The National Center for Informatics, which designs the government’s websites, has said it has no information on who created the Aarogya Setu app and how it was created. The Main Information Commission has stopped the NIC, which reports to the Ministry of Electronics, and issued a display notice to several chief public information officers asking them to provide a response to an RTI request questioning Covid’s contact tracing. -19. The answer cannot be evasive, the CIC has said.
The complaint was filed by a Saurav Das who claimed to have approached the NIC, the National Electronic Governance Division (NeGD) and the ministry of electronics and information technology in search of the creation of the application, which has been downloaded by million Indians. during lockdown. Downloading the mobile application is also essential before entering restaurants, movie theaters, metro stations, as stipulated by the Ministry of the Interior. But Das said neither NIC nor the ministry had data on the app’s creations.
The CIC has also asked the National Center for Informatics to explain why its name appears on the website, but has no information on this.
“The Commission orders the CPIO, NIC to explain this matter in writing about how the website https://aarogyasetu.gov.in/ was created with the domain name gov.in, if they have no information about it.” Information ordered by commissioner Vanaja N Sarna.
The CIC pointed out that not only about the creation of the application, no one “seems to have” knowledge about the files created, the inputs received, the audit measures taken to verify whether the personal data is being misused or not.
Concerns have already been raised about the application and its security aspects. The leader of Congress, Rahul Gandhi, had previously accused the government of breaching data security. “The Arogya Setu application is a sophisticated surveillance system, outsourced to a pvt operator, without institutional supervision, which raises serious concerns about data security and privacy. Technology can help us stay safe; but fear should not be used to track citizens without their consent, ”he tweeted.
Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad refuted the allegations and claimed that Aarogya Setu has not been outsourced to any private operator.
.
