Overview
- India’s IT and Home ministries are analyzing the proposal and a planned meeting with smartphone executives was postponed with no decision taken.
- The COAI plan would require device-level A‑GPS to stay active at all times and would also remove pop-up alerts when carriers access location data.
- Apple, Google and Samsung, through industry body ICEA, warned the government the move has no global precedent and would be a regulatory overreach.
- Security researchers say always-on A‑GPS could enable meter-level tracking and effectively turn phones into dedicated surveillance devices.
- The review comes days after the government withdrew an order to preload the Sanchar Saathi app, intensifying concerns over expanding surveillance measures.