India Orders Mobile Phones Preloaded With Government App To Ensure Cyber Safety (reuters.com) 38
An anonymous reader shares a report: India's telecoms ministry has privately asked all smartphone makers to preload all new devices with a state-owned cyber security app, a government order showed, a move set to spark a tussle with Apple, which typically dislikes such directives.
[...] The November 28 order, seen by Reuters, gives major smartphone companies 90 days to ensure that the government's Sanchar Saathi app is pre-installed on new mobile phones, with a provision that users cannot disable it. [...] In the order, the government said the app was essential to combat "serious endangerment" of telecom cyber security from duplicate or spoofed IMEI numbers, which enable scams and network misuse.
[...] The November 28 order, seen by Reuters, gives major smartphone companies 90 days to ensure that the government's Sanchar Saathi app is pre-installed on new mobile phones, with a provision that users cannot disable it. [...] In the order, the government said the app was essential to combat "serious endangerment" of telecom cyber security from duplicate or spoofed IMEI numbers, which enable scams and network misuse.
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Is India a democracy? Cause if so they Apple as a corperate player in said democracy surely as a say in the matter in some form or another. Such as funding politicians, running ads, applying political pressure for continued job growth in the country, etc.
Re:To Apple -- (Score:4, Informative)
India is an above-average democracy, though its ranking varies a lot, and a number of commentators have criticised a recent erosion of democracy. Apple has a say, and used it days ago in a slightly different case https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
Ranking of India in Democracy indexes:
* The Economist: #41, 7.29/10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] (USA #28, 7.85/10)
* V-Dem institute: #105 0.398/1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] (USA #19, 0.84/1)
Quick search on keywords "India democracy erosion"
* https://www.journalofdemocracy... [journalofdemocracy.org]
* https://ippr-journal.com/india... [ippr-journal.com]
* https://www.fairplanet.org/edi... [fairplanet.org]
* https://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/empt... [ox.ac.uk]
Re:To Apple -- (Score:5, Insightful)
No-one I know on the right want to spy on everyone's phones.
It's a government thing, not a left/right thing. Governments want to spy on everything all the time because they're authoritarian scumbags, regardless of whether they claim to be left-wing or right-wing.
I mean, it's not a right-wing government pushing Digital ID in the UK. It's a left-wing Labour government who claim to be the socialist party of the working man and have been trying to force ID cards on the British people for the best part of thirty years now. Nor is a right-wing EU government pushing software to spy on every private message.
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It's perfectly possible to be left-wing on economic issues and right-wing on issues of liberty. There's more than one left-right axis.
Imagine a person who is against all form of taxation and government interference in private business, but also vehemently opposed to the government dictating what consenting adults do in their own bedrooms.
Is this person left-wing, right-wing, both or neither?
Labour may be notionally on the left when it comes to the economics of the country, though nowhere nearly as much as
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That kind of person is called a pervert who doesn't want to pay taxes. It's not exactly a political thing.
Re: To Apple -- (Score:2)
tim apple has infamously said in the past they follow all local laws where they do business when they removed vpn apps from the app store in China.
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Why?
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> Why?
How about this:
Because the ability to pull the cover more over to your side of the bed isn't the kind of behaviour that warrants more voting power.
If government has access to your device! (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh hell's no! (Score:5, Interesting)
Time to root and put a custom rom on your phones over there.
Seriously, I would think this would affect the trustworthiness of contract labour from India. Don't need the government over there scraping up everyone's corporate IP.
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Time to root and put a custom rom on your phones over there.
It's called "bootloader unlocking" and it results in a growing list of apps (including Craigslist, Cash App and Uber Driver) refusing to work. So there's that.
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Fun fact: Freedom is never free.
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Or, what everyone in India that can afford to do will do: just buy in China.
All this is going to do is create a grey market for phones where some people with big suitcases and easy border crossings can make money.
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Not possible if you plan to use the phone for serious things e.g. using a bank or government apps. You can root / burn ROM in the phone you use for browsing and communicating but you need a pristine phone for mandated apps.
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How difficult will it be to circumvent? (Score:1)
I mean, at this point that's all that matters. Complaining about it will accomplish nothing
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As easy as buying a train ticket to China for buying. your next phone, I imagine.
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:-) Go to China to avoid spyware.. That's a good one!
If the government is truly serious, the network will ping the phone for the app, and if it is not installed, disconnect the phone. It's an easy law to enforce.
Blackberry (Score:1)
the sad part is (Score:1)
Apple has that capability int he OS its self they make a ton of money on stolen phones that get sold to other nations. So dose android. This shit will not end till the end user can kill a device remotely and i mean blow effuses in it to really brick it the screen the digitizer the battery and the broadband processor.
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Personally I'd rather put all of the idiots with such short attention spans, that the thing that is in their hands 90% of the time is so easily stolen, in a shrink ward. If they are just going to fantasize about generating vindictive ewaste in response to their own failings, we may as well.
Why do you need an app for this? (Score:2, Informative)
Here in Australia if your phone is stolen you can have the IMEI blacklisted and it will no longer be able to connect to any network. And both iOS and Android already have tracking features that let you find the device remotely and even lock or wipe it. Not to mention the cloud lock many phones have to prevent factory resets.
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Exactly. All the features the article says the app is needed for is already handled by the carriers and the Android OS and IOS. So they are obviously lying about the reasons for the app.
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No interest.
If my device has been stolen, I'm already out of my phone.
Someone else may as well get to use it, since I can't. Certainly better than it becoming ewaste.
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It might reduce theft in the long term, but in the meantime, MY phone has been stolen, so someone may as well use it rather than it just being ewaste. Disabling it does help me, all it does is annoy someone else and make my phone useless.
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Here in Australia if your phone is stolen
Who said anything about theft?
Whan I bought a mobile in India a few years ago (Score:1)