The Congress has been under the scanner for corruption scandals, however, a new roadblock has now hit the ailing party. The Congress now seems to have compromised significantly with the data of private citizens. It was first exposed by French security researcher Baptise Robert in a tweet, which showed that the server of the Congress app ‘With INC’ was located in Singapore. An Indian political party having its official app operating from a server in Singapore naturally raised security concerns. The Congress left red-faced and embarrassed first raised a counter allegation against the Prime Minister’s NaMo app, and then hastily took down its official app from the Google Playstore.
More recently, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower had deposed before the UK Parliament that the Congress was a client of his past employer, which is believed to be involved in a mammoth data theft.
This time around, a similar act of data theft by the Congress has come to light. According to an explosive thread on Twitter, Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah’s app seems to be sharing citizens’ data with private firms.
Siddaramaiah APP, run by Government of Karnataka(unlike NM app) sends my details to a website owned by a private company.
Data is not encrypted, sent as http instead https pic.twitter.com/xj2IGSdh2x— Shreeharsha Perla (@harshaperla) March 26, 2018
Siddaramaiah’s app was strangely run by the Government of Karnataka, unlike the NaMo app which is run and financed by the Bhartiya Janata Party. The app was launched on October 31st last year, supposedly with the aim of connecting with the citizens digitally. The idea of the app being a citizen-connect application seems to have been mere eyewash. The real intent of the Congress and the present Karnataka Government seems to have been to misuse taxpayers’ money for Siddaramaiah’s and the Congress’ publicity. It is shameful how an application operated by the Government of Karnataka and financed by the people of Karnataka was named as the ‘Siddaramaiah app’. This reeks of the Congress’ ideology, of asserting ownership rights over the country’s assets. Since the app is an official government app, the least they could have done was to name it the Chief Minister’s app. Siddaramaiah is only a temporary executive and once he vacated office, the app would have been redundant.
However, an even bigger issue has now emerged out of the shoddy handling of this app. According to a tweet by an ordinary citizen, the Siddaramaiah app has been transferring the details of the app users to a website owned by a private company. Moreover, the data is not encrypted, it is sent as http instead of https. The server to which the data is sent is hosted by Amazon. It was pointed out that extremely personal details of the user such as his phone number and device name had been sent to http://citizenoutreachapp.in/, a website owned by a private company. What is more shocking is that the application didn’t have a privacy policy. If the user wished to access it, he would be taken to “Error 404” upon clicking on the privacy policy of the Siddaramaiah application. Siddaramaiah’s app has been taken down after this expose.
However, neither the Congress nor the Siddaramaiah government have come out with any explanation about this serious issue. It is outrageous how the chief minister first used public money for personal advertisement with elections around the corner, and then effectively used the app (developed by taxpayers’ money and operated by the government) for compromising with citizens’ data, and that too to a private party. The state is supposed to be the protector of the citizens’ data and privacy. However, in this case, it seems that the government itself has become the destroyer instead of being the protector. It has compromised with the citizens’ data, perhaps with ulterior motives.
The Congress has been exposed in the past for committing scams in almost every realms of the government, at times even compromising with national security. However, it seems that the controversial party is keeping pace with the times, and is now using the digital age for leaking citizens’ data and infringing their right to privacy. This is perhaps being done with the ulterior motive of influencing elections or some other ulterior purpose, and this only further exposes the Congress. This strengthens the case for a Congress-mukt Bharat simply because the Congress has shown that it is capable of harming India and its citizen’s interests in every possible way.
It is clear that as long as the Congress remains in power even in a few parts of the country, it will indulge in acts which continue to harm our interests. The Congress has been the harbinger of almost everything that is wrong with our country in the years since independence, and now it seems that it has added data leakages and thefts to that long list
