India's Supreme Court Declares Country's 5 Month Internet Blackout Illegal

from the self-inflicted-wound dept

As we've been discussing, India's government has blacked out internet access in Kashmir since around August, setting records for one of the longest government-mandated internet blackouts in history. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has tried to argue that the blackout is a necessary security precaution in the face of growing unrest in the region stemming from its loss of autonomy earlier this year. Granted like most government internet censorship efforts, the move has a lot more to do with cowardice and fear of an informed public than any genuine concern about public welfare.

Fast forward to this week, and India's Supreme Court has warned that the blackout is clearly illegal:

"In a blow to the Hindu nationalist government of the prime minister, Narendra Modi, the country’s highest court said the expression of opposition to state policy could not justify the crackdown. The court said any suspension of the internet, which it called intrinsic to free speech, must be accompanied by detailed reasons to allow aggrieved persons to challenge it in court.

The ruling came in response to petitions filed by Anuradha Bhasin, the executive editor of the Kashmir Times, the opposition Congress party leader, Ghulam Nabi Azad, and others. "The ruling shows that liberty and security have to be balanced. The court has made it clear that it is people’s freedoms that are paramount, not the government’s agenda,” said Sushmita Dev of the Congress party."

After some initial complaints Modi's government restored landline connectivity, and at least some text messaging services were restored at the tail end of December. Still, many in the region have found the outages make it impossible to maintain contact with loved ones and to find those who have been lost in the conflict. And while the Indian courts have clearly noted that the blackout violates free speech and basic human rights, the ruling effectively leaves it up to Modi's government to do the right thing, or at least be more transparent about doing the wrong thing, something that doesn't seem particularly likely:

"In principle the ruling is good, though it has taken a long time. But in terms of immediate relief, there is none. The court has left it to the administration to decide,” said Bhasin."

The human cost of the blackout has been monumental, and studies have shown that internet shutdowns have cost the Indian economy around $1.3 billion in 2019 alone. And while Modi's government continues to insist the blackouts are essential to preserve security and stability in the region, the reality remains that such efforts are the last refuge of cowards who simply don't want their citizens informed as to the scope of the government's aggressive and sometimes fatal buffoonery.

Filed Under: india, internet blackout, kashmir

Indian Government Sets New Record For 'Internet Shutdown By A Democracy'

from the headed-down-to-the-UN-to-collect-its-medal... dept

India's internet blockade targeting the Kashmir state has set a dubious record that really shouldn't be held by a government that considers itself a democracy.

It is now 134 days since the seven million residents of Kashmir had regular access to the internet beyond a handful of government controlled outlets, the longest denial of access by a democratic state.

This brings India close to its nearest competitors in shutdown longevity, China and Myanmar -- neither of which consider themselves responsive to public concerns or demands. Ever since the Kashmir region lost its autonomy earlier this year, the Indian government has been in crackdown mode. The easiest way to control a population you feel needs more controlling is to remove their communication options.

When the region was still independent, it engaged in its own internet blackouts. But those were nothing compared to the Indian government's efforts, which began with the selective censorship of certain content and expanded to eliminate access to almost everything internet-related.

The excuse for the blackout is national security. The Indian government claims it's necessary to prevent Pakistani-led terror groups from organizing. Whether or not that's been effective, the elimination of internet connectivity has done severe damage to the region's population. People with no connection to terror groups and otherwise uninterested in shrugging off the Indian government's shackles are being hurt.

Asmita Bakshi's article for LiveMint covers the human cost of the internet shutdown. Killing off the internet has disabled support systems for women targeted by violent acts and made people -- like Uber driver Dipesh Sharma -- pretty much unemployed.

His earnings are crucial for his family—his wife and daughter, parents and younger siblings, all of whom he supports financially. He also pays ₹4,000 as rent for his two-room accommodation and ₹11,000 as monthly instalment for his vehicle.

The weekend without mobile internet, therefore, was particularly hard on him. “Saturday-Sunday aap samajh lo main berozgaar tha (On Saturday-Sunday, it was like I was jobless)," he says.

One doesn't typically view India as an authoritarian regime, but Baskhi's report points out India's 134 internet shutdowns in 2018 outpaced a number of countries with worse international reputations, including a handful of nations on the UN's human rights blacklist. Its 2018 total was more than Russia, Congo, Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, and the Philippines combined.

The long-term shutdown is also causing other collateral damage. The region's service providers are losing money every day no one's paying for internet access they don't actually have. Since they're at the mercy of the government, they're being forced to bleed cash until the Indian government feels it's "safe" enough to lift the blockade.

On top of that, there's further annoyance ahead for residents if the Indian government ever decides to give them back their internet connections. As James Vincent reports for The Verge, those affected by the blockade will likely have to rebuild their personal social networks from scratch.

On Wednesday, reports on social media appeared of Kashmiri WhatsApp users leaving group chats in droves. This was a surprise to friends and relatives outside the region given that India has shut down Kashmir’s internet for over four months as part of a dispute over the area’s autonomy.

Some thought the activity might be sign of a further crackdown, but, as first reported by BuzzFeed News, the accounts are being automatically removed in line with Facebook’s inactivity policy. If users don’t log into their account for 120 days (four months), they’re deactivated, meaning individuals will have to sign up to the service again.

It's not an insignificant loss for WhatsApp, which has almost five times as many users in India than it does in the United States. It's definitely a significant loss for Indian users, whose government has managed to terminate their accounts through an extremely disruptive action followed by more than three months of inaction.

The Indian government may be claiming this is a national security necessity, but the reality is it's insulating itself from criticism and preventing unhappy Kashmir residents from organizing or protesting the absorption of the previously-independent region. Any collateral damage here is acceptable because it helps the Indian government achieve its goal of complete control.

Filed Under: democracy, india, internet shutdown, kashmir

India Is Stifling Kashmir Journalists And Twitter Is Helping Get The Job Done

from the this-isn't-helping dept

India has expressed an interest in being considered a top-tier totalitarian state. Not content to let nearby nations claim all the glory in the "Terrible Places to Live" race, India has been stepping up its censorship and its domestic surveillance, presumably in hopes of being the next country to claim a coveted UN blacklist spot.

The Indian government has asked third party contractors to help it build a massive surveillance network utilizing thousands of cameras and the current cream of the facial recognition crop at the time of deployment. The whole thing needs to be in place less than 8 months after the contract is secured, suggesting the government is more than happy to move forward with whatever it has on hand rather than whatever might actually do the job well.

It's also climbing the global censorship charts, trailing only Russia, China, and Turkey in various social media platform demographics. But it is the king of Facebook censorship, delivering more takedown demands to Facebook than closest rival, Russia. When you're out-censoring Russia, you're playing the censorship game right.

Disputed areas the Indian government claims, but doesn't actually control, are only encouraging further censorship from the Indian government. Unfortunately, US tech companies are helping the government maintain control of the narrative by silencing dissenting voices. Kunal Majumder of the Committee to Protect Journalists has more details:

On August 10, 2018, the Indian government informed Twitter that an account belonging to Kashmir Narrator, a magazine based in Jammu and Kashmir, was breaking Indian law. The magazine had recently published a cover story on a Kashmiri militant who fought against Indian rule. By the end of the month, Indian police had arrested the journalist who wrote it, Aasif Sultan, and Twitter had withheld the magazine’s account in India, blocking local access to more than 5,000 tweets. As of October 2019, Sultan was still in prison, facing terrorism-related charges that CPJ has repeatedly condemned. And the @KashmirNarrator Twitter account was still withheld throughout the country.

There has been almost no improvement over the past year. CPJ reports the government's Kashmir-targeted blackout has only been partially listed. To prevent Kashmir-sympathetic reporting from reaching the territory's residents, the Indian government shut down the region's connection to the outside world by cutting off its internet and phone connections. Some mobile phones have been able to route around the government's blockade, but targeted Twitter accounts remain blocked in the region and journalists have been smuggling out reporting using USB sticks.

Since Twitter is one of the best platforms for spreading news quickly, the Indian government has focused its efforts on this platform. It's following in the footsteps of Turkey and President Recep Erdogan by increasing its targeting of Twitter users. Twitter, unfortunately, has been super-helpful.

A CPJ analysis of those notices reveals that hundreds of thousands of tweets blocked in India since August 2017 under the company’s country withheld content policy were shared by accounts that focus on Kashmir. Among dozens of accounts that were withheld, CPJ identified several besides @KashmirNarrator that were sharing news and opinion, raising serious questions about what safeguards are in place to ensure freedom of the press and the free flow of information.

There are few safeguards built into Indian law. The minimal protections the country allows are not being extended to contested areas the Indian government feels are not deserving of speech protections. Twitter could simply refuse to honor these requests targeting dissenting views, but it has chosen to comply with India's demands, most likely because the country is home to nearly a billion potential users.

If there's any upside to this, it's that the government's targeting appears to be more keyword-based rather than content-based.

CPJ analyzed every account involved, whether the request was based on a single tweet, several tweets, or the account itself, reviewing more than 400 in total. Around 45 percent of those accounts mentioned Kashmir in the handle or bio, or had recently tweeted about Kashmir, according to CPJ’s review.

This censorship is damage that can be routed around. If Kashmir is one of the keywords sought by Indian censors, removing this word might allow links to reporting to sneak past censors. It also appears Twitter is only blocking in certain regions of the country, so tweets and accounts are still visible as long as Twitter believes viewers aren't in the affected areas.

That being said, Twitter's compliance is still problematic. Twitter is unwilling to discuss how it applies local laws to tweets and accounts targeted by governments with track records of stifling dissent. The legal options it has available are generally left unexplored. It makes a certain amount of sense in terms of the bottom line. Challenging foreign rulings and takedown notices requires money and man hours Twitter may not necessarily have to spare. The potential userbase in India is too large to ignore, which means it's probably too large to be considered expendable when principles are on the line.

US tech companies aren't doing all that great dealing with competing interests on a worldwide scale. While some concessions can be excused under the theory that some connection is better than nothing, assisting governments in censorship of critics and journalists isn't acceptable, no matter how much market share is at stake.

Filed Under: censorship, content moderation, india, journalism, kashmir
Companies: twitter

Indian State Of Kashmir Bans 22 Social Networks For A Month

from the because-speech-is-bad dept

We've seen random attempts by governments to block access to social media sites or even the internet as a whole, but the Indian state of Kashmir has ordered 22 social networks to be blocked for at least a month. Journalist Nazir Masoodi, who is in Kashmir, tweeted out screen shots of the government order, noting "This could be my last tweet."

We've taken those images and turned them into a PDF if you'd prefer to view them that way. But you can see that basically every big name social network is listed: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Skype, Snapchat, Reddit, YouTube (apparently they just want YouTube uploads blocked, but you can visit the site) and more. MySpace is still available.

As the NY Times points out, this pointless and heavy handed approach is apparently a terrible response to protests:

The move illuminated a government increasingly vexed by civilian protests, by a newly budding homegrown militancy in south Kashmir and by a series of video clips, distributed on social media, depicting confrontations between civilians and Indian security forces.

The order, signed by the principal secretary in the state’s Home Department, contended that social media was being used by “anti-national and subversive elements” for “vitiating peace and tranquillity” in the state.

As always, when governments resort to out-and-out censorship, it's difficult to see how this will do any good at all. There are always alternative ways to communicate and share information, and these kinds of actions tend to galvanize those being censored into being even more aggressive in sharing such info. Indeed, the NY Times quotes protesting students pointing out how pointless such a ban really is:

“The government has to understand that there is a sentiment which forces students to come out on the streets: it is not the internet, it is not Facebook or any other social media platform,” said Aqib Shah, a 19-year-old student at Amar Singh College, who has been participating in protests in Srinagar for the last several days. “It is because of the overwhelming presence of forces that are deployed here.”

Instead of trying to shut people up on the internet, maybe it would be a better idea to listen to them.

Filed Under: bans, communications, free speech, kashmir, social media, social networks
Companies: facebook, reddit, snapchat, tumblr, twitter, youtube

Indian Government Agencies Demand Access To WhatsApp Messaging Groups

from the we-can't-have-people-bad-mouthing-the-government-and-getting-away-with-it dept

Here comes the inevitable government backlash against WhatsApp rolling out end-to-end encryption for one billion users worldwide: if governments can no longer demand access to communications, the next best thing is to demand access to WhatsApp users.

According to India resident Prasanto K. Roy, local governments are demanding that administrators of WhatsApp groups (the latest beneficiaries of the encryption rollout) register with the local magistrate, and will apparently hold them accountable for any "irresponsible remarks" or "untoward actions" by members of the group.

Notice: Running a WhatsApp group in #Kashmir? Get a license. @ShashiTharoor @abdullah_omar HT @fainalysis pic.twitter.com/oV47VfrLHE

— Prasanto K Roy (@prasanto) April 19, 2016

The government's unsubtle man-in-the-middle approach to accessing WhatsApp communications also involves placing a literal government man in the middle, according to the Times of India.

The spokesperson also said that a government representative might also have to be added to the WhatsApp group as an admin. "If any government admin is present in a WhatsApp group, it will immediately prevent any sort of rumour-mongering," he said.

Whenever a government agency develops an overweening urge to curb "rumor-mongering," one can be sure that particular government is fucking something up somewhere. And, indeed, that is the case here.

The government had imposed a blackout on mobile internet in the troubled area after clashes between security forces and protestors claimed the lives of five people. The area had seen protests after the alleged molestation of a teenager by security personnel. The mobile internet blackout had been aimed at curbing the spread of potentially inflammatory messages that could spark further tension in the area.

It would seem to me the tension was created by the alleged molestation, the government's lack of interest in investigating/punishing the wrongdoer and the killing of five people. The government appears to be more interested in saving itself from its constituency, so the obvious move is to shut down any communication platform that it can't monitor or control. It can't kill WhatsApp, so it's demanding to be inserted into these conversations -- either directly or by lurking just offscreen whispering legal threats.

Not only that, but the quelling of dissent extends to the government itself. The flier also notes punishment awaits government employees who find the registration demand heavy-handed.

Govt. Employees serving in the district are directed to restrain from making any comments/remarks with regard to the policies and decisions of government on these WhatsApp groups running in the district and if anyone found involved in such activities, strict action will be initiated against them as required under rules.

Looking beyond this local dispute that has managed to drag in the world's most popular messaging service, one can see why it is essential that citizens have communication platforms that keep the government locked out. Encryption doesn't just "protect" criminals from law enforcement and innocent people from criminals. It also protects the innocent from their governments' self-serving overreach.

Filed Under: encryption, groups, india, kashmir, messaging, privacy, whatsapp