"Priyanka Gandhi of the Congress Party, a member of Parliament, said that Sanchar Saathi "is a snooping app... It's a very fine line between 'fraud is easy to report' and 'we can see everything that every citizen of India is doing on their phone.'" She called for an effective system to fight fraud, but said that cybersecurity shouldn't be "an excuse to go into every citizen's telephone.""
"The Internet Freedom Foundation, an Indian digital rights advocacy group, said the government directive "converts every smartphone sold in India into a vessel for state mandated software that the user cannot meaningfully refuse, control, or remove. For this to work in practice, the app will almost certainly need system level or root level access, similar to carrier or OEM system apps, so that it cannot be disabled.""
Sanchar Saathi is available via app and website for consumers to check mobile connections registered in their name and report fraudulent ones. A parliamentarian called the app a snooping tool and warned that fraud reporting risks becoming comprehensive phone surveillance. A government directive requires phone makers to ensure the app's functionalities are not disabled or restricted, raising concerns that pre-installed versions may need deeper integration. The Internet Freedom Foundation warned such integration would likely require system or root-level access, creating a permanent, non-consensual point of access inside smartphones. The foundation cautioned that server-side updates could repurpose the app to scan apps, flag VPNs, correlate SIMs, or trawl SMS logs.
Read at Ars Technica
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