TMC MP lodges plaint over CoWIN data breach

Trinamool’s Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’Brien has lodged a complaint with the cyber police station in Kolkata against the alleged leak of CoWIN portal data, resulting in a “breach of privacy”.

In his letter (dated June 14, received by the police station on June 15) and addressed to the officer-in-charge concerned, O’Brien said the “nationwide breach of privacy” has affected lakhs of Indians, besides him.

“On June 12, it was brought to my notice that my personal details were made publically available through a social media platform/App and I discovered through media reports that the public portal had a major data breach”, says the letter.

Stating how people shared their personal details in order to avail vaccination, O’Brien mentions that “now it seems there is a notorious conspiracy at play to make sensitive information available to private players through government resources”. “Aadhaar and its connected ecosystem is a repository of critical information, breach of which is detrimental for the entire nation,” O’Brien adds.

He has also made a request in the letter that the letter of complaint be treated as FIR, and steps be taken to “investigate and book the antisocial elements”, under sections (he mentioned) concerned, of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, read with sections of the Information Technology Act, and of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016.

The reports of CoWIN data having been accessed by a Telegram bot, earlier, had entailed the Union government clarifying that the portal was not “directly breached”, and what was being shared on Telegram had something to do with the data breached earlier.