If you follow tech news, it seems like every day now, the government of India is teasing crazy new regulatory schemes aimed at Big Tech.

Last week, they were discussing requiring all smart phone makers to install a government-authored app – which can’t be uninstalled.  The app would allow users to report spam calls and also verify their phone isn’t stolen.  Who knows what else it would be doing.  Apple, Google, and others were given 90 days to implement it.  Later, India backed down after a flurry of industry protests.

Then a couple days later, they decided to get into the ride-share business, musing about creating a co-op that would be “zero commission”.  This co-op would create a vast ride-sharing network where drivers get paid, but companies like Uber and Lyft don’t.  This would inevitably drive cost down for consumers, and since the service of sharing a vehicle is extremely commoditized, this would essentially put Uber and Lyft out of business in India.

Now they want to require smart phones to have GPS services turned on at all times with no option to disable the feature.  This would enable the police to track down a given phone faster, since cell-phone triangulation is less precise than GPS.

This sort of government coercion of big tech is not new.  Doing business in China or Russia requires selling one’s soul, but here we’re talking about a democracy.  The EU has famously pushed various regulations, but they’ve be relatively gentle: requirements to store and dispose of personal information properly, or those annoying cookie warnings.  Here you’ve got the government choosing to put certain tech sectors out of business, installing mandatory apps, and specifying that all citizen phones must be precisely trackable.

How long before every Indian citizen has a mandatory chip implant?  Sheesh.

raindog308

Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.

Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.

His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.

You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.