Habitual fake news publisher The Wire has once again come up with fake news to target the Modi government, this time with the claim that the union govt has proposed to mandate keeping mobile phone location services ‘on’ at all times. In a report titled ‘Is the Modi Govt Working on a Proposal to Insist All Cellphones Have Location ‘on’ at All Times?’ published yesterday, the report claimed that the Modi govt is toying with the idea of insisting that all smartphone holders have the ‘location’ feature ‘on’ permanently switched on in all phones manufactured by it.
Citing a Reuters report, The Wire reported that major phone makers like Google, Apple and Samsung have objected to the proposal. However, when one looks are the original Reuters report, it becomes clear how Wire twisted the report to target the government.
The report states that it was the telecom service providers who had made the proposal to keep location services always on, not the government. Reuters said that the Indian government was reviewing the proposal submitted by the telecom operators. The telecom operators wanted a govt mandate to keep this feature always enabled, because when they were required to provide location data of users to police and other law enforcement agencies to aide in investigations, they are unable to provide the exact location.
The telecom operators can guess the location of a connected mobile device using triangulation of mobile tower data, but it is not accurate. The accurate location data can be obtained only if the GPS feature is activated on the device, and this data is made available. Therefore, the Cellular Operators Association of India that represents telcos like Jio and Airtel had proposed that they will be provide the precise location if the government orders the phone manufacturers to activate A-GPS technology by default and remove the option to disable it. The -GPS technology uses GPS signals and cellular data to determine the exact location of mobile devices.
Reuters reported about the proposal by the telcos citing govt sources and documents including internal IT ministry emails. The report also added that companies like Apple, Samsung and Google told the government to not issue such a mandate. India Cellular & Electronics Association (ICEA), in which Apple and Google are members, wrote to the government said that there is no such precent anywhere in the world, and said that the A-GPS network service is not deployed or supported for location surveillance.
The report further added that the Union Home Ministry had scheduled a meeting with top smartphone industry executives to discuss the matter on Friday but it was postponed.
While The Wire correctly reported about the opposition by phone makers, they completely and deliberately twisted about the original proposal. They also claimed that “the move has its genesis in a purported proposal by The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI),” implying that while the proposal did come from the telcos, the govt was actively considering it.
However, the Reuters report, which is the sole source of the Wire report, makes it clear thar the government is only reviewing the proposal, not considering it. And most importantly, the proposal was made by the telecom companies, not the Modi government, as the Wire falsely claimed in the report including its headline.
