In late November in Jamnagar, India, the scions of two of the most powerful families in the world stood face-to-face. On one side was 30-year-old Anant Ambani, son of one of the richest men in Asia. On the other was Donald Trump Jr. For months, the Trump administration had been on the offensive against the sprawling Ambani energy empire, placing it at the center of an escalating tariff campaign against India. But after Trump Jr. touched down, the two men toured the Ambanis’ private zoo, and at night they performed a Gujarati folk dance, grinning as they moved together to the music.
Four months later, an obscure Texas startup called America First Refining announced that it had received a nine-figure investment from the Ambanis’ company. The deal puzzled numerous energy investors familiar with the project, which aims to build the first major new oil refinery in the U.S. in about 50 years. The company is run by a serial entrepreneur with a history of bankruptcy and lawsuits alleging fraud. After more than a decade of failed attempts to raise money, blown deadlines and rebrands, it had been floundering.
America First Refining’s unexpected breakthrough came after it forged a previously unreported relationship with Trump Jr., who secretly acquired a stake in the startup, according to records and seven people familiar with the company. The new details reveal the role the president’s son has played in a theme of Trump’s second term: overseas investors with interests before the administration putting money into the Trump family’s business interests.
Over the past year and a half, Trump Jr. has amassed a fortune from stakes in companies ranging from crypto startups to a drone business to a firearms retailer. Some firms tied to the president’s son have received contracts or other support from the federal government, part of what critics describe as a run of Trump family self-dealing. In December, Forbes estimated that Trump Jr.’s net worth had rocketed from roughly $50 million to $300 million since the election. But the Forbes figures were based on the investments that have been publicly disclosed. The America First Refining episode suggests there is much about the family business that remains secret.
The size of Trump Jr.’s stake in America First Refining and what he paid for it remain unclear. Top executives at the startup have also said that they speak regularly with Trump Jr., according to a person close to the company. And after the Ambani investment was announced, Trump Jr.’s personal lawyer took credit on social media for playing a part in the deal.
America First Refining has flexed its Trump Jr. connections during pitch meetings with foreign officials. Early last year, Trump Jr. joined the company’s leadership for a meeting in South Florida with potential investors from Saudi Arabia, according to two people familiar with the matter. Another foreign government official pitched on the project told ProPublica that the company’s team emphasized they had backing from the Trump family and suggested that an investment would help with White House access.
The Ambanis’ investment coincided with the family’s securing major U.S. policy wins that their company, Reliance Industries, had been lobbying for. “Reliance Goes From Trump Foe to Friend With Refinery Pledge,” ran the Bloomberg headline after the deal was announced. Reliance’s intent with the deal was to “smooth out” tensions between the U.S. and India, the outlet reported.
A Trump Jr. spokesperson said that Trump Jr. “has no operational involvement in AFR and is simply a passive minority investor in an American company that aligns with his worldview.”
“The entire premise of this story relating to Don is false,” the spokesperson said, adding, “Don does not interface with the Federal Government on behalf of any company that he invests in or advises.” ProPublica did not find evidence Trump Jr. was aware of refinery executives’ suggesting that an investment would help with White House access.
In response to detailed questions, a spokesperson for America First Refining said, “The claims in this story are false,” but declined to specify what they were referring to. The company’s CEO previously denied wrongdoing in the lawsuits against him reviewed by ProPublica, and the suits were either settled or dropped.
The Ambani family had long been cultivating its relationship with the Trumps. Reliance paid $10 million to the Trump Organization in 2024 as a “development fee” for a project in Mumbai, according to the president’s financial disclosure. (Despite the payment, Reliance has not yet announced a Trump project. Reliance told ProPublica that “the real estate project is real” and “remains under development.”) Ivanka Trump attended Anant Ambani’s wedding party in India that year, where guests were treated to a Rihanna concert. Anant’s father, Mukesh — who is worth an estimated $90 billion and lives in a 27-story home — came to Washington, D.C., for Trump’s second inauguration, posing with the president at a private reception.
But by the summer of 2025, the family was under attack from the White House. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Reliance had reportedly made billions in profits by purchasing vast quantities of Russian oil at a discount. In August, as Trump grew frustrated with his administration’s struggles to bring the war to an end, the president doubled his tariffs on India to 50%. The move was explicitly designed to force companies like Reliance to stop buying Russian oil. White House trade adviser Peter Navarro publicly assailed “India’s politically connected energy titans” for “funding Putin’s war machine,” widely read as a reference to the Ambanis.
Amid this tension, Trump Jr. visited Anant Ambani on his November trip to India. At the end of the trip, Trump Jr.’s personal lawyer commented at a business conference in Miami: “I had a nice closing this morning with Don Trump Jr., who’s flying back from India today.” (The following week, the Texas startup — then called Element Fuels — filed paperwork to create America First Refining LLC. In an email, the attorney, John Willding, told ProPublica that there was “no transaction in India or with an Indian company that I was ever involved with.”)
Anant Ambani, who helps run Reliance’s energy business, personally worked on the Texas refinery deal for months before it was announced, a major Indian newspaper later reported.
As the Ambanis quietly finalized their deal with America First Refining, U.S.-Indian relations appeared to warm. In February, the Trump administration struck a trade deal with India, dramatically lowering tariffs, and also reportedly gave Reliance a license to buy Venezuelan oil. When the Iran war broke out and rocked global energy markets, the U.S. gave India a sanctions waiver to buy Russian crude. (The waiver was later expanded to all countries.)
In response to ProPublica’s questions, the White House said that “there are no conflicts of interest.” Reliance did not answer ProPublica’s questions about Trump Jr.’s and Anant Ambani’s roles in the investment deal, but said in a statement that the company did not receive “any unique or preferential treatment” from the U.S. government.
“There is no connection between Reliance’s investment in AFR and any unique measures associated with general U.S. trade, tariff, sanctions or licensing outcomes,” Reliance said. “The investment was evaluated and approved on its commercial merits, strategic fit and long-term value creation potential.”
In March, President Trump personally announced Reliance’s deal with the Texas startup on Truth Social, thanking the Ambani company for its “tremendous Investment.”
After the announcement, Willding, the Trump Jr. lawyer, shared the news on LinkedIn: “Just so proud to have been part of this one.”
Willding rowed back his claim in an email to ProPublica. “I have never worked for or advised AFR and had zero involvement in their deal with Reliance Energy,” he said. “I simply saw the press release and was excited for them.” America First Refining’s spokesperson called Willding’s comment “moronic and false.”
In June 2025, Willding registered a new entity in Wyoming called TX Fuels, LLC, listing the company’s address as Trump Jr.’s mansion in Jupiter, Florida. In his email, Willding said his “only involvement in AFR was handling the legal paperwork” for the Trump Jr. LLC’s investment in the startup.
Trump Jr. first hired Willding in May 2021, according tointerviews the lawyer has given. A corporate deal lawyer in Dallas, Willding has referred to himself as “outside business counsel to the Trump family” and has said he talks to Trump Jr. or Eric Trump almost daily. A former Bill Clinton and Barack Obama voter who fell hard for MAGA, the attorney has installed a portrait of President Trump over the mantel in his living room.
Willding’s practice has boomed during the second Trump administration, bringing the lawyer to Argentina, Saudi Arabia and South Korea. “Everybody in the world wants to do business with the United States right now,” Willding said at a conference in June 2025. “Every company wants to do business with the Trump family.”
There are other fingerprints of the Trump world on the refinery deal.
Howard Lutnick’s firm Cantor Fitzgerald — which his sons took over when Lutnick became Trump’s commerce secretary — is working as the financial adviser to America First Refining, including on the Ambani investment deal, Cantor Fitzgerald announced. (Cantor Fitzgerald declined to comment.)
And the Trump administration played a direct role helping America First Refining find potential foreign investors, according to public comments from the company’s CEO, John Calce. “We have received support from the White House,” he told a local news outlet. The National Energy Dominance Council, led by the interior and energy secretaries, has “helped us with, candidly, introducing us and helping us meet some of these people overseas,” Calce said on an industry podcast.
America First Refining has recently explored going public, according to three people close to the company. That could allow its current investors to start cashing out even if the refinery never gets built — a milestone many energy industry insiders still view as a long shot. Reliance made its investment in the startup at a valuation of at least $1 billion, according to America First Refining’s announcement.
Building a refinery at the Port of Brownsville on the Gulf Coast has been Calce’s mission for a decade. A former Yale offensive lineman, he started his career as a high school football coach after an unsuccessful attempt to make the NFL and now describes himself as a “lifelong entrepreneur.”
The project has been serially delayed, out of money, rebranded and trailed by angry former business partners. At one point, Calce’s companies were being sued simultaneously by eight other firms. In 2022, during bankruptcy proceedings for an earlier iteration of the project, the trustee appointed to impartially oversee the case sued Calce too. The trustee alleged that Calce and other insiders had improperly siphoned away cash and other assets. (Calce denied wrongdoing. The case was ultimately settled.)
During the Biden administration, as the company sought financial support from the Department of Energy, it pitched itself as a climate-friendly green project that would also help “people of underrepresented social demographics” in Brownsville, according to records from that period. The company failed to get enough money from outside investors, and the planned construction was delayed.
By the company’s own estimate, building the refinery will take years and cost $3 billion to $4 billion. Even if it’s built, profitability could be hard to achieve. Many energy investors told ProPublica there’s a reason the U.S. hasn’t seen a major new refinery in decades. “Refineries cost a lot of money and essentially make pennies on the dollar,” said Ed Hirs, an energy economist in Houston. “Wall Street is not going to finance a new refinery.”
Even after the start of the second Trump administration, the company was in jeopardy, according to interviews and documents. It laid off workers last year, and, by late 2025, with delays continuing to plague the refinery, officials at the Port of Brownsville believed the project looked to be dead, according to records reviewed by ProPublica.
That has not stopped Calce and his team from making grandiose claims to the public. Earlier this year,a website went live for another Calce company called Brownsville Energy Storage Terminals. It claims to have a far-flung network of oil storage terminals in places like the Netherlands and Singapore, more than 850 employees and a C-suite of experienced energy executives. But ProPublica could find no evidence that the executives are real people or that the storage terminals actually exist. The phone numbers on the website are also currently listed online as the contacts for a Houston baklava caterer, a Dallas-area taxi service and an OB-GYN office. The numbers are dead.
America First Refining’s political ties, though, may have boosted its standing with Texas state regulators. In February, shortly before the Ambani investment became public, the company sought an extension on its permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
Inside the state agency, emails obtained by ProPublica show, officials scrambled to approve the request.
“Need to get this one logged and processed asap,” wrote one official.
“You are going to have to do this one. I will explain why in person in a few,” wrote another. “You can guess if you check out the name.”
America First Refining got its approval the next day. A spokesperson for the Texas agency did not address questions about the emails. “This request was processed quickly due to the quality of information provided,” the spokesperson said.
The government of India — especially under Prime Minister Narendra Modi — has never been shy about wanting to know what every one of its billion-plus citizens are up to at any given time.
Not only does the government apparently have access to pretty much every bit of internet traffic generated by its citizens, it has also taken steps to ensure those seeking to avoid this pervasive surveillance won’t be allowed to opt out via VPNs or other options that might make their web surfing a bit less visible.
Modi’s government has also made it clear it doesn’t like American companies that undercut its surveillance efforts by notifying residents that their smartphones may have been compromised by state actors.
India’s government sent a notice to private companies last week giving them 90 days to ensure that a government app was “preinstalled on all mobile handsets manufactured or imported for use in India.”
The order said the requirement was meant “to identify and report acts that may endanger telecom cybersecurity.” On Tuesday, the government explained that the app, Sanchar Saathi, was intended to prevent crime, including the theft and smuggling of phones and the call-center fraud that wreaks havoc within India and abroad.
Yeah, that’s fucked up. The government reiterated — even as it slowly walked backwards — that this was just a thing that anyone who didn’t want to be surveilled could easily avoid.
By Tuesday afternoon, the government appeared to be backpedaling. Jyotiraditya Scindia, the minister of communications, said that while “this app exists to protect them from fraud and theft,” it was also “completely optional.”
“If you don’t wish to register, you shouldn’t register and can remove it at any time,” he told reporters outside the Parliament building.
That assertion doesn’t appear to be supported by the facts. According to analysts, the order contained wording that suggested phone providers were expected to ensure the functionality of the government-mandated spyware was “not disabled.”
India’s government revoked an order on Wednesday that had directed smartphone makers such as Apple and Samsung to install a state-developed and owned security app on all new devices. The move came after two days of criticism from opposition politicians and privacy organizations that the “Sanchar Saathi” app was an effort to snoop on citizens through their phones.
“Government has decided not to make the pre-installation mandatory for mobile manufacturers,” India’s Ministry of Communications said in a statement Wednesday afternoon.
That’s better. Much better. But it still leaves manufacturers with the option of pre-loading this snitchware app voluntarily, which might be an option some take to score a few points with what is presumably a “regime for life” government headed by a relatively charismatic autocrat.
And while the government is currently getting bashed for attempting to slide this past the populace, it continues to insist it’s the public that’s wrong about this:
While the order for it to be installed universally was revoked, the government continued defending the app on Wednesday, saying the intent had been to “provide access to cybersecurity to all citizens,” and insisting that it was “secure and purely meant to help citizens.”
While the app does allow users to make use of the tracking software to locate lost or stolen phones and/or defend against scammers using fraudulent numbers or online accounts, it was obvious from the secretive rollout that any benefits enjoyed by citizens were just the unavoidable byproduct of an app clearly meant to give the government expanding surveillance capabilities. It’s the sugar-coating on the poison pill. And all the government has to say in defense of its failed ratfuckery is that a rounding error (“2.6 million lost or stolen phones“) in a nation with 1.5 billion cell phones (that would be 0.17% of all phones) outweighs whatever evil it planned to do if it had been able to make this mandate stick.
In this week’s roundup of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Ben is joined by guest host Prateek Waghre, former executive director at the Internet Freedom Foundation and currently a fellow at Tech Policy Press. Together, they cover:
Techdirt has been writing about India’s huge Aadhaar database of biometrics, which assigns a unique 12-digit number to all Indian citizens, for a decade now. The system was introduced to make it easier for people in India to access key government services by authenticating their identity, but there were soon plans to allow businesses to deploy it in commercial applications. In an important ruling in 2018, the Indian Supreme Court placed restrictions on how businesses could use Aadhaar. Now the Indian government has introduced an amendment to the original law that unequivocally allows commercial applications of the Aadhaar system (found via TechCrunch). The press release for the “Notification of Aadhaar Authentication for Good Governance (Social Welfare, Innovation, Knowledge) Amendment Rules, 2025” explains how Aadhaar authentication is being widened in order to enhance “ease of living” (emphasis in the original):
The amendment seeks to enhance the scope and utility of Aadhaar authentication to further promote good governance, social welfare, innovation, and knowledge dissemination allowing the usage of Aadhaar for improving service delivery and thereby enhancing ease of living for residents and enabling better access to various services for them. The amendment would help people seamlessly avail the services of e-commerce, travel, tourism, hospitality and health sector etc. being provided by entities other than government entities also.
The amendment enables both government and non-government entities to avail Aadhaar authentication service for providing various services in the public interest for related specific purposes like enablement of innovation, spread of knowledge, promoting ease of living of residents and enabling better access to services for them. This will help both the service providers as well as the service seekers to have trusted transactions.
Businesses that wish to deploy Aadhaar authentication have to apply “with the details of intended requirements to the concerned ministry or department of the Central or the State government”. The application is examined by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which runs the Aadhaar system. However, from the press release it is clear that the Indian government is keen to expand the use of Aadhaar as widely as possible, presumably in the hope that doing so will drive innovation and efficiency.
According to the Aadhaar Dashboard, over 1.4 billion people have been enrolled in the Aadhaar database. Around 100 million authentications take place each day, and in total 130 billion authentications have been carried out. Most authentications involve fingerprints, with a small number using iris biometrics. Aadhaar has also started using facial recognition (pdf) to authenticate people.
Assuming the latest expansion to business is not blocked by the Indian Supreme Court, it is likely to drive an even wider use of the Aadhaar system, potentially touching every aspect of life in India and beyond. There are clear advantages for users, but there is also a danger. The Aadhaar number could become a natural way to track people online, and to create consolidated databases that unify public and private information about them, even if the UIDAI insists that is not the aim. As it adds facial recognition to its Aadhaar system, India is carrying out an important digital and social experiment, one which the rest of the world would be wise to watch closely.
Numerous articles on Walled Culture have chronicled the struggles to turn the aspirations of open access to knowledge into reality. The central reason people do not have free digital access to all academic knowledge is that publishers have been successful in subverting attempts to provide it. Publishers are strongly motivated to undermine open access, since its successful implementation would reduce their currently fabulous levels of profit, far greater than in most other industries.
The clearest sign of how successful academic publishers have been in colonizing the idea of open access is the rise of gold open access. Under this approach, articles are freely available online, but academic establishments pay for their researchers’ work to be published, usually in the form of “article processing charges”, or APCs. Publishers were quick to embrace gold open access, because once the system was in place they could push up the price for those APCs continually until their profit margins matched or even exceeded those under traditional publishing models.
Unfortunately, many funding bodies still see gold open access as an acceptable way to achieve open access’s goals, and continue to fund it. For example, India has just signed a huge journal subscription deal, worth $715 million over three years, with 30 academic publishers. It will allow an estimated 18 million researchers and students in India to access some 13,000 journals, including many leading titles. There is an open access element to the deal, but as a news item on Science explains, it is gold open access:
Some part of the $715 million will cover the fees some journals charge to publish papers open access, making them immediately free to read by anyone worldwide when published, [director of the coordinating agency for the Indian initiative] Madalli told Science. Details of that component have not been worked out yet, but the amount will be calculated based on the country’s current spending on these fees, known as article-processing charges (APCs), which are paid by authors or their institutions, Madalli says.
Rahul Siddharthan of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, who chaired a group on open science, is pleased the agreement will reportedly cover APCs. At a global average of about $2000 per article, they are unaffordable for many scholars in India, he says.
The $2,000 average APC figure indicates just how extreme the current gold open access model has become. The Science article notes that:
Some scholars criticized the deal for continuing to spend public money on journal subscriptions at a time when many countries have been shifting to other business models that provide articles open access, including some that do not charge author fees.
This is a reference to the diamond open access approach, which has been advocated on this blog many times before. In the Science report, that view is echoed by Sridhar Gutam, a scientist at the ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research and founder of Open Access India:
Gutam says India should embrace the “diamond open-access” business model, in which the government or other funders cover costs and authors, and scholars and their institutions do not pay to publish or read articles. Although government institutions—including his own—have tried to promote free-to-access repositories for scientific papers, comparatively few researchers use them. Gutam says many prefer to boost their chances for career advancement by publishing in prestigious journals from European and U.S. publishers, which some reformers have criticized as unreliable and overly restrictive gatekeepers of quality papers. “The current plan fills a short-term goal,” he says, “but the larger system needs reform.”
Gutam is correct that the entire publishing system needs reform, with a move to new business publishing models. That’s precisely what a recent grant from the Gates Foundation to the nonprofit, open access publisher PLOS aims to facilitate:
PLOS has been awarded a $3.3 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, underscoring its commitment to pioneer a shift away from traditional publishing models. The 3-year funding package from the Gates Foundation will support PLOS’ transition towards APC-free publishing by enabling authors, funded by the foundation, to publish with PLOS without facing APC barriers, and to contribute to open access publishing options for authors who do not have access to funding. This 3-year grant offers support while PLOS is actively working on new publishing models grounded in open science starting with an ongoing research & design project.
That’s not the first time the Gates Foundation has made moves in this direction. Walled Culture reported back in September on an important shift to diamond open access by the funding body. The latest grant, albeit small, is welcome, just as India’s three-year lock-in to the inefficient and hugely expensive gold open access approach with its massive new subscription deal is deeply disappointing.
Monster Energy. Go ahead, I’ll wait for your eyes to finish rolling. The trademark bullying company with a side business in making beverages has been the subject of discussion here for years and years and years. Monster Energy is one of the most prolific trademark bullies I’ve ever come across. It behaves so absurdly in its bullying behavior that it would be fair for someone unfamiliar with its history to wonder if this was all some kind of bizarre intellectual property performance art. This is a company that has sued or opposed applications over trademark concerns everyone from companies that make fishing gear, to personal trainers, to a company that makes industrial paint.
I’ll remind you again that Monster Energy only creates two things: trademark litigation and beverages.
Well, Monster applied in India for a trademark on a slogan it uses in advertising, “Energy for the Journey.” Its initial application was denied by the Indian government, which decided that the slogan contained nothing but some generic words, and also does not include the company’s main identifying part of its name (“Monster”), and therefore does not work as a source-identifier for the consuming public. So the trademark application was denied. Monster appealed and now the Madras High Court has affirmed the earlier decision, refusing to grant Monster Energy a trademark on the slogan.
The respondent argued that the phrase “Energy for the Journey” comprised generic words commonly used in trade and was incapable of distinguishing the appellant’s goods from those of others. The Court noted that under Section 9(1) of the Act, descriptive or generic marks devoid of secondary significance or distinctiveness cannot be monopolized by any trader. The appellant admitted to having only proposed to use the mark, without any evidence of prior use or established goodwill.
The Court agreed with the respondent’s assessment, concluding that the proposed mark was inherently incapable of serving as a source identifier. It also highlighted that granting exclusivity over such a common phrase would unjustifiably limit its use by others in commerce.
It’s hard to argue with the court’s logic here. There’s nothing about this phrase, when viewed on its own and without context, that would call to mind Monster Energy at all. And the point of trademark laws generally is not for one company or entity to be able to lock up some random phrase just for the sake of it. Rather, it’s to prevent customer confusion in the marketplace. So, if the phrase isn’t associated with the brand, it doesn’t serve as a useful trademark.
Makes sense, right? Meanwhile, in America:
Yup, Monster Energy managed to get that very same generic, non-source-identifying mark approved and registered by the USPTO. Now, perhaps there are some subtle differences between American and Indian trademark law that explain this, but I don’t really think that matters. The point here is that the courts in India have a far better handle on how trademarks are supposed to be used than we do, specifically as it comports with the very purpose of trademark laws.
It sure would be nice if the USPTO would put a little more effort into its approval process than it does.
Whether you like the results or not, there’s no denying that the EU’s GDPR legislation has tackled a wide range of privacy problems in the online world. Other countries around the globe — including the US — may lack comparable national legislation but there are alternative ways of protecting people’s privacy, as a recent ruling in India shows. The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has imposed a fine of ₹213.14 crore (about $25.25 million) on Meta for exploiting its dominant position through WhatsApp’s 2021 Privacy Policy update. The Internet Freedom Foundation of India explains how what it calls a “landmark penalty” will improve the privacy of users:
The policy update, which compelled users to accept expanded data collection and sharing within the Meta group on a ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ basis, violated user autonomy by offering no opt-out option. The [CCI] ruling reinforces the need for greater accountability from tech giants, ensuring that users’ rights are protected, and the principles of fair competition are upheld in digital markets.
The CCI found that Meta’s actions violated Indian competition law under Section 4(2)(a)(i) by imposing unfair conditions and abusing its dominant position in the market.
That is, it was competition law rather than privacy law that was used, an approach Germany also adopted some years ago. In India’s case, it has led to a fine (admittedly pretty small given the size of Meta) and restrictions on how Meta operates in India. The press release from the Competition Commission of India (pdf) spells out what those are:
WhatsApp will not share user data collected on its platform with other Meta Companies or Meta Company Products for advertising purposes, for a period of 5 (five) years from the date of receipt of this order.
After that time, Meta must abide by the following:
Sharing of user data collected on WhatsApp with other Meta Companies or Meta Company Products for purposes other than for providing WhatsApp services shall not be made a condition for users to access WhatsApp Service in India.
In respect of sharing of WhatsApp user data for purposes other than for providing WhatsApp Services, all users in India (including users who have accepted 2021 update) will be provided with:
a) the choice to manage such data sharing by way of an opt-out option prominently through an in-app notification; and
b) the option to review and modify their choice with respect to such sharing of data through a prominent tab in settings of WhatsApp application
Those are quite similar to GDPR requirements, and show that the same results may be obtained by different means. As to the motivation for the Competition Commission of India’s investigation into Meta, the Internet Freedom Foundation of India noted back in 2021 that it was “suo moto” — that is, begun by the Indian authorities without being requested to do so by any other party — but also that it was “a huge opportunity to present the user’s point of view to the Commission!” The final result certainly seems like a win for WhatsApp users in India. It will also serve as a warning to other major online players not to adopt a ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ approach when it comes to their data collection practices in India.
