Why Apple risks facing India’s scrutiny after ‘hacking’ allegations against Modi government

India’s lawmakers could pull up Apple representatives after several politicians from the country’s opposition said they received alerts on their iPhones warning them of “state-sponsored” hacking.

Ministers of the Narendra Modi-led government on Tuesday said they will investigate the allegations and “get to the bottom of these notifications” after screenshots of the alert sent by the American tech giant went viral on social media.

While opposition politicians have accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) administration of spying on rivals and critics ahead of national elections in 2024, it could be Apple that soon faces the scrutiny of the Indian government.

A parliamentary committee on information technology is considering summoning representatives of Apple India over the alerts sent to public figures, an unnamed official of the committee was quoted as saying by news agency ANI on Wednesday.

The committee’s secretariat expressed “deep concern” over the alerts and is treating the matter with the “utmost seriousness”, the official said.

A minister from the Modi government also said Apple should explain what the notification means, especially their claims about the security of their devices.

“After today’s ‘threat notifications’ being received by many people, including MPs, and those in geopolitics, we expect Apple to clarify the following... if its devices are secure, why these ‘threat notifications’ are sent to people in over 150 countries,” said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the minister of state for electronics and information technology, on X/Twitter.

The BJP’s lawmakers have also rubbished allegations of hacking made by opposition politicians.

“Apple believes you are being targeted by state-sponsored attackers who are trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID,” said a screenshot of the alert shared by opposition members.

“If your device is compromised by a state-sponsored attacker, they may be able to remotely access your sensitive data, communications, or even the camera and microphone.

“While it’s possible this is a false alarm, please take this warning seriously,” it said.

The alerts were sent by Apple late Monday to lawmakers from opposition parties including the Indian National Congress, Trinamool Congress, Aam Aadmi Party and several others.

Several journalists, including those from the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and online news portal The Wire, claimed to have received alerts from Apple.

Samir Saran, the president of the Observer Research Foundation think-tank in Delhi, also said he had received an alert.

In a statement to The Independent, an Apple spokesperson said the company does not attribute the threat notifications to any specific state-sponsored attacker.

“State-sponsored attackers are very well-funded and sophisticated, and their attacks evolve over time. Detecting such attacks relies on threat intelligence signals that are often imperfect and incomplete,” it said.

Opposition party members have questioned the Modi government on the issue, while rights organisations have raised concerns and pointed to hacking allegations made against the ruling BJP in the past.

Opposition lawmaker Mahua Moitra said this was an attempt to distract voters from the “main issues” ahead of the 2024 elections.

“This is worse than Emergency,” she said, referring to the period in Indian history when the country was under presidential rule and faced stifling of dissent and a government crackdown on civil liberties.

“These attacks are not on me as an individual, or one opposition party but the common people of India,” said Raghav Chadha, a lawmaker from the opposition Aam Aadmi Party.

“As it is not about my phone or my data alone. Every Indian needs to be worried. Because today it is me, tomorrow it could be YOU,” he said.

Sitaram Yechury of the Communist Party of India questioned why the alert came “only to opposition leaders and some journalists and not to anybody from the ruling party”.

He questioned whether there was any government agency “that has been given the responsibility to conduct such surveillance against opposition leaders”.

Amnesty International said the latest “hacking” row highlighted “unabated targeting [of] human rights defenders, journalists, and politicians”.

“Amnesty International reiterates its call that all governments must immediately ban the use of highly invasive spyware which cannot be independently audited or limited in its functionality,” said Likhita Banerji, Amnesty International’s researcher and adviser on technology and human rights.

The Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), a non-governmental organisation that conducts advocacy on digital rights and liberties, said use of spyware is “antithetical to the democratic ideals of our country”.

“Such reports suggesting government surveillance in the lead up to the general & several state elections is a further cause of concern,” it said.

Tanmay Singh, a senior litigation counsel at IFF, told The Independent that the hacking of devices falls outside the scope of existing legal surveillance framework in the country.

“This regime, while seriously deficient, calls for several procedural safeguards, including some manner of record keeping,” he said.

In 2021, hundreds of Indian mobile phone numbers were found on a leaked database that was a potential target of Pegasus, a military-grade surveillance software made by Israeli firm NSO Group that can be used to hack Apple and Android phones.

The leak involved phone numbers of top opposition politicians, journalists, Supreme Court judges and bureaucrats.

At that time, the Indian government had in an affidavit “unequivocally” denied all the allegations relating to illegal surveillance, but had not categorically said whether it used the software for spying, citing national security.

India’s Supreme Court later said the government had refused to cooperate in a probe into the use of Pegasus spyware after the court appointed an independent committee to probe the allegations.

Mishi Choudhary, a technology lawyer and online civil liberties activist, told The Independent that the probe and hearings should be public as it’s a matter of grave concern for everyone.

“What must not happen is that we go through the motions yet again but reach What must not happen is that we go through the motions yet again but reach nowhere like it did with Pegasus,” she said.

“The hearings should be public and not shrouded in secrecy. The citizens are entitled to know whether their own government is behind such intrusive cyber attack or it’s a foreign state actor,” she added.

The row involving Apple comes at a sensitive when the Indian government and the American tech giant are in talks to expand the latter’s manufacturing operations in one of its biggest markets to diversify its supply chain outside China.

Apple is eyeing both manufacturing production and retail sales in the country.