Voter data ‘theft’: Details collected by NGO has great potential for misuse, hard to prevent it now, say experts

The police on Friday broke open the offices of the NGO in Malleswaram and recovered electronic devices, but those in the know say ‘precious time has already been lost’

While there is a political storm over the alleged voter data ‘theft’ by Chilume Educational Cultural and Rural Development Trust, impersonating as civic body officials from August-November in Bengaluru, the larger question as to how and whether the data can be retrieved at all is crucial, say experts.

Though the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) revoked permission to Chilume to carry out the Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) campaign on November 2, till date, it has not initiated any steps to recover the data that has potential for misuse. 

Given that electioneering is increasingly becoming “professionalised” with consultancy firms and big data playing a key role, the value of the information said to have been collected in the run-up to the Assembly polls is immense, said a city MLA, who did not wish to be named. “Such data can allow us to target our campaign better. Spatial data, mapped at a household level, removes the hazy assumptions most of us work with and gives campaign an edge,” he said. 

Experts and election-watchers say the data collection in this manner not only breaches privacy, gives political players with access to this data undue advantage, but also has the potential to enable voter suppression. They demanded immediate confiscation of all copies of the data and stringent action. 

“It is said that those who run the accused Trust also ran a political consultancy firm, which the Opposition has alleged is associated with a member of the ruling party. This throws up a scary scenario. If there is systemic collusion, there is a potential for targeted voter suppression by deletion of entries from electoral rolls, presently a big concern in the U.S. Right now, there is no evidence to suggest it has happened. But such an exercise has the potential to enable it, which is why there needs to be a thorough probe,” said Harish Narasappa of Karnataka Election Watch and Association for Democratic Reforms. 

Senior electoral rolls analyst P.G. Bhat said that while a probe would act as deterrence, he was skeptical about data recovery. “Any number of copies of the data could be anywhere in the world on the cloud. It is practically impossible to prevent the data from falling into the hands of those who are ready to pay for it. Even before this scandal broke, there have been many improprieties carried out with data from the electoral rolls itself,” he said. 

Agencies, now tasked with the probe of the scandal, said recovering the data was one of their priorities. The Halasuru Gate police on Friday broke open the offices of the Trust in Malleswaram and recovered electronic devices from the premises. They are looking out for office-bearers of the Trust, presently at large. A senior police official with experience in cyber crime investigations said it was almost impossible to confiscate all copies of the data. “Precious time has been lost and the data would have already been passed on,” he said.