As Opposition leaders intensified allegations of government snooping after receiving alerts from the tech firm Apple that a “state-sponsored attacker” may be targeting their digital devices, government officials and ruling party politicians moved to advance a series of misleading and vague statements on the nature of the warning. The government says that it will investigate Apple’s message, which was delivered on Monday night to top leaders in the Congress and other Opposition outfits, as well as some journalists and civil society members.
Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw, for instance, posted on the social media platform X that “information by Apple on this issue seems vague and non-specific in nature,” even as the company warned users in detail how the attacks they may have detected could infiltrate targets’ phones and remotely access their devices’ contents, and get a real-time feed from devices’ cameras and microphones.