(edit: viz. that forcible peer-to-peer bluetooth networking works. One man's unrestricted mass-surveillance is another person's "terrorist activity". Oh how the turntables turn and turn.)
Maybe the videos were fake, but I saw at least a couple of this happening.
Our governments have failed us worldwide.
I don’t know what we can do with that information. Feels both useless and that we’re helpless to fix it.
We go by province, mine was basically keep your distance and wear a mask (yeah, that pretty much was non-existent), whereas another one was; you can enter a coffee shop, but you can't use the washroom, you can buy construction shoes (not boots) in-store, but regular shoes you had to order and pickup outside.
It felt odd while there (I was visiting a friend with health issues).
I'm happy we didn't go too nutso.
I'm probably more on your side than it sounds based on this comment, but I find it frustrating to encounter learned helplessness dressed in profundity.
> Hayley Hodgson [...] was ordered to go to the facility after a friend of hers tested positive for the virus and she was identified as a “close contact” by the number plate on her scooter.
> spent 14 days at the Howard Springs mandatory Covid-19 quarantine facility
> "Police officers blocked my driveway. ’What’s going on, are you guys testing me for Covid? What’s happening?’ They said, ‘No, you’re getting taken away. And you have no choice. You’re going to Howard Springs. You either come with us now, and we’ll put you in the back of the divvy van. Or you can have a choice to get a Covid cab.’
> they were even threatening me that if I was to do this again, ‘We will extend your time in here.’”
> Ms Hodgson said she told police “I don’t consent to this”, and asked why she couldn’t “just self-isolate at home”. Police responded ‘We’ve just been told from higher up where to take you. And that’s all that there is,’”.
> She was told to pack her bags and that she would be released when she tested negative. During her two-week stay she was tested three times, and each time tested negative.
> The video includes footage filmed by Ms Hodgson during her stay as she argues with a police officer at the facility, who reprimands her for leaving her cabin without a mask and threatens her with a $5000 fine.
> “I’m gonna give you a warning, yeah?” he says to her as she sits on the balcony. “It’s an official warning that you have to stay on your balcony and obey the rules while you’re here.” When she argues with the officer that the rules don’t make sense, he replies that “it doesn’t have to make sense”. [...] “Highly infectious when all of us people are negative?” she asks. “So far. The risk is still very high,” he says.
> She said at one point when she was distressed and asking to be let out of her room to go for a walk or a run, facility staff instead offered her Valium to calm down.
> Ms Hodgson said as a result of her two-week stay she had lost her casual retail job. “They compensated me $1500 for the two weeks, and that was all,” she said. “Now I’m currently unemployed because of this situation”
Full interview with recordings from inside the Australian "internment camp" https://unherd.com/newsroom/inside-australias-covid-internme...
Mirror: https://archive.ph/GQDkN
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/dra...
The arrest of a woman in Australia for promoting an anti-lockdown protest online has drawn criticism, after video of the incident went viral.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54007824
A Victorian police officer who was filmed grabbing a woman around the neck after approaching her for not wearing a face mask earlier this year will face no disciplinary action.
https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/australia/victoria...
Under no circumstances was anyone in Australia forcibly removed by people in hazmat suits.
Where if the uniform worn isn’t quite right, and the location isn’t quite the same, and the presence or absence of one arbitrary infectious agent doesn’t match the criteria, then Everything Is Okay™.
> The man had been staying at the Intercontinental, in the centre of Perth, until yesterday afternoon before three officers, dressed in Hazmat suits removed him from his room.
https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/australia/illegal-...
Mirror: http://archive.today/ekWBs
As soon as a single shot is fired in defence, every thug now has to think twice before busting down a door. The game changes. Tyranny becomes a whole lot less efficient.
You send an FBI task force or god forbid the military to interfere with the life of a peaceful stranger and now you've given every man in the country a damn good reason to get himself organised for when they come for his family.
It's clearly not about a flu, at that point.
What it comes down to is can you scare those within the power structure sufficiently enough that they back off before they escalate violence to the point of mass murder? In the U.S. I don't think that you can. It seems that a lot of other people don't either, which is what is delaying people from using violence. There are still enough incentives to be handed out that those capable of committing the harm will escape being harmed by the power structure. When the rewards run out and those who wield arms in service of power become no different from those being harmed, then it will change. The issue is that so much of the world is connected now that those rewards are at no risk of running out, because they can always be pulled from somewhere else.
For large-scale infectious disease --- epidemiology and public health --- quarantine and infection/contact tracing are very tried and true containment methods. Yes, these impose costs, particularly on individual liberties. What's key is having a well-governed, principled, high-integrity, trustworthy government which makes clearly-justified decisions as to when to impose such restrictions, and when to lift them. Sadly, this has become more difficult in recent years.
The infection spread based on being in the same enclosed space as an infected person, and was not based on being only a few feet apart.
Sorry for pointing out the obvious, but "providing safety for its citizens" is not, has never been, and never will be a "goal" of any government on this planet.
this is not a productive outlook to have
Governments DO HAVE to try to protect its citizens against internal and external threats. Otherwise people will "abandon" the government up to a certain point.
Case in point: When cartels dominated small towns in Mexico, people gathered in small armies (Auto defensas).
Same thing with Zapatistas.
The US supreme court has explicitly ruled, on several occasions, that the government has no duty to protect its citizens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeShaney_v._Winnebago_County
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzale...
Proceeds to give example of one of the most oligarchical countries that ignore financial transparency laws on an industrial scale.
The fact that they can get away with shit like this makes them pretty competent in my book.
To me it’s the opposition that’s incompetent, not being able to put an end to the circus.
My post was talking about things like discreet microphones in public spaces that can automatically separate and recognize multiple voices, smartphones recording and sending every word (or, even better - 24/7 camera footage) to the relevant authorities. But it's not just recording - we still lack the deep level of organization to automatically and fully correlate and organize ALL these types of data from countless sources for everyone. All of these are things that we already have to limited extents, but they're still not taking full advantage of, yet.
There's a lot that scary about AI, but this is one of the scariest. Even if new good jobs pop up to employ all the people who work on things LLMs can do, governments and other powerful organizations now have this ability to analyze surveillance at scale that was unimaginable even by the East German Stasi.
It's conceivable we'll soon have a machine that can listen in on every phone call, read every text message and email, understand them, and flag dissident concepts and content. The manpower limit on oppressive surveillance will be gone. It'll be like having a spy following you around all the time, taking notes. All the guys who's job it is to listen can be redeployed as thugs to beat out the wrong-think.
It so great these smart kids invented all this. Truly for the benefit of mankind. /s
I think you're confused. Those things aren't mutually exclusive, and it's a significant cognitive error on your part to think I'm giving "authoritarian governments" a pass.
And I'm not blaming the technology itself, but the people who are choosing to build it.
Exactly. How about doing something for people instead of trying to control them, people aren't becoming radicals when their basic needs are met, they have a well paying jobs, housing, and health insurance.
Fixed that for you. It's a subtle but important difference.
There is only partial overlap between what's good for the government and the country. At some times in some countries the overlap may be substantial, or it may be scant if at all.
We could try that one, since the MBAs-and-lawyers clique with money/influence have been doing a poor job lately.
Not only that, but that would be actually democratic concept. Greeks long ago found that elective systems are in the end oligarchies.
I used to be an obnoxious gun control advocate until I learned that California's gun control legislation was brought about in response to the Black Panther's patrolling predominantly black neighborhoods while armed to protect the people of the neighborhood from state sponsored (police) violence.
Reference to start from: https://www.kcra.com/article/liberty-limits-black-panther-pa...
This topic is full of subtlty so recommend reading the sources from that article and so on.
Were they what precipitated it or were they one of the many factors used to get the public on board?
9/11 didn't write the patriot act.
and china. police in china generally is not armed. (china may or may not be considered a developed country, but i think that distinction is irrelevant. i am pretty sure there are more than three countries in the word where police is not armed, or where armed police is a distinct unit used only for specific tasks where arms are needed). but that wasn't the point i was making, rather, in most countries police simply does not get violent, nor do they have to fear being shot at, because of gun controls.
How you can vote someone out?
Or, even better, don't give our responsibility to uknown electorate at all.
I'm fairly sure whatever they do you'd likely be complaining about it. Glad to be wrong though.
They're afraid of people communicating. That's not a safety thing.
Clearly I have not worded my reply carefully enough, so for clarity: I am all for private messaging and against mass surveillance.
People are making independent communication networks using reticulum, LORA devices and hold tight - unregistered radio transmitters.
You can't seriously argue trying to take down ONE app is acting in the interests of national security?
No I'm not.
> You can't seriously argue trying to take down ONE app is acting in the interests of national security?
Again I'm not.
See my replies to all the other comments. I'm only interested in what the OP of the comment I was replying to think governments should be doing.
They implied that if this goes on (TFA) then the government is incompetent and all the people should be fired. Seems to me this sort of thing is the focus of most world governments (chat control, online identity checks, etc). These are all the same thing and as the op states indicates that all these governments are incompetent. So what does a competent government look like? What acceptable stuff should they be doing to solve the issues these measures are attempting to solve (however badly).
Maybe my wording lead to misunderstanding but there you go.
> I'm not condoning this but what would you suggest they should be doing to keep people safe?
That led me to believe you consider request to ban the app as an action in the interest of the general public, making them safe.
I appreciate your response, thanks!
Why do you need to encrypt your network traffic with ssl, is you have nothing to hide....
I learned about this earlier this year because I had a connecting flight through India on the way to go trekking in the Himalayas. I had planned to take a Garmin inReach with me, but luckily a day or two before my flight out I came across horror stories of people getting pulled out of security and taken to JAIL in India for having these things in their checked bags when TRANSITING India. Security there when transiting from Switzerland to Nepal was no joke - every single electronic item including anything with wires had to come out of bags including electric toothbrush.
In light of that, banning point to point communication seems on brand for India. Note that Apple gets a pass for its satellite capable phones by geofencing India and disabling the feature.
on edit: changed myths to narratives to avoid confusion
India eventually gained independence because colonialism in general was not politically and economically viable in a post WW2 world, and so Britain just got up and left (as they did from dozens of other colonies in the post war years).
Had the independence movement not existed and Gandhi himself not existed the end result would have been exactly the same.
People always forget that Gandhi's first actions as a 'nationalist' were attempting to raise an army to fight on behalf of Britain. The idea that the Indian nationalists wanted to be a new nation from the get go is a modern day invention.
There is a racial component to it that the American settlers did not have.
Gandhi and the original nationalists were English barristers who spoke English, believed in English institutions, were educated in England, and saw themselves as Englishmen and loyal subjects of the King.
That is how they've always seen themselves and how the average educated Indian saw themselves.
Gandhi's experiences in South Africa made him realize that no amount of education was going to make the English treat him the same simply because his skin made him not blend in. Gandhi is not the only person to see that. Lee yuan kew thought the same.
His first reaction was thinking he should prove Indian loyalty to the crown and this would win him points.
When that didn't work, he threw away all his tailored English suits and adopted (by show... It was all show) the habits of a Hindu holy man to lead his movements.
One can debate the efficacy or whatever but there was no great resistance to English rule. Many old Indians are neutral about it. That generation is dying though and the younger ones have a mythologized past.
So yes the degrees in this situation really mattered. The American settlers were seeking to forge a new nation with new institutions. The Indian nationalists just wanted to perpetuate English ones but were unable to do so under English rule.
Saam: First, they tried reason.
Daam: Then they demanded a price (Salt Satyagraha to initiate the Civil Disobedience Movement).
Danda: Then they moved to reject the regime entirely (Quit India). At a time when the colonial power was literally fighting on multiple fronts, in World War Two.
Bhed: Then they helped to throw them out, and attempt to build a whole new political identity.
BBC says 3000 but yeah.
https://www.outlookindia.com/national/2-terrorists-family-ho...
So the houses of 2 accused were razed because.....
(edit: i.e. SatCom alone can't do much, if there is no verifiable on-ground intel. And in 2008, our mass-media supplied it in liberal quantities, through multiple camera angles and replays and blow-by-blow commentaries.)
cf. Westpoint's Urban Warfare Project Case Study #16: Mumbai Terrorist Attacks: https://mwi.westpoint.edu/urban-warfare-project-case-study-1...
> Maintaining communications with their handlers in Pakistan was critical for several reasons. First, the handlers were monitoring live Indian news broadcasts and social media feeds, so they could provide real-time instructions throughout the operation and thus afford the attackers the ability to react to developments outside their targets.
> The communication also provided the attackers psychological support.
> The handlers were able to encourage the young, inexperienced militants to maintain their resolve and continue killing civilians and security forces by reinforcing their religious and financial motivations.
> During the operation, the handlers actively coached some of the attackers to continue shooting civilians and to hold positions against Indian security force responders.
The media was so stupid that it literally showed commando positions. Literal position second by second.
The govt then later banned this information, staggering it to one hour after the fact
To broadcast that they are there to "stand in person with the heroes", literally making it all about themselves. How they showed up. But unfortunately they could only come the day after, because the then home minister beseeched them to not come on site. But now they are there, surrounded by their Z-plus security, in an ongoing urban conflict zone.
What kind of a state leader shows up in another state, compounding the security nightmare with their own entourage at the site of an ongoing security debacle and literal national emergency,with people being murdered as they spoke?
And, it's a miracle the gaffe was not explained away as a "strategic master stroke" psyop engineered by the British to fool the other side and lull them into complacency.
> Side 1: Henlo world, look our people are here, about to surprise-attack Side 2, at this surprise location, at this time.
> Side 2: Lol. Not falling for that.
> Narrator: This is all totally absurd, and totally real of course.
> Side 1: Goes ahead with globally broadcasted secret plan anyway.
> Side 2: FML.
> Side 1: After the dust settles. "Psych! Master-Stroke!".
Also, pray tell why is everything (supposedly) "done" by those in positions of power framed as "strategic master stroke"s these days? I suppose only hyperbole makes sense, in a zeitgeist where "leadership" behaviour is jerk, knee-jerk, reactionary-by-default... epileptic.
Returning to the US from japan you notice. Japanese bathrooms don't have trash cans, so no paper towels. In the US, the bathrooms have trash cans overflowing with paper towel waste and it is quite a difference.
Where does all the trash go? More often than not, I ended up carrying trash in a backpack to throw away at my hotel.
For things I didn't eat at the store I carried a small plastic bag to store my trash and when I got to my lodging I would throw it away. Also once you go inside the gates of a subway/train station there often seemed to be trash cans available.
Gradually I learned to deposit things where I bought them, sometimes politely asking the people behind the counter who would take it from me.
Meanwhile, Japanese subway stations still have trash cans, which are only blocked when foreign dignitaries visit the country. It doesn't seem authorities are reacting to the subway attacks from 30 years ago.
In a nearby municipality there is a particular spot that sees a lot of dog traffic yet has no can. Some civilly disobedient good samaritan keeps leaving an empty bucket and the city periodically gets around to removing it long after it fills up. Seems to work well enough despite being entirely illegal.
Security Theater keeps on keepin' on.
The busiest stations have wandering staff picking up rubbish off seats and the floor etc.
Many of us Brits in station coffee shops still do the performance of looking for a bin because we're too embarrassed and too well-mannered to leave it anywhere else. It's endearing and funny at the same time (though of course it's also often due to forgetting there are no bins!)
What's next? A bomb under a bench? No more benches!
I make additional effort to never experience that again. Connecting flight through Mumbai. An absolutely awful experience.
Search “parks and recs straight to jail”
There have been cases of incoming immigrants sent to foreign prisons without charges or trial. In March 2025 the U.S. administration flew 238 Venezuelan migrants from Texas directly to the "Terrorism Confinement Center" in El Salvador. The group included asylum seekers with active court cases, individuals who had entered the U.S. legally, and recent border crossers. The administration labeled them members of the "Tren de Aragua" gang to justify the move.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair_Flight_4978
Flying over a country does not make you immune to that country’s laws.
Frankly, temporary transit through a nation’s airspace (while onboard a commercial jet that you don’t control) shouldn’t subject you to their legal jurisdiction.
Shall we revoke the concept of diplomatic immunity next? Close the embassies?
We seem to be unlearning all the hard lessons of the past. It’s not going to end well.
Because your original comment was:
> Weren't some of the German tourists last year sent to an ICE camp in Mexico?
Do you separate them from their kids, and send the bunch to a prison? That is insane.
Because from what we hear about ICE, that is exactly what is happening... when they don't just kill them outright.
Also a tenant in your situation would most certainly have rights to not be "unceremoniously kicked out" - both a time period before they'd even be legally expected to leave, and also legal protections against being forcibly removed even if they didn't leave at that time.
Which is that it depends on the mood of the person in charge. Either you get to keep it, or it's confiscated and destroyed, or you go to jail, or you go to a firing squad.
We can guess which is more likely in each country. Indonesia almost always executes people found with drugs. Australia would probably just destroy your pineapple. India, being authoritarian but not completely insane, my guess is they'd take it and fine you.
..what? Condoms are not outlawed there, are they?
Whatever will happen with you lawyering and fighting the border officers, will happen after you've been detained.
To put it in perspective, many Indians (of all religions) died and fought in a bloody war to secure Bangladesh's (then East Pakistan's) freedom from what was a genocidal regime in West Pakistan. Decades later, the typical Bangladeshi muslim still hates Indians because any non-muslim Indian they consider 'Hindu', thus polytheist, and thus worthy of death. One thousand five hundred Indian soldiers died only for their neighbor to hate them in return for the 'crime' of not being born part of their religion. While Hindu nationalists are fucking insane, I honestly think many have been driven to it by the insanity of South Asian Islam.
Meanwhile, America has a relatively peaceful and cooperative neighbor (Mexico), which only has a crime problem on the border, and the average American seems ready to give up almost every civic right to deal with that. There are barely any terror attacks of note coming from these Mexican gangs, and congress has already ceded many constitutional rights (such as the right against unreasonable search and seizure) near the border zones. Anyway, imagine Mexicans hated everyone in America for the crime of being 'gringos' (even the non-whites) and that's basically what India has with all their neighbors.
If people in the west want India to liberalize, which we really should want to do, Western nations need to work on dismantling Pakistan and limiting Islamic extremism in the region.
India's initial decisions need not be merely humanitarian but also political.
https://scroll.in/article/1081784/why-are-bangladeshis-turni.... This article explains that it's due to an increasingly unequal interactions as sowing distrust.
Explaining the Hindutva moment as a genuine counter reaction to anti-Hindu sentiment rather than a politically motivated movement seems to be misguided, even if not actively propogating the propaganda.
It's reasonable to distrust a neighboring country with distinct interest, even if they went to war for you, sure. You don't owe them anything.
Similarly, it's actually also normal for India to have concerns about illegal migration, similar to Europe, America, Australia, and Canada.
But the propaganda coming out of Bangladesh is purely religious in form, and it's pretty clear that that is the main reason why they dislike India. Pakistan literally slaughtered them and they're all bhai-bhai with them now.
The article cites the CAA as a reason for Bangladeshi distrust, except the data show that India is acting as a humanitarian in this disaster. Non-muslims are physically persecuted in both Bangladesh and Pakistan. Pakistan particularly is an apartheid state where non-Muslims have fewer political rights. Bangladesh is slightly better but violence against non-Muslims is rampant. People like to paint India as having high rates of religious violence, which is true, compared to America, but not true compared to Pakistan or Bangladesh. Pakistan regularly executes Christians for blasphemy. India doesn't. Non-Muslim refugees should qualify for extra protection from secular nations given the on-the-ground realities of South Asia. Literally the cited reason for the creation of Pakistan is that South Asian muslims constitute a distinct nation from every other religion in the subcontinent. Neither the Jews nor the Parsis nor the Christians ever made such an argument.
Well regardless, countries cannot get angry over other countries making immigration policy (and yes, this also applies to Indian migrants to America, blah blah blah)
> Explaining the Hindutva moment as a genuine counter reaction to anti-Hindu sentiment rather than a politically motivated movement seems to be misguided, even if not actively propogating the propaganda.
If you read about the history of Savarkar, then I think this is exactly what you see. He was kind of meh about everything until he witnessed anti-Hindu extremism from Muslims, and then went off his rocker. Before that, he was a relatively benign nationalist and humanitarian. Well anyway, more to the point of it really being just the Muslims, Savarkar was defended by an Indian Christian barrister.
Are you an American or South Asian, out of curiosity? I feel like Americans don't really have the ability translate South Asian politics. Not that I'm some expert, but I can report personal on-the-ground experiences.
Are you a European, out of curiosity? I feel like South Asians don’t really have the ability to translate European history. Not that I’m some expert, but we can report good on-the-ground experiences about "relatively benign nationalism" and where it leads.
The argument that Jews need their own state specifically in the area between Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria is integral to Israel’s politics and history.
There is anti-Hindu persecution in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Therefore Bangladeshi distrust of India is mainly religious. Therefore Hindutva is essentially a defensive reaction rather than a political movement.
I accept the first proposition. The others do not follow from it.
Bangladesh has entirely intelligible state-to-state grievances with India, unresolved Teesta water sharing, killings at the border, Indian political rhetoric portraying Bangladeshis as demographic threats, economic asymmetry and India’s perceived support for Sheikh Hasina and none of that makes Islamist propaganda imaginary. It means your claim that religion is the main explanation requires evidence rather than assertion. AP, among others, identifies both Teesta and lethal border enforcement as serious bilateral disputes [0].
India’s enormous contribution in 1971 also does not place Bangladesh under permanent political obligation. Bangladeshis fought the liberation war and India provided strategic assistance. Countries can remain grateful for historical aid while opposing a neighbour’s present policies. And Bangladesh has hardly forgotten Pakistan’s crimes: in 2025 it was still formally demanding an apology and financial settlement from Pakistan over 1971 [1]. That is rather different from your “bhai-bhai now” potrayal.
Similarly, describing the CAA as humanitarian does not answer the objection. A true persecution-based refugee law would ask whether an applicant was persecuted. The CAA instead adds to the broader co-relation over actual criteria they need to look for and preselects six religion [2], excluding groups such as persecuted Ahmadis and non-theists. Making religion the statutory filter is the part being criticised.
The portrayal of Savarkar as a benign humanitarian who simply snapped in response to Muslim extremism is not rationalising the fact after the incident. His 1923 Hindutva formulation made India’s status as both fatherland and holy land a criterion of national belonging, thereby excluding Muslims and Christians from the Hindu nation. That is an articulated political ideology, and not a reflex to witnessing extremism.
> "A HINDU means a person who regards this land of BHARATVARSHA, from the Indus to the Seas as his Father-Land as well as his Holy-Land that is the cradle land of his religion."
> Many a Mohammedan community in Kashmir and other parts of India as well as the Christians in South India observe our caste rules to such an extent as to marry generally within the pale of their castes alone; yet, it is clear that though their original Hindu blood is thus almost unaffected by an alien adulteration, yet they cannot be called Hindus in the sense in which that term is actually understood, because, we Hindus are bound together not only by the tie of the love we bear to a common.
From: https://archive.org/stream/essentials-of-hindutva-veer-savar...
I'm not sure how Christians persecuted Sarvakar to cause him to not consider them worthy of belonging here. Although their rhetoric has indeed not been anti-Christian later given we are a minority.
> Not that I'm some expert, but I can report personal on-the-ground experiences.
Your claim that Jews “never made such an argument” makes the selectiveness more apparent. Zionism was organised as a Jewish political movement advocating a Jewish homeland and eventually a Jewish state in Palestine [3]. This does not make Zionism, Hindutva and the Muslim League identical movements, but it disproves the universal claim made. Were you to narrow it after the correction to “Jews specifically within India”, that would move the goalposts. Different minorities, occupying different demographic and political positions, unsurprisingly did not all develop identical political movements. Their differing outcomes do not prove that Muslim political mobilisation was uniquely theological while every other form of nationalism was historically intelligible. Hindu nationalism is granted an historical defence that it's adherents were provoked and driven towards it by Muslim extremism. Bangladeshi and Muslim politics, meanwhile, are stripped of political context and reduced to religion. If historical insecurity and persecution are relevant when explaining Hindutva, then border killings, water disputes, political interference and support for an authoritarian government are also relevant when explaining Bangladeshi distrust. You cannot treat context as explanatory when it excuses your side and as irrelevant when it complicates your account of the other.
Likewise, saying that Americans cannot understand Islamist extremism is rhetorical but not grounded. The United States was the target of the September 11 attacks, and the 9/11 Commission documented al-Qaeda’s development, declaration of war against the United States and execution of those attacks [4]. That does not make every American an expert on Islamism, but that is exactly the point: neither nationality nor proximity automatically establishes expertise. Asking where someone comes from rather than answering their evidence is a genetic fallacy, evaluating a claim through its origin instead of its reasoning. The special pleading lies in treating your own South Asian identity as evidence while treating somebody else’s identity as grounds for disqualification.
So asking whether someone is American, South Asian or Indian Christian does not resolve anything. A person outside India can misunderstand India, and a person within India can be misinformed about it. The relevant question is still whether the account is supported by evidence. Personal experience may provide useful evidence, but it cannot substitute for demonstrating causation. “I have been there” is not evidence that every Bangladeshi grievance is secretly religious.
Your appeal to on-the-ground experience is also less helpful than you suggest. The student protests in India provide a fairly direct example. Indian television did not report the same events from a same point, a review found that Republic, News18, ABP and DD News largely changed the protesters’ actual demands with narratives about conspiracies, Pakistan, Nepal and national security, while police violence against protesters nearly disappeared from their coverage [5] while AP seemed to have a much coverage of the police violence, and the HRW [6], [7].
[0]: https://apnews.com/article/india-bangladesh-energy-developme... [1]: https://apnews.com/article/bangladesh-pakistan-relations-has... [2]: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-briefing-notes/2019/12/press-... [3]: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/postwar-re... [4]: https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/ [5]: https://www.newslaundry.com/2026/07/21/nepal-reference-pak-l... [6]: https://apnews.com/article/india-cockroach-protests-memes-sa... [7]: https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/07/23/india-excessive-force-us...
South Asian Muslims often want it both ways. When India got rid of triple talaaq divorce, south Asian Muslims at my American college demanded a protest to criticize Indias supposed religious discrimination. Meanwhile, you act as if Bangladesh has not given India and Indians reasons to dislike it
This is the problem with discourse about India. The expectation is always that India needs to change and it's neighbor's behavior, regardless of how unhinged, is just seen as a simple matter of unchangeable fact.
> Your claim that Jews “never made such an argument” makes the selectiveness more apparen
You took no time to read or understand what I said and instead assumed I was talking about European Jews. I am not
I am talking about Indian Jews. In that sentence about neither Christians nor Jews nor parsis not sikhs nor jains claiming to be separate nations, I was referring to Indian christians, Indian Jews, Indian parsis, Indian sikhs and Indian jains.
None of these religious groups claimed they were not part of the cultural nation of India. No one made arguments like Jinnah who claimed that Indian Muslims and everyone else (who he called Hindus.. he called all non Muslims Hindus) constituted two distinct nations.
Not everything is about Europeans and European Jews. India has its own Jews. While some were sympathetic to Zionism, most were integrated into Indian society writ large and many participated in the independence movement for India.
> saying that Americans cannot understand Islamist extremism
These sorts of things (terror attacks) are of course awful, but in India it's a different story. Firstly there's just more, and more fooled plots. But more than that, it's the aggressive nature of the religion. It's the loud calls to prayer, the public street takeovers, the slaughter of animals in the streets full of blood, etc (much of which is banned in Muslim countries) that annoy the hell out of people.
Up until recently Muslims could claim any piece of private land and then privately judge whether such a claim had legal merit. Landowners were left without any possibility of appeal. Imagine such a thing in america, lol.
American communities that have seen large influxes of Muslims smaller than the population of Muslims in India by a lot have lodged similar complaints. I mean, when the government tries to stop the streets from being filled with lambs blood, Indian Muslims complain that it's discrimination. Americans would quickly become radicalized if that happened in an American city.
Europe is a great example. The Muslim population of Europe is miniscule but Europeans are even more vitriolic against them than Indians. And even European liberal parties have seen the issues. Of course it's only when India takes actions against this that claims of islamophobia arise. When macron bans the burqa, people default to it being for cultural preservation and safety.
> When Macron bans the burqa, people default to it being for cultural preservation and safety.
Macron did not introduce France’s public face-covering ban because the law was enacted in October 2010 [8]. Macron became president in 2017 [9]. It is formally a general prohibition on concealing the face in public, rather than a law that names only Muslim clothing, and the same legislation separately punishes forcing someone to conceal her face [8]. There can obviously be secular grounds for restricting face coverings in particular situations. Identity checks, examinations, courtrooms, secure buildings and circumstances in which someone is being coerced are all reasonable subjects for regulation. If a woman is being forced to wear a burqa or niqab, then punishing the coercer is entirely defensible.
But that does not make every general prohibition unquestionably secular or liberal. The European Court of Human Rights upheld the French law [10], while the UN Human Rights Committee later found that France violated the religious freedom of two women whom it fined for wearing the niqab [11]. The Netherlands has a partial prohibition applying to public transport and government, healthcare and educational premises rather than an unrestricted ban in every public place [12].
European states therefore do not have one obvious consensus under which all burqa restrictions are merely neutral safety measures. Different countries regulate them differently, and major human-rights institutions have disagreed about the limits. You can defend a restriction on secular grounds, especially where identification or coercion is involved, without pretending that every restriction proves Europe has correctly diagnosed the nature of Islam.
> Europe is a great example. The Muslim population of Europe is miniscule but Europeans are even more vitriolic against them than Indians.
The fact that Europeans complain about Muslims does not prove every complaint is true, much less that the cause must be the "aggressive nature" of Islam. That is circular, Muslims are supposedly aggressive because people dislike them, and people’s dislike is then justified because Muslims are supposedly aggressive. Hostility towards a group cannot itself be used as proof that the group deserves hostility. Europe also involves a very different political question. A large part of its debate concerns recent migration, asylum and integration. Indian Muslims are not recently arrived foreigners asking a host population to tolerate them. They are citizens from communities that have lived in the subcontinent for centuries. Millions remained in India after Partition and had to define their citizenship and belonging within the Indian republic [14].
Immigration policy concerns who may enter and settle in a country. Constitutional equality concerns how a country treats citizens who already belong to it. Conflating the two rhetorically turns Indian Muslims into permanent immigrants whose rights depend on whether the majority presently finds their behaviour agreeable.
> When the government tries to stop the streets from being filled with lambs blood, Indian Muslims complain that it’s discrimination.
Slaughtering animals in public streets can be restricted on grounds of sanitation, or obstruction of public space. India’s prevention of cruelty to animals rules state that, within municipal areas, animals generally may not be slaughtered except in recognised or licensed slaughterhouses and set requirements involving veterinary examination, drainage and the collection of blood [15]. Apply those rules. I have no objection to that. But apply them as rules governing slaughter, sanitation and public space, not as evidence that one religion has an inherently aggressive nature.
United States federal law expressly recognises slaughter performed according to Jewish or other religious ritual requirements as a legally humane method [16]. European Union law permits a religious rites exception from prior stunning requirements when the slaughter occurs in a slaughterhouse [17]. The British government publishes instructions for legally conducting halal and kosher slaughter without prior stunning [18].
And is animal sacrifice uniquely Muslim. Goats are sacrificed daily to Kali at Kalighat, and the Indian legal dispute there has included whether the practice should be prohibited, regulated or concealed from public view [19]. I am not arguing that Hinduism is therefore an aggressive religion, that inference would be as irrelevant as the one you are making about Islam. It shows that slaughter can exist within more than one religious tradition and can be regulated through neutral public health law, and maybe animal welfare. Practices change when institutions, and culture change and if public slaughter creates a health problem, regulate public slaughter. There is no need to transform a solvable civic problem into a theory about the unchangable nature of millions.
The same applies to loudspeakers and the occupation of roads. Impose neutral limits on noise, hours, sanitation and obstruction, and apply them to mosques, temples, churches, political rallies, wedding processions and every other group. Article 25 itself subjects religious practice to public order, morality and health and allows the regulation of secular activity associated with religion [1]. What is not neutral is treating a Muslim violation as evidence about Islam’s aggressive essence while treating similar majority practices as ordinary Indian culture. India has no shortage of temple loudspeakers, processions, road occupations, public animal sacrifice or politically protected religious gatherings.
This is the same special pleading that existed in your previous response. Hindutva is granted history, fear, political incentives, trauma and provocation. Muslim conduct is reduced to “the aggressive nature of the religion”. Indian Jews are treated as comparable to a population thousands of times larger when that helps your argument, while their mass migration to Israel is ignored. Your experiences at an American college become evidence about Indian Muslims, while sourced descriptions of Indian politics are dismissed as Western misunderstanding.
And after all of this, you still do not answer the original causal claim. None of the material about triple talaq, Waqf property, burqas, loudspeakers or animal slaughter establishes that Bangladeshi distrust of India is mainly religious. None of it converts Savarkar’s articulated political ideology into a merely defensive reflex. It is a collection of grievances about Muslims being used to avoid defending the propositions that were actually challenged.
[8]: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jorf/id/JORFTEXT000022911670 [9]: https://www.elysee.fr/en/emmanuel-macron [10]: https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=002-9952 [11]: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2018/10/france-banni... [12]: https://www.government.nl/faq/ban-on-face-coverings/what-doe... [13]: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/11/29/europes-grow... [14]: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/muslim-belonging-in-sec... [15]: https://www.dahd.gov.in/sites/default/files/2026-05/SLAUGHTE... [16]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/7/1902 [17]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2009/1099/oj/eng [18]: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/halal-and-kosher-slaughter [19]: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-law-and-r...
Most of this does not answer what I wrote. You do not address Teesta, border killings, India’s support for Sheikh Hasina, the CAA’s religious filter, or the fact that Savarkar explicitly excluded both Muslims and Christians from his conception of the Hindu nation. Instead, you move to the UCC, some students at your American college, Waqf property, burqas, loudspeakers and animal slaughter.
> The UN declaration is retarded because Indian law is not and has never been neutral to religion. If you believe it should be, then you are on the side of the BJP.
The fact that Indian personal law has historically not been religion neutral is not an argument against making it more neutral. It also does not follow that anyone who supports religion neutral law must support the BJP. Equality before the law, prohibition of religious discrimination, freedom of religion and the aspiration towards a uniform civil code all exist together in Articles 14, 15, 25 and 44 of the Constitution [1]. The BJP does not own the concept of equal law merely because it invokes it selectively.
I have no issue saying that instantaneous triple talaq should not have legal effect. That is separate from supporting every provision of the BJP’s legislation. The 2019 act does not declare triple talaq void but also it makes pronouncing an already legally ineffective divorce a criminal offence punishable by up to three years in prison [2]. Someone can support getting rid of triple talaq while questioning why an ineffective utterance requires that particular criminal penalty. Presenting the only options as either supporting the BJP’s complete policy or supporting discrimination against Muslim women is a false dichotomy.
> South Asian Muslims often want it both ways. When India got rid of triple talaq divorce, South Asian Muslims at my American college demanded a protest.
You are at an American college reporting what some South Asian Muslim students supposedly said. I am at an Indian college and do not see Muslims behaving in the way you keep describing. Neither experience proves much. My experience cannot establish that no Indian Muslim behaves this way, and your experience cannot establish that South Asian Muslims generally behave this way. You are repeatedly moving from some people you met, to South Asian Muslims, to Indian Muslims, and then to the inherent character of Islam. One campus anecdote should not carry that much weight.
> You took no time to read or understand what I said and instead assumed I was talking about European Jews. I am not. I am talking about Indian Jews.
Your clarification narrows the claim, but also makes the comparison nearly meaningless. There were only 22,480 Jews in India in 1941 [3]. They were an extremely small and geographically scattered minority. They could not reasonably demand a Jewish territorial state carved out of India in the manner that a community numbering tens of millions and concentrated across entire provinces could. Their failure to demand an Indian partition does not prove that they possessed some fundamentally different religious or moral character. It largely proves that no such political project was demographically possible.
Indian Jews also did exactly the broader thing you were presenting Jews as having rejected. After Israel was established, most Bene Israel emigrated there. The Hebrew University estimates that there are now around 80,000 Bene Israel in Israel and only about 3,000 in India [4]. This was large-scale migration by Indian Jews to a Jewish nation-state.
That does not make Indian Jews disloyal, nor does it make their migration identical to Jinnah demanding that India be divided. It does, however, destroy the idea that Indian Jewish integration proves Jews had no interest in religiously framed national self determination. They could be integrated into India and still migrate to Israel when a Jewish state became available. Both things can be true.
So the comparison fails in both directions. They were far too small to demand a viable Jewish state inside India, but when a Jewish state existed elsewhere, most of the community migrated to it. You cannot use them as a control group proving that Muslims uniquely politicised religion.
You have also basically stopped defending what you initially said about Savarkar. Your original description was that he had been a relatively benign nationalist and humanitarian until Muslim extremism caused him to snap. I then quoted his own definition of Hindutva, under which India must be both a person’s fatherland and holy land, and the passage in which he explicitly explains why Christians and Muslims are not Hindus in the relevant national sense [5].
Muslim violence does not explain his exclusion of Christians. Christians did not collectively persecute Savarkar into declaring them outside his cultural nation. Your answer that later Hindu nationalist rhetoric was not especially anti-Christian because Christians are a small minority does not defend his ideology either. If anything, it concedes that the groups emphasised by the movement depend upon political usefulness and demographic threat rather than some neutral humanitarian reaction.
You initially gave a psychological account of Savarkar as a humanist driven into extremism by what he witnessed. When confronted with what he actually wrote, you did not explain it. You simply moved to other subjects. The quote still stands, this was a worked out political definition of national belonging that explicitly distinguished Hindus from Muslims and Christians.
> Up until recently Muslims could claim any piece of private land and then privately judge whether such a claim had legal merit. Landowners were left without any possibility of appeal. Imagine such a thing in America, lol.
This is not an accurate description of the old Waqf Act. An individual Muslim could not simply point to someone’s house, privately declare it Waqf and award it to himself. Former Section 40 allowed the statutory Waqf Board to collect information about property it had reason to believe was Waqf property and decide the question after an inquiry [6].
There was a valid criticism here, the board was an interested administrative body being allowed to make the initial determination. I do not need to pretend that was a good arrangement. But the act expressly stated that the Board’s decision was final only unless it was revoked or modified by the Waqf tribunal. The tribunal had the powers of a civil court. Although the act excluded an ordinary appeal from the tribunal, Section 83(9) allowed an aggrieved person to ask the High Court to examine the record and confirm, reverse or modify the tribunal’s determination [6].
"No ordinary appeal" and "no legal remedy whatsoever" are not the same statement. Your quote removes the regulatory bodies like the tribunal and High Court revision, and replaces all of them with "Muslims could claim anything and privately judge it themselves". That is far more rhetorically useful, but it is not what the statute said.
America also does have a proecudre in the same broad family, called adverse possession, where a person possessing somebody else’s land can eventually acquire legal title without the original owner’s consent if state-specific conditions are met which has to be hostile, open and continuous for the statutory period [7].
Adverse possession is not identical to the old Waqf process and requires physical possession over a long period and eventual legal proof, it is not a religious board making an initial property classification. But that is precisely why the careful comparison matters. "Imagine a legal mechanism by which somebody can obtain title to another person’s property in America, lol" is not a devastating point you think it is, because America has one, the procedures and justifications are different, which is what should actually be debated.
[1]: https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/19150/1/con... [2]: https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/11564/1/a20... [3]: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4464913 [4]: https://cris.huji.ac.il/en/publications/the-bene-israel/ [5]: https://archive.org/stream/essentials-of-hindutva-veer-savar... [6]: https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/15941/1/the... [7]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/adverse_possession
Do you remember that time two dozen or so years ago when a couple buildings collapsed in NYC? After some planes rammed into them?
Maybe dismantle the caste system first. You need a civil rights movement.
This is India's biggest hurdle but it seems too ingrained in the society. All peoples should have the same opportunity, but the structure of power in India likes the way things are.
Next work on how you treat women.
As countries such as Norway and China show, you can have development with or without a police state. The issues have nothing to do with each other
You mean, since India and Pakistan were invented 79 years ago?
If India was invented 79 years ago, then you need to explain the various East India companies established in the 1600s, and all the references to India and the Indians by the Romans and the Greeks and the Persians and the Chinese before the Abrahamization of Europe. Europeans were literally looking for ways to India and ran into the West Indies and North America by accident.
The East India Company, and then the British Raj, held power because they were able to broker deals with opposing (and warring) princely states and kingdoms. They used contractual leverage to make those sub-sub-regions keep each other in check.
The British Raj was a kingdom of kingdoms, in addition to being a protectorate. These are literal legal facts [0].
The word Hindu is literally an exonym. A name given to a people by foreigners. Our very collective identity was conferred upon us by outsiders.
[0] Obligatory Wikipedia... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Raj#British_India_and_...
In its Interpretation Act 1889, the British Parliament adopted the following definitions in Section 18:
(4.) The expression "British India" shall mean all territories and places within Her Majesty's dominions which are for the time being governed by Her Majesty through the Governor-General of India or through any governor or other officer subordinates to the Governor-General of India.
(5.) The expression "India" shall mean British India together with any territories of any native prince or chief under the suzerainty of Her Majesty exercised through the Governor-General of India, or through any governor or other officer subordinates to the Governor-General of India.[1]
There have been many (empires, not modern, Westphalian nation-states), but the British managed to create the largest yet. Pakistan was carved out of British India on Muslim and non-Muslim lines.
> Who agreed to the legal terms? The rulers of the sovereign princely states and kingdoms.
Sovereign in name, but vassals nonetheless.
> Our very collective identity was conferred upon us by outsiders.
It is a name, not an identity. This is like saying the Indians conferred upon the Chinese their identity because the word cīna is of Sanskrit origin and the world calls the Chinese ... Chinese ... due to that.
Pakistanis who were looking for their fathers in Arabia, Persia and Turkey in the past based upon a deliberate avoidance of their Indic origin have recently started a political project to reclaim their identity based upon the IVC. They can try all they want but civilizational continuity is the only thing that matters. Names are dime a dozen. If you have a problem with Hindu/India and other exonyms, you could always call yourself Bhāratīya or some such. It is all the same.
Modern day Hinduism is a post-hoc reconstruction. That's not to say Indian religious beliefs and doctrines don't exist -- they do. There are just a wide variety of them and they deserve their own mentions.
You're applying modern standards to a time and place where they would have been incomprehensible
https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1v6k8vq/several_injur...
- the moment it comes to their backyard once in a while, they are willing to go full nuclear on it
Indian Government is struggling to address this issue at face. PM Modi hasn't responded to this in public. To address this, Government is taking into all sort of measures like blocking public communication and social media. Like they have done for other measures like for terrorism , control and govt lead propaganda to control the narrative.
It is interesting that they tried to do this app with a _miniscule_ usage. Usage might be so small, that they could have bothered less about it.
But since they did it, Jack Dorsey is now using his clout to share about this app and bring some light on the situation. With what we have seen with Twitter/X and not-standing up to Elon, let's just remember that Dorsey isn't champion of free speech either.
Failed attempts at censorship are the best thing that could ever happen to Bitchat: free advertising for a vibcoded and questionably secure entry in a space with plenty of competitors. As others have commented it's basically impossible to shut down an open source app by blocking the source distributor, but press is priceless.
I played around with Briar [1] for a while: it worked well, and had an option to install peer-to-peer without going through any app store, was sad to see that the authors put it in maintenance mode. It also had a security audit.
I am also aware of the attempts to bring down NEET here, which I feel isn't given the right amount of scrutiny, and showing the cracks in the system. Exam leaks have been happening in India for a long time, and it looks like better systems need to exist for preventing this.
As far as censorship goes, many people should start making SDR based chat systems for long distance relays as well ... they can make this easily today
In the late 90s I attended a Telephone industry conference while working for a telephony test equipment company. A rep. from the Indian government gave a talk on their telephone system regulations. During the question period I got up and asked how India was dealing with voice over internet protocol (VOIP). With a straight face the speaker replied "We will not allow it". :-)
This stuff happens in many places, including in India.
I don't think there's any country that can keep a lid on the internet. The best they can do are leaky blocks (china's gfw is probably the best in the world, but still quite leaky), or complete shutdowns (eg. iran).
When someone with the monopoly on the use of force says they will not allow something, that isn't something cute to ignore, it is serious.
FSF: if you use PGP your communications will be unreadable by outsiders.
Some Uyghur: bruh, the government assigned a Han Chinese person to live in my house and watch me whenever I use technology.
One example - the government would lose infinite respect if it martyrs some normal guy who bought business supplies with foreign (TLS-encrypted) online banking. So it won't do that. So how far can that line be pushed? i.e. what is the least normal thing the government won't punish?
I remember how the Uber rollout worked in Berlin. Uber said they don’t need to comply with anything the city asked for and enjoyed their position in the safety of an ocean away so the local authorities instituted eye watering fines for drivers caught providing Uber rides. Uber decided to comply.
[0] https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/quadrf-can-spot-drone...
Resistance against totalitarianism is a duty.
After living under one of those totalitarian regimes, all Incan say is that everything sounds easy in an HN comment typed from the safety of a democratic society.
Not everything is about “fighting the power”, there are plenty of good reasons to want to validate and approve these systems.
Musk was as usual likes to talk big and brave but same as with his fight in Brazil over X, or the Tesla factory in Germany, if he wants to operate there he needs to follow the rules. And there’s no moral argument (saving freedom) he can pull out of his wig in most parts of the world that can make him money.
In much of the world including USA poor people will slang crack for $5 under threat of life in jail and fines higher than they could ever hope to pay. Suffice to say there's an endless line of people willing to uber for roughly crack slinging wages without the risk of life imprisonment even if the fines are as bad -- because their alternatives are worse.
The US has almost entirely lost this culture except for short moments in isolated places. Minneapolis is nearly a proof by exception in this. Very, very few people need to be detained or killed to get the mass of Americans to stay inside and self-censor. Much less is required to get businesses to put their head down and play nice with the government.
You name things and decide that‘s “resistance”. People break the law because there’s no real consequence or because they just have nothing to lose. They’re not “resisting”, they’re surviving. The US society decided that a large class of people will be forced to operate at that level their whole life and are incentivized to do worse by the insane punishment model applied only to them.
The only people doing the “resisting” in the US are those who can afford a good lawyer. Everyone else does what the cracks in the system allow, or what they need to do out of desperation.
No German Uber driver is desperate enough to risk their whole livelihood especially for that meager payoff. Most civilized countries make sure that people have something to lose which will keep people acting straight rather than always act on desperation. Depending on your goal, having people exercise self restraint works better than restraining them with tasers, chokeholds, and bullets to the back.
> because their alternatives are worse.
Ah, ok. So not “a healthy culture of resistance” but more “desperation because the country made sure that’s driving them”.
This is logical fallacy, but you've tried hard to pull a gotcha out of it.
Resisting because you are desperate is perfectly valid and doesn't create a contradiction.
It's not something reserved to "those who can afford a good lawyer." Desperation is one of the hardest drivers of resistance, not something reserved to rich people with lawyers and something to lose. And even if we suppose there's not resistance in USA, I said in USA or someplace with a healthier culture of resistance, which means even if you don't consider USA a place of resistance it still meets the logical test of falling within my statement.
>[now deleted] If you hear this for the first time, hello white male with plenty of money for a lawyer.
Lol you couldn't resist adding that in. Your little racially charged bits about why we're not allowed to call it resistance when a poor black person does such acts. While ignoring your very example of Rosa Parks who was a black woman, child of a teacher and itinerant worker and before activism working largely in domestic work for white families. The contradiction is yours.
My “very example” about which you are now quoting Wikipedia to me was resistance, not desperation. It wasn't a tweaker selling $5 crack because he literally has nothing better to look forward to. It wasn’t a mother driving without a license because she couldn’t afford the court taxes for a few traffic tickets. It was a woman who did it out of principle alone. That’s resistance, and it’s rare. Your speech fell on its face as soon as you had your big boy proud moment because you’re missing something important to back it up [0]. You were never taught enough pst that proud song and dance.
If you thought calling you privileged for your dissonant and ignorant line of argumentation is racist then let me add not educated enough[0] too. Read a book to understand these concepts, don’t expect you can just throw words around and people will bow to your wisdom. You make it impossible for me to take you seriously when you make junior level confusions like “resistance” and “desperation” all for a shitty national pride moment.
on the other phone calls are getting replaced by video chat with the various messengers, making VOIP a dying technology, at least the part that end users access directly.
> on the other phone calls are getting replaced by video chat with the various messengers, making VOIP a dying technology, at least the part that end users access directly.
Not so much in countries where it's banned and the ban is enforced.
whatsapp is a private network, not federated and only works with a whatsapp owned client. to qualify i would have to be able to call someone on whatsapp with a generic VOIP client.
this is comparable to googles text messaging system that is built on xmpp. it used to be possible that i could use any xmpp client on any xmpp server to reach people on google. at that point google was xmpp. but when they removed public access it stopped being standard xmpp but became a custom fork of it.
Midterms are coming up and the regime has spoken openly about "rigging" them so... just give it some time (and download a copy!).
We're much safer not opening that can of worms for now.
Honestly I would think something like this would come from the EU or UK. UK is trying to ban VPNs, EU is trying to ban private chat completely. EU countries routinely block whole swaths of IPs and websites, etc.
'This is the right call' — VPN industry praises the UK’s decisions to leave VPN alone | TechRadar https://share.google/CyBImh95bt3VTubJV
Yes, it is American exceptionalism (and quite foolish) to make the claim that "This could never happen in the US".
No, the American government is NOT more authoritative than the UK in the way they handle freedom of websites. The grandparent comment is correct: the US government does not (currently) order ISPs to block specific websites.
Yes, those in the US should protest the current government (many of us already are doing so).
Just looking at the percentage of the population in prison, or murders by cop per inhabitant, that are also good indicators of "repression", and the US might rate first worldwide.
As a note, I think you meant authoritarian; authoritative means “preeminent/most trustworthy”
> “The application’s design, which enables communication even during network restrictions, creates a substantial risk of misuse by anti-national elements, terrorist organisations, organised criminal groups, and cybercriminals seeking to evade lawful detection and continue communication despite legally imposed restrictions,” the notice mentioned.
Yeah, did you know criminals can use roads to commit crimes, too? We should destroy all of the roads. Terrorists also use food to give them energy to commit more terrorism, so we should start regulating access to food behind mandatory ID checks.
Originally you’d communicate by mail and they could get a warrant. The day encrypted comms showed up, they wouldn’t just want to give up.
If you love the encryption but hate the terrorism, what to do? Double down on old school / physical surveillance? (Obviously not my field)
That was why the government decided to ban mail, and since that didn't cover all cases, they also banned people handing things to each other.
At least, I think that is how I remember it going in an alternate world where physical laws mimiced electronic laws.
This also isn't even motivated by terrorists, but rather people daring to oppose the government.
If you make the government do your terror for you, you win. Like the TSA after 9/11.
Remember, the terms of service for your LG TV say you have to warn visitors to you house they're being eavesdropped.
I just want to make sure I understand which expansive ideology we're calling innate, because again I know you are not claiming that a sovereign nation's desire to rid itself of foreign colonial oppression and apartheid is "expansive".
It's not ordinary citizens' job to figure out solutions to these problems. Government has teams of intelligence agencies to answer these questions. Encrypted chat is fundamental infra that shouldn't be blocked.
It is generally extremist arms interested in destabilizing India to strengthen other regional powers (usually Pakistan).
The goal of much of these terrorist attacks simply end with ... no India, not "we demand change to policies in a reasonable way"
[0] https://www.visionofhumanity.org/terrorism-counterterrorism-...
Spending crazy amounts in public education, healthcare, and nuclear arsenal?
We also regulate roads. You can not drive around in tanks. Or without license plate...
It's just a matter of interested parties setting up a body to create the standard, which might genuinely be a huge bottleneck under the current geopolitical landscape.
freifunk in germany and funkfeuer in austria do the same thing.
Without a critical mass of adoption, mesh applications are largely useless.
(For once my tax dollars are producing something I appreciate, even if I don’t love the reason behind it.)
The request has not yet been published by GitHub to https://github.com/github/gov-takedowns/tree/master/India/20...
Also not mentioned in the project's GitHub repository yet per https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Apermissionlesstech%2Fbitc...
To imagine that US MNCs readily obey these orders. There was a time when Gmail exited China due to Aurora attacks, and Chinese GFW is universally hated, so why is India allowed to create a GFW like censorship on US platforms? Indian courts have even blocked Reuters articles GLOBALLY before. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/19/india-judg...
When asked about when kind of government the founding fathers had created, Ben Franklin replied "A Republic, if you can keep it."
On democracy, John Adams wrote: "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
Thomas Jefferson further wrote that "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
tl;dr democracies need to be fought for, or else they won't stay democracies forever.
Individual States and localities have elements of democracy, but the US—built upon knowledge of Rome—is not.
The United States of America is the second iteration of American government, after the one that failed in 1787. The arguments leading up to the 1789 Constitution are quite explicit around why democracies don't work. America is a nation of nations, which is why "these United States" as a plural term was used frequently until after the Civil War, when having it be a singular concept once-and-for-all was of paramount importance.
That said, this is ban is clearly a restriction on freedom of expression, and highly un-American.
Which is a kind of democracy. Democracy is a broad term describing all forms of government where power is granted by the people. This is a weird framing that I see brought up by Americans only, and I don't understand it, because direct democracies (what these Americans are actually referring to when they say 'democracy') are basically extinct in the modern world. They keep trying to distance themselves from the term. Most democratic nations today are presidential or parliamentary republics, just like you, or something that can be approximated to one of them. I'm doubtful that the US founders didn't recognize they were founding a democratic nation, just a specific subcategory - but ultimately still a state that should hopefully answer to the people.
Neither does federalism relate to the form of government - you could have a federal or distributed direct democracy if you wanted to. They're just different categories of things, the way you choose how to best represent the will of a group of people is a different question from how you subdivide these groups into self-governing blocks.
Is it interesting that all these "democracies" around the world have persistent speech bans? When someone says something they don't like?
I seem to have a recollection of flipping through HN for a decade or so and people talking about all the meanie-pants who want people to be able to speak freely, even if it hurts people's feelings and might not be endorsed by the elected government.
No. It's not. I encourage you to read the quite enlightening treatment of democracies in the Federalist Papers. And Greece's government was nothing like Rome. If there is a conflation there, it is one largely created by America.
Which in its own right is interesting. What is interesting about the longest-running continuous constitutional government in history (America)?
I presume you're referring to the various systems of democracy introduced in different ancient Greek city-states, as opposed to the Roman Republic. Of course, they're different. But it doesn't run counter to what I said - being descendant from the ideas of democracy doesn't promise you that any aspect of the government will be in any way similar, only that the power will ultimately originate from the people in some way. You don't even have to go ancient for this - there are dozens of different takes on democracy in the modern world.
To emphasize - I'm not arguing against the distinctions or the new ideas that were made during the founding of the US, or that some of these ideas weren't novel. I'm arguing against the school of thought that seemingly arose long after that happened, which tried to categorize the US into a bespoke category of government that included it and excluded other nations, modern and historical - despite them all definitionally being ruled by the people and often even having similar ways of organizing their governments. Let's review the terms.
An autocracy is a state where power descends from a single person, the autocrat. An absolute monarchy is a subset of autocracy, where that person is a monarch, usually with religion tying into their perceived legitimacy. An aristocracy is a state where power descends from an upper elite class. In anarchy, the power descends from no one in particular. Democracy is the class that is opposed to these other forms, it's a system of rule by many where power descends from lots of people. It includes many flavors and forms that result in different types of government - direct, indirect/representative (you are here), as well as many sub-variants that define the exact way of how power moves from the ruled to the rulers or other characteristics.
Therefore, republics are a strict subset of the broad term of democracy. There are lots of republics in the modern world, all of which are democratic states, just as there are constitutional democracies. If you want to distance the US from these other states, you would need to prove why it was not envisioned as a power-from-the-people state and what exactly would place it in a different category that no one else occupies. The US may have been the first, but it's not that unique in the modern landscape of governments.
If us means humans living in democracies, I would say that parliamentary democracy has more supporters and constitutional republics.
And even if us == the US, I would argue that most US citizens actually have only a very hazy idea about how their own system of government works, much less how others work. Most of these people think that chanting "USA, USA" in unison is democracy.
That's a very dim view of your fellow Americans. I don't have such a dim view myself; there are certainly people who don't care and didn't pay attention in their high school civics classes, but I've found that most people do care and do pay attention. I wonder if your opinion is colored by recent events, and whether you'd have thought the same in 2008?
Democracy -> Tyranny
Fun fact: They have deployed facial recognition vans, AI smart glasses and illegally tracking the protesters (most of which are students) without their consent to threaten and deter them.
Aside: oof yeah this seems like terrible policy and takes India off my bucket list.
The thing about it is they specifically are targeting the repo which is interesting because the only thing that can really stop the proliferation of these apps is not allowing user to install from other sources which would have to come from Google preventing this.
Hopefully google won't prevent people from installing from outside sources /s
This change is largely drivin by claims that installing apps from other sources is insecure... I'd argue this is why it's insecure... Not insecure for individuals. Insecure for oppressive governments.
Those are features, not bugs ;) Seriously tho, the I4C is describing face-to-face communication. Is that illegal too? Perhaps the problem here is not the protesters, but an overreaching government.
In 2014, the Hong Kong protesters used an app called FireChat.
I had the pleasure of meeting the founder, Micha, a few times. The company was called OpenGarden.
The app was popular - distributed in the App Store. Same idea: Bluetooth and wi-fi networks.
User numbers growing like a hockey stick. 100k+ downloads a day.
Micha was in Hong Kong during the 2014 protests (originally for a layover en route to meetings in China) and gave many interviews to international/Western media outlets while there, including the New York Times, TIME, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, BBC, and Reuters. Mica expressed support for free speech.
Authorities limited or blocked downloads and information about the app.
The term sheet for the funding round disappeared.
Too early?
https://updates.techforpalestine.org/bitchat-for-gaza-messag...
Apple caved to pressure from the Chinese government to block distribution of flyers during protests by changing it to 10 minutes only.
Note that India is heavily dependent on money from elsewhere (hence a lot of recent policy changes to bring in more foreign money). It is a net importer and isn’t strong enough on exports.
There are some recent policy changes to attract more foreign currency deposits with lots of expectations.
If there is a hint that these subversive actions are also going to hurt the economy, there is a tiny, tiny sliver of a chance that the powers that be will be a bit more afraid of losing the next round of elections in the state governments and in a few years at the union level. That could possibly limit the ignorant knee jerk reactions and bans.
At a festival I got notifications there are "other users nearby", which made me question if and how the app is broadcasting it's presence, possibly at all times. I also couldn't figure out a way to turn off these notifications (there's barely any settings) and I ended up uninstalling the app.
Does Apple still allow side loaded apps ?
To make it even more annoying, good projects like Briar have been doing this for over 10 years. Why would BitChat suddenly succeed or get any attention at all?
This mouthful boils down to exactly this: a form of communication not controlled by the government creates a risk for the country.
Sorry for pointing out the obvious, but if your country's safety depends on ability to block all forms of private person to person messages, your government has failed in one of its primary goals: providing safety for its citizens. They can blame Dorsey, Telegram, WhatsApp and what not, but it is their failure. Things will not change until people notice the obvious and vote out incompetent persons in power.