Bubble of Security!

  When the whole world was appreciating the 'sheer suddenness of the move',

When Indians were 'secured' by banning Chinese applications from their Chinese phones,

When 'everyone' thought that not using these applications will destroy China's economy,

But, we were unaware that China was already playing a 'masterstroke'.

I am talking about the investigation, or I should say journalism, carried out by Indian express as China is watching. In this investigation, the fact that the Chinese are monitoring Indians came into bright light.  A Chinese information technology firm, Shenzhen, has developed an Overseas Key Information Database(OKIDB), which accounts for the largest group of high-profile individuals being monitored through their online presence. More than 10,000 important personalities, identified as 'targets', are under constant digital surveillance.

I am a little bit amused because I witnessed this exact surveillance strategy used by an antagonist organization in a movie! Marvel fans would have guessed it correctly, The Zola's Algorithm. The explanation in the movie Captain America: Winter Soldier was "Zola's Algorithm was a program written by Arnim Zola to identify targets for HYDRA by analyzing people's data available online, including private data, to predict whether they currently posed a threat for the organization or would in the future."

 So, we can all agree that Zola's Algorithm is no more a myth or a fictional plot.

After all these allegations, the first question to throw up is:

Who is Shenzhen? What are they doing?

Shenzhen is a Chinese information technology firm. Wang Xuefeng holds 86% of the company's stake and is identified as a former IBM Engineer by WeMedia Alliance. He is an expert in the fields of AI, Data Mining, with "more than 10 years of intensive research on overseas social media data". He is affiliated with at least 12 other tech companies. The tech firm has a close relationship with the Chinese Army and the Chinese Communist Party.

Shenzhen has developed an Overseas Key Information Database(OKIDB) which monitors more than 2.5 million 'targets' all over the world which includes more than 10,000 entities from our country.

Okay, so this was quite basic. A question might be troubling you now:

What are they monitoring? Who are they monitoring? Is it dangerous?

So, writing it for the millionth time that they are monitoring 10,000 important, emerging, or former VIP personalities and their families too. Let's have a small analysis of this 10,000 mark.

From sarpanches, mayors, deputy mayors, Members of Parliament to the PMs, there are over 700 politicians with direct mentions and over 460 indirect mentions who are close relatives of these politicians. Former Presidents like late Pranab Mukherjee and late APJ Abdul Kalam, former Prime Ministers like late PV Narsimha Rao, Dr. Manmohan Singh, late Rajiv Gandhi, late A B Vajpayee, and their close relatives are among the politicians in this list. Former Chief Ministers like Kamal Nath, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Janardan Reddy, late Manohar Parrikar, Ashok Chavan are also on this list.  

There has been a family list of 100 politicians, which looks like an attempt to create a family tree. These families include The Gandhis, Badals, Pawars, Scindia among others.

This list also consists of former and current CJIs with other top regulators. Over 30 judges retired or serving, including the current CJI, who are at high positions are being monitored.  

The current Chief of Defence Staff, at least 14 former Chiefs of three services along with 60 retired or serving military officials are all marked as "targets".

Even scientists at Atomic Research Centers are being monitored and marked along with 1400 startups, venture capitalists like Azim Premji, co-founders of unicorns like Flipkart, Swiggy, Zomato, Razor Pay everyone is under constant surveillance.

Still, there is not much data that is publicly available to scrap, why are we considering it a threat?

There is always a humungous amount of data available about you, from your Facebook post or from your tweets, from your searches, or from your payment details. Not even this, the analysis of the posts about your close relatives also provides adequate information about someone. And this is what they are monitoring, all the digital footprints of an individual. Tracking and stealing vital information like geographic locations through their advanced AI is adding on to it. 

If this does not threaten anyone, I don't know what does!!

 

Opinion:

When you are being monitored continuously by someone with whom you are on the verge of war, then it is of grave concern. They are not only monitoring the common but VIPs like the PM, CM, Military Chiefs, and even the rising self-reliant economy of India. And I am very delighted that our government has taken this seriously. There is a formation of a group which will investigate this matter and will report after 30days.

In my opinion, instead of giving Chinese applications a priority, we should be looking forward to set-up industries that can compete with Chinese ones in our market. This will help in the "AtmaNirbhar Bharat" Scheme as well as provide products free of 'Chinese sauce'. But we have to understand two major things:

• This is a gradual step, we cannot ban all the products at once,
• We should prioritize building alternatives first rather than banning the products.

The second and concrete step that we can take is, instead of emphasizing the citizen's data retrieval by the government, we should be focusing on "data protection and monitoring" in India through the Data Protection Bill.

The third step which can be called a 'masterstroke' is building our own indigenous and secure phones with our own indigenous and secure OS for the high-ranking officials and the politicians with power.

So, we are in a bubble of security levitating in a room of needles.

Hope you like it!

Comment down your views.