Privacy is My Right!

One experiences all sort of emotions while driving on our roads. The most prominent one is rage on the fellow citizen who has given damn to your safety or rights while on the road. Many a times, we feel that let me chase him out and give him back! One may also fantasize of veiled attack on him. Here is the way!

Today Big Data, Social media, mobile and internet have certainly given such possibilities. Few days back, Maharashtra RTO has given a number (09212357123). If you send an SMS VAHAH and vehicle number, a return SMS will provide the owner’s name. (It is still working but personal information is not sent now). Once the name is available, it is very easy to get his photo, telephone number and other details on social media websites such as Linkedin, Facebook, Google+ etc. Today image search (http://images.google.com/ ) is also possible. Such search engine can give photos of entire family and friend’s network of that person.

Today so much of information is available online than never before. One can get private information of a person based on his public information. Getting someone’s PAN number is very easy. Banks, utility suppliers and even NSDL systems are very prone for hacking. Even hacking is not needed. Small bribe can get you anyone’s PAN number. Once it is available, access to all his financial information is possible. Income Tax department’s website Traces (tdscpc.gov.in) has all the information about bank accounts, FD, shares and mutual funds. There is one organization called CIBIL. Its major stakeholder is TransUnion (of USA). The overseas companies hold 43% stake in this company and remaining stake is held by various Indian Banks. The all member financial companies provide financial information of an individual to this company. CIBIL has consolidated information of credit card transactions, any types of loan and properties bought on loan. Do you still think that your financial information is secret?

We see proliferation of Android phones and usage of gmail, Facebook, whatsApp on it. Go to Settings and click on apps. It gives a list of all the apps installed on the phone. Click on whatsApp, you will be astonished to see that it practically collects everything like geo location, contacts, groups, calling details, SMS and can directly modify/change/delete settings. The same is for other apps as well. Complete control on your phone!

Remember Govt. instructing Blackberry to provide unencrypted data or stop the services in India? Blackberry had to oblige unwillingly. Govt. collects data from internet traffic. We have already provided our biometric information through Aadhar Card. It is very easy to develop a system which will provide consolidated view of NSDL, Traces, CIBIL and Adhaar. The day is not far away that each citizen would be mapped! It is essentially good and useful but your personal information can be sensitive information too!

Just hold your breath! Do you think ONLY Govt. of India collects this information? Big Brother USA is also collecting it across the globe under the pretext of anti-terrorism operations. US’s National Security Agency (NSA) has built a huge data center in Utah which collects data from global internet traffic. They forced Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Skype, YouTube, whatsApp etc. to open their systems for collecting data. Now just imagine how much personal information you provide to these websites! By now Big Brother knows everything about you! This is not just enough. NSA used Microsoft’s Windows update to spread Flame Malware to target few countries in past. One can argue that there is nothing for me to hide. But we must understand our privacy is a basic building block of our freedom and democracy is built upon freedom!