Comment by goku12
> If knives were technologically sophisticated enough that they could be programmed to refuse to pierce particular materials, you know that the government would be forcing manufacturers to include human flesh in that list
I have serious doubts that their intentions are nearly as harmless or sincere as you project it. The government through DoT has repeatedly shown their willingness to control, invade, impose arbitrary measures and harm the digital lives of the citizens with impunity. Remember how Aadhar was touted as a welfare support programme. They even promised in the supreme court that it wouldn't be made mandatory. But they just haughtily refused to honor that promise and linked it to every imaginable service. You can't live without it these days. On top of that, they were so careless with it that the entire biometric database of more than a billion individuals was leaked and published on the darkweb for sale. And despite several news media showing the evidence for it, the government just brazenly denied the leak.
With such a dubious track record, let me say that I'm skeptical about their claims on 'cybersecurity' on the phones. It may start like that. But with their attitude it won't take much time for it to progress from a cybersecurity app to a cybersecurity nightmare. We already know what they did with the Pegasus malware that they bought with the taxpayers' money - another accusation they just denied blatantly, ignoring the evidence provided by the others. No avenue for abuse will be left unused. The real issue is that an omnipresent app that cannot be uninstalled is the most valuable target and the perfect vector for malware delivery. And this government has destroyed any reputation they may have had in the digital space, with their overtly hostile attitude towards the citizens who voted them in. This app is going to be a nightmare for the citizens in the not-too-distant future.
I see how you could've got that from my comment, but I wasn't trying to imply pure intentions.
Governments have to juggle a lot of different factors in order to maintain order and stay in office. It's natural that they would resort to less than scrupulous methods to attain this.
To go back to the knife example, once they have established preventing the piercing of human flesh as a mandate, it would be easy to extend this to preventing any kind of action using a knife that is inconvenient to them.
I'm struggling to come up with a reasonable sounding example though given the analogy. Perhaps... it gets extended to animals under the guise of protecting animal rights, but also prevents people from butchering their own hunt and animals killed must be submitted to a central processor who takes a large cut and have financial ties to particular politicians. I guess it's a stretch.
My point is just that the natural economics of the situation will cause governments to use all means at their disposal to achieve their end goals, whatever they may be. And so having these devices with their capabilities and our reliance on them is a huge hole in the defenses of freedom advocates just begging to be exploited.