Samsung have aligned with the policy as well.
I think this is a bit exaggerated for effect. No one in India considers having a Linux laptop as being circumstantial evidence in case of a crime. Whereas having Tor installed would be.
DYR (deeper) and support less dodgy options like LineageOS.
How so?
> DYR (deeper)
Care to help with that?
There is a search box on the bottom of this page, just research for yourself and learn what this is about.
India chose to back off on data sovereignty [0] because it would have had a side effect of making Indian IT Offshoring less competitive plus to help make negotiating a US-India BTA easier [1].
[0] - https://verfassungsblog.de/cross-border-data-flows-and-india...
[1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-25/us-seeks-...
So does a security backdoor in every mobile device used by said Indian offshoring staff.
That's because China has no regulation obliging them to do so.
China takes the other, more comprehensive, route to privacy invasion. Sucking up every bit of data at the router.
In more recent developments of this story, looks like Russian authorities saw a success of EU's push for alternative stores and now want Apple to allow that in Russia too [1,2]. Sadly, the motivation is twofold: a. let authorities publish their spyware (Max messenger) and b. let sanctioned companies publish their apps (sberbank). I haven't heard a single word about caring for user freedom.
P.S. just for laughs: Since it's currently (almost)impossible to install alternative appstores, stores and online marketplaces selling iphones now label them as "defective" [3]: below title "Имеется недостаток товара: невозможно установить и использовать RuStore" = "Defect: impossible to install and use RuStore"
[1] (ru) https://www.ixbt.com/news/2025/07/07/apple-rustore-iphone-ip...
[2] (en) https://meduza.io/en/feature/2025/06/27/an-app-store-ultimat...
Other phone makers could if they wanted to do the same, but do not as an active choice, or at least somebody's choice above them.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44473694
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114784469162979608
> European authoritarians and their enablers in the media are misrepresenting GrapheneOS and even Pixel phones as if they're something for criminals. GrapheneOS is opposed to the mass surveillance police state these people want to impose on everyone.
- If only criminals want privacy, privacy becomes suspicious
- If more people use an open OS, it's more profitable for commercial entities to not put in extra effort to block these devices due to the FUD going around about them being insecure
So if someone suggests that using open source software is increasingly being seen as suspicious, the #1 thing to do is start using it
I don't understand "just load GrapheneOS" sentiments. It only runs on extremely specific flagship devices with explicit features that allow it that are out of financial and technical reach for >99.9% of population of Earth and it still fully relies on AOSP. It's an escape hatch for mice. Or is it really not that way?
LineageOS has no such shenanigans nor has a pattern of suspicious funding.
What are these reasons?
> LineageOS has no such shenanigans nor has a pattern of suspicious funding.
What pattern of suspicious funding?
For the sake of avoiding repetition or bias, just do your own research. There is a search box at the end of the page.
Kindly use the search box on the bottom of the page.
I'm not your personal google search engine.
The second is forgetting things like actively promoting the usage of US government developed and sponsored tech like signal and Tor.
Then let's look at that availability of source code, which for some "reason" doesn't come out. Lest but not least, don't even wonder about their financing sources and constant spamming on sites like this as if there aren't better options.
You can bot away and say none of this matters. It does matter, not everyone here is dumb and I'll keep complaining no matter how many times the other bots downvote what is obviously just another gov-sponsored operation.
Sounds like Google should be the one leading the charge against this. Will be interesting to see what they do.
> The app is mainly designed to help users block and track lost or stolen smartphones across all telecom networks, using a central registry.
It's an app. That's all it does now (presumably). Once installed, it can be changed in the future to do all kinds of terrible things. This is big brother.
In India it doesn't really mean anything. As an example the biometric based id 'Aadhaar' is 'voluntary' on paper, The Modi govt had to concede this after a Supreme court judgement that made it clear that Aadhaar cannot be made mandatory. However in practice it's anything but. Govt officials will openly refuse to consider other forms of id. They have been informally told by the highest rungs of govt that they will be protected against any complaints and that they need to insist on Aadhaar.
The whole point is to make daily life practically impossible without Aadhaar so that the citizens give in and 'voluntarily' give their biometrics.
> Ensure that the pre-installed Sanchar Saathi application is readily visible and accessible to the end users at the time of first use or device setup and that its functionalities are not disabled or restricted.
https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2197140&re... (Press Release)
https://x.com/arvindgunasekar/status/1995540552205697079 (Leaked Order)
Does not sound optional. (I do not have an Aadhaar and have to fight across regulated domains - finance, insurance, banking, investments, even renting).
Reuters/BBC have been famous to pounce and sensationalizing.
No sensationalizing apart from you it seems
"Manufacturers must ensure the App is easily accessible during device setup, with no disabling or restriction of its features"
And they claim to protect people from fraud / phishing / scams.
> https://x.com/shantanugoel/status/1995874411543671208
>> sanchaarsaathi.dot AT gmail dot com >> broadbandmission AT gmail dot com
So while this state-owned cyber safety app is authoritarian, I wonder if it reflects just the most practical way India’s government can achieve the same things that the US has.
The real issue with 100% enforcement of law is it requires a society with differing values to not just agree on which laws exist but what just punishment is. Without leeway for differing social judgement or bifurcation.
Both are doing similar things. You have no idea what the US is doing; I have some inkling, and it is terrible.
At least India is publicly disclosing what this app does, and that the phone has this app. Do you have any idea what the US does?
Hint: that big data center in Utah, what is it for?
Another hint: the US has given many billions of dollars to US telecom companies under the guise of "rural broadband" and "rural cell service". Has the state of rural service really changed much in the last 30 years?? Why has all that money been given, then?
No one is claiming the US government is doing less terrible things than the Indian government.
It's happening, and it's time we say no. It's uncomfortable, but we need to do it en masse, right now.
Do not buy backdoored hardware, help others get rid of the backdoors, use anonymous technology to organize protests.
There has to be a line.
So it’s true 3,300 people were arrested for posts online. What they don’t tell you are the statistics or context. The actual law for these arrests covers EVERYTHING online. These arrests include those arrested for terrorism (if the planning/act of terror includes any online communication in the UK), threats of violence, racist abuse, hate speech and unwanted communication (including sending unsolicited sexual photos to strangers). It also includes spreading false information that could cause harm or affect an ingoing investigation.
If you look at convictions, only 137 people were actually sentenced in 2024.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DebunkThis/comments/1mmux6r/comment...
Note: this occurred in the US and not the UK but it happens here, too.
Stories like this are designed to provoke a reaction, but the truth could be far more mundane: he might be a completely unreasonable person who was genuinely stalking someone, and police might have had credible concerns. We simply don’t have the full picture.
For balance, West Yorkshire Police do have a reputation for being heavy handed. the same force that used drones during Covid to shame people walking alone on the moors.
My point is: this isn’t solid evidence of Orwellian decline. It’s difficult to draw sweeping conclusions about Britain from a single case built on incomplete information and media amplification.
Notably:
> with the situation causing him considerable stress at a point where he was also dealing with an inquest into the deaths of his parents, who had both died in a car crash in 2023
so for some reason, there was something going on about his parents' death two years later. The article also states:
> He said the complaint against him was linked to an ongoing business dispute.
My take is that someone used his pictures of him holding guns (illegal in the UK) as support for a claim that he is an armed and dangerous stalker. Whatever got flagged regarding the inquest into his parents' deaths probably added suspicion. Police acted quickly (as they should, but probably too quickly) and made mistakes, but it looks like they couldn't accept that they were being used, so they decided to continue pressing onwards with the investigation, hoping they were still right and wouldn't be on the hook for a false arrest.
Getting falsely arrested is always terrible, but the way the media spins this as some kind of witch hunt about a LinkedIn post is misleading at best.
All of these attempts to "debunk" this statistic feel like they're missing the mark. How did the UK get a point where planning terrorism and making mean comments online go into the same statistic for arrests? Does it not seem strange that the second half of that list is worthy of arrest?
> If you look at convictions, only 137 people were actually sentenced in 2024.
This, again, does not help. Being arrested isn't a casual thing. It threatens everything from your job to your reputation and your relationships, even if you aren't convicted.
The strange thing is that the UK are arresting people for abusing the telecom system, and not for the more serious crime like terrorism, death threats, harassment and sexual harassment.
In most publications: because the people reporting on these statistics can get more views and clicks that way. FUD sells. If someone online can defuse the statistics, the reporters that spread them also could've, but chose not to.
As for the second half of the list, "racist abuse, hate speech, and unwanted communication" are pretty common things to incriminate. Even the extremely liberal freedom of speech laws in the USA do not permit stalking ("unwanted communication") and racist abuse is criminalized in all kinds of cases (i.e. firing someone because of their race).
Using Carlin’s dirty words against others you dislike or quoting passages from historical books should not warrant arrests.
Edit: I believe they are now getting compensation for a 'wrongful arrest' which, sounds entirely deserved.
What is clear though is there has been some abuse of power by the police. I wondered if someone at the school 'knows' someone in the police, which made it go so far.
"He quoted an excerpt about Islam from the book The River War by Winston Churchill.
"Reportedly, a woman came out of the Guildhall and asked Mr Weston if he had the authorisation to make this speech.
"When he answered that he didn't, she told him: 'It's disgusting', and then called the police.
"Six or seven officers arrived. They talked with the people standing nearby, asking questions about what had happened.
"The police had a long discussion with Mr Weston, lasting about 40 minutes.
"At about 3pm he was arrested. They searched him, put him in a police van and took him away."
If even half of that is true, I can't fathom why someone would willingly live in that total shithole of a country.
This article says 10k https://www.zerohedge.com/political/britains-speech-gulag-ex...
More broadly it's been a huge issue for a while, tons of articles come out of the UK for people being arrested for criticizing politicians/policies. Even more dystopian is it's hard to report on, because the police might come after you for talking about it. Germany is having similar issues, it's easy to forget most of the world (including Europe) doesn't have free speech
while nobody should be arrested for speech online, here on hacker news, people are downvoted for saying something unpopular (as opposed to whatever, i don't even know what the criteria is, but maybe it should be "toxic") all the time. you are preaching to the wrong audience, not the choir.
We absolutely need to police hate speech.
> There has to be a line.
There is no line at all these days, with open hatred displayed. Fascism is on the rise across the world off the back of the hatred that's produced on social media.
> Every day 33 brits are arrested for what they say online.
They must be giving them tea and crumpets before releasing them to generate more hate online because it clearly isn't working.
> There has to be a line.
Where do you draw the line?
However, there are cases which do cross the line... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9dj1zlvxglo
And that’s where you’d be wrong - lots of us belief that speech should not be a cause for arrest except in the most extreme circumstances. Hurting someone’s feelings is not that
what is an extreme circumstance?
At least in the UK, hate speech is a crime and is punishable by law, whether people agree or disagree is irrelevant, I do believe that if it's illegal on the street it should be illegal online, obviously in the relevant jurisdiction.
In short, the arguments for this seems to stink?
The perversion is that you are legally responsible for what happens with your device, but you are unable to prevent others from using it as they wish. An app like this is automation for putting people into jail. Just upload some illegal content and then "detect it". There's literally nothing you can do to defend against this attack, and it will work until it's overused.
I was getting these messages for sometime and installed it finally. It is the same app that is mentioned in the article. My phone is already in the system then.
A lot of people in this thread seem unaware of what SIM cards actually are and do.
I didn’t know the SMS was legit or not and I just marked it as spam. The challenge I have found with mobile in India is the excess of sms spam. Also the sender is always some cryptic alphanumeric characters so authenticity is difficult to judge.
But easy enough to tie it to iCloud region - you have to set your device and iCloud to Indian region to be able to use many of their region specific payment methods (ie UPI)
Govt can't have their population at large being scammed by criminals and do relatively nothing about it. It's a huge economic and productivity drain people seem to have "accepted as normal".
So how do you not shut down and arrest these greedy international corporations, which would disrupt a country's infrastructure, despite ongoing warnings? Force them.
To me it's akin to the US govt mandating software that allows users to report any and all spam, fully traceable to criminals and providers, whom the govt could prosecute/heavily fine 100% of the time. Dangerous 2-edged sword, but if takes down that despicable scam industry, later it can transition to a law mandating the same protection but in a privacy a preserving manner.
Anyway, that doesn't in any way negate that this is shit for the people of India.
this last year i'm seeing very concerning behavior in students in the 14-20 range. complete addiction to their phones. very deep interests in things i was completely unaware that they existed. similar to how when i started noticing anime girlfriends/waifus in 2016.
about 40% are deep in discord communities where i literally cannot figure out a single sentence of what they're talking about.
if society doesn't do something, and soon, say goodbye to the cognitive ability of a large chunk of future generations.
I would think very deep interests in niche or obscure topics is correlated with increased cognitive ability, not a decrease.
That's just a symptom of getting old. Young people always find stuff that baffles adults. When I was a teenager, Anime itself was like this - just being "into" anime was considered some kind of bizarre, obscure affectation by adults.
I think smartphones present real challenges (and I don't get how/why they're allowed in schools), but a lot of what you're describing is normal.
as one of said students, I would just call these hobbies!
I feel like the same could be said of an at the time adult looking at my IRC or MSN Messenger logs from when I was a teen.
The world is changing quickly, and many people may run into problems, but I'd rather let cultural solutions to these problems naturally arise. Relying on a government to impose top-down solutions on these complicated and poorly understood problems is a recipe for a disaster of unintended consequences.
For the safety and security of children, of course.
More and more it seems like the benefits of being connected are not worth the cost of being so visible to so many hostile (state and non-state) actors
Ah yes, so because someone has stolen MY phone, I should give up all my right to privacy and allow the government to have their claws in my phone.
Logic. What a silly point to make when 'findmyphone' services, which are OPT-IN litterally do the same thing.
But societal combined risk is commonly handled in this way. In the US, if you employ someone you have to report that you paid them to a central federal government. Way to track someone? Surveillance state? All words you could use.
And the government previously restricted gambling and so on. The question isn't "why would a bad government do these things?". The question is "would a benevolent government do these things?" and "if so, why?". And the answer is quite straightforward, I think:
Someone in the government has observed that there is a great deal of cyber crime in India. A fairly uneducated population, with very high smart-phone penetration (85%+ apparently), and a large number of fraudulent actors that their federal government is unable to enforce against. So they're attempting to attack the problem where they can.
This is ultimately India. They don't need insidious "app on your phone" / stingray / any other sophisticated solution. The local politicians can manipulate local authorities to get your cell tower association data and SMS. And if they want your comms devices they will rubber-hose the secrets out of you.
Someone I know worked at a big FAANG. He's Indian so went back to Bangalore to see his ailing mother. One day he took an auto-rickshaw while wearing his FAANG sweatshirt. The driver took him to a makeshift jail where he, police officers, and a magistrate conspired to threaten the guy with prison unless he paid $10k. $10k is nothing to a FAANG engineer, so he paid up, was brought in front of court on some lesser charges and then had to pay a small fine (much less than $10k). And then he flew back to the West Coast and never returned to India. Trying to reason about this kind of place using the perspective of the West is meaningless.
I think it unlikely they're trying to use this as cyber-surveillance. India simply does not have the infrastructure necessary to do that at scale. And they have the infrastructure for the rubber-hose, and Indians wear their identification on their sleeve, so to speak. Names point to ethnic groups and castes. Primarily endogamous marriage means if you want to perform violence against groups you can simply spread out from one member of the family unit being visibly of that group.
Using an app to get access to someone's data there is sort of like using Heartbleed to get root on a machine on which you are in /etc/sudoers with NOPASSWD.
This will keep the data out of governments hands, while pushing the cost burden to these companies and they would be better equipped to build around these goals than the government themselves.
We all know the govt doesn't have a great track record with using Pegasus etc... Giving away control to apps that can decide your phone is stolen and lock it opens the door to any possibility including a totalitarian regime. It would be naive to believe that even if this is done with good intentions, such control could be easily mis used by opposition parties, one malicious individual etc...
If you read the Internet, you will hear that India has strict controls on KYC for SIM cards and so on. But on my last trip there I acquired one without much fuss. I'm not sure how that happened but I didn't provide any ID! I suspect that in such an environment you can't really do the thing you're suggesting.
The average mobile phone store there had an absolutely mind-blowing profusion of smartphone brands that all sound like those Amazon drop-shipped Chinese brands: Vivo, Poco, Realme, Oppo. And those are the good ones! There is a Cambrian-like explosion of brands there from various manufacturers. It's an unusual place.
EDIT: I'm going to have to reply to you here because I'm rate-limited on comments. See below in response.
Is it contradictory? I imagine saying "install this app on your phones from the factory when selling here" is a lot more achievable than coordinating what you suggested which is:
> ...build tools, reporting, support services around helping with both Scamming applications or Stolen phones etc....
But perhaps you anticipate these to both require equivalent ability? If so, I think that's the crux of the disagreement. I don't think the Indian state has the power to set up a mechanism to set a standard for tools, reporting, and support services that meet some requirements to detect scammers etc.
In fact, I think that's a really high bar. I think perhaps only highly developed nations would have any success designing such a program. I think even the smaller EU member nations would fail at it, and I don't think any of the developing nations (barring China).
Enough is enough...
Do you use gmail, is that why you assume everyone else does as well?
Without domestic silicon or OS, you're forced to mandate bloatware that users can see
Real power operates at the silicon/firmware level, invisible, unremovable, and uncompromisable
This is a cringe move from India
https://www.centerforcybersecuritypolicy.org/insights-and-re...
I abhor any decision that robs even a grain of my individual freedom.