YSRC likens data breach to Cambridge Analytica scam
VIJAYAWADA: Demanding a high-level probe by all the concerned agencies including cyber crime police, Election Commission and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology into data harvesting and data theft cases, the YSRC has said that it’s the breach of State residents’ data that they have been raising and not that of the TDP cadre as their leaders are claiming.
Speaking to media persons here on Monday, party MLA and PAC (Public Accounts Committee, AP Assembly) chairman Buggana Rajendranath said the data harvesting being done by IT Grid has been so sensitive that it has full control of the personal information of the people of the State which was provided by a mechanism created by State government through surveys done by contract workers.
“This case is nothing less than that of the sensational Facebook versus London-based Cambridge Analytica scandal which took the world by storm in 2018 and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had to appear before competent authorities for launching Open Graph platform to third-party apps through which data of over 8 crore people were harvested for political use in the United States. Here, the IT Grids has stored data of over 4.5 core people of AP,” he said.
According to him, Hyderabad-based IT Grids and Vizag-based Bluefrog Technologies have been patronised by Chandrababu Naidu and the heads of the two companies are always seen in the Chief Minister’s Office.
“We lodged a complaint after finding out that a large number of names, most of them YSRCP sympathisers, was being deleted from the electoral rolls. Our suspicion was strengthened with the Seva Mitra App recording all the personal details of the people of AP and the data is being segregated and manipulated by the IT Grid Company. The personal data of residents of the State is being used for the political purpose by private players which is an offense,” he said.