Is it just me, or the government of India is cracking down of all end to end encryption apps like signal and element.
Cause I guy who works for the police came to my house and asked whether I use signal and element
Is it just me, or the government of India is cracking down of all end to end encryption apps like signal and element.
Cause I guy who works for the police came to my house and asked whether I use signal and element
Thanks for the comment. I haven’t found any local news for this. I may update this once I find any
And for my story: A guy came from the police station he had a list all the people who were using "signal, element and bip (not open source, full of ads but encrypted) and a buch more end to end encrypted apps. Shown my mobile number, address and my name.
Told me why I was using signal and element and also had to show my chats. Didn’t look at all the chats, was curious tho.
Said that these apps were used by terrorist and all and you should switch to WhatsApp.
WhatsApp runs India. It is a backbone all Indian users and it is also e2ee for all I know
That’s very curious. The push to WhatsApp is especially interesting considering it is owned by Meta/Facebook, which is a company that has a long history of working with the US government for extrajudicial surveillance of the US populace. I wonder if they’re working with the Indian government in a similar capacity.
As such, I fully personally expect WhatsApp to have officially sanctioned government backdoors. If they’re willing to build them for the US government, maybe they’re building them for the Indian government, too. Which is perhaps why there is a push towards the corporate, non-open solution, because the other options have more ways for individuals to avoid backdoors.
We really need more community owned and operated communications groups, like the barbed wire telephone of the past.
The only people I know who use WhatsApp are Indian. The only reason I have ever used WhatsApp is many of my Indian friends are unreachable by any normal means. And it was that way since before Meta ever bought them. If Modi tried to completely eliminate WhatsApp than people would be upset about it.
WhatsApp is the most commonly used messaging app globally. What would be considered ‘normal’ means here? SMS or iMessage?
Good point. I would consider SMS, MMS, Phone call & email “normal” but it woulda probably been better if I used a different term, maybe “long established protocols?”