alt Hacker NewsGovernment orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey
Comments
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.
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". :-)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thank you Indian government for announcing the existence of this app to the public.
In long term, it seems democracies transform to autocracies. Well, china is the future indeed.
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)
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.
Too bad it operates on Nostr, which is crypto-adjacent, otherwise they could move to Codeberg.
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."
for their goverment and every goverment the problem is not the comunication channel, the problem is the dissenting ideas...
thats one, only 3.999, kiloforks to go
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.
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.
Wow I didn’t know about this technology but it sounds like seriously cool stuff
Not stated in the headline: it's the government of India.
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.
There are certain shadow govt groups who have added aspects to Bluetooth protocol itself literally opening up any device
I do hope they were ignored. But then this is ultimately Microsoft we're talking about.
In a few hours someone will release Streisand Chat as a fork
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...
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.
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...
TItle is missing a clarification: Indian government.
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.
#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.
They'd have been safe on Codeberg. Just saying, given yesterday's outrage.
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.
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
> 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.