India To Have Automatic Communications Monitoring 96
angry tapir writes "India plans to set up a centralized system to monitor communications on mobile phones, landlines and the Internet in the country, a minister has told the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament. Indian laws allow the interception and monitoring of communications under certain conditions, including to counter terrorism. A pilot of the new Centralized Monitoring System (CMS) is to be started by June next year, subject to clearances by other government agencies."
They already have this! (Score:5, Funny)
Your call may be monitored for quality control purposes.
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I swear to cow! If you don stap mekin phone of me, I'm gonna Tek yer Jerbz!
Re:They are just like the Chinese. (Score:4, Insightful)
One that builds nuclear weapons.
One that wastes money on the race into outer space, while being in the deepest debt in the history of mankind.
One that is nationalistic to a fault.
One that sends spies to India and China.
One that kills fetuses and adults all around the middle east.
One that monitors private internet and phone communication inside and outside its territory.
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...Russia?
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France
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Great. Another American high horse. Because democracy in the US of A is the gold standard by which the free world should measure itself.
- The US builds and holds more nuclear weapons than the rest of the world combined
- US military spending accounts for 60% of the total world military spending, outpacing all other industrialized nations by more than double on a per-capita basis.
- An American calling another nation nationalistic is beyond pot calling the kettle black.
- The CIA and NSA have hundreds of statio
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Well, at least they can't blame it on the 2-party system in India, eh?
Kinda takes the wind out of the sail out of a lot of the parroted arguments made on /..
Not in the Third World now! (Score:2)
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to ensure nobody can hear what the other side is saying...
Support (Score:5, Funny)
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At least we know... (Score:4, Insightful)
26/11 is India's 9/11 ... they picked the day (Score:5, Insightful)
The Research & Analysis wing in India has always had significant electronic intelligence hardware and has always been looking for more funding & more engineers to work for them. I know in some sense that they are indeed working their things to let me live my life in some sort of passive ignorance. The thing that pisses me off about this is the day and time they decided to announce this.
I haven't touched yesterday's copy of my paper (the hindu [thehindu.com]), because it is very likely that the mass hysteria about the last year's terror attacks in Mumbai will overcome any real news that they have to say. I feel sad for the victims of the attack, but in the fight between the government and the terrorists (well, militants for the 90s people), the rights that really being eaten away are mine.
So, pushing this legislature yesterday was an act of emotional blackmail on an entire country. To do this while they're still feeling vulnerable and to ensure that anyone opposing it will get vilified in the press.
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I haven't touched yesterday's copy of my paper (the hindu [thehindu.com])
That explains why your post has anger rather than surprise. If you read the paper, you would be surprised that Hindu didn't report it, nor did any Indian news paper.
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So, pushing this legislature yesterday was an act of emotional blackmail on an entire country. To do this while they're still feeling vulnerable and to ensure that anyone opposing it will get vilified in the press.
But its so damned effective in getting people to give up their rights and think it was a good idea.
"So this is how democracy dies, not with a whimper but shouts and flag waving"
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You assume that the time of release was a coincidence. It was not. Speaking of which, we need to switch to SSL and PGP for communication. KSP at FOSS.IN.
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At least we know that there will be a system like this. In many countries it is suspected, there's a "wink and a nod", someone says there's such a system, etc, but there's no proof. In India, there will be no doubt.
It also shows that unlike many others, the Indians do not "think of the children".
Shameful.
Todays children are the terr..., no, freedom figh... uh, ah yes, consumers of tomorrow ! Think of the children !
Spain has it too (Score:1, Interesting)
Look for "SITEL" in Spain, the actual government monitorizes the communications without judges control.
Re:Spain has it too (Score:4, Funny)
"...monitorizes..."
Is that you, H.W.?
Impractical. Money not well spent. (Score:3, Insightful)
For a country of 1 billion people where even the remotest of villages are obsessed with mobile phones, it is highly unrealistic to expect complete mobile monitoring. The money probably is much better spent in other more deserving development efforts. Add to that 26 official languages and thousands of regional dialects for which speech to text hasn't been properly researched yet, it is completely unresonable.
Also, finding loopholes in such a huge system, I think wouldn't present a problem. A simple word substitution would do the trick?
Plus the lack of privacy would probably mean the corruption in the government _will_ work against the idea. (Maybe high level politicos can wriggle out of it, but the rest?)
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The money probably is much better spent in other more deserving development efforts.
It seems likely they are more interested in cross-boarder calls than from housewife to local market or mobile to mobile.
I suspect these intercepts would be used for after-the-fact interdiction rather than prevention of terrorism. In such cases, having the conversations on hard drive or tape is more important than someone finding the odd word or phrase that signals an attack.
As for the money being better spent, I submit that in this economy ANY spending by government is as useful as any other, and training p
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"As for the money being better spent, I submit that in this economy ANY spending by government is as useful as any other"
Bollocks. Privatizationist bollocks. 900 billion dollar bailout package? Spending it any which way will be as good as any other?
* Why not spend it on setting up a totally new energy infrastructure? Government and industry has for years been telling us that the tech is there, it's just a chicken or the egg problem, no fuel depots stock alternative fuel coz there are no alternative fuel car
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* Why not spend it on setting up a totally new energy infrastructure?
Ok, have you had time to take your meds yet?
The amount of money required for India to set up a monitoring structure is in no way adequate to the task of setting up a totally new energy infrastructure.
Nor was India involved in any way in a $900 billion bailout.
If you won't read the article, and you won't read the summary, at LEAST read the TITLE where you will find the first word is INDIA.
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Considering how, supposedly, the ratio of SMS to voice traffic is much higher in India and other developing economies, this isn't that far-fetched as it seems.
Priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
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That hardly characterizes the majority of India.
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Exactly how many people do you need shitting in holes and sleeping on bicycles on highway dividers until it becomes an attention worthy problem? You're probably right - this doesn't characterize the "majority" of people in india - only maybe 200m or so.
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Sorry, compassion for the individual is the topic being discussed, and two wrongs don't make a right.
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Right. We should follow historical precedent and send our poor and criminals out of the country. Preferably to some place over the ocean. Might as well send them to the US. Ideally with measles and drug resistant TB infected blankets.
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Please explain how past wrongs have something to do with individual compassion?
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It's karma, bro! Shouldn't have been a douchbag in your past life...
This is just a clear example of how "fighting terrorism" is merely used to justify any increase in surveillance on the populace. Actually giving a shit about the welfare of the individual citizens isn't even on the radar. That's why the argument is so useful, since it's up to each citizen to add "for my wellbeing" to "fighting terrorism"... they feel like they are agreeing with the given reason when they fill in the blank.
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That country's
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Its the same all over the third world. For example it is considered normal in Malaysia to stack piles of household rubbish beside the road. This happens in towns and urban areas. I saw one otherwise idyllic fishing village on Pulau Langkawi with a huge pile of rotting garbage right on the road leading into the village.
Every new generation will make some improvement as a few of their people soak up the norms from the first world countries. I don't think it has anything to do with the Government. Its just abo
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Please, could you (Score:1)
Outsouring effects... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Outsouring effects... (Score:4, Insightful)
If they were worried about their business being intercepted they'd not hire 100 foreign nationals to carry out their business on foreign soil.
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Outsources are mostly not governments. If you are a private sector business, there is not particular reason to think foreign nationals are less trustworthy than your own.
A lot of outsources are multinationals, so the idea of foreign nationals is not necessarily important anyway. If a company is officially head-quartered in Ireland for tax purposes, but most of the operations are in the UK, and the biggest shareholders lives in Monaco (also for tax reasons), what does nationality mean?
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I really hope your companies make a big fuss about this, though I don't have much hope.
The response from 90% of indians will be "Good". There's no concept of privacy here. Probably comes from rubbing elbows with people each time you go out and being around prying family from birth. A lot of people didn't know what the big deal was when batman could see everything in Dark Knight.
CMS (Score:1)
So now CMS stands for "centralized monitoring system"... but Indians are doing an amateur job here, because anything centralized is doomed to become the single point of failure.
Real (social-)Engineers knows better: don't put all your eggs in one basket. E.g. Decentralized, distributed, p2p web of surveillance in the clouds. [std.com] (Grep for "Web Of Distrust" to see the relevant part.)
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Inefficient current systems (Score:1, Interesting)
I remember 5 years back, there was this group of kidnappers that had to be nailed in Northern India and police had no proper equipment to trace their communications. Finally, some geeks and a professor were hired by police and they were successfully nabbed. Such a system is essential in India considering terrorist threats from Islamic and China supported socialist maoist extremists.
However, I am nervous as well, as I certainly wouldn't want corrupt govt. agencies snooping up on me :(
Should stop (Score:3, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaswant_Singh_Khalra [wikipedia.org]
Burning thousands of bodies in double funeral pyres.
With the help of big telcos their work and contacts can be found.
A chat about national security and all is fine again
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Wow, what don't you learn ... India having 'disappearing' citizens, 1984 style.
But I guess It was only to be expected, after all Oceania is not alone on world ... Eurasia and Eastasia need to catch up.
implementation.. (Score:1)
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Things to keep in mind:
* When it costs a trillion dollars, they will squash it.
* you will know your call is being monitored because the lights will dim
* you will know when something you said/did requires deeper look because the lights will go out and your call or internet will become choppy or drop
* you will know when you said something suspicious but they don't know why, and you will wake up in The Village.
* you will know your neighbour is trouble because your lights will dim often.
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Sound familiar? (Score:1)
Seems like India's version of the Patriot Act has given them some ideas on what to do with their newly-legalized abilities. At least they have the courtesy to be forward and open about it (unlike other countries {cough} USA {cough}). At the least, very few nations beyond China have instituted punishments for Thoughtcrime. Big Brother is watching you!
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Mandatory registration... (Score:1, Informative)
Considering that all SIMs and landline phones must be registered to a particular person--down to the PAN (like SSN/SIN) or passport number of foreign nationals, which is then actually verified--this has some pretty frightening implications.
World's largest democracy! (Score:3, Insightful)
World's largest democracy!
World's largest democracy!
World's largest democracy!
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This is the first time in literally decades when I was accused of defending US government or Americans in general.
Holy cow... (Score:2)
encryption (Score:1)
Why worry about this when we're already en-masse handing over all our private information to gmail? You don't think these communications are
monitored? Of course they are, at least for advertisement-purposes.
I say we need encryption at the client-to-client level. Something by which we can still use gmail, but in such a way that even google cannot inspect our communications.
I guess that some simple extensions to javascript/html would do the trick (in principle it could be done in javascript, but you'll also w
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I use gmail with lots of pgp. I get ads for encryption software.
The Indians are being very ambitious (Score:2)
They've also embarked on a population registration database and ID card scheme - for a population of nearly a billion. Given the scepticism critics have expressed here in the UK about the technical feasibility of the British Government's similar schemes (the National Identity Register and Interception Modernisation Project), I can't help feeling that the Indian officials have succumbed to an even larger dose of snake-oil than ours have.
N900, iPhone etc. (Score:2)
Since this is happening not just in India, what measures can we take to protect ourselves? For example, with the Nokia 900 Linux-based phone or iPhone etc....do any apps exist, that will encrypt the conversations (similar to cryptophone, just actually affordable)? Anyone got any suggestions and/or experiences?
It's not true, don't believe it (Score:1, Troll)
Encryption. (Score:2)
Problem solved.
Another Google (Score:1)