Why TRAI could drag Apple to court
Apple Inc and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) are caught in a tussle that seems to be taking an ominous turn. In fact, if reports are to be believed, Apple is likely to find itself dragged to court for failing to help TRAI in its endeavour to develop a Do-Not-Disturb (DND) app, which will help iOS users flag unwanted calls and messages.
As per a report published in The Economic Times, chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, RS Sharma, when quizzed about the regulator’s next plan of action to make the DND app, said, "We will consider taking legal action." The face-off comes at a critical juncture for the smartphone maker as it has recently been involved in high-level talks with the Indian government over concessions and grants to help it expand its manufacturing base in the country.
Violates privacy
Apple's hesitance here is that this app, though seemingly harmless, in its current form is a can of worms that the Cupertino-based tech giant would rather keep sealed. In times of increased scrutiny over data privacy, Apple fears that this application, with the permissions and access it seeks, could snowball into a major issue that would be hard to contain later.
To this effect, Apple has been holding conversations with TRAI over the matter for over two years now, and even met with TRAI back in November 2017, at which point it had agreed to provide a framework for its iOS operating system to support the regulator’s mobile app, which can report spam calls and messages on iPhones.
However, later realising that allowing the application to access contacts and other related data would mean compromising with security and user privacy, Apple reportedly took no action towards providing help in the development of the application.
Earlier last week, speaking to Reuters, Apple said that the government's DND app “as envisioned violates the privacy policy” of its App Store. Apple said it had been working with government engineers and would “continue discussing ways they can design their app to keep users’ personal data safe”.
This has particularly miffed TRAI as the regulator believes that Apple is intentionally delaying the talks and is not even working towards "providing basic clarifications". Interestingly, TRAI maintains that the issue at hand is not one of privacy, but instead of "consumer protection and the rights of the consumer on their own data".
But even as Apple holds the fort in this battle for safeguarding data privacy, it is important to note that Google's Android operating system, already supports TRAI’s Do-Not-Disturb app which was introduced as far back as 2016. The innocuous application, however, is quite invasive in the permissions it seeks and upon being started for the first time asks the user for app permissions to access contacts and view text messages and then allows users to report them as spam.
Apple though still seems to be sticking to its guns as it looks in no mood to modify its guidelines that currently do not allow applications to access contacts, call logs or text messages. But how long it can do so will be interesting to see as TRAI had issued a consultation paper on privacy, ownership and security of data on telecom networks last year, and can very easily arm-twist Apple into complying.
Case in point, the ban over free internet service, Free Basics, which had to be withdrawn by Facebook and Reliance Jio's in India following the regulatory body's order.