Every smartphone is a small miracle of sensors, radios and memory—and governments are starting to treat that miracle like state property. Recent moves in India to turn phones into always-on tracking devices are not an abstract debate about policy; they are a test of how much private life a modern state can commandeer before the social cost becomes unbearable.
What’s being proposed — and why it matters
The Department of Telecommunications pushed a string of measures that, taken together, would make continuous device-level tracking the new normal. First came Sanchar Saathi: an app that the DoT wanted preloaded and undeletable on every new handset. Then came “SIM binding” rules that tie messaging accounts to a single SIM and lock out multi-device workflows. Reports followed that the government is even considering forcing GPS to remain permanently on.
On paper, these moves are sold as solutions to cybercrime and national security problems. In practice, they create a scale of surveillance few democracies have attempted. Apple pushed back in court and the government temporarily rolled back the Sanchar Saathi preload. But that retreat looks tactical, not principled. The bigger fight—over constant GPS, account binding and what “mandatory” really means—continues.
Who benefits — and who pays
Look beyond slogans. Telecom companies publicly bless some of these measures. Why? They gain commercial leverage: fewer demands to build denser tower networks, more customers compelled to buy additional SIMs and data plans, and potentially new revenue streams linked to compliance. Privacy advocates, technologists and many users see a different ledger: mass collection of intimate location and device data, replete with risk of breaches, misuse and mission creep.
Consider the practicalities. Cell-tower triangulation already gives rough location. It’s imprecise—50 to 150 meters—but good enough for many investigations. Forcing GPS always-on shifts the burden from telcos to manufacturers and hands precise, continuous location to the state. It also removes a user’s last meaningful control over when and how their device shares whereabouts.
Real people, real disruption
I once sat across from a small business owner who relied on WhatsApp Web to juggle orders, inventory and customer queries across a Windows PC and a tablet. The proposed SIM binding rule would have fractured her workflow overnight: log out every six hours, reauthenticate with a single SIM, abandon multi-device convenience. She was not afraid of the state on principle—she was afraid of losing the small efficiencies that keep her business alive.
That anecdote captures a larger truth. Policy decisions framed as technical fixes ripple through everyday life. They change how people communicate, work and travel. They create friction where friction is unnecessary—and they rarely fix the problems they promise to solve.
Legal and ethical fault lines
Two names matter in the debate: Nikhil Pahwa and Apar Gupta. Pahwa warns that embedding tools like Sanchar Saathi without opt-out turns a utility into a tracker. Gupta highlights how continuous GPS tracking reduces infrastructure costs for telcos and eliminates the need for legal warrants in many cases. Both point to the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023: a statute that grants broad exemptions to government agencies and leaves important questions unanswered about oversight, retention and accountability.
When a law gives wide latitude to state actors to process personal data without the normal checks—consent, purpose limitation, judicial oversight—the result is not only legal risk. It is moral risk. It is the erosion of the tacit bargain that people have with technology: that some parts of their life remain theirs.
What’s at stake
- Privacy: Continuous, device-level tracking creates datasets that map movement, associations and routines. The potential for misuse—by the state, by insiders, or by attackers—is enormous.
- Freedom: If monitoring is routine, dissent becomes more costly. The chilling effect is real and measurable.
- Security: Centralizing sensitive telemetry increases the attractiveness of a breach. No single safeguard eliminates the risk.
How this should be handled
Policymakers should stop treating surveillance as a turnkey solution. They need to prove proportionality, implement strict data minimization and create independent oversight that has real teeth. Cost-sharing mechanisms for lawful interception—long demanded by telcos—should be transparent and limited. Manufacturers and platform companies must defend technical boundaries that are widely recognized outside India: user consent, removable apps, and user-controlled sensors.
Above all, citizens deserve clarity. When a government argues that this is about preventing fraud, ask to see the evidence. Demand pilot studies, privacy impact assessments and multi-stakeholder consultations. This is not technocracy versus democracy; it is a choice about what kind of society to build.
Final word
Surveillance dressed up as security is still surveillance. The balance can tip toward safety without abandoning civil liberties—but only with transparency, accountability and real limits. Don’t let convenience or commercial interest carry decisions that reshape public life. Push back. Ask hard questions. Insist on safeguards before any new surveillance blueprint moves from proposal to practice.