After facing massive backlash and resistance, the Government of India has reversed its decision to mandate the pre-installation of Sanchar Saathi app on all smartphones. The Indian Government had stated that this decision was announced with an intent to help citizens from bad actors in the cyber world. However, this decision was not accepted by a large section of mobile manufacturers as well as the general public, who also stated concerns of snooping and spying by the government through the app.
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“The problems deepen when we look at the scope and safeguards. The order invokes “telecom cyber security” as a catch-all justification, but it does not define the functional perimeter of the app. Clause 5 of the Directions refers to identifying acts that “endanger telecom cyber security,” an expression so vague that it invites function creep as a design feature, not a bug. Today, the app may be framed as a benign IMEI checker. Tomorrow, through a server-side update, it could be repurposed for client-side scanning for “banned” applications, flag VPN usage, correlate SIM activity, or trawl SMS logs in the name of fraud detection,” the Internet Freedon Foundation had stated on the move.
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Nevertheless, the Government issued a clarification on the issue stating: “There is no other function other than protecting the users in the app, and they can remove the app whenever they want. This has been clarified by the Government. So far, 1.4 crore users have downloaded this app and are contributing to information on 2000 fraud incidents per day. The number of users has been increasing rapidly, and the mandate to install the app was meant to accelerate this process and make the app available to less aware citizens easily. Just in the last one day, 6 lakh citizens have registered for downloading the app, which is a 10x increase in its uptake. This is an affirmation of faith by citizens on this app for protecting themselves provided to them by the Government. Given Sanchar Saathi’s increasing acceptance, the government has decided not to make the pre-installation mandatory for mobile manufacturers.”
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This move is now being appreciated by users. “Incredible work by EVERYONE who raised their voice to push back against the government mandate directing cell phone manufacturers to mandatorily pre-install the app. Had the mandate gone through, it would have served a very problematic precedent about what the government could coerce the users and the industries to adopt in the name of security. There are better ways to target fraud, ways that are far less invasive. This wasn’t it,” said one such view on social media.
