> On Tuesday, the Karnataka High Court directed the Indian government to block Proton Mail, a popular email service known for its enhanced security, following a legal complaint filed by New Delhi-based M Moser Design Associates. The local firm alleged that its employees had received emails containing obscene and vulgar content sent via Proton Mail.
How does this make any sense. Would the court block gmail if the same happens via gmail?.
India somehow is stuck in the worst of all worlds. There is no freedom like democratic countries and there is no good government like China.
To any westerners commenting, this is not same as think of the children. Government or courts mostly don't even need to give such excuses in India (max they might say to counter traitors). There is obscene amount of corruption in the country at every step from the local to the highest, and it is internalized by the citizens so much that everyone knows and nobody cares.
Edit: good government above means competent government
Here "good" means "is competent and calculating" I suppose. China's government wouldn't even blink blocking Proton Mail or any other non-Chinese technology without even giving a reason, though.
India is now building 100 km highway per day. It created 24,000+ km in the last 5 years. [0]
It has the second-largest road network in the world, second only to the US. [1]
[0]: https://pib.gov.in/PressNoteDetails.aspx?NoteId=151963&Modul...
[1]: https://www.financialexpress.com/business/roadways-indias-ro...
Democracy is messy, but there is some kind of transparency (freedom of press) that brings up issues out in the open.
Let's not be impatient with Democracy lest we lose all that we valued without us realizing it.
Democracy needs patience and preserverence.
This is a bad joke. For starters, China blocked Proton Mail years ago.
I’m not sure how efficient or how long accurate their success / failure rates are.
Especially when blocking a service would seem to have no impact on it…
And travel 30 minutes outside of any major city. You'll see people living in broken-down buildings without heating when it's below zero, roads that haven't been maintained in decades, and poor people trying to jump in front of your car for insurance money.
China is neither the technological wonder of the world portrayed in these videos nor a bunch of peasants. It's a vast, complex country with a lot of good and a lot of bad.
https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/china/india?sc=...
China has its problems for sure, but vast slabs of India remain mired in sub-Saharan Africa levels of poverty and squalor.
'In fact, there's an old saying about Mussolini that goes something like this: "Mussolini made the trains run on time." In other words, even dictators have their good points. Sure, fascism is an often brutal model of efficient government, full of poverty and corruption, but hey, at least the trains were newly punctual.
https://history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myth/did-mussol...
The fact check goes on to explain:
"Italy's railway had entered into a state of disrepair after World War I, but after the war ended, there had been a number of measures implemented to boost efficiency. Mussolini, of course, liked to say he was responsible for those improvements. However, those changes actually took place before he assumed power, so technically, he couldn't really take credit (although that didn't stop him). More to the point, the trains didn't always run on time, either."
I have also been under the impression, for years and years, that it isn't a good idea to speak ill of the one-party regime, to anyone ever.
This is why Chinese overproduction exists - incomes are too low for most Chinese consumers to purchase higher value goods that are made in China, because you aren't upgrading your cellphone or car every year when your household income is in that range.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/278698/annual-per-capita...
So there are benefits for the Chinese population.
And yeah, they put out a shit ton of propaganda too. But it being propaganda doesn't by virtue of that fact make it lies. One would argue the more effective kind of propaganda is the kind that's verifiable fact, even if ideologically slanted in delivery.
And you know, I'm also biased as an American currently living under the "group of incompetent jackasses" administration, but I'd love for my government to do anything besides shutting down departments that make business owners mad and handing out tax breaks to the richest assholes here every fuckin day.
Also, does the government really work for its citizens if they are doing a genocide of one nation in the country?
Yeah, I agree that the Trump situation is frustrating and idiotic, however, we should not resort to shifting towards totalitarians. That's problematic thinking.
It's a powerful country because of the leadership though. Policies and culture shape the country. China was extremely poor for a long time, and it wasn't because the people were lazy back then.
If you are going to parrot western talking points then it would be insane conversation.
Exactly the same here. I went to see with my own eyes, and the reality is very different from what I hear in some news outlets and from politicians.
With freedom of thought and markets, you get competition of ideas, which ultimately selects a better solution than any central planner can plan.
I’ve been to both the U.S. and China. There's significantly more propaganda about China in the U.S. than there is about the U.S. in China. Stop blindly believing what others say—go see for yourself. In the coastal and Tier-1 cities, you’ll witness how a population the size of the entire United States enjoys a higher standard of living than the American middle class, with greater affordability, and clean, safe, and beautiful urban environments (with infrastructure that is way ahead of US).
Don't believe what any government pretend, especially communist ones. Chinese standard of living improved ? Absolutely.
Just like it did in previous emerging market, which were not ruled by communist party.
Protecting Chinese technology firms also allowed China to grow highly competitive national companies, a phenomenon we don't see as much anywhere US technology companies were allowed free reign.
> The applicable Chinese law is the China Internet Security Law which came into force in 2017. The law essentially stipulates that foreign companies which operate in China and process the private information of Chinese citizens, must store such data in China and make it available to Chinese authorities upon request. An example of a company which has had to comply with this law is Apple, which has extensive operations in China. A similar law went into effect in Russia back in 2015 (known as Federal Law No. 242-FZ).
The robust Chinese technology sector is no doubt a reflection of smart and industrious Chinese people. Those smart and industrious people include those in the CPC engaged in wholesale industrial espionage.
Anyways, you can read more here: https://www.amazon.com/Surveillance-Valley-Military-History-...
As someone that lived in China for 5 years, competent is the last adjective I’d use.
Sichuan Earthquake —> https://circa.art/ai-weiwei-recapturing-the-tragedy/
The Shanghai Lockdown —> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-59890533.amp
Local Chinese government corruption —> https://thediplomat.com/2025/03/how-local-corruption-evolved...
Tai Lake pollution —> https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/taihu-green-wash-or...
Land seizures —> https://rightsandresources.org/blog/the-guardian-chinese-vil...
Xinjiang —> https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/china-xinjiang-uyghurs-musl...
One could call China’s government competent the same way one could say Stalin was a competent administrator. Nazis were also very “competent” and efficient. In no universe should that be considered “good government.”
1. An authoritarian government that can actually do things but also mess up and be harsh against anyone opposing it - China
2. A democratic government that can’t get anything done, citizens can’t rely on police for any crimes, courts for any justice, politicians for any development, where the politics of the nation just constantly seeks to divide on basis of caste, religion, language etc, and the nation as a whole wallows in mediocrity.
But your argument against their ruling speaks for itself, IMO.
There will come a point where India has to lead on this kind of thing.
India, Malaysia, and Singapore all share the same common judicial origins because they were forked off in the 1940s to 1960s, and never saw the reforms that the UK, Canada, Australia, and NZ saw in the 1980s-90s.
Furthermore, civil libertarianism is more of an American judicial innovation, and even European countries are aligned with the primacy of the state over platforms.
The British system remained paternalistic for a long time (eg. universal male suffrage only happened in 1918, collective bargaining was only legalized in 1945)
The works of Adam Smith and David Hume arguably shaped the modern capitalist world which India is part of and branched off from.
Maybe there are nuanced arguments why it's less of a democracy, but I'm fairly sure nowadays every democracy has similar arguments.
Indian (and Malaysian and Singaporean) jurisprudence largely forked off from British jurisprudence in the 1940s-1960.
A number of the reforms in jurisprudence that happened post-WW2 weren't incorporated in the judicial codes for most colonies at that point, so judicial norms remain paternalistic.
> Scottish influence is imprinted in UK law, US law and any ex-colony
In Canada sure (Scots were overrepresented in "anglophone" Canada), but not the rest of the Commonwealth.
India should have just been given to a monarch who liked the country and its people unlike the British or the Mughals
I mean, G will happily cough up the data and so will other big corps. Proton doesn’t… unless they go through the Swiss relationship route?
But this decision is stupid and harmful regardless.
How bad is the 'vulgar content' that it warrants banning of the service? This seems like extreme snowflake behavior
Can I ask: If someone wishes to challenge this decision from a regional High Court, do they petition the India Supreme Court?
Proton is obligated to cooperate with authorities just like any other company. Proton has a distinction in that it also takes certain cases to court when it argues there is no legal justification.
The best way to make sure they don't divulge information is to make sure they don't have information to divulge.
"“The Internet is generally not anonymous, and if you are breaking Swiss law, a law-abiding company such as Proton Mail can be legally compelled to log your IP address.” This cannot be changed due to how the internet works. However, we understand this is concerning for individuals with certain threat models, which is why since 2017, we also provide an onion site for anonymous access (we are one of the only email providers that supports this)."
And, in the case you are presumably talking about, Proton took it through the courts and ended up getting a ruling that "email services are not telecommunications providers. Consequently, email services are not subject to the data retention requirements imposed on telecommunications providers and are exempted from handing over certain user data in response to Swiss legal orders"
Which paints an incredibly different story than the one you are trying to paint.
Third, emails weren't handed over (nor were files, calendars, etc.). Which is another important distinction your comment does not mention.
Why parrot half of a story disparaging one of the only large email providers that fights in court to protect the privacy of its users?
> Third, emails weren't handed over
That they weren't, however the information that was handed over was enough to identify the target.
> Why parrot half of a story disparaging one of the only large email providers that fights in court to protect the privacy of its users?
Because despite their apparent and commendable work in trying to preserve the privacy of their users, they have regretfully failed to do so in the past, and it will more than likely proceed that way in the future.
It's not that I want to badmouth their efforts, but it has tainted them so I think it would be wrong not to bring it up. An email provider that has never divulged info (of which several exist) isn't tainted the same way as one that has. It may only be a difference of time and scale, but it's your freedom of choice, and I think freedom of choice is a very important thing. Email is decentralized, and the more email providers that exist and hold themselves to high standards the better. If more people moved between or started smaller email providers, it would help relieve these kinds of issues.
So that is why I would recommend against it.
Instead, you should have mentioned the context, and allowed people to come to their own conclusions. Your quote: "Because despite their apparent and commendable work in trying to preserve the privacy of their users, they have regretfully failed to do so in the past, and it will more than likely proceed that way in the future." alongside a bit more detail would have been a fantastic comment, instead of the vague accusatory one-liner you wrote.
India has been mimicking Chinese and Gulf authoritarianism for a decade now. New Delhi is not truly authoritarian, but more an an elected federal government with autocratic powers, not dissimilar from the U.S. Both are mimicking China, to a certain extent, in ways good (industrial policy, moderating hyperindividualism like NIMBYism) and bad (suspending habeus, jingoism).
e.g.:
-After a decade of Modi rule, India now ranked 161 out of 180 in the world press freedom index: https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/22/media/india-elections-press-f...
-Political opponents have been arrested on trumped up charges before elections: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrest_of_Arvind_Kejriwal
-Extrajudicial killings on Canadian soil and possible attempt on US soil before they were caught (despite extradition agreements between India and these countries): https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/india-government-agent-as...
I saw an interesting interview from 50's by one of India's founders on the topic of democracy in India: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WyWUlIbcRH8 . It seems India still has a long way to go, and the current government is reversing the trend.
I really hope the west thinks long and hard about foreign investment in/free trade with India without preconditions (although these are doubtful from the US under the current administration, maybe the EU can step up). The west had this idea that opening up trade with China would make the country more democratic and free, but it had the opposite impact (the extra resources only made things worse in these areas at home and aborad, especially after Xi's takeover in 2014).
It may not be as blatant, but the current administration is openly attempting to muzzle the press (i.e. banning the AP from Whitehouse), the last few US elections have been mired in law enforcement interactions (FBI investigation into Hilary's emails, Trump's various trials), and extrajudicial killings on foreign soil have openly been a thing since Obama's drone-strike-happy administration.
He also bought one of india's last major independent traditional media outlets (NDTV) years ago. The comparison I can think of is if MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News were all run like Fox news in terms of alignment with Trump. In a country where 25% the population is illiterate this is especially concerning as a significant portion of the electorate can only access their news from traditional media (TV, radio).
Second point the Indian leader arrested was involved in huge scams in liquor and policy, he used to live in a lavish palace and got called out by enforcement directorate. It's good he got arrested.
Canada has not provided even a single proof for Indias involvement in extrajudicial killings but instead harbor people who threaten Indians regularly. Despite extradition treaty Canada has become a safe harbor of terrorists and refused to extradite terrorists even after repeated requests by India.
Reversing the trend ? Are you kidding me, previous government imposed emergency rule when their position was threatened and commited human rights abuses.
This seems troubling. Can you share some examples of this?
> Canada has not provided even a single proof for Indias involvement in extrajudicial killings
I don't know about Canada, but did you read this about the case in the US?
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/us-attorney-announces-c...
It's pretty comprehensive that the person hired was connected to the Indian govt.
https://www.opindia.com/2024/12/khalistani-terrorist-pannun-...
https://www.opindia.com/2024/12/we-take-threats-very-serious...
https://www.opindia.com/2024/11/us-supported-khalistani-terr...
Regarding extrajudicial killings if I remember correctly arrested person was Indian, not sure if it was proved that he was connected to Indian govt. And for Canada yes they didn't provide any proof but instead had to backtrack on their statements:
https://www.opindia.com/news-updates/canadian-pm-justin-trud...
From wikipedia -
OpIndia is an Indian far-right[2] news website known for frequently publishing misinformation.[11][12][28] Founded in December 2014,[18] the website has published fake news and Islamophobic commentary on numerous occasions.[37][43] OpIndia is dedicated to criticism of what it considers liberal media,[14] and to support of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)[47] and Hindutva ideology.[3] According to University of Maryland researchers, OpIndia has shamed journalists it deems to be in opposition to the BJP and has alleged media bias against Hindus and the BJP.[13]
Did you get a chance to read the US attorney's indictment and alleged connections to the Indian govt?
There are much worse media houses that opindia especially on the left.
And Wikipedia? That's neither reliable or consistent. It itself has been shown to be edited by whimsical propagandists to serve their own means in past.
The articles sources can be checked and not only opindia other news houses have reported on Gurpreet Singh Pannu
hmm: https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/13/india-arrests-raids-targ...
> Second point the Indian leader arrested was involved in huge scams in liquor and policy.
unproven, and the timing could not have been more suspicious:
"Amnesty International, an international human rights group said that the arrest of Kejriwal and the "freezing of Indian National Congress’ bank accounts", a few weeks before India's general elections showed "the authorities’ blatant failure to uphold the country’s international human rights obligations".[45][46]"
> Despite extradition treaty Canada has become a safe harbor of terrorists and refused to extradite terrorists even after repeated requests by India.
How about despite an extradition treaty, India has never submitted a claim against these so called terrorists and like normal democracies use the courts to argue their case for extradition. In Canada the courts are generally far more independent than those in India. Note - speech calling for a separate state by itself is not terrorism in any country that values free speech (heck half of Quebec regularly does this), only calling or acting for violence means crossing that line, i haven't seen any evidence for the latter (but I'm open to be proven wrong - from independent credible sources unlike those you listed).
> Reversing the trend ? Are you kidding me.
Yes, according to the article I originally cited and others, India has become less democratic. Caste violence and religious tension (i.e. chants of "love jihad") seems to have gotten worse - true to India's founders video in the 1950's I shared of democracy in India.
The problem with international media houses is that they don't report why someone has been arrested on what charges and with what process. Newsclick offices has been raided for allegedly taking funding from CCP for propaganda and also inciting Delhi riots.
The second instance when the hrw is saying that Delhi police arrested 'peaceful protesters', there were RIOTS! A police offices was stabbed in two digits, a boy' limbs were amputed while being alive and left to burn in his shop. They were not peaceful protests in any case.
Amnesty international did the same thing. It did not report why Kejriwal was arrested. Kejriwal's lavish mansion made with money of tax payers has been a topic of mockery by Indian public. His party lost elections badly because people knew that the arrest was not whimsical.
I won't comment on topic of court more, as I don't know you can be right.
Independent credible sources :p. Name any media house and I can show how they have repeatedly used media as a propaganda page with full of fake news whether left or right(except reuters maybe). The only thing credible is reading from multiple sources to know fully about an incident. What I like about Opindia is that it provides a very comprehensive coverage of every incident with sources and proofs at every line and has even corrected itself in past for mistakes.
India has not become less democratic that is just a farce by some parties who neither have any agenda, neither consistent neither in touch with what people want, they are just envious that they are being repeatedly loosing elections in multiple states of India. They only cry India is less democratic when they lose elections.
The opposing party repeatedly wants a caste census and invites regularly people of different castes against other castes. In fact caste violence is at its lowest period, since from my parents times. Young generation have stopped believing in birth castes except to make Instagram reels. Love jihad, I can show you hundreds of cases when a member of a community (you can guess) has posed as member of other religious group for an affair to be finally have his identity revealed after marriage after which domestic violence and sexual exploitation of the victim arises. Now before you say that it is a 'Hindutva majoritian' agenda, well not when the church groups of Kerala raise the same issue in their community.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/australian-pm-calls-en...
This was during her “Emergency” when Parliament was essentially dysfunctional.
There have been campaigns to remove her changes, but nothing has come of it.
English version: https://cdnbbsr.s3waas.gov.in/s380537a945c7aaa788ccfcdf1b99b...
In the preamble (p32), I see this text:
> WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a [SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC] and to secure to all its citizens:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty-second_Amendment_of_the_...
edit: There was also forced sterilization in the United States. Does that make the United States a socialist country? No, of course not. The argument form "Bob did X, and Bob is an A, therefore anyone who does X is an A" is nonsense. The argument form "Bob did X, and Bob is an A, therefore all As do X" is similarly nonsense. It's also a very weird argument to make when you say it was done "at behest of the World Bank and IMF.", considering those are certainly not socialist organizations.
Technocratic managerialism.
Communism, socialism, fascism, and progressivism are 20th century political systems based around technocratic managerialism — and all of them have attempted to control breeding in the population. That’s because technocratic managerialism is prone to such decisions.
Progressives in the US were behind both Great Society programs and forced sterilization — so it’s more or less accurate to say the US equivalent of socialists did also sterilize people.
That's a nifty insight. Engineers want to engineer. If you place an engineer in charge of social policy they will likely try to engineer social and cultural changes.
Eugenics were universally popular back in those days. Willson (hardly a progressive either) was a strong supporter of eugenics. Just like Theodore Roosevelt.
> more or less accurate
It would be more or less just as accurate to say that conservatives were the US equivalents of socialists following this silly logic..
Ideologies that further concentrate power in the hands of a central state - in India's case, things like Hindutva nationalism and socialism - are risky, particularly in developing nations where liberty is less firmly-established, and should be given a stern eye when they appear.
And, just like "southern democrat" is a "bad word" in America for obvious reasons and doesn't imply "democrat from the south", "socialist" is a bit taboo in India.
There were forced sterilization programs in New York State in the early 20th century, and the victims weren't specifically black.
e.g. in 1912 Wilson, Roosevelt and Taft all supported it.
Yes, in the 20s in New York State. It was quite rare by comparison to what happened in India. The point was not to say "this is what socialists do" but to say point out that they did it at the behest of capitalists, which is quite the incongruity -- an incongruity which you noticed yet you failed to make the connection that it made the Gandhis phonies. That should make you wonder how genuine they were as socialists.
1. population growth leads to food
production improvements which
enables more population growth,
2. catastrophic failure must result
eventually when we really run
into the planet's human carrying
capacity.
So far we've only seen the inverse of Malthusian catastrophes: population collapse.
We've seen population collapse twice in recorded history, perhaps more:
- the Roman empire
- now, almost everywhere
It’s not though. That was only the case since the 1800s. Malthus was more or less correct about the preceding periods.
> collapse twice in recorded history, perhaps more
Not perhaps. Certainly more. If you want a clear cut and well documented example look at Europe between ~1000 and the 1300s.
Massive population expansion leading to overpopulation, very high food costs and mass starvation. The Black Death interrupted that cycle and limited population growth for the next 400 years or so (which resulted in significant increase in per capita productivity across Europe).
By definition, in socialism, I can't start and/or grow a business, and I'm not free to do with it as I please. Some socialist societies let people have small business, but the state comes in and takes it once it gets too big.
...that is not taught in any school of economics.
it's actually a political platform or set of political promises
In this instance though, this is from the High Court of the state of Karnataka and not the Indian Government. Karnataka isn't ruled by the same party at the center (imagine California and the current US Government). Again, the Government of Karnataka had nothing to do with this case either - it's the High Court.
Indian courts have done similar things forever. YouTube/FB etc quickly comply with court orders here; because judges would simply issue a blanket ban order on the website.
in NordVPN (a paid mainstream provider without Mulvad-like conviction to privacy), you can connect to an Indian server without ever providing your personal details when signing in.
i wonder how much these rulings are enforced in reality. there is definitely no great firewall situation and outright jailing for breaching this law so far. but on the other hand, it is just a lower temperature setting in the frog-boiling process.
I'm not saying it does. Just that it's possible. Perhaps an Indian NordVPN user could provide input here
But so far as I can tell, using protonmail isn't illegal yet?
Not an expert on Indian law. But we have a court order blocking Proton Mail across India. Circumventing the block could be found tantamount to wilfully violating the court order.
Yes, it’s stupid. But it’s the reality of things.
The point is it's regulated irrespective of the government's maturity. If it only works under a mature government, it's superfluous as a social tool. (Technology usually is.)
And, before it gets popular and regulated, it gets overrun by criminals?
Definitely the case with Bitcoin. I don't know about ProtonMail, though.
Bitcoin's 'criminal' use is/was 95% narcotics. In a world without a superficial 'war on drugs', where a state had no right to tell a citizen what to put into their own body, no user, no dealer would be criminal.
If you wish to fight crime, the solution might not be to 'make more things criminal', but to 'make less things criminal'.
On the other hand, I have been using bitcoin for cross-border value transfers where banks would have taken ridiculous fees, and I have used bitcoin for online micro-transactions where setting up other payment systems would have been expensive.
The governments have also regulated cocaine. It didn’t work there, either.
For tomorrow we should keep exploring and adopting improvements. Pick your poison.
[0]: Discovery left as excercise for reader
It, of course, does not work for email. OTOH protocols like briar [1] theoretically could.
(I have several relevant devices, amateur licence and radios, etc)
It's a weirdly-effective pitch! ("Drain the swamp.")
The stupidity of it is compounded by the fact that it's often not about giving the government unchecked power, but a subset of the powerful unchecked power.
> Due to WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption, messages sent between two users are only readable by them; even the service provider cannot decrypt the contents of the messages. This prevents any third party, including service providers (WhatsApp, Telegram), from accessing the messages
> no verified evidence to suggest that the government is directly accessing private WhatsApp chats
> WhatsApp itself does not store message content, and it explicitly states that it cannot and does not produce the contents of user messages in response to any government request
Reading between the lines, it sounds like they're getting encrypted chat content directly from the phones (and also metadata from providers).
(edit: you weren't GP)
Keyword being "if". There's no indication such backdoors exist, as opposed to something like malware being placed, or the phone being physically being tampered with.
> However, as Ashish Mishra, Partner-Cyber Security, NangiaNXT notes, “As of now, the government has the provision to access the encrypted messages under certain exceptions such as legal request, court matters, surveillance, and criminal investigations. The DPDP (Digital Personal Data Protection) Act, along with the Telegraph Act and IT Act, gives the government power to request such data from service providers.”
Given the general attitude towards digital privacy from the govt, I think it’s safe to assume they do have means to request.
That’s not the only incident to draw this conclusion from btw: https://www.business-standard.com/india-news/supreme-court-s...
I’d also have given WhatsApp a fair pass but Meta/Zuck has never shown any concrete proof that they stand by their users and not the ruling govt’s desires.
That along with all these events, quotes from ministry should suffice to have a reasonable assumption to not put trust on these platforms for private messages.
Such fantasy stories unfortunately fly in the country. There was one such false claim widely spread earlier, that facebook had provided the ruling party with access to directly block any posts on facebook they wanted gone.
As for the second part, they sort of are still able to censor/remove posts a lot more easily so this is far from the “fantasy” you’re talking about: https://www.business-standard.com/companies/news/x-takes-ind...
So this is what they come up with.
So you're saying the same thing, just a more polite. You're still saying that the Indian government cooperates with scam call centers.
Yes, or the obvious, that their ringleaders pay hefty bribes up the government food chain, as is common in many, many countries with organized crime activity.
Protonmail presumably didn't do any such thing, aside from also refusing to cooperate legally.
Either way, shame to see India going down this road of censoring X and Y or random snooping for reasons of political expediency.
the local population is also in the blast radius of scam calls, and is recognized by the government as well. so much so that one receives a disclaimer voice message before getting connected to a call every now and then.
robocalls are also a problem the states continue to deal with, so it is easier said than done about such cat-and-mouse issues.
> So sending someone something offensive is grounds for banning
it took a whole lawsuit to come to this ruling. in vast majority of cases, people and businesses do not resort to approaching the courts for things such as this. especially given the backlog and time/resource costs associated with the whole ordeal. the plaintiff went through the effort, which is quite impressive to be honest.
Seeing their unwavering support for Putler this is at least consistent with the pariah states like Iran and North Korea.
* Some company’s employees receive some inappropriate emails from a ProtonMail address.
* They file complaints and approach the court to identify who sent the emails.
* ProtonMail does not respond to queries about its users from foreign authorities unless the Swiss government directs it to. [1] It didn’t respond to this request.
* The court decides that blocking ProtonMail in the entire country will solve this problem and such problems forever.
[1]: https://proton.me/blog/india-block-proton-mail (key text snippet below)
> Under Swiss law, Proton is not allowed to transmit any data to foreign authorities, and we are therefore required by law to reject all requests from foreign authorities that are addressed directly to us. However, Proton is legally obligated to respond to orders from Swiss authorities, who do not tolerate illegal activities conducted through Switzerland and may assist foreign authorities in cases of illegal activity, provided they are valid under international assistance procedures and determined to be in compliance with Swiss law.
Regardless of whether Proton mail is a useful service with a principled stance, their refusal to engage under a sovereign legal system makes them simply “ungovernable” from the perspective of any sovereign government (lacking any relevant arbitration treaties). The only natural reaction seems to be to unperson them from engaging in transactions within the land. What other options does any sovereign government have when an entity simply refuses to engage?
It would be a different situation if Proton mail appeared in Indian court and argued why these details must be protected (within the contours of Indian law).
We take for granted the freedom to send bits anywhere in the world, and forget that we have an intricate system of decentralized governance (countries with local sovereignty, treaties, etc) in the physical world to regulate our ability to ship atoms around the world. As much as we all like our freedom, (and maybe exactly for that reason) decentralized self-governance feels like a value we ought to uphold.
lol
In any given nation with a default-open Internet, what are the ramifications of a court or legal process "blocking" a service?
Protonmail is clearly more than a mere website; it's a full-featured communications platform; I'm sure it has a mobile app or at least access via the typical POP/IMAP interfaces.
So, "blocking" Protonmail could mean all sorts of things:
- Excise it from DNS
- Demand removal from Play Store, Apple Store, other mobile OS providers
- filter any IP traffic attempting to connect to service via web, IMAP, POP3
- inhibit or interfere with SMTP traffic to/from Protonmail servers, e.g. mail sending and delivery (MTA activity)
- expel/prohibit colocation of physical servers, VPS systems, or middleware that may be within jurisdiction
- deal legally with any physical office presence or employee contingent within the jurisdiction
Now within the Great Firewall of China and other default-deny Internet services, it's not difficult to see that Protonmail could easily be blackholed. But what if you're accustomed to open access like the USA?
There are so many considerations here. A simple court order to "block" an Internet service introduces quite a few layers to peel back. The USA's action against TikTok was fraught with confusion and ambiguity. Because TikTok is likewise a powerful communications service. So, tech people like us need more insight on what it means to "block" a service when a court says so!
iLoveOncall•9mo ago
It seems like such an insane over-reaction to an absolute non-issue.
hengheng•9mo ago
shash•9mo ago
This is a bit more comprehensive: https://www.barandbench.com/amp/story/news/karnataka-high-co... and the Delhi case in which the ban is previously mentioned is only peripherally about email (the mail used by one of the parties is proton). The court makes an observation there that it should already have been banned so how is it still around.