India Won’t Quit: New Proposal Demands Always-On GPS on iPhones
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Just one week after doing an about-face on a controversial government tracking app mandate, the Indian government is now looking for ways to wage another battle over its citizens’ privacy.
Reuters reports that India is considering a proposal that would mandate Apple keep GPS location services permanently enabled on every iPhone sold in the country.
The proposed regulation would require Apple (and other smartphone manufacturers) to activate satellite-assisted GPS on their handsets 24/7, with no way for users to disable the feature. According to the proposal documents reviewed by Reuters, the rule would require “smartphone makers to activate A-GPS technology,” noting that the combination of satellite and cellular data is “precise enough that a user can be tracked to within about a meter.”
The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) claims that location data obtained from cell tower triangulation is not sufficiently precise for investigators and argues that authorities should have access to meter-level coordinates provided by GPS.
Currently, an iPhone’s GPS is only activated when a specific app requests location data or when an emergency call is placed. The COAI has also petitioned the government to force smartphone makers to disable any pop-up notifications that inform users when a carrier attempts to access location information.
This new controversy comes just one week after India walked back a separate directive that would have required Apple, Google, and other smartphone companies to pre-install a government tracking app called “Sanchar Saathi” and ensure users could not remove it from their devices. All devices sold after the directive came into force would have been required to include the app, either installed at the factory or pushed out to those on store shelves via a software update. Many feared this update policy would also expand to phones already in customers’ hands.
As it did with Sanchar Saathi, Apple is pushing back against the proposed GPS requirement, alongside other smartphone makers. In July, the India Cellular & Electronics Association (ICEA), which represents Apple and Google, sent a letter to the government warning that requiring GPS to be enabled at all times would constitute regulatory overreach. The ICEA claims such a measure to track device-level location has no precedent anywhere else in the world.
Although India’s Ministry of Home Affairs had scheduled a meeting for Friday to discuss the matter with top executives from the smartphone industry, it was postponed. At this point, no decision on the proposed regulations has been made by the home or IT ministries.
While Reuters sent questions about the proposed regulations to the involved parties — including India’s IT and home ministries, Apple, Samsung, Google, Reliance, and Airtel — none of them responded to requests for comment. Lobby groups ICEA and COAI also did not respond.
