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marketrent OP t1_jcvmucl wrote

Excerpt from the linked content^1 by Gerry Shih, Karishma Mehrotra, and Shams Irfan:

>Indian authorities severed mobile internet access and text messaging for a second day Sunday across Punjab, a state of about 27 million people, as officials sought to capture a Sikh separatist and braced for potential unrest.

>The statewide ban — which crippled most smartphone services except for voice calls and some SMS text messages — marked one of the broadest shutdowns in recent years in India, a country that has increasingly deployed the law enforcement tactic, which digital rights activists call draconian and ineffective.

>Three Punjab residents who spoke to The Washington Post said life had been disrupted since midday Saturday.

>“My entire business is dependent on internet,” said Mohammad Ibrahim, who accepts QR code-based payments at his two clothing shops in a village outside of Ludhiana and also sells garments online. “Since yesterday, I’ve felt crippled.”

>In each of the past five years, Indian officials have ordered internet shutdowns more frequently than any other government, according to the New York-based advocacy group Access Now, which issues annual reports on the practice.

>Authorities in Punjab deployed a tactic that is usually seen in another restive Indian region: Jammu and Kashmir. The majority-Muslim region in India’s far north has experienced internet disruptions more than 400 times in the past decade, according to the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), a New Delhi-based nonprofit.

^1 Gerry Shih, Karishma Mehrotra, and Shams Irfan for the Washington Post/Jeff Bezos, 19 Mar. 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/03/19/india-punjab-intermet-ban-amritpal-singh/

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AverageCowboyCentaur t1_jcvp9jw wrote

In Egypt it's illegal and possibly deadly to use starlink. Eg: The government will come in and take it arrest and/or kill you. Is that the same in India, can't they just get starlink up and running?

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MrBillyLotion t1_jcvr7i5 wrote

That kind of move is really going to motivate the populace to get involved

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Dwarfdeaths t1_jcvuv5t wrote

What do you know, this shut down coincides with an uncharacteristic cessation of spam phone calls from my area code.

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housepuma t1_jcvvxae wrote

Replying to Dwarfdeaths (#2,274,424)

Huh! I noticed a big reduction of spam phone calls as of late myself but I don't think it is necessarily this. The accent on the scam phone calls I received was clearly Southeast Asian in origin/

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housepuma t1_jcvwcfv wrote

A country as densely populated as India with a lot of its citizenry well-educated in IT, could create their own internet in defiance of the government. I'd love to be able to do this here in the United States but it's infeasible and I haven't gotten any interest.

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cool_slowbro t1_jcw54uh wrote

Meanwhile, scam centers continue to run rampant. :)

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lori_lightbrain t1_jcw9fny wrote

Replying to housepuma (#2,274,518)

> with a lot of its citizenry well-educated in IT, could create their own internet in defiance of the government.

those people are windup toys who jump at whatever hoops are thrown to them by the westerners hiring them for offshore work. that's very different from coming up with your own mesh network from scratch, which requires multidisciplinary expertise in electrical engineering, hardware radios, networking software, etc. etc.

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leoheck t1_jcwfj6b wrote

Imagine turning the lights off instead of turning them on to search for someone...

This is stupid to say the least.

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Science_is_Greatness t1_jcwk8zn wrote

no wonder India is such a poor country, with all its backward-thinking policies.

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happyscrappy t1_jcwked7 wrote

Replying to marketrent (#2,273,944)

Indian government: replaces all currency partly to try to get everyone to use electronic payment systems like paytm (or PhonePe) instead of cash

Same Indian government: shuts down the internet at random intervals thus shutting down electronic payment systems

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H3g3m0n t1_jcwm2a3 wrote

Replying to AverageCowboyCentaur (#2,274,089)

afaik Starlink generally only provides service in countries where there is an legal agreement for them to operate (and probably international waters). If Egypt don't want it they would just disallow it. Or require that it works with their law enforcement requirements.

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Ophelia_Yummy t1_jcwmrpz wrote

Replying to stepover7 (#2,276,046)

But in the developing countries… mobile internet is the most crucial internet… at least I know in China, vast majority of e commerce is done via mobile.. if this lasts for two days.. online stores are gonna lose billions

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cinemachick t1_jcwneq0 wrote

Replying to lori_lightbrain (#2,275,401)

Say what you will about the outsourcing of labor, but it's a bit goache to call them 'windup toys.' It takes skill to execute directions from a different country in a different language to exact specifications, even if the task isn't a higher order of intelligence. Just because they're paid less for smaller jobs now, doesn't mean they aren't capable of learning something more skilled in the future.

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peedrah t1_jcwo9sy wrote

Can we just clarify that the reason for taking over the police station was because they were holding people way beyond their sentence. Shame that Washington post doesn’t actually do their own research about why people are protesting

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