> 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.<p>This mouthful boils down to exactly this: a form of communication not controlled by the government creates a risk for the country.<p>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.
>This mouthful boils down to exactly this: a form of communication not controlled by the government creates a risk for the government.<p>Fixed that for you. It's a subtle but important difference.<p>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.<p>I <i>used to</i> 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.<p>Reference to start from: <a href="https://www.kcra.com/article/liberty-limits-black-panther-party-impact-california-gun-laws/69623049" rel="nofollow">https://www.kcra.com/article/liberty-limits-black-panther-pa...</a><p>This topic is full of subtlty so recommend reading the sources from that article and so on.
Most nations with gun control apply gun control to the street police also.
>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.<p>Were they what precipitated it or were they one of the many factors used to get the public on board?<p>9/11 didn't write the patriot act.
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.
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.
I'm not condoning this but what would you suggest they should be doing to keep people safe?<p>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<p>They're afraid of people communicating. That's not a safety thing.
and in this argument we pre-suppose that loss of privacy equates to an increase in safety, right?
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.<p>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.<p>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.
The Indian government is pretty serious about cracking down violently on peaceful protesters: <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/07/23/india-excessive-force-used-against-student-protesters" rel="nofollow">https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/07/23/india-excessive-force-us...</a>
One of the formative narratives of Indian independence is that peaceful protest works in getting rid of bad governments.<p>on edit: changed myths to narratives to avoid confusion
It’s funny because the Indian independence movement was literally a failure. Indians protested non-violently and sometimes violently for over a hundred years, and British control (first through the East India company and then directly by the crown) kept increasing with every passing year, eventually encompassing the entire subcontinent.<p>India eventually gained independence because colonialism in general was not politically and economically viable in a post WW2 world, and so the British just got up and left.<p>Had the independence movement not existed and Gandhi himself not existed the end result would have been exactly the same.
So far the Modi clique is still in power though.
<a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/india/anantnag-terror-attack-terrorists-homes-demolished-omar-abdullah-kashmir-10800147/" rel="nofollow">https://indianexpress.com/article/india/anantnag-terror-atta...</a><p>BBC says 3000 but yeah.<p><a href="https://www.outlookindia.com/national/2-terrorists-family-homes-demolished-in-kashmir-day-after-anantnag-attack" rel="nofollow">https://www.outlookindia.com/national/2-terrorists-family-ho...</a><p>So the houses of 2 accused were razed because.....
I don't trust the Modi clique one second.
> I had a connecting flight through India<p>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.
The USA is already on my blacklist of places never to go visit as a tourist again because you never know if they will send you to some prison in some nasty country.<p>Now India is on the same blacklist.
We have the best doctors in the world. Because of jail.
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.
The poster you're answering to just described what happens.
India is kind of cute.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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).
As I understand it, China's GFW is intentionally leaky, balancing as much control as they can get away with but not enough to forment open revolt. As with a lot of things, the best control is not total control.
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.
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.
I'm not suggesting people should give up, I'm suggesting that some countries can resort to doing <i>very uncute things</i> when faced with noncompliance.<p>When someone with the monopoly on the use of force says they will not allow something, that isn't something cute to ignore, it is serious.
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."
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.
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.
isn't phone tech itself digital over the internet nowadays just like VOIP if it isn't using VOIP directly?<p>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.
Yes, but PSTN using voip is paying all the telecom fees and taxes and respecting the government surveillance mandates which is what the Indian Government is concerned about.<p>> 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.<p>Not so much in countries where it's banned and the ban is enforced.
If Modi government wants to ban something, it is usually good stuff.<p>> “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 <i>point</i> of this stuff is providing checks and balances for the people against a rogue government, or emergency situation.<p>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.<p>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.<p>If you love the encryption but hate the terrorism, what to do? Double down on old school / physical surveillance? (Obviously not my field)
Originally, you'd communicate by mail, but some people didn't write things out in plain language; they used coated messages.<p>That was why the government decided to ban mail, and since that didn't cover all cases, they also banned people handing things to each other.<p>At least, I <i>think</i> that is how I remember it going in an alternate world where physical laws mimiced electronic laws.
Yes, exactly that. Tons of crime is committed using only in-person communication. Should we all have microphones in our homes? Do detective work, flip sources, follow the money.
I believe that most of terrorism does happen because the people behind it have some goals, not for funsies; so trying to fight the causes would be one thing to do. Obviously, that's difficult for many reasons, and making life more shit for everyone else is cheap and easy, and hence preferred.
So there was no terrorism or crime or trafficking or money laundering prior to encrypted comms?
> Honestly no idea what I’d do if I were in government.<p>It's not ordinary citizens' job to figure out solutions to these problems. Government has teams of intelligence agencies to answer these questions. Encrypted chat is fundamental infra that shouldn't be blocked.
If you were sane, you would realise that restricting the right of billions of people to communicate privately, a right they have enjoyed for all the thousands of years of human history, is handing terrorists a complete and total victory far beyond any act of violence they could commit. The purpose of a government is not to prevent 100% of all crime and terrorism by locking every citizen in a straitjacket.<p>this also isn't even motivated by terrorists, but rather people daring to oppose the government.
Become a society where nobody feels it necessary to fall back on "terrorism" to get themselves properly heard.
Yeah, I don't think the terrorism in India is from lack of being heard.<p>It is generally extremist arms interested in destabilizing India to strengthen other regional powers (usually Pakistan).<p>The goal of much of these terrorist attacks simply end with ... no India, not "we demand change to policies in a reasonable way"
> Honestly no idea what I’d do if I were in government.<p>Spending crazy amounts in public education, healthcare, and nuclear arsenal?
We do regulate food. Tons of substances are not allowed.<p>We also regulate roads. You can not drive around in tanks. Or without license plate...
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.<p>We're much safer <i>not</i> opening that can of worms for now.
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.<p>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.
The UK for now have given up on trying to ban vpns<p>'This is the right call' — VPN industry praises the UK’s decisions to leave VPN alone | TechRadar <a href="https://share.google/CyBImh95bt3VTubJV" rel="nofollow">https://share.google/CyBImh95bt3VTubJV</a>
Oh boy , this is American exceptionalism at its finest. The US has by far the most authoritarian government of all mentioned entities.
Really you should protest against your government.
What a mix!<p>Yes, it is American exceptionalism (and quite foolish) to make the claim that "This could never happen in the US".<p>No, the American government is NOT more authoritative than the UK in the way they handle freedom of websites. The grandparent comment is correct: the US government does not (currently) order ISPs to block specific websites.<p>Yes, those in the US <i>should</i> protest the current government (many of us already are doing so).
How many people has the US sent to jail due to saying naughty things on Twitter vs the UK? If were going to speak of authoritarianism. Just due to ensuring free speech and right to bear arms the US is possibly the least authoritarian developed nation outside of maybe Switzerland.
Will there be a headline?
> I was worried for a second there that it was the American government.<p>Midterms are coming up and the regime has spoken openly about "rigging" them so... just give it some time (and download a copy!).
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.<p>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.
Unfortunately Bitchat feels like an unfinished proof of concept.<p>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.
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:<p>When asked about when kind of government the founding fathers had created, Ben Franklin replied "A Republic, if you can keep it."<p>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."<p>Thomas Jefferson further wrote that "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."<p>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.<p>Individual States and localities have elements of democracy, but the US—built upon knowledge of Rome—is not.<p>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.<p>That said, this is ban is clearly a restriction on freedom of expression, and highly un-American.
Regression to the mean...
Thank you Indian government for announcing the existence of this app to the public.
Ooh definitely time to install this on my personal device then. Thanks Mr. Modi!<p>Aside: oof yeah this seems like terrible policy and takes India off my bucket list.
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)
For clarity: Indian government.
On the contrary, these projects should be given a boost.
Agree, sounds like it is working for its intended purposes.<p>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.<p>Hopefully google won't prevent people from installing from outside sources /s<p>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.
Still available.<p><a href="https://github.com/permissionlesstech/bitchat" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/permissionlesstech/bitchat</a>
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.<p>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.<p>There are some recent policy changes to attract more foreign currency deposits with lots of expectations.<p>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.
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."
Too bad it operates on Nostr, which is crypto-adjacent, otherwise they could move to Codeberg.
Democracy Dies in Darkness
I do hope they were ignored. But then this is ultimately Microsoft we're talking about.
Wow I didn’t know about this technology but it sounds like seriously cool stuff
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.
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.<p><a href="https://updates.techforpalestine.org/bitchat-for-gaza-messaging-without-internet/" rel="nofollow">https://updates.techforpalestine.org/bitchat-for-gaza-messag...</a>
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.
India is now going after domains too: <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/worlds-biggest-domain-seller-fears-indias-fake-site-crackdown-could-damage-2026-07-03/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/world/worlds-biggest-domain-seller-f...</a><p>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. <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/19/india-judge-reuters-story-00136339" rel="nofollow">https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/19/india-judg...</a>
#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
><i>Just saying.</i><p>maybe its because its friday, or im just not smart, but what is the <i>implication</i> of what you are just saying, beyond "very large country does two things"?<p>(sure would be neat if the downvoters would enlighten me with some text after downvoting, i really don’t understand what the connection is supposed to be)
With google banning side loaded apps, is what India wants to do just a waste of time by India.<p>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>
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