Want to become important? Get warned, especially by Apple

You must have heard this joke – An iPhone is so expensive because it replaces many machines – phone, camera, watch, music player, GPS, PDA, voice recorder, gaming console, etc. An Android on the other hand is much cheaper because it replaces only one machine, the iPhone.

Maybe this cost factor is responsible for the market share of the iPhone in India being only about 6%. I surmised therefore that only the very elite own iPhones. Always ready to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ and a budding aspirant for entry into the society of elites, ‘I must have one’, I inferred (incorrectly). Accordingly, I sold a kidney and bought myself an iPhone. This would surely boost me upwards in importance I told myself, only to be left rather disappointed; and not merely because of the short battery life. Let me explain.

A short while back, a large number of these members of the society of elites started getting a warning message from Apple – “you are being being targeted by state-sponsored attackers”. By the fact that the recipients of these messages included Members of the Parliament, and some media guys you will be correct in concluding that this created quite a hullabaloo in India. The MPs went ballistic. The media, always fond of ballistic MPs fielded their soundbites prominently. Panel discussions of the clueless were convened, non stop coverage of the apoplectic was initiated, opposition leaders full of righteous indignation were interviewed, and the death of Indian democracy was forecast.

Which brings me to, well, me. It left me bitter no end that none of these ‘state sponsored attackers’ found me worthy of attention. Gallingly, though people in about 150 countries got this message, MY blasted iPhone got none. I therefore, could not call a press conference and proudly profess innocence like some prominent leader who proclaimed thunderingly, “I am not scared. You can do as much [phone] tapping as you want, I don’t care. If you want to take my phone, I will give it to you.” However as far as my procured at the cost of one kidney iPhone was concerned, no one seemed interested in it. Further unlike the prominent leader, I didn’t even know who to give the phone to.

Now bureaucracies anywhere in the world have been created to test our patience and perseverance. The Indian bureaucracy being the best, goes a step further and includes a testing our sanity too in its charter of duties. Our ‘steel frame’ is a master in framing long sentences which mean nothing, in obfuscating matters till one forgets one’s own name, in making the very simple, very convoluted. It uses words like ipso facto, paradigm, simultaneity, architype, etc, which sound officious but are essentially aimed only at humbling us. However, what I have learnt over the last few days or so, is that the Indian bureaucracy for all its vaunted denseness, is but a novice compared to Apple when it comes to confusing the hell out of everyone. For a start the keen amongst you would have noticed for example, that they did not specify who the attackers could be.

When this lacuna was brought to their notice, Apple, sensing that additional ambiguity is always a good thing, released a statement that “no specific government agency has been indicated, but state-sponsored attackers are very well-funded and sophisticated, and their attacks evolve over time”. It also added helpfully that they target a “very small number of specific individuals and their devices”. Noticed how transparency was overlaid with congealed opacity?

Quite obviously, the Indian Government was provoked by the non stop media attention to ‘do something.’ It did do so by “asking Apple to join the investigation and forward real accurate information” (bureaucratese for – wadda hell is going on). To be safe, and believing in the adage that if one were to do something, it is better to go the whole hog, the opposition leaders were also branded anti national, anti progress and compulsive critics. If you thought that would faze Apple, you are in a minority. Apple responded – “it can’t give more details about what prompts it to issue these threat notifications as that may help state-sponsored attackers adapt their behaviour to evade detection in the future.” Note the delightful vagueness in the words. Apple essentially adopted the same evasive measures that any government spokesperson would have been proud of; essentially summarised as – confuse and confound. Government – zero, Apple – one.

And just when both the government and the opposition were left scratching their heads on what to make of it, Apple, perhaps under the illusion that scratching of the collective heads may be just what the doctor ordered for scalp health, added, “it is possible some threat notifications may be false alarms”, and that it “relies on often imperfect intelligence signals” to detect potential hacking attempts. That essentially took the zing out of its original sensational claim leaving the opposition MPs feeling exactly as a ferocious charging lion would, if it suddenly encountered a particularly malodorous skunk. Nonplussed is the word, I think. Government – zero, Apple – two.

But all of the above is neither here nor there. And while the opposition may have been nonplussed, I for one was livid. How come these well funded and sophisticated agencies did not find me worthy of their attention? Even for a false alarm? Realising ultimately that my kidney was worth nothing, all I could do was find refuge in the spiritual and ponder on the futility of life.