HYDERABAD: In response to the report, ‘AP govt site goes offline, data of millions freely available on Mee Kosam’ published in these columns on May 2, 2018, the Real Time Governance Society (RTGS) CEO Babu A has said in a clarification that the report lacks facts and content has been written without verification from the authorities concerned.
The New Indian Express stands by its report. The CEO said, “Mee Kosam does not have an offline version, e-Pragathi has an informative website that does not contain any data pertaining to the citizens.” The report never said Mee Kosam has an offline version. The government site that went offline was ap.gov.in and the same was mentioned clearly in the report. Similarly, e-Pragathi was mentioned by a student, who participated in the recently held Hackathon. It was his opinion and not ours and the same was reported as such. Even he merely said he and his fellow students had spotted loopholes in e-Pragathi. We would also like to point out that we have verified with Principal Secretary (IT) K Vijayanand and his version has been reported. However, Babu A clarified that RTG does not come under Vijayanand’s purview.
The CEO further said, “Mee Kosam is a secured platform that is used for collecting the citizen grievances and route them to the concerned official in the last mile, online in real time. The last-mile official can access Mee Kosam by using dedicated log-in credentials coupled with Aadhaar e-KYC. Adding the layer of Aadhaar e-KYC for accessing the Portal, besides the dedicated log-in has only added to the security layer. Any official can see the details of only those grievances which are assigned for him/her. Citizens can also register their grievances through a secured login.
Any citizen can see only those grievances which are registered by him/her. Besides the above, information related to Aadhaar is never displayed in the portal hosted by RTG, making it complaint with Aadhaar Act 2016.” Nowhere does our report say that the RTG displays Aadhaar numbers of all. What it says is that in the wake of the leakage of Aadhaar numbers by some State government websites, as reported widely in the national media in the last one week, anyone with access to Aadhaar numbers of citizens can log in and get information of citizens. All that the report says is that the loophole has not been plugged yet (as on Wednesday). TNIE has evidence to prove the same.
We are glad the loophole has been plugged on Thursday after our report was published. Further, TNIE never reported that there was misuse of data. The CEO also said, “Your publication has made a generic comment by stating that the Government websites of AP are weak in structure and logic - without any evidences, even circumstantial evidence is lacking.”
The report does not make any such generic comment. It was an opinion of a well-known ethical hacker and we would also like to point out that in the last one week, leakage of Aadhaar numbers on State government websites, exposed by independent researchers, has been reported widely in the national media. The report also contains the IT Principal Secretary’s version that the State government is conducting an audit and has already scanned 227 of its websites. Mee Kosam portal vulnerability was also taken to his notice and his reply on the same has been reported.Finally, we would like to point out that the report was carried in public interest after the vulnerability in the website came to our attention.