After revoking its earlier decision to enforce a mandatory cybersecurity application Sanchar Saathi installed in all mobiles after a stern backlash from manufacturing giants, the government of India is now mulling a compulsory always-on location tracking of all smartphones in the country, as per latest reports.
According to media sources, the government is considering to bring a telecom proposal to put a mandatory condition on smartphone firms to enable satellite location tracking that is always switched on for a better surveillance. Though there is no official promulgation from the government so far, leading companies like Apple, Google and Samsung opposing this step due to privacy concerns.
The government reportedly wants to bring this mandate so that it can get precise locations when legal requests are made to telecom firms for the sake of investigation. At present, telecom operators can only utilise cellular tower data to provide an approximate area location which can be off by several meters.
This consideration came in the backdrop of the proposal given by the Cellular Operators Association of India, representing Reliance Jio and Bharathi Airtel, has informed the government that exact location can only be provided if it orders smartphone users to activate A-GPS technology which uses satellite signals and cellular data. To make this happen, location tracking on mobile phones should be activated all the time with no option for user to disable them.
Mobile companies like Apple and Google have reportedly opposed this plan firmly due to privacy concerns as such tracking might include people working in sensitive sectors like military, law, corporate, surveillance stations and media.
Some telecom operators have contended that no such measure to track device level location is available anywhere in the world and opined that such a move would be a regulatory overreach and is likely to attract opposition from mobile users.
So far, no policy decision has been made by the government regarding this proposal. India’s home ministry was supposed to hold a meeting with top smartphone industry executives to discuss about this matter on Friday, but it was postponed due to unforeseen reasons.
Even if the government comes up with such an order, it will surely receive immediate pushback from both the public and the Opposition parties just like in the case of Sanchaar Saathi app.
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