> the app enables communication even during network restrictions and creates a substantial risk of misuse by anti-national elements, terrorist organisations, organised criminal groups and cyber criminals seeking to evade lawful detection and continue communication despite legally imposed restrictions.
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.
Hilariously (darkly), during the pandemic, the very same reason is why the very same administrators were hell-bent on forcing Bluetooth-always-on contact tracing on the whole country's smartphone-carrying population.
(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.)
> 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.
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.
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).
> 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.
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.
I wonder how long it's going to take until we have universal communication monitoring, including in real life. It's not an impossible technical challenge, it's just a question of time. Every spoken word recorded forever and scrutinized. After all forms of distant private communication fall, the spoken word will be the last one remaining. And all these arguments they're making apply to it, too.
That went live about a decade ago. Heck, a lot of the people who built it and maintain it are here on HN, each getting paid so well and contributing only so little that if they can even admit it to themselves, they would never do it publicly.
> I wonder how long it's going to take until we have universal communication monitoring, including in real life. It's not an impossible technical challenge, it's just a question of time. Every spoken word recorded forever and scrutinized. After all forms of distant private communication fall, the spoken word will be the last one remaining. And all these arguments they're making apply to it, too.
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
You vote against them when they're up for re-election. If they're not up for re-election, you vote against anyone who allies themselves with said person.
It's easy to criticize others when your own government basically mandates backdoors into all comm devices, thereby obviating the need for hamfisted maneuvers like blocking apps, etc.; after all, who needs to block apps when there are backdoors farther down which allow the reading of all keystrokes and characters displayed?
>This mouthful boils down to exactly this: a form of communication not controlled by the government creates a risk for the government.
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.
Those "protections" are in place for the protection of the government, not the citizens. That's also why the US tried to classify encryption as arms and why they passed the gun control act (people nowadays might think modern gun control was passed to help school kids, no lmao, it was passed in response to the killing of JFK).
I don't have the citations to back this up anymore than you did, but it was also passed because of the rise in Black Power movements walking around with guns.
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.
I don’t think anyone thinks gun control was passed to help school kids. People have been begging the govt to pass stricter gun control laws to protect kids for decades with very little success.
Blocking communications is basically sweeping the issue under the rug in the hopes that it dissolves on its own. This is closer to avoiding of "taking action"
I mean one could say they are taking action when they lock up and kill random immigrants... or getting into unnecessary wars in the middle east. I would hardly call that a measure of competence. In fact, I would love a government that did absolutely nothing at all ahead of this one.
India is pretty serious about being able to monitor all communications after the terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008. The terrorists used satellite phones to coordinate the attack. As a result, they banned most satellite communication devices.
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.
Japan has no trash cans. (reaction to the japanese subway attacks)
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.
To add some context, the removal of trash cans accelerated prior to the hosting of the Tokyo Olympics. The municipal government was concerned about trash possibly overflowing from the can, thereby ruining the appearance of the streets.
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.
One thing I noticed is that I tended to accumulate a lot of trash in Japan. Connivence stores were plentiful and the food was tasty, but it was all wrapped in plastic.
Where does all the trash go? More often than not, I ended up carrying trash in a backpack to throw away at my hotel.
The terrorists were only able to do so because mass-media news was live broadcasting everything on the air, and the terrorists holed up with hostages in the hotel were able to follow the blow-by-blow live.
(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.)
> 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.
They are self-DoSing. Whatever you want to get banned, just make sure you some terrorists use it, and it will get banned. Want to ban, say, hijabs, or long pants? Have some terrorists wear them to cover their identities.
Same thing that happens whenever your flight gets diverted to South Korea and you have condoms, or Indonesia and you have legal weed, or to Australia and you have a pineapple.
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.
I'm aware of stories of people who've had their flights unexpectedly grounded in New York (, New York) so they just abandoned their checked pistol and refused to collect it. I'd imagine something similar. If you never take possession, it becomes harder to charge and convict someone for possession.
I disagree with the Modi and Hindutva project almost entirely, not only politically, but on a personal level coming from a minority community (Christian) in India. However, India is in what basically amounts to a perpetual state of war with Pakistan and has always been this way. India rarely agresses Pakistan and Pakistani terror groups do operate with seeming impunity in India (Pakistan doesn't even maintain a 'no-first-use' nuclear option, and is currently run by a military dictatorship... they're f'ing nuts). While all these actions are obviously crazy and in my opinion overbearing, people in the West don't understand how awful radical Islam is, especially of the South Asian variety. I'm not sure many Americans would react differently to the extremism of South Asian Islam to be honest.
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.
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.
I find it telling you blame India's lack of modernization on Pakistan. A reflection of the times.
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.
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.
> Jack Dorsey is now using his clout to share about this app and bring some light on the situation
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.
This was a legit case for the students, who suffered the most here. Better systems need to exist, including parametric computer testing and same day results - thereby making re-examinations simpler for the affected students.
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". :-)
And it's also cute when people imply the internet is unregulateable. There are plenty of tools that countries use to regulate internet traffic. They can require ISPs to DPI the traffic and block it. They can MITM traffic. They can shut off the internet entirely. They can throw people in jail. etc.
This stuff happens in many places, including in India.
>And it's also cute when people imply the internet is unregulateable. There are plenty of tools that countries use to regulate internet traffic. They can require ISPs to DPI the traffic and block it. They can MITM traffic. They can shut off the internet entirely. They can throw people in jail. etc.
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).
They could even just shoot people for using the internet! It’s hopeless. Anyone who wants freedom should probably just give up now before it’s too late.
There are workarounds for all of those things up until the point of you suffering violence for just using any encryption. But if you are at that point, then your country is completely fucked.
Lots of countries ban voip in some way or another. Not allowed to connect to the PSTN. Disrupted by licensed ISPs based on traffic inspection. Large vendors yelled at. Etc.
isn't phone tech itself digital over the internet nowadays just like VOIP if it isn't using VOIP 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.
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.
If Modi government wants to ban something, it is usually good stuff.
> “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.
Literally any encrypted mesh net communication protocol would be subject to the same propaganda. The point of this stuff is providing checks and balances for the people against a rogue government, or emergency situation.
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.
Title should specify that it is Indian government. I was worried for a second there that it was the American government. I should have read the url though.
I was fully expecting that was about Trump administration, and was a bit disappointed that my prediction turned out to be wrong. I do not support this; I expected the first federal court and then all the appeals to serve a verdict cementing the right of encrypted communication to exist in the US.
Be careful what you wish for. Bringing a test case to the current supreme court is playing with fire, and we are far more likely to end up with precedent rejecting a right to encrypted communications, given the current make up of the court. They have already shown a willingness to show deference to national security, and our fifth amendment protections are already eroding (State v. Andrews in NJ, government can compel the production of a password under the foregone conclusion exception). For now this is still state dependent, but its only a matter of time before a case reaches the supreme court.
We're much safer not opening that can of worms for now.
Something like this would be basically impossible in the US, and it wouldn't even matter what kind of administration tried it. The US government doesn't even order ISPs to block websites because they run afoul of all kinds of 1st amendment litigation. They just have the FBI seize a domain after a court order.
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.
Bluetooth based messaging apps are naturally able to circumvent internet restrictions that inhibit protests, citizen journalism and other kinds of unapproved activities but there are several ways Bluetooth could be updated as a protocol to introduce compatibility with some kind of antibody-esque suppression of communication standard.
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.
I was thinking the same thing. We do need more. I set up a Meshtastic node at the house and joined https://chicagolandmesh.org/ which has been a fantastic community for beginners in mesh based comms.
But here it shows another problem: who controls the distribution channel, they also control which program can be found and installed (by the mass) and which not.
Without a critical mass of adoption, mesh applications are largely useless.
What Jack Dorsey could do for decentralized local chat, better than creating yet another copy of what already exists, is taking 0.1% of his wealth and using it to solve the problems that Briar project has: money.
Indian government also blocked Telegram a while back to prevent exam leaks and stopped Whatsapp's rollout of usernames (which has some legitimate concerns) but more or less it wants complete China-like control of it's citizens' communications. Except no one uses any homegrown chat app (for good reasons)
> “The application enables anonymous communication without mandatory user registration, phone number verification, or centralised logging of communications.“
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.
Some relevant wisdom from the founding fathers of the United States:
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.
John Adams wrote that as a reason why the United States is not a democracy. It's a Constitutional Republic. It's a consistent theme throughout the Federalist Papers.
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.
If your country's security depends on someone on the internet taking their product off for the whole world something must be wrong with the people in power. This is censorship and suppression at its peak.
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.
Agree, sounds like it is working for its intended purposes.
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.
Remember that Google is working to introduce developer verification to Android soon, making it trivial for governments to force Google to revoke a certain developer's apps within that country. The whole developer verification thing is about security... for Google's grip on Android and goverments' grip on communication
Lets imagine that github does give in and it does take down bitchat, will it result in the death (or at least a huge loss) for github? I mean of course a lot of open-source projects on github won't feel safe when they know that github can easily give in to the government pressure. Plus the general state of github right now is already causing projects to migrate to some better alternatives.
I sincerely hope that Microsoft responds with "If the Indian government wants to block content hosted on U.S. servers, they are more than welcome to set up their own Great Firewall."
This may not be much, but if you’re outside India, please write to your local representatives and also to the Indian government that you are going to avoid products made in India as much as possible, will avoid visiting the country for tourism or work, and will not invest in the Indian markets or in foreign currency bank deposits. Clearly state the reasons why, and ask how the “largest democracy in the world” could be so short sighted and dictatorial.
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.
I understand the source is thehindu.com - but I'm assuming there's no way we can get that title updated? "Government orders..." sort've misleadingly implies something that "Indian government orders..." does not.
Ban Post-It notes and any other piece of paper than can be passed around with messages written on them by bad people. No whispering into people ears either unless your lips are plainly readable.
Unfortunately Bitchat feels like an unfinished proof of concept.
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.
For context, there are currently mass protests against the Indian government which the government is violently suppressing. It also just cut off the internet in a major city to stop the protesters communicating, so this ban is probably to try and suppress other means of communication.
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...
#2 post on HN currently is: India’s first privately developed rocket reaches orbit on dramatic debut launch. In the same page, there is this news about banning an OSS app, built on open tech. Just saying.
We evaluated Bitchat and determined it would be a really useful tool for Gaza - Israel controls all internet access to Palestine and would frequently cut off internet access to Gazans. We tried building our own but when Bitchat came out we focused on that instead.
Well, this also shows why we all should remove our dependency on Microsoft-GitHub in the long run. The US government just fiddle-influences too much here. Tomorrow it could be your project too.
Bitchat, berty, briar, all do use Bluetooth for communication. It would be funny if popular apps also add p2p Bluetooth options or just over any network, and seeing them trying to ban the internet.
Aside of if it's right or not (i actually think it is), the bag is out in the open, anyone any countries, any bad person or security persons are going to look at it now
Uggh in any given project I tend to gauge the hype to working tech ratio. The higher it is, the more annoying the project. BitChat is about as annoying as you get. The reason is simple: bluetooth connectivity only works at scale if everyone has the app, and even then it only works under extremely high node density -- packed stadiums, maybe an apartment building if you're super lucky. The combination of extremely wide distribution and extreme density never happens.
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?
Because it’s Jack Dorsey and that’s it. I agree it’s not novel or interesting. It’s frustrating for me particularly because I want some kind of widely decentralized network but something that actually has a chance to work, which Dorsey has the capability (financially, connections, etc) to make happen. Instead he decides to waste time on something that’s DOA.
> the app enables communication even during network restrictions and creates a substantial risk of misuse by anti-national elements, terrorist organisations, organised criminal groups and cyber criminals seeking to evade lawful detection and continue communication despite legally imposed restrictions.
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.
Hilariously (darkly), during the pandemic, the very same reason is why the very same administrators were hell-bent on forcing Bluetooth-always-on contact tracing on the whole country's smartphone-carrying population.
(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.)
But that did save lives; I was able to know my family had Covid before the symptoms showed up. Happened with a lot of other people too.
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The most consequential public health failure during COVID was the denial that COVID was airborne, based on no scientific evidence.
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.
Was that 30 second bluetooth beacon ever switched off again?
> 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.
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.
> 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
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You are just very pessimistic and cinic person.
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.
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Hobbes's Leviathan wants to have a call with you.
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This is an absurd claim.
> 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.
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.
I wonder how long it's going to take until we have universal communication monitoring, including in real life. It's not an impossible technical challenge, it's just a question of time. Every spoken word recorded forever and scrutinized. After all forms of distant private communication fall, the spoken word will be the last one remaining. And all these arguments they're making apply to it, too.
That went live about a decade ago. Heck, a lot of the people who built it and maintain it are here on HN, each getting paid so well and contributing only so little that if they can even admit it to themselves, they would never do it publicly.
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We already have that, except for half of real life.
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> I wonder how long it's going to take until we have universal communication monitoring, including in real life. It's not an impossible technical challenge, it's just a question of time. Every spoken word recorded forever and scrutinized. After all forms of distant private communication fall, the spoken word will be the last one remaining. And all these arguments they're making apply to it, too.
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
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“incompetent persons in power”.
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.
Instant, wide-range (mesh) private comms are rather different than a couple of people out in a field at night talking.
and vote out incompetent persons in power.
How you can vote someone out?
Recall elections. California loves them.
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You vote against them when they're up for re-election. If they're not up for re-election, you vote against anyone who allies themselves with said person.
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It's easy to criticize others when your own government basically mandates backdoors into all comm devices, thereby obviating the need for hamfisted maneuvers like blocking apps, etc.; after all, who needs to block apps when there are backdoors farther down which allow the reading of all keystrokes and characters displayed?
tapping the sign https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48922409
you are being too charitable in your evaluation.
>This mouthful boils down to exactly this: a form of communication not controlled by the government creates a risk for the government.
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.
[dead]
Those "protections" are in place for the protection of the government, not the citizens. That's also why the US tried to classify encryption as arms and why they passed the gun control act (people nowadays might think modern gun control was passed to help school kids, no lmao, it was passed in response to the killing of JFK).
I don't have the citations to back this up anymore than you did, but it was also passed because of the rise in Black Power movements walking around with guns.
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.
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I don’t think anyone thinks gun control was passed to help school kids. People have been begging the govt to pass stricter gun control laws to protect kids for decades with very little success.
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Playing Devils Advocate... isn't this the government taking action?
Yes, misinformed and counterproductive action.
Blocking communications is basically sweeping the issue under the rug in the hopes that it dissolves on its own. This is closer to avoiding of "taking action"
I mean one could say they are taking action when they lock up and kill random immigrants... or getting into unnecessary wars in the middle east. I would hardly call that a measure of competence. In fact, I would love a government that did absolutely nothing at all ahead of this one.
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I'm not condoning this but what would you suggest they should be doing to keep people safe?
I'm fairly sure whatever they do you'd likely be complaining about it. Glad to be wrong though.
"Do you consider your position so weak that it cannot withstand debate?" -- Data, STNG
They're afraid of people communicating. That's not a safety thing.
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How is private messaging causing people to become unsafe? If you're saying privacy = unsafe environment, then your right to privacy is meaningless.
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and in this argument we pre-suppose that loss of privacy equates to an increase in safety, right?
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Are you suggesting that taking down an application is making people safe?
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?
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Very similar argument to those who want to ban encryption.
Why do you need to encrypt your network traffic with ssl, is you have nothing to hide....
India is pretty serious about being able to monitor all communications after the terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008. The terrorists used satellite phones to coordinate the attack. As a result, they banned most satellite communication devices.
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.
Japan has no trash cans. (reaction to the japanese subway attacks)
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.
To add some context, the removal of trash cans accelerated prior to the hosting of the Tokyo Olympics. The municipal government was concerned about trash possibly overflowing from the can, thereby ruining the appearance of the streets.
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.
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One thing I noticed is that I tended to accumulate a lot of trash in Japan. Connivence stores were plentiful and the food was tasty, but it was all wrapped in plastic.
Where does all the trash go? More often than not, I ended up carrying trash in a backpack to throw away at my hotel.
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Britain had no rubbish bins on train stations for a long time due to similar issues (IRA attacks).
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Hmm, Osaka has plenty of trash cans... Did you mean Tokyo?
That just means that terrorism works.
What's next? A bomb under a bench? No more benches!
The terrorists were only able to do so because mass-media news was live broadcasting everything on the air, and the terrorists holed up with hostages in the hotel were able to follow the blow-by-blow live.
(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.
A similar thing happened in the Falkland's War: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/history/bbcs-treason-battle...
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I was in school back then, lived in a town near Mumbai and watched it on TV
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
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They are self-DoSing. Whatever you want to get banned, just make sure you some terrorists use it, and it will get banned. Want to ban, say, hijabs, or long pants? Have some terrorists wear them to cover their identities.
The Indian government is pretty serious about cracking down violently on peaceful protesters: https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/07/23/india-excessive-force-us...
One of the formative narratives of Indian independence is that peaceful protest works in getting rid of bad governments.
on edit: changed myths to narratives to avoid confusion
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https://indianexpress.com/article/india/anantnag-terror-atta...
BBC says 3000 but yeah.
https://www.outlookindia.com/national/2-terrorists-family-ho...
So the houses of 2 accused were razed because.....
> I had a connecting flight through India
I make additional effort to never experience that again. Connecting flight through Mumbai. An absolutely awful experience.
So what happens if you have a flight that gets diverted to India and they search your bags and find a satellite phone?
Believe it or not, straight to jail.
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Same thing that happens whenever your flight gets diverted to South Korea and you have condoms, or Indonesia and you have legal weed, or to Australia and you have a pineapple.
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.
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I'm aware of stories of people who've had their flights unexpectedly grounded in New York (, New York) so they just abandoned their checked pistol and refused to collect it. I'd imagine something similar. If you never take possession, it becomes harder to charge and convict someone for possession.
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The poster you're answering to just described what happens.
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I disagree with the Modi and Hindutva project almost entirely, not only politically, but on a personal level coming from a minority community (Christian) in India. However, India is in what basically amounts to a perpetual state of war with Pakistan and has always been this way. India rarely agresses Pakistan and Pakistani terror groups do operate with seeming impunity in India (Pakistan doesn't even maintain a 'no-first-use' nuclear option, and is currently run by a military dictatorship... they're f'ing nuts). While all these actions are obviously crazy and in my opinion overbearing, people in the West don't understand how awful radical Islam is, especially of the South Asian variety. I'm not sure many Americans would react differently to the extremism of South Asian Islam to be honest.
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.
Largely uncited and generalised exposition of Bangladeshi's misses other factors which could be involved in their decision towards distrust of India.
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.
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I find it telling you blame India's lack of modernization on Pakistan. A reflection of the times.
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.
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>people in the West don't understand how awful radical Islam is
Do you remember that time two dozen or so years ago when a couple buildings collapsed in NYC? After some planes rammed into them?
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> India is in what basically amounts to a perpetual state of war with Pakistan and has always been this way.
You mean, since India and Pakistan were invented 79 years ago?
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its amazing you are actually getting downvoted for speaking facts
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I don't trust the Modi clique one second.
Just to clarify -- this article is about Indian government order.
An important context is, there is a large scale non-violent protest and a Gandhian fast lead by Sonam Wangchuk. https://x.com/Wangchuk66/status/2080471599237702014
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.
> Jack Dorsey is now using his clout to share about this app and bring some light on the situation
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.
[1]: https://briarproject.org/
To avoid a potential misunderstanding, the maintenance mode is intended to continue indefinitely. Briar project is not shutting down.
* https://briarproject.org/news/2026-maintenance-mode/
This was a legit case for the students, who suffered the most here. Better systems need to exist, including parametric computer testing and same day results - thereby making re-examinations simpler for the affected students.
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
India is kind of cute.
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". :-)
And it's also cute when people imply the internet is unregulateable. There are plenty of tools that countries use to regulate internet traffic. They can require ISPs to DPI the traffic and block it. They can MITM traffic. They can shut off the internet entirely. They can throw people in jail. etc.
This stuff happens in many places, including in India.
>And it's also cute when people imply the internet is unregulateable. There are plenty of tools that countries use to regulate internet traffic. They can require ISPs to DPI the traffic and block it. They can MITM traffic. They can shut off the internet entirely. They can throw people in jail. etc.
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).
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They could even just shoot people for using the internet! It’s hopeless. Anyone who wants freedom should probably just give up now before it’s too late.
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There are workarounds for all of those things up until the point of you suffering violence for just using any encryption. But if you are at that point, then your country is completely fucked.
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That's funny considering the scale of WhatsApp now in the country.
Reminds me of Elon's answer to the question of what various countries can do about StarLink: "They can shake their fists at the sky."
India's solution is that they put anyone who has a starlink ground station in jail.
Starlink can be jammed.
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That is still the case. I looked up this law. It is strictly forbidden to ever connect the POTS network to an IP network. End of story.
Lots of countries ban voip in some way or another. Not allowed to connect to the PSTN. Disrupted by licensed ISPs based on traffic inspection. Large vendors yelled at. Etc.
isn't phone tech itself digital over the internet nowadays just like VOIP if it isn't using VOIP 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.
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voip is pretty effectively banned, or at least marginalized, in the USA. Can't use a Google Voice number for most payment services, for example.
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It is not the first time.
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?
If Modi government wants to ban something, it is usually good stuff.
> “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.
Literally any encrypted mesh net communication protocol would be subject to the same propaganda. The point of this stuff is providing checks and balances for the people against a rogue government, or emergency situation.
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.
Honestly no idea what I’d do if I were in government.
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)
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We do regulate food. Tons of substances are not allowed.
We also regulate roads. You can not drive around in tanks. Or without license plate...
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Title should specify that it is Indian government. I was worried for a second there that it was the American government. I should have read the url though.
I get it but you shouldn’t assume everything is about the USA. YC may be based here but it’s a big world out there.
> I was worried for a second there that it was the American government.
Midterms are coming up and the regime has spoken openly about "rigging" them so... just give it some time (and download a copy!).
I was fully expecting that was about Trump administration, and was a bit disappointed that my prediction turned out to be wrong. I do not support this; I expected the first federal court and then all the appeals to serve a verdict cementing the right of encrypted communication to exist in the US.
Be careful what you wish for. Bringing a test case to the current supreme court is playing with fire, and we are far more likely to end up with precedent rejecting a right to encrypted communications, given the current make up of the court. They have already shown a willingness to show deference to national security, and our fifth amendment protections are already eroding (State v. Andrews in NJ, government can compel the production of a password under the foregone conclusion exception). For now this is still state dependent, but its only a matter of time before a case reaches the supreme court.
We're much safer not opening that can of worms for now.
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But how far are they from such a headline do you think?
Something like this would be basically impossible in the US, and it wouldn't even matter what kind of administration tried it. The US government doesn't even order ISPs to block websites because they run afoul of all kinds of 1st amendment litigation. They just have the FBI seize a domain after a court order.
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.
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Will there be a headline?
Few months.
Bluetooth based messaging apps are naturally able to circumvent internet restrictions that inhibit protests, citizen journalism and other kinds of unapproved activities but there are several ways Bluetooth could be updated as a protocol to introduce compatibility with some kind of antibody-esque suppression of communication standard.
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.
Meshtastic, reticulum, meshcore... We need more.
I was thinking the same thing. We do need more. I set up a Meshtastic node at the house and joined https://chicagolandmesh.org/ which has been a fantastic community for beginners in mesh based comms.
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But here it shows another problem: who controls the distribution channel, they also control which program can be found and installed (by the mass) and which not.
Without a critical mass of adoption, mesh applications are largely useless.
You think the spooks are just sitting and watching people using other tech unmonitored and do nothing about it?
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Still available.
https://github.com/permissionlesstech/bitchat
To add:
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...
India.
Thank you Indian government for announcing the existence of this app to the public.
Sing it for me, Streisand!
What Jack Dorsey could do for decentralized local chat, better than creating yet another copy of what already exists, is taking 0.1% of his wealth and using it to solve the problems that Briar project has: money.
https://briarproject.org/news/2026-maintenance-mode/
Indian government also blocked Telegram a while back to prevent exam leaks and stopped Whatsapp's rollout of usernames (which has some legitimate concerns) but more or less it wants complete China-like control of it's citizens' communications. Except no one uses any homegrown chat app (for good reasons)
> “The application enables anonymous communication without mandatory user registration, phone number verification, or centralised logging of communications.“
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 long term, it seems democracies transform to autocracies. Well, china is the future indeed.
Some relevant wisdom from the founding fathers of the United States:
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.
John Adams wrote that as a reason why the United States is not a democracy. It's a Constitutional Republic. It's a consistent theme throughout the Federalist Papers.
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.
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https://www.history.com/articles/what-are-platos-5-forms-of-...
Democracy -> Tyranny
Regression to the mean...
If your country's security depends on someone on the internet taking their product off for the whole world something must be wrong with the people in power. This is censorship and suppression at its peak.
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.
Ooh definitely time to install this on my personal device then. Thanks Mr. Modi!
Aside: oof yeah this seems like terrible policy and takes India off my bucket list.
For clarity: Indian government.
On the contrary, these projects should be given a boost.
Agree, sounds like it is working for its intended purposes.
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.
Remember that Google is working to introduce developer verification to Android soon, making it trivial for governments to force Google to revoke a certain developer's apps within that country. The whole developer verification thing is about security... for Google's grip on Android and goverments' grip on communication
Lets imagine that github does give in and it does take down bitchat, will it result in the death (or at least a huge loss) for github? I mean of course a lot of open-source projects on github won't feel safe when they know that github can easily give in to the government pressure. Plus the general state of github right now is already causing projects to migrate to some better alternatives.
Too bad it operates on Nostr, which is crypto-adjacent, otherwise they could move to Codeberg.
Not any more though, right? Didn’t we just learn that Codeberg now bans vibe-coded projects, and that’s how Jack developed it?
I sincerely hope that Microsoft responds with "If the Indian government wants to block content hosted on U.S. servers, they are more than welcome to set up their own Great Firewall."
and just stop doing business in a country with 17% of the world population? fat chance :)
This may not be much, but if you’re outside India, please write to your local representatives and also to the Indian government that you are going to avoid products made in India as much as possible, will avoid visiting the country for tourism or work, and will not invest in the Indian markets or in foreign currency bank deposits. Clearly state the reasons why, and ask how the “largest democracy in the world” could be so short sighted and dictatorial.
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.
What about encrypted ultrasound modems?
Democracy Dies in Darkness
Also in broad daylight
Democracy dies. Always.
I understand the source is thehindu.com - but I'm assuming there's no way we can get that title updated? "Government orders..." sort've misleadingly implies something that "Indian government orders..." does not.
I figured with an app name like "bitch at", the government was simply getting tired of hearing peoples' gripes. I was saddened to see I was way off.
I hadn't heard of Bitchat before, will need to check it out! Streisand Effect in full force...
thats one, only 3.999, kiloforks to go
https://github.com/permissionlesstech/bitchat/forks
Wow I didn’t know about this technology but it sounds like seriously cool stuff
Ban Post-It notes and any other piece of paper than can be passed around with messages written on them by bad people. No whispering into people ears either unless your lips are plainly readable.
Unfortunately Bitchat feels like an unfinished proof of concept.
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.
I do hope they were ignored. But then this is ultimately Microsoft we're talking about.
Not stated in the headline: it's the government of India.
For context, there are currently mass protests against the Indian government which the government is violently suppressing. It also just cut off the internet in a major city to stop the protesters communicating, so this ban is probably to try and suppress other means of communication.
India is now going after domains too: https://www.reuters.com/world/worlds-biggest-domain-seller-f...
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...
In a few hours someone will release Streisand Chat as a fork
for their goverment and every goverment the problem is not the comunication channel, the problem is the dissenting ideas...
There are certain shadow govt groups who have added aspects to Bluetooth protocol itself literally opening up any device
#2 post on HN currently is: India’s first privately developed rocket reaches orbit on dramatic debut launch. In the same page, there is this news about banning an OSS app, built on open tech. Just saying.
2 Indias
We evaluated Bitchat and determined it would be a really useful tool for Gaza - Israel controls all internet access to Palestine and would frequently cut off internet access to Gazans. We tried building our own but when Bitchat came out we focused on that instead.
https://updates.techforpalestine.org/bitchat-for-gaza-messag...
Oh good someone is using it?
Holy crap, this article has been active here for 13 hours - it really needs a country callout (ie India) in the title.
Chilling hearing communicating with willing nearby people being called "misuse of communication". Maybe in a prison.
They'd have been safe on Codeberg. Just saying, given yesterday's outrage.
Well, this also shows why we all should remove our dependency on Microsoft-GitHub in the long run. The US government just fiddle-influences too much here. Tomorrow it could be your project too.
Bitchat, berty, briar, all do use Bluetooth for communication. It would be funny if popular apps also add p2p Bluetooth options or just over any network, and seeing them trying to ban the internet.
Translation: "We can't spy on you and we don't like it"
inb4 some government tries to ban independent IRC, since it can be used over a VPN and thus can be equally unspyable
TItle is missing a clarification: Indian government.
With google banning side loaded apps, is what India wants to do just a waste of time by India.
Does Apple still allow side loaded apps ?
Only despots are afraid of people talking in channels they can't eavesdrop on.
What an excellent idea. This will surely make the protesters go away.</s>
guess im downloading a copy of each version + the source code lmfao and im not even in india
Aside of if it's right or not (i actually think it is), the bag is out in the open, anyone any countries, any bad person or security persons are going to look at it now
If a country wants to ban private open source communication, then they do not deserve to enjoy the benefits of modern technology.
Uggh in any given project I tend to gauge the hype to working tech ratio. The higher it is, the more annoying the project. BitChat is about as annoying as you get. The reason is simple: bluetooth connectivity only works at scale if everyone has the app, and even then it only works under extremely high node density -- packed stadiums, maybe an apartment building if you're super lucky. The combination of extremely wide distribution and extreme density never happens.
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?
Because it’s Jack Dorsey and that’s it. I agree it’s not novel or interesting. It’s frustrating for me particularly because I want some kind of widely decentralized network but something that actually has a chance to work, which Dorsey has the capability (financially, connections, etc) to make happen. Instead he decides to waste time on something that’s DOA.
It’s more in his own self-interest to vibe-code a rudimentary solution than to just support a good existing project, sadly.