By Nanditha Subhadra & Adv Salini T S
In an era where digital surveillance masquerades as national security, the breach of privacy emerges as the silent casualty, eroding the very essence of personal autonomy and dignity. Such invasive technologies—deployed without consent or safeguards—transform everyday devices into instruments of control, exposing intimate details of our lives to unchecked state scrutiny. This not only violates fundamental human rights but fosters a chilling effect on free expression, as citizens self-censor under the omnipresent gaze of ‘Big Brother’. While the nation is curiously debating the alleged digital overreach, a fresh Reuters “exposé” has ignited anxieties about the Modi Administration’s apparent appetite for embedding surveillance into the very fabric of everyday technology. Titled “Exclusive: India weighs greater phone-location surveillance,” the December 5 report reveals internal deliberations on a telecom industry proposal to mandate permanent activation of Assisted Global Positioning System (A-GPS) technology in all smartphones sold in India. This isn’t just an upgrade to location services—it’s a blueprint for turning 735 million smartphones—and potentially tens of millions more in tablets and other GPS-enabled handheld devices—into unwitting beacons for state monitoring, with no off-switch for users. To grasp the enormity: With smartphone penetration at over 50% of India’s 1.4 billion population, this could track movements of half a billion people in real-time, dwarfing even the most ambitious surveillance nets elsewhere. Coming hot on the heels of the government’s embarrassing U-turn on the Sanchar Saathi app mandate, this development raises a damning question: Has New Delhi learned nothing from its recent privacy fiasco, or is this merely surveillance by another name?
Precision Tracking Without Consent
At its core, the initiative stems from a June letter by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), the powerful lobby representing giants like Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel. Frustrated with the “rough” location data derived from cell tower triangulation—often inaccurate by several meters—COAI argues that law enforcement and disaster response agencies need “meter-level” precision for investigations. Their solution; Force smartphone manufacturers to embed and perpetually enable A-GPS, a hybrid of satellite signals and cellular data that delivers pinpoint accuracy. Under this scheme, location services would hum in the background 24/7, sans user notifications or the ability to toggle them off. Even more insidiously, COAI wants phone makers to suppress those pesky pop-up alerts that currently warn users when carriers access their location, lest “targets” catch on to being tracked.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has been mulling this since mid-2025, with internal emails confirming the push for “device-level” activation. Proponents frame it as a public good: aiding criminal probes, emergency responses, and even national security. Yet, as Reuters notes, this isn’t about voluntary opt-ins—it’s a top-down edict that could expose every citizen’s movements to potential scrutiny, all without a warrant in sight. Imagine the scale: Over 700 million smartphones already in circulation, plus annual shipments of 150 million units, each primed for mandatory tracking— that’s not security; it’s a surveillance singularity.
Critically, Reuters’ reporting—bolstered by documents, emails, and anonymous sources—exposes the opacity of these talks. Five years in the making, the proposal has languished due to “privacy concerns and device maker reluctance,” only to resurface now. But is this journalism holding power to account, or amplifying a narrative that glosses over the human cost? The article rightly highlights opposition but underplays how such mandates erode trust in institutions, especially in a country where data breaches and misuse by officials are rife.
Echoes of Sanchar Saathi: From App to All-Seeing Eye
This GPS gambit feels like déjà vu, a direct sequel to the Sanchar Saathi debacle that unfolded just weeks ago. In late November, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) issued a secretive order demanding that all new smartphones—be it iPhones, Galaxys, or Xiaomis—come preloaded with the government’s “cyber safety” app, Sanchar Saathi, rendered undeletable by users. Marketed as a tool to combat phone theft, fraud calls, and smuggling, the app boasted features like device tracking and blacklisting stolen IMEIs. On paper, benign; in practice, a Trojan horse for mass surveillance.
The backlash was swift and ferocious. Opposition lawmakers stormed Parliament, branding it a “kill switch” for dissenters. Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala thundered, “This app could turn every cell phone into a brick, which the government could use against journalists, opposition leaders, and dissidents, if it so desires.” Privacy advocates, including the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), decried it as an “intrusive overreach,” warning of unchecked access to call logs, locations, and contacts. Tech behemoths like Apple flat-out refused, citing irreconcilable conflicts with their privacy-first ecosystems. By December 3, under fire from all sides, the government revoked the mandate—a rare Modi-era retreat, cloaked in assurances that the app was “secure and purely meant to help citizens.”
Now, compare that to the A-GPS push: Both originate from telecom lobbies demanding hardware-level compliance for “security.” Sanchar Saathi was software spyware; this is hardware-embedded panopticon. Where the app allowed retroactive updates to existing devices, GPS would bake surveillance into new imports from day one. Both sideline user consent, but the GPS variant is stealthier—no app icon to delete, just invisible tracking. IFF, still smarting from the app fight, has flagged this as “even more intrusive,” arguing it could enable “real-time GPS tracking available to authorities on demand.” If Sanchar Saathi was the appetizer for outrage, always-on GPS is the main course of constitutional overreach—scaled to a device base that could encompass nearly every urban and semi-urban household.
The opposition’s hypocrisy deserves scrutiny too. While COAI cries for precision in probes, critics point out that existing tools—like voluntary location sharing or court-ordered warrants—suffice without mass intrusion. “This would turn smartphones into dedicated surveillance devices,” lamented one tech expert anonymously to Reuters, calling it “pretty horrifying.” And the industry’s resistance? A confidential July letter from the India Cellular & Electronics Association (ICEA)—lobbying for Apple, Google, and Samsung—slams it as “regulatory overreach” with “significant legal, privacy, and national security concerns.” They warn it endangers sensitive users: military personnel, judges, journalists. Samsung echoed this, per sources, emphasizing that A-GPS was never designed for perpetual snooping.
Even China and Russia Draw the Line
The Reuters piece underscores a chilling fact: “A measure to track device-level location has no precedent anywhere else in the world.” This isn’t hyperbole. While authoritarian regimes like China mandate facial recognition in public spaces and Russia’s “sovereign internet” enforces state apps, neither requires always-on satellite GPS in consumer phones. China’s WeChat surveillance is app-based; Russia’s VKontakte monitoring is metadata-heavy. No major democracy or autocracy forces hardware-level, consent-free geotracking on billions of devices. The U.S. debates E911 for emergencies; the EU’s GDPR would torch this outright.
This isolation isn’t a badge of innovation—it’s a red flag. In a post-Snowden world, where Cambridge Analytica scandals linger, India’s leapfrog to dystopia ignores global norms. Critics like EFF’s international arm have labeled it a “privacy nightmare,” arguing it normalizes what Amnesty International calls “digital authoritarianism.” If even surveillance-heavy powers balk, what does that say about New Delhi’s priorities—especially when the stakes involve tracking devices in the hands of over half its populace?
Security Theatre or State Control?
Let’s dissect the Reuters report’s framing: It balances COAI’s “precision for probes” with tech giants’ pushback, but skimps on the societal fallout. Sure, accurate tracking could nab fugitives faster, but at what cost? Hackers could exploit backdoors; corrupt officials, a history of WhatsApp snooping in India, might weaponize data against minorities or protesters. The opposition’s case crumbles under scrutiny—tower data is “inaccurate,” they say, yet pop-ups preserve transparency. Forcing silence on alerts? That’s not enhancement; that’s evasion. And with 735 million smartphones already buzzing, plus growing tablet adoption (over 5 million units shipped yearly), the ripple effect could ensnare an entire generation’s digital footprint.
Moreover, Reuters hints at political timing: Post-Sanchar revocation, this feels like a stealth pivot, testing waters amid public fatigue. The government’s silence—neither confirming nor denying—fuels speculation of a Modi playbook: Float extreme ideas, retract under pressure, then repackage them. Tech firms’ defiance is noble, but self-serving; Apple’s privacy halo shines brighter in markets like India, where iPhone sales are surging.
A Constitutional Reckoning via PIL?
In sum, this isn’t progress—it’s regression, a blatant violation of the public’s fundamental right to privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution, as unequivocally established by the Supreme Court’s watershed Puttaswamy judgment in 2017. That ruling declared privacy intrinsic to life and liberty, subjecting any state surveillance to a rigorous proportionality test: It must be lawful, necessary in a democratic society, and pursue a legitimate aim with minimal intrusion. Mandatory, always-on A-GPS tracking—blanketing 735 million devices without consent or oversight—flunks this on every count, mirroring the mass surveillance risks the Court struck down in Aadhaar’s architecture just a year later. Echoing recent precedents like the 2024 Frank Vitus case, where even targeted GPS mandates on bail were deemed unconstitutional violations of privacy, this proposal invites judicial intervention to halt what amounts to unchecked state intrusion into citizens’ movements and autonomy.
Fortunately, India’s robust Public Interest Litigation (PIL) framework offers a potent bulwark. PILs have repeatedly reined in surveillance excesses: The 2021 Pegasus spyware petitions prompted a Supreme Court-ordered independent probe, affirming that “every citizen” deserves protection from privacy breaches with a chilling effect on free speech. Earlier challenges to broad interception powers under the IT Act and Telegraph Act—via PILs questioning the 2018 authorization of 10 agencies for mass monitoring—remain live, underscoring the judiciary’s intolerance for “sweeping provisions” targeting innocents. Privacy advocates, opposition leaders, or civil society could file a swift PIL in the apex court, seeking an interim stay on implementation and a declaration of unconstitutionality. Success is plausible; courts have issued orders mandating warrants, data minimization, and oversight committees in similar cases, effectively restricting agencies from warrantless snooping.
As IFF’s Apar Gupta warned post-Sanchar, “Surveillance states don’t announce themselves; they embed.” By channeling outrage into a PIL, India wouldn’t just reject this GPS gambit—it would prioritize consent over control, ensuring the world’s largest democracy doesn’t devolve into its most surveilled. The bench awaits; the onus is on the vigilant to summon it.
*About the Authors: Nanditha Subhadra is senior IT professional with over three decades of service and Adv. Salini T S is a practicing lawyer in the High Court of Kerala specialised in Administrative Law
