India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app

I share your abhorrence but are you really shocked? "Think of the children", "Stop the terrorists," these have been the foundations for the erosion of personal liberty for the past thirty years.

https://sancharsaathi.gov.in/

Basically IMEI stamping.

Do they actually have a choice? Usually with laws and orders from the government, you can't do much than either go with the flow, try to lobby against it afterwards, or straight up refuse and leave the market. Considering Apple's ties to India, I feel like Apple is unlikely to leave, so that really only leaves Apple with the first; comply and complain.

You shouldn't be: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26644216

As concerning as it is, this is just another addition to the pile of malware that a modern smartphone is. Everyone including SoC manufacturer, RF baseband manufacturer, OEM, OS developer, browser developer and app developers add their own opaque blobs, hidden executable rings, lockdown measures, attestation layers, telemetry, trojan apps, hidden permissions and more.

We lost the game when we allowed these players to impose limits on us in the way we can use the device that we bought with our hard earned money. Even modifying the root image of these OSes is treated like some sort of criminal activity. And there are enough people around ready to gaslight us with the stories about grandma's security, RF regulations, etc. Yet, its the extensive custom mods like Lineage OS that offer any form of security. Their extensive lockdown only leads to higher usage costs and a mountain of malware.

We really need to demand control over our own devices. We should fight to outlaw any restrictions on the ways we can use our own devices. We should strongly condemn and shame the people who try to gaslight us for their greed and duplicity.

Why wouldn't they? If Apple doesn't comply, the Indian government could force them to withdraw from the market or otherwise make their lives difficult. I can't see Apple or their shareholders caring about privacy enough to abandon such a large market.

> I will be suprised if companies like apple comply though

They will.

All tech companies already comply with India's IT Act. And India now manufactures 44% of all iPhones sold in the US [0] while facing the threat of a $38B anti-trust fine [5], so Apple doesn't have much of a choice because both China and Vietnam (the primary competitors for this segment of manufacturing) have similar regulations. Same with Samsung at 25% in CY24 [1] which is trying to further entrench itself in India [2][7][8] due to existential competition from Chinese vendors [3][6].

Heck, Apple complied with similar regulations in Russia [5] before the Ukraine War despite being a smaller market than India with no Apple manufacturing, engineering, or capex presence.

All large companies who face existential threats from Chinese competition have no choice but to entrench in India as it's the only large market with barriers against direct Chinese players - ASEAN has an expansive FTA with China and Brazil is in the process of one as well.

And the Indian government is taking full advantage of this to get large companies to bend to Indian laws, as can be seen with the damocles sword of tax enforcement on Volkswagen [3] while negotiating an FTA with the EU and a potential $38B anti-trust fine against Apple [4] while negotiating a BTA with the US. It's the same playbook China used when it was in India's position today in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

[0] - https://scw-mag.com/news/apples-supply-shift-to-india-speeds...

[1] - https://www.techinasia.com/news/samsung-to-broaden-manufactu...

[2] - https://www.chosun.com/english/industry-en/2025/11/25/SLEYWT...

[3] - https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20251118VL205/2030-samsung-s...

[4] - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...

[5] - https://www.macrumors.com/2021/03/16/apple-to-offer-governme...

[6] - https://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=...

[7] - https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20250903PD208/samsung-india-...

[8] - https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20241212PR200/samsung-india-...

And you trust the government to only use it for good purposes? and not to track people who may be protesting or belong to opposing political/religious/cultural views? We know based on historical pegasus complaints that this trust has to be earned and can't be given.

There are lots of ways to solve for this, mandating that these companies own the identification process through their systems, report misuse, govern apps. Why taken on the ownership of a process that is better handled outside of government while the government holds them to account via huge fines and timelines but giving these large companies ownership of protection from scams or stolen phones etc...? win win and I think these large companies are due spending extra money to protect their users anyway.

> I will point out that India have the highest number of victims of cyber-fraud

Based on what?

> Another huge issue is unregulated loan apps

You don't need to root everyone's phones to regulate financial crime.

> Then there are obvious security issues with terrorism and organized crime

India is building a centralised backdoor into every phone in the country. That's a massive national security risk.

It will be used as evidence that the person who has GrapheneOS on their phone is attempting to break the law. Telegram and Signal chats are often used as evidence of malfeasance in Indian national security cases, so the jump to using GrapheneOS as evidence of malfesance is tiny.

Yeah, internet is a dead star in so many ways this days. Repetitive, addictive and a private data sucker. I'm already starting to buy programming books and offline content preparing for a radical semi-disconnection.

Get GrapheneOS. The installation is painless and the OS surperior. No mainstream phone OS is viable in the privacy and security nightmare of today.

https://grapheneos.org/