India's IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar dismissed a Reuters report claiming that the Indian government is considering new security rules for mobile devices that force smartphone makers to allow: uninstallation of pre-installed apps screening of major operating system updates While the report claimed that compliance with number 1 will be verified by a lab authorized by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), it does not clearly state who will carry out the screening of OS updates. But a tweet from one of the report's authors, suggests that this may also be done by BIS-certified labs. The IT Minister, however, disparaged the report stating a lack of understanding of what the government was doing: https://twitter.com/Rajeev_GoI/status/1635831978787483649?s=20 Adding to this, Kanchan Gupta, Senior Advisor, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, tweeted: https://twitter.com/KanchanGupta/status/1635842307479019526?s=20 Government considering this for national security reasons: The Reuters report claimed that the government is considering these new rules in view of concerns about spying and abuse of user data. "Pre-installed apps can be a weak security point and we want to ensure no foreign nations, including China, are exploiting it. It's a matter of national security," an unnamed official told the news agency. "Majority of smartphones used in India are having pre-installed Apps/Bloatware which poses serious privacy/information security issue(s)," a government document seen by Reuters stated. Issues with the "proposed" security rules: If the government is indeed considering the rules reported by Reuters, it raises many concerns: Screening could delay important security updates: If the government wants to screen OS updates before they are released, this could…
