PRIVACY IN DIGITAL WORLD:A STUDY ON KOO APPLICATION (By : Ms. Utsa Nath & Mr. Debarghya Bhattacharya)
PRIVACY IN DIGITAL WORLD:A STUDY ON
KOO APPLICATION
Authored By : Ms. Utsa Nath
Lecturer,
Department Of Commerce
St. Xavier’s
College (Autonomous), Kolkata
CO- Authored By : Mr. Debarghya Bhattacharya
Assistant Professor, Department Of Law
Kristu Jayanti College Of Law, Bengaluru
Introduction
The utmostsignificantdevice for a
nation is to establish the concept of welfarismto achieve prerogatives of
welfare state. In today’s digital world, security related to privacy in cyber
space is of great concern. It falls under the obligations of the government to
check whether any activity by intermediaries is infringing the privacy rights
of any citizens or not.In India, Right to Privacy is part and parcel of Article
21 of Constitution. With the advent of microblogging and social services, the
idea of privacy and cyberspace security has been merged. Protection of personal
data of users of such services is required to assure theright to privacy.
Recently our homegrown application
KOO app, which is an alternative to Twitter have fairly earned popularity in
the household of India. The Atmanirbhar Bharat App challenge winner of
2020, KOO, have grabbed the attention of the Indian users by providing the
feature of local languages in the app and also have taken the proper
opportunity of the present ongoing legal war between the government and
twitter, for its prominent growth in the country. The KOO is available both for
IOS and Android clients, and provide its users a limitation of 400 characters
to post, which is more than twitter, as the creators believe that one need more
characters to express in the local language.[i]
Interestingly, the application was launched in 2020 but came into the spotlight
due to the ongoing dispute between the government and twitter, India’s former
electronics and information technology Minister, Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad also
joined the app and stated that he had around 500,000 followers already in the
app.[ii]
Nevertheless, we know that whenever a
new application is released, the foremost thing that the creators must focus on
is the data privacy of the users, as in India even if we have been offered some
protection by the Information Technology Act,2000 (IT Act) which provides
compensation to
the victim against any unlawful
disclosure of the personal information and also the Constitution of India have
included the right to privacy under the sphere of Article 21 but still, India
have not yet sanctioned any pending data protection bills, due to this drawback
we have witnessed several cases in connection to leakage of personal data of
the public.As in the present scenario, KOO is making effort to expand its reach
as compared to twitter which has 199 million users globally, butrecently in
February 2021 some claimshave been raised by a French cybersecurity
researcherin related to the privacy concerns of the KOO app, which
automatically creates a gloomy situation about the extent of the security
provided to the user’s private data by the application.
Is Koo App
Leaking Data?
As stated earlier, KOO is our own
Atmanirbhar microblogging platform which is presently available in English as
well as local languageswhich is Hindi, Kananda, Tamil, Telegu, Marathi, Bangla
and Assamese, apart from these in future it is also planning to add 10 more
Indian languages. As this yellow bird logo app giving a tough competition to
the blue bird in the Indian market, with more than 6 million users, it is also
attracting the scrutiny related to the safety of the consumer’s data.
The French cybersecurity researcher,
Robert Baptiste expressed his dissatisfaction related to the safety
precautionsof the app and claims a overflowing of user’s sensitive data by the
app. The researcher who is popularly known as Elliot Anderson in Twitter has
also made headlines before by highlighting numerous susceptibilities in the
Aadhaar card system.Baptiste took twitter to explain the loopholes of KOO,
stating that it is disclosing the personal data of the users which includes
name, date of birth, gender, marital status, email which is a set of personal
data known as personally identifiable information (PII), this informationcan be
used for identity thefts and then using it for banking security process leading
to financial fraud. Automatically, the claim directly raises concern regarding
the possibility of the leakage of data of not the million users of the app but
also the various governmental wings using this platform, which may lead to the
threat towards thenational security as well. The claim of the data leakage has
been immediately cross verified by the independent cybersecurityresearcher, RajshekharRajaharia
who actually discovered the existence of the fault in KOO’s API (application
programming interface) system which were occurring a leakage of the user’s
personal data. The company within hours of such discovery have made correction
to such errors and ensured the security of the data.[iii]
However, on contrary the founders of the KOO,
Mayank Bidawatka and Aprameya Radhakrishna specified these claims as invalid
and also mentioned that the users are sharing the data voluntarily to everyone.
It is also further clarified by Radhakrishna, that the public access of the
user’s email has been now blocked by the company.[iv]
But the French researcher tweeted again by sharing some screenshots of an IAS
officer in KOO and pointed out that the user has not mentioned his marital
status on the app, but still Robert has the information of the same.[v]
In the meantime, some allegations
have also been made of some Chinese investment link to the app. The Chinese
company named Shunwei, which also had a connection to Xiaomi, had made some
earlier investments on the application, but it is cleared that presently the
app is registered under Bombinate Technologies, which is the parent company of
KOO and the Whois record for domain Kooapp.com which shows the app is registered
in China have been created three years and nine months ago and since then there
have been a lot of changes. According to the founder of the app, Shunwei is a
single digit share holder who had invested in other startups made by the KOO
founders known as Vokal, will take a full exit and Bombinate will continue to
be the parent company of both Vokal and KOO.[vi]
Presently, Shunwei Capital has completely taken exit by selling its stake to
Bombinate Technologies, making the present status of the application as purely Made
in India.
Conclusion
The principle of Right to Privacy is
a well-versed concept which has been uniformly accepted as part of the ambit of
human rights of every individual. Article 12 of UDHR (Universal Declaration of
Human Rights), clearly states that the privacy of each individual shall be
protected under law. The Constitution of India under Article 21 provides that
no person shall be deprived of his or her life or personal liberty. The right
to life enshrined in Indian Constitution has been liberally interpreted to mean
something more than mere survival or existence. Keeping these things in mind,
the privacy security related to the personal information and posts of the users
in social media networking sites is matter of great concern. The cyber security
does falls under the ambit of privacy and its facets in a wide range and
protecting such specific right is necessary for the government to initiate the
concept welfarism in its administrative and legislative procedures.
Moreover, Section 43A of the IT Act,
it has been laid down that all corporate bodies and intermediaries, who
possess, handle of collect any sensitive personal data shall maintain security
practices which are reasonable. But the Parliamentary Standing Committee on
Information
Technology in its 52nd Report
(2013-2014) on Cyber Crime, Cyber Security and Right to Privacy were unhappy of
the fact that the government is yet to institute a legal framework for Privacy.[vii]
The Government of India thus constituted a committee to propose a draft statute
on data protection. Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 was proposed on the
basis of such draft statute. But the Bill has not been taken a form of codified
statute yet making the personal data of the users of social media
intermediaries vulnerable.
The KOO application is surely a
strong step towards creating a healthy self-dependent economy in today’s
digital world. But welfare of the state is always signified on the basis of how
one government is guaranteeing its citizens all the fundamental rights. In
today’s electronic world the ambit and scope of right to privacy has spread
into a new horizon which can only be measured with strong sets of
organizedlegislation.