The curious case of Missing

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The curious case of the ‘missing’ 

Aarogya Setu developer

The National Informatics Centre (NIC) has found itself at the centre of a strange controversy over the developer of the central government's contact-tracing application, Aarogya Setu. 

 

On Wednesday, the  Central Information Commission (CIC) issued show-cause notices to the Central Public Information Officers of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), National Informatics Centre (NIC) and the National E-Governance Division (NeGD) following the agencies' failure to disclose information relating to the process of the Aarogya Setu app's creation, and the audit measures implemented to verify whether the personal data it has gathered of India's citizens, has been misappropriated or misused. 

 

The NIC, which falls under the ambit of the MeiTY is listed on the Aarogya Setu website as the app's designer, developer and host. According to the website, the content is owned, updated and maintained by MyGov which is also under the MeitY. 

Why this issue?

The CIC's order and notes were in response to a complaint filed by RTI activist Saurav Das who had, reportedly, filed several RTI requests relating to the government's contact-tracing app. The RTI he filed requesting details over the app's creation – including the proposal's origin, the approval process, which government departments were involved, and any correspondence with private individuals contributing towards the app's development – was filed on August 1. 

However, on August 7, information officers, having failed to issue answers to any of his questions, informed him that the RTI application had been sent to the CPIO of the National e-Governance Division (also part of the MeitY). 

Nearly two months later (October 2), the NeGD responded to Das stating that they had no information at all to provide him. Das then filed a request for an urgent hearing at the CIC, citing the matter as one of “immense public interest.” 

It is worth noting that the fuzzy privacy policy of the contact-tracing app has previously come under the scanner by numerous privacy advocates and security researchers. In May, a French ethical hacker known as Robert Baptiste a.k.a Elliot Alderson had flagged privacy concerns over the app, claiming that it had several security flaws. https://medium.com/@fs0c131y/aarogya-setu-the-story-of-a-failure-3a190a18e34

He then went on to publish a blog post (https://medium.com/@fs0c131y/aarogya-setu-the-story-of-a-failure-3a190a18e34) outlining why he believed the app had security flaws. In his blog post, he contended that anybody could access the app's internal database to find location information of anyone who is sick in the country. He also noted that the flaw was later “quietly fixed” by developers. 

On October 22, Das took to Twitter to allege that the app was “not keeping your data safe as it should have. Govt of India has NOT followed its own Aarogya Setu Protocol, 2020!” going on to claim that he had evidence of the same. 

Das' tweet came soon after a hearing conducted by the CIC where information officers from the MeitY admitted that the ministry had no information relating to the app's creation. 

When quizzed over the origin of the app, the CIC noted that one of the ministry's CPIOs could provide no “plausible explanation except that the creation of the same involves inputs from NITI Ayog.” He was, reportedly, also not able to explain why the ministry did not have this information either. 

Calling the responses “extremely preposterous,” the CIC noted that Das had been correct in pointing out the concern over a breach of privacy over an app that has been downloaded by crores of Indians around the country. 

The ministry also notes in the press statement that information over the app's creators can be found on Github, along with the app's source code. Oddly enough, the NIC had pointed to the contributor list on Github in response to another application filed by RTI activist Aniket Gaurav on August 5. Why it didn't do the same for Das' RTI request remains a mystery that only the NIC can shed light on. 

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