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Nikhil Pahwa

@nixxin

25 Nov

There's uncertainty in the crypto space again, after the Cryptocurrency Bill is expected to get tabled. The problem is the announcement text: which states in its description that the Bill seeks to "prohibit all private cryptocurrencies in India".This is confused nomenclature.
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It's not clear which cryptocurrencies are private, and which are public - does that mean publicly available, or only those issued by governments (of which there are none).

There have been rumours about the RBI planning their own cryptocurrencies -- so called Laxmi Coin.

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Some countries like China have theirs. At the same time, there are several regulatory issues around cryptocurrencies that NEED to be discussed: around black money, hawala, taxation etc.
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Read 4 tweets

Nikhil Pahwa

@nixxin

27 Oct

Supreme Court has appointed a largely technical committee, headed by Justice Ravindran, former SC judge, to investigate the Indian government's usage of Pegasus. I'll be on NDTV at 9pm on this.

A thread (which I'll update through today)
1. National security: SC observed

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that "National Security" is not a free pass for the govt to do what it wants. Their alleged usage of Pegasus needs to be investigated. Hence an expert committee

2. Not a govt committee: the court has appointed its own committee and chose not to accept the govts offer of

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Constituting its own committee, because the investigation needs to be independent of the govt.

3. Insufficient response: from the govt regarding the allegations made by the petition, despite sufficient opportunity given to the govt by the SC.

4. My take:
4.1 A technical
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Read 13 tweets

Nikhil Pahwa

@nixxin

5 Aug

@JagdeepChhokar

A war by a government against its own citizens.

Among all the things that were said in the Supreme Court today in the #Pegasus case, this from Shyam Divan really hit home. Especially since Mr. Divan is representing my uncle @JagdeepChhokar.

medianama.com/2021/08/223-pe…

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2. Remember that apart from protectors of democracy like him, people targeted for surveillance in this case were Parliamentarians, Journalists & judges.

This is an attack from one pillar of democracy,the Executive,against the other three (Legislature, Media and Judiciary).

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So, the Supreme Court must step in to protect the republic and democracy in this country.

We cannot trust the executive, or its agencies, to investigate itself. Perhaps we need the legislature - with more from the opposition, to investigate.
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Read 10 tweets

Nikhil Pahwa

@nixxin

18 Jul

#pegasus 🧵
There is nothing shocking or surprising about governments spying using Pegasus. We've known about Pegasus since at least 2016. First known use in India that we know about was in Bhima Koregaon spying, allegedly by Indian govt. A few points for your consideration:
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1. A govt has used it to spy: Pegasus is sold only to govts. So it would follow that it has been used by a govt against ministers, journalists, opposition leaders, supreme court judges, and many others. This is essentially an attack on our freedoms in india.
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2. Pegasus, once installed on our phones, is used to extract all communications (iMessage, WhatsApp, Gmail, Viber, Facebook, Skype) and locations. Remember that content on your phone itself is not secure.
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Read 18 tweets

Nikhil Pahwa

@nixxin

6 Jun

@GoI_MeitY

I have a slightly unusual take on the Indian government / @GoI_MeitY 's threat to remove intermediary status for @Twitter if it doesn't comply with the Rules.

Thread 👇
1. An intermediary is an entry which is merely a platform for you & me to publish / transfer info. It does
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Not modify the content, so isn't liable. So if I defame you on Twitter, you can't hold Twitter responsible. Unless, under India law, you have actual knowledge. Now the Indian Supreme Court said, on March 24th 2015, that actual Knowledge = court order or govt order.
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2. Thus, if Intermediary status is removed, Twitter is liable for this hypothetical defamation suit. Expand that to millions of potentially defamatory tweets, and Twitter won't survive it. So removing intermediary status is a very serious threat. They might as well shut down.

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Read 10 tweets

Nikhil Pahwa

@nixxin

26 May

So WhatsApp has sued the Indian government for imposing the IT Rules 2021. This is probably the most significant privacy case in India, ever since the Right to Privacy case.

Thread on what this is about:

1. WhatsApp uses end to end encryption. This doesn't just mean that they don't know what is in our messages. It also means that they don't know who has sent what message.

The only time they can see the content of the message is when someone marks it as spam,in which case the
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user who has marked it as spam unencrypts it for WhatsApp to see.

2. The IT Rules force WhatsApp to change this: the govt has said that it wants WhatsApp to identify the originator of a message (but doesn't want the message content). When this is for law enforcement
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