Blasé Capital TECH TROUBLES
Recent media reports indicate that the Government plans to tighten the screws on smartphones, which will make life difficult for the prominent makers such as Apple, Samsung, and a slew of Chinese brands. Although there are talks going on between the two sides, tech firms are rattled, and wish to oppose the potential measures. The Government feels that the decisions will favour the users, the firms think that they will be saddled with extreme burden. While some of the moves relate to additional government control over the phone-makers, the others wish to allow the users to escape the operational, business, and commercial clutches of the firms. The media article hints that the Government has started the process, which is evident from the official movements of a few documents, memos, and papers with the official agencies. Recently, the privacy rules announced were quite stringent as they related to privacy.
Some of the forthcoming measures include disclosure of the mobile software source code. In essence, while the manufacturers may need to test the proprietary source code, they may be forced to provide it to government agencies for review. The Government feels that this is essential to pinpoint vulnerabilities, bugs, and issues in the source code. The firms contend that the codes are proprietary, and cannot be shared for commercial, and other reasons. They fear a situation like China, where leaks and reverse engineering allowed the Chinese competitors to copy the products, and codes, and launch me-too and fake products in the local and global markets. The firms do not wish to take such risks, which may impact their businesses. Industry associations and firms have categorically told the official agencies that this is not possible due to secrecy and corporate privacy.
Another painful measure for the firms includes a potential decision to force devices to store security audit logs, including app installations and logins for 12 monthly. This, feel the firms, is cumbersome, costly, and time-and-effort consuming. While this will increase the burden on the firms, it will consume device memory, which will slow down the operational features, and hurt the consumers’ interest. In addition, this indirectly invades the privacy of the users, who may not wish the device to remember where they went, what they viewed, what they used, and for how long, and how many times. The users have a right that forces the apps to ‘forget’ about the usage patterns. An industry association feels that this move is impractical as most phones do not have the storage capacity for one-year data. Even users delete information, content, and files every few months.
Options to remove and delete preloaded apps on devices is a constant demand of the users, and independent experts. Both believe that manufacturers deliberately tie them down, and force people to use certain apps in exchange for commercial considerations. This limits and restricts the choices for the users, and enables the apps to benefit in the future through fair and unfair means. In a competitive arena, the users need to be free to choose what they wish to use, and how they wish to use it. No one can force them to use specific apps. Of course, there are some integral and embedded apps that are critical system components, and cannot, and should not, be removed or deleted. Hence, the makers cannot offer such choices to the users. But, as experience shows, there are multiple apps that should be deleted if the users wish to use competing apps for the same operations. These may include online buying and delivery platforms.
The Government wants the device makers to inform before releasing major software updates, or security patches. The latter invariably update the software, and codes several times a year, sometimes within a month or two. While this is a headache for the users, as each update takes up more storage space, it involves time as sometimes updates take several minutes, and need an Internet connection. If the users refuse to update, they are bombarded by constant reminders, and warnings, which force them to initiate the action. However, what is in the mind of the Government is not the user-specific problems, but a means to maintain control over the phone makers. If the proprietary source code is tested by the Government, and updates need prior clearance, there will be an official control over the software used in the phones, which may lead to an indirect control, and monitoring of the users’ behaviour.
Most firms offer the buyers the option to scan the phones periodically. In fact, there is the choice to enable the phones to do it regularly, like every night, when the phone is not in use, and when a scan does not disturb the usage. Most users exercise this option. However, the Government wants the devices to periodically scan for malware, and other potentially-harmful applications and software. In this case, the industry and firms’ logic that this cannot be done because on-device scanning tends to drain the battery, and slows down the hardware performance may not be valid. Regular scanning is preferable because of the plethora of apps that are available, or downloaded, apart from the surfing that users do. There is information that phones receive via social media platforms.
