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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 coord
by iambenm 2mo ago
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.
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.
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.
- ranger_danger 2mo agoSo what happens if you have a flight that gets diverted to India and they search your bags and find a satellite phone?
- iamnothere 2mo agoBelieve it or not, straight to jail.
- vsviridov 2mo ago[flagged]
- actionfromafar 2mo agoYou jail them so they can't leave? :-D
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- el_io 2mo agoI think I missed the joke here. Can you please elaborate?
- Dansvidania 2mo agoI think it’s from parks and recs. but the quote was “we have the best patients in the world. Because of jail. “ Search “parks and recs straight to jail”
- el_io 2mo agoThanks.
- folkrav 2mo agoIt’s a “Parks and Recreations” reference.
- realo 2mo ago[flagged]
- krupan 2mo agoAre there any countries NOT on this blacklist?
- brightball 2mo agoAre there any instances of the US sending a tourist to jail in another country?
- philipallstar 2mo agoNo, I don't think so. There's a set of people who consume media that deliberately and consistently conflates "immigrant" and "illegal immigrant", and they just can't disambiguate what happens to one from what happens to the other.
- realo 2mo agoBut what to do with an "illegal immigrant" who has been living in the country for 30 years (and PAID TAXES!) , had 4 kids and a perfectly normal , productive life? Do you separate them from their kids, and send the bunch to a prison? That is insane. Because from what we hear about ICE, that is exactly what is happening... when they don't just kill them outright.
- mindslight 2mo agoIt might be enlightening for some to look at what happens to someone who builds a house on land they don't own, and then lives there for 30 years. It's a pretty well established body of law.
- mdgld 2mo agoExcept your analogy is asinine, and in this case it would be more like paying rent for 30 years in an apartment but not being on the lease so they unceremoniously kick you out.
- hdgvhicv 2mo agoDo you have a reputable link?
- bad_username 2mo agoThere you go : https://youtu.be/eiyfwZVAzGw https://youtu.be/eiyfwZVAzGw
- izacus 2mo agoThe poster you're answering to just described what happens.
- Barbing 2mo agoNot for diversions necessarily. Diversion versus expected connection should at least help one’s lawyers… hopefully.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- delecti 2mo agoLawyers can get you out of jail, but you need to be pretty rich for your lawyers to prevent going to jail in the first place.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- Barbing 2mo agoBeat rap not ride right!
- izacus 2mo agoWhen you're standing at the customs office entering a country, your lawyers are far far FAR away and the people talking to you won't care about them even a little bit. Whatever will happen with you lawyering and fighting the border officers, will happen after you've been detained.
- mdgld 2mo agoIf you’re flying private customs is a joke. And/or your fixer just calls the local governor/embassy/etc.
- mothballed 2mo agoI'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.
- ranger_danger 2mo agoBut wouldn't they know whose bag it was anyway? And there's cameras everywhere so it wouldn't help if you e.g. removed the bag tags or discarded the contents somewhere else in the airport.
- inigyou 2mo agoSame thing that happens whenever your flight gets diverted to South Korea and you have condoms, or Indonesia and you have legal weed, or to Australia and you have a pineapple. Which is that it depends on the mood of the person in charge. Either you get to keep it, or it's confiscated and destroyed, or you go to jail, or you go to a firing squad. We can guess which is more likely in each country. Indonesia almost always executes people found with drugs. Australia would probably just destroy your pineapple. India, being authoritarian but not completely insane, my guess is they'd take it and fine you.
- manytimesaway 2mo ago>your flight gets diverted to South Korea and you have condoms ..what? Condoms are not outlawed there, are they?
- flerchin 2mo agoAFAICT South Korea does not outlaw condoms. Grandparent may be thinking of North Korea. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-where-condoms-are-banned https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...
- inigyou 2mo agoI was probably thinking of Romania a century ago. But you can imagine for every normal thing there is probably a country where it is banned. And South Korea is a country where some things are banned that you wouldn't expect.
- neonstatic 2mo ago> I had a connecting flight through India I make additional effort to never experience that again. Connecting flight through Mumbai. An absolutely awful experience.
- logicchains 2mo agoThe Indian government is pretty serious about cracking down violently on peaceful protesters: https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/07/23/india-excessive-force-used-against-student-protesters https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/07/23/india-excessive-force-us...
- bryanrasmussen 2mo agoOne of the formative narratives of Indian independence is that peaceful protest works in getting rid of bad governments. on edit: changed myths to narratives to avoid confusion
- shevy-java 2mo agoSo far the Modi clique is still in power though.
- paxys 2mo agoIt’s funny because the Indian independence movement was 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. India eventually gained independence because colonialism in general was not politically and economically viable in a post WW2 world, and so Britain just got up and left (as they did from dozens of other colonies in the post war years). Had the independence movement not existed and Gandhi himself not existed the end result would have been exactly the same.
- bryanrasmussen 2mo agoI think the political non-viability was at least partly due to the combination of non-violence and the potential threat of violence, as I am of the opinion that the first never works without a threat of the second.
- anon291 2mo agoPeople greatly misunderstand the Indian independence movement. The early Indian activists merely wanted India to have a devolved legislature like present-day Scotland and Wales, or like Canada and Australia used to have. It was relatively late that anyone really wanted independence. I think many of them still wanted to be a constituent state of the UK. People always forget that Gandhi's first actions as a 'nationalist' were attempting to raise an army to fight on behalf of Britain. The idea that the Indian nationalists wanted to be a new nation from the get go is a modern day invention.
- shevy-java 2mo agoI don't trust the Modi clique one second.
- anon291 2mo agoI disagree with the Modi and Hindutva project almost entirely, not only politically, but on a personal level coming from a minority community (Christian) in India. However, India is in what basically amounts to a perpetual state of war with Pakistan and has always been this way. India rarely agresses Pakistan and Pakistani terror groups do operate with seeming impunity in India (Pakistan doesn't even maintain a 'no-first-use' nuclear option, and is currently run by a military dictatorship... they're f'ing nuts). While all these actions are obviously crazy and in my opinion overbearing, people in the West don't understand how awful radical Islam is, especially of the South Asian variety. I'm not sure many Americans would react differently to the extremism of South Asian Islam to be honest. To put it in perspective, many Indians (of all religions) died and fought in a bloody war to secure Bangladesh's (then East Pakistan's) freedom from what was a genocidal regime in West Pakistan. Decades later, the typical Bangladeshi muslim still hates Indians because any non-muslim Indian they consider 'Hindu', thus polytheist, and thus worthy of death. One thousand five hundred Indian soldiers died only for their neighbor to hate them in return for the 'crime' of not being born part of their religion. While Hindu nationalists are fucking insane, I honestly think many have been driven to it by the insanity of South Asian Islam. Meanwhile, America has a relatively peaceful and cooperative neighbor (Mexico), which only has a crime problem on the border, and the average American seems ready to give up almost every civic right to deal with that. There are barely any terror attacks of note coming from these Mexican gangs, and congress has already ceded many constitutional rights (such as the right against unreasonable search and seizure) near the border zones. Anyway, imagine Mexicans hated everyone in America for the crime of being 'gringos' (even the non-whites) and that's basically what India has with all their neighbors. If people in the west want India to liberalize, which we really should want to do, Western nations need to work on dismantling Pakistan and limiting Islamic extremism in the region.
- epestr 2mo agoLargely uncited and generalised exposition of Bangladeshi's misses other factors which could be involved in their decision towards distrust of India. India's initial decisions need not be merely humanitarian but also political. https://scroll.in/article/1081784/why-are-bangladeshis-turning-against-india https://scroll.in/article/1081784/why-are-bangladeshis-turni.... This article explains that it's due to an increasingly unequal interactions as sowing distrust. Explaining the Hindutva moment as a genuine counter reaction to anti-Hindu sentiment rather than a politically motivated movement seems to be misguided, even if not actively propogating the propaganda.
- adityaathalye 2mo agoThe terrorists were only able to do so because mass-media news was live broadcasting everything on the air, and the terrorists holed up with hostages in the hotel were able to follow the blow-by-blow live. (edit: i.e. SatCom alone can't do much, if there is no verifiable on-ground intel. And in 2008, our mass-media supplied it in liberal quantities, through multiple camera angles and replays and blow-by-blow commentaries.) cf. Westpoint's Urban Warfare Project Case Study #16: Mumbai Terrorist Attacks: https://mwi.westpoint.edu/urban-warfare-project-case-study-16-mumbai-terrorist-attacks/ https://mwi.westpoint.edu/urban-warfare-project-case-study-1... > Maintaining communications with their handlers in Pakistan was critical for several reasons. First, the handlers were monitoring live Indian news broadcasts and social media feeds, so they could provide real-time instructions throughout the operation and thus afford the attackers the ability to react to developments outside their targets. > The communication also provided the attackers psychological support. > The handlers were able to encourage the young, inexperienced militants to maintain their resolve and continue killing civilians and security forces by reinforcing their religious and financial motivations. > During the operation, the handlers actively coached some of the attackers to continue shooting civilians and to hold positions against Indian security force responders.
- marcta 2mo agoA similar thing happened in the Falkland's War: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/history/bbcs-treason-battle-goose-green.html https://www.warhistoryonline.com/history/bbcs-treason-battle...
- adityaathalye 2mo agoThat's wild. TIL; thanks for sharing. That appears to be an epic failure of all kinds of intelligence on both sides of the war. And, it's a miracle the gaffe was not explained away as a "strategic master stroke" psyop engineered by the British to fool the other side and lull them into complacency. > Side 1: Henlo world, look our people are here, about to surprise-attack Side 2, at this surprise location, at this time. > Side 2: Lol. Not falling for that. > Narrator: This is all totally absurd, and totally real of course. > Side 1: Goes ahead with globally broadcasted secret plan anyway. > Side 2: FML. > Side 1: After the dust settles. "Psych! Master-Stroke!". Also, pray tell why is everything (supposedly) "done" by those in positions of power framed as "strategic master stroke"s these days? I suppose only hyperbole makes sense, in a zeitgeist where "leadership" behaviour is jerk, knee-jerk, reactionary-by-default... epileptic.
- inigyou 2mo agoThey are self-DoSing. Whatever you want to get banned, just make sure you some terrorists use it, and it will get banned. Want to ban, say, hijabs, or long pants? Have some terrorists wear them to cover their identities.
- m463 2mo agoJapan has no trash cans. (reaction to the japanese subway attacks) Returning to the US from japan you notice. Japanese bathrooms don't have trash cans, so no paper towels. In the US, the bathrooms have trash cans overflowing with paper towel waste and it is quite a difference.
- hyperbolablabla 2mo agoHmm, Osaka has plenty of trash cans... Did you mean Tokyo?
- m463 2mo agohmm.. I didn't compare. but yes for certain tokyo.
- bhelkey 2mo agoOne thing I noticed is that I tended to accumulate a lot of trash in Japan. Connivence stores were plentiful and the food was tasty, but it was all wrapped in plastic. Where does all the trash go? More often than not, I ended up carrying trash in a backpack to throw away at my hotel.
- sieabahlpark 2mo ago[dead]
- mef 2mo agoWorking as intended
- graton 2mo agoI would eat the food at the store and then throw the trash away in the store's trash cans. For things I didn't eat at the store I carried a small plastic bag to store my trash and when I got to my lodging I would throw it away. Also once you go inside the gates of a subway/train station there often seemed to be trash cans available.
- 2mo ago