India considers new surveillance measure on iPhones

Fresh off abandoning its controversial mandate to preload a state-run “security” app on all smartphones, the Indian government may already be heading into an even bigger privacy battle. Here are the details.

This week, a tug-of-war with smartphone makers ended with the Indian government giving up on an order to pre-install an undeletable state-run app on all phones sold in the country.

Now, as reported by Reuters, the Modi government is looking into the idea of requiring “smartphone makers to activate A-GPS technology – which uses satellite signals and cellular data (…) precise enough that a user can be tracked to within about a meter.”

This idea was floated earlier this year by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), as a result of concerns by the Modi administration that “its agencies do not get precise locations when legal requests are made to telecom firms during investigations,” since this information relies on cellular tower data, which is less precise.

At the time, Apple and Google manifested their opposition to the proposal, which they called “a regulatory overreach,” and claimed that this would present clear “legal, privacy, and national security concerns”.

Currently, A-GPS is only activated in certain situations, such as emergency calls, but the mandate would require it to be permanently activated.

Reuters’ sources said that representatives from the government were scheduled to meet with “top smartphone industry executives” earlier today to discuss the issue, but the meeting was postponed.

The meeting would likely also include a discussion over surveillance alerts, which the COAI also reportedly sees as an inconvenience:

What’s your take on this new proposal? Let us know in the comments.