Many large American tech companies have long looked to India as their next El Dorado, enchanted by the country’s massive population and steady modernization.
Amazon is investing billions of dollars there, challenging domestic e-commerce giants. Apple is slowly but surely gaining a foothold in the Indian smartphone market, while also eyeing manufacturing expansion within its borders. Hundreds of millions of Indians already use Alphabet-owned YouTube and Meta-owned Facebook and WhatsApp, with room still to grow for each platform.
Yet just as they have in autocratic China for decades, Silicon Valley giants may soon face some sticky ethical wickets when it comes to operating in India.
A new proposal introduced Wednesday by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration would give the Indian government sweeping powers to regulate digital communication services and access vast troves of user data.
Most concerningly, the proposed legislation would give Indian authorities the ability to take control of communication services and intercept user messages “on the occurrence of any public emergency or in the interest of public safety,” a nebulous provision ripe for abuse. The bill also forces licensed digital communications platforms to “unequivocally identify the person to whom it provides services,” rendering online anonymity impossible. To top it off, the Indian government essentially can’t be sued for abusing provisions of the act.
The plan builds on new rules and proposed guidelines in India about the government’s role in monitoring large tech companies. While some of the debate has been framed around defending user privacy, protecting domestic tech companies, and updating colonial-era laws, the practical implications of the regulations typically involve government officials expanding their surveillance powers.
The latest proposal fits snugly with this trend. Indian officials said the legislation, known as the Indian Telecommunications Bill of 2022, is a much-needed overhaul of laws that date back nearly 140 years in some cases. They also argued the reforms target the “importance of cybersecurity, national security, and public safety concerns, while ensuring constitutional and procedural safeguards.”
At the same time, the bill serves as a trojan horse for building out India’s growing surveillance state. The Internet Freedom Foundation, a leading voice in India for democratic digital rights, tweeted Wednesday that the proposal “increases government powers under vague grounds” and does not contain “meaningful reform.”
The Indian Telecommunications Bill of 2022 remains in the early stages, with amendments or a complete scrapping still possible. But its mere introduction offers another example of the Indian government exhibiting illiberal tendencies that cut against the professed principles of Western tech companies.
In 2019, Indian officials introduced a bill that would give the government “broad powers to store, use and control the large amounts of data it gathered on its citizens, including fingerprints and iris scans,” the New York Times reported. Indian legislators tabled the bill in August amid backlash from privacy advocates and tech giants, though government leaders said a new proposal is forthcoming.
Last year, the Indian government ordered Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to censor about 100 posts, including some authored by high-profile Indian figures, that were merely critical of Modi’s administration and political party. The three platforms complied with the demand, though some of the posts remained up outside of India.
And on Sunday, a new regulation will take effect that requires virtual private network, or VPN, operators to collect personal information about users and provide it to the government upon request. Several companies providing VPN services have abandoned their Indian operations in response, with the Swiss company Proton announcing Thursday that it will join the list.
“It’s going to have a chilling effect. I find it really sad that the world’s largest democracy is taking this path,” Proton CEO Andy Yen told the Wall Street Journal.
If Modi’s administration continues down this path, more tech companies will have to decide whether some moral compromise is worth accessing the Indian road to riches.
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Jacob Carpenter
NEWSWORTHY
No longer Metamates? Meta is targeting a 10% reduction in company-wide costs in the coming months, a response to this year’s slowdown in revenue growth driven largely by increasing competition from TikTok, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The Facebook and Instagram parent does not immediately plan to issue layoffs, but company executives are pushing out employees by reorganizing departments and forcing staffers to apply for new roles. Meta also is expected to trim spending on consultants and overhead to reach its goal.
Head in the clouds. The U.K.’s communications regulator is investigating whether Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are violating competition laws through their dominance of the cloud computing market, the Financial Times reported Thursday. The Ofcom regulatory agency said it will “examine the strength of competition in cloud services generally” and the roughly 80% U.K. market share owned by the three companies. Ofcom officials could take enforcement action or recommend rule changes, among other steps, if they find violations of competition statutes.
A dark day in Iran. The Iranian government has restricted access to Instagram and WhatsApp amid a wave of anti-government protests tied to the killing of a 22-year-old woman in police custody. The decision to cut off access to the two sites coincided with a broader shutdown of internet access across Iran, where protesters have clashed with police across the country. Meta-owned Instagram and WhatsApp are the only two global social media platforms still available in Iran.
A crypto succession. Kraken CEO Jesse Powell plans to step down from his post in the near future, ending an 11-year run at the company he cofounded and helped build into one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. Powell has served as a high-profile advocate for cryptocurrency adoption, though his libertarian views on workplace culture and political issues has rankled some employees. Powell, who plans to remain as Kraken’s chairman, will relinquish his role once a replacement is found for the company’s new chief executive, current COO Dave Ripley.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
He’s got an ear for it. Apple CEO Tim Cook takes some grief for failing to deliver revolutionary technology on par with the original iPhone, but a Bloomberg Businessweek feature published Thursday argues such criticism overlooks the understated brilliance of AirPods. While Apple doesn’t disclose sales figures for the wireless headphones, industry estimates suggest the company sold an eye-popping 120 million pairs of AirPods last year. If true, that would mean roughly half of revenue in Apple’s “wearables, home, and accessories” division, the company’s fastest-growing category, is attributable to AirPods. (Also: props to the Businessweek illustrator for the magazine’s cover, which features a parka-clad Cook making snow angels in AirPods.)
From the article:
AirPods are fragile, have just-OK bass, and look like the result of a horrific Q-tip accident. They’re easily clogged with earwax, lost in subway grates or couch cushions, and—at least in a handful of cases—swallowed in the wearer’s sleep.
But even if you don’t ingest them, your AirPods will need to be replaced every few years, because their lithium-ion batteries can’t be removed once they’ve run their course. While Apple has said newer versions use more recycled materials, AirPods remain costly both to the environment and our wallets, especially compared with the wired EarPods that came free with the company’s products for most of the past two decades. And yet, as anyone who’s been out in public lately can attest, people love ’em.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Jamie Dimon calls ‘dangerous’ crypto a ‘decentralized Ponzi scheme’ that’s not ‘good for anybody’, by Chloe Taylor
NASA is about to crash a spacecraft into an asteroid. Here’s how to watch, by Chris Morris
Al Gore says a ‘game changer’ for green tech has arrived, by Jessica Mathews
Web3 development is siloed. QuickNode wants to change that, by Leo Schwartz
Tesla recalls almost 1.1 million vehicles that fail to detect fingers getting pinched in automatic windows, by the Associated Press
Flying-car company backed by Google co-founder Larry Page will shut down, by Mark Bergen, Julie Johnsson, and Bloomberg
Microsoft: ‘Using technology to spy on people at work is not the answer’, by Jared Spataro
BEFORE YOU GO
Rolling in the grave. The world never got to experience LG’s expandable smartphone, but at least we now know what we missed. Engadget reported Wednesday that a South Korean tech reviewer got his hands on LG’s ill-fated Rollable, a phone-shaped device capable of expanding into a small tablet, and posted a video of the shelved product on YouTube. LG had high hopes for the Rollable, teasing its arrival in January 2021, but the South Korean conglomerate abandoned the smartphone manufacturing business just three months later after failing to gain any significant foothold. While the Rollable had its issues, including a screen with some imperfections, an 11-minute, hands-on video by BullsLab shows just how cool it could have been.
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