Google-EC tie up: Were privacy concerns overblown?

Google’s proposed tie-up with the Election Commission of India had caused an uproar in India. Political parties and privacy experts argued that it could have led to possible privacy violations. Additionally from security point of view, the biggest concern was that handing over valuable citizen data from India to a foreign company was a bad idea.

BJP’s Vice President Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi had said when the tie-up was rumoured to be in place, “Though we do not doubt the intentions of the Election Commission. The matter could have been first discussed with various stakeholders at the all-party meeting before taking a final decision…. It does raise some security concerns.”

Post the uproar the Election Commission has decided not to go ahead with tie-up .

“After due consideration, the Commission has decided not to pursue it any further,” an election commission official said.

A Google spokesperson too issued a statement on the fall-out saying, “Google is committed to help make public information on the web easily accessible to internet users across the country. It is unfortunate that our discussion with the Election Commission of India to change the way users access their electoral information, that is publicly available, through an online voter look up tool, were not fruitful.”

The assumption was that Google would be handling all of the personal Election Commission data. According to the first Times of India report, it appeared that all of this information would not be available directly in Google Search itself.

The report had said quoted a senior EC official as saying, “The EC is going ahead with the use of hi-tech and professional expertise to manage online enrolment of voters…all that one needs to do now is to type his name/EPIC no and address on the Google Search engine, which will promptly generate results matching the voters’ name with his assembly/Lok Sabha constituency, and pinpointing the location of his polling station.”

The report had made it not given specifics on where the data was being stored or in fact who would be handling it.

But according to Google, the privacy angle has been overplayed and it had never aimed to control the data in the first place. Google India told Firstpost that the pitch was about showing new technologies to the Election Commission and help manage data better, where the data is currently stored on much older technologies.

“With the new proposed technology managing heavy user traffic close to polling dates would have been handled without any glitches. The aim was to help manage the data that is in fact already available publicly,” Google said.

It added that the cloud-based services which Google offered was one of the options given, however the decision was left to ECI to use other or their own cloud services as well. Google also added that the reason for offering the services was that even though “the election voter data and poll booth data is in fact already in public domain on the ECI website but there is no one national database where citizens can go and find out the poll booth information.”

It further stated that “the application code and data would have remained in complete control of ECI.”

While the EC-Google tie-up might have had everyone up in arms, it should be noted that India would not have been the first country to work with Google on official election bodies.

In Kenya, for instance Google teamed up with the Independent Boundaries and Electoral Commission (IBEC) in January 2013. It announced help for open source technology which would power online voter tools, including registration confirmation online and over SMS, mapping the polling stations, and a developer Application Programming Interface (API). The API is aimed at helping other developers create their own tools for the elections.

Another country where this exercise was carried out by Google is Phillipines, where they had a Precinct Finder tool, which allowed voters to find their polling stations using Google’s Mapmaker tool.

Privacy concerns when it comes to Google aren’t exactly a new thing. For instance Google’s latest feature where it allows even strangers to email you on your Gmail id is worrying to say the least. For now, though it does come with the option of opting out. On the other hand where voting lists in India are concerned, it is a well-documented fact that they are often the first documents to be misused when communal riots break out. And this has happened well before the days of Google or any other search engine.

However in a digital world, there’s no denying that a lot of personal information is already out there, some of which we have supplied willingly. But the question that often gets ignored is how does the state handle and manage all of that data, which is now available on its websites from NREGA to MTNL to the EC. And that question remains unanswered in all of this din over the Google-EC tie-up.

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