NEW DELHI: Intelligence agencies say news about Chinese government keeping a tab on over 10,000 Indian individuals and organisations is on expected lines. Adding that the government was aware of data mining by Chinese companies and the decision to ban Chinese apps was taken because of this misuse.
“The decision to ban Chinese apps was taken because of this misuse. Indian agencies flagged how common Indians unknowingly were contributing to the data bank of Chinese companies, which in turn was being shared with Chinese Communist Party and agencies,” a senior government official said.
Officials, however, added that the data for VIP Indians like Prime Minister, President and Chief Justice of India, even if collated from open source, could be used damagingly by an enemy nation and its agency.
A senior security officer said that open source data if collated and analysed properly can give a lot of answers a hostile agency could be looking for.
Giving perspective, government officials said that while the current tension with China has brought the data misuse focus on them, the fact is that all countries are using data mining to secure themselves.
‘All open source data in one place like dossier’
The US has over 200 data fields collated from various social media platforms, which gives them an edge over the rest of the world.
China has been managing to safeguard its own data by a good extent with its own form of Google, YouTube and Twitter. “However, the big thing here is that the scraping software puts all open source data in one place as a dossier,” an official said.