Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala on Thursday said the CPI(M) had no moral ground to sermonise on data sanctity.
He was responding to CPI(M) Polit Bureau member M.A. Baby's allegation that Mr. Chennithala had invaded citizens’ privacy by publishing the personal details of nearly 4,34 lakh citizens on the charge that they had illegally come into possession of multiple voter identity cards.
Mr. Baby had alleged that Mr. Chennithala had published voters' personal information on a website registered in Singapore. “This is a serious matter. Mr. Chennithala should explain how voter ID, names, address and other details of people here were handed over for storing abroad. As cross-border data transfer regulations are applicable in our country, he should spell out which legal permission did he seek to share sensitive data with a website hosted in Singapore,” Mr. Baby said.
Mr. Baby also asked whether Mr. Chennithala had procured individual consent before uploading their photographs and individual details on a foreign server. He said Mr. Chennithala's action had raised serious questions about data sanctity.
“Double voting should be prevented; there are no two ways about it. But Mr. Chennithala is politicising this too by hinting that adding voters is a LDF ploy to return to power,” Mr. Baby said.
Mr. Chennithala said the LDF had compromised the private medical information of lakhs of citizens at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
The government had hired a U.S.-based big data analytics firm to crunch medical information to zero in on the most vulnerable segments of the population and to help the administration predict the spread of the pandemic. The process facilitated the company to sell valuable information to major players in the health and insurance sectors, he said.
