The House Committee on ‘Unlawful Interception of Communications, Data Theft and Illegal Transmission, causing infringement of citizens rights during 2016-2019’ constituted by the A.P. Legislature headed by MLA Bhumana Karunkar Reddy has concluded that “there was unauthorised and improper transmission of large amounts of sensitive data from the State Data Centre (SDC) to unknown external servers from November 30, 2018 to March 31, 2019.”
Mr. Karunakar Reddy, while presenting the report in the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday, said the committee had found that a large volume of data had been transmitted from 18 SDC servers to several external servers and that there was no permissible presence or reason to transmit such data from these servers to external IP addresses.
“The data has been directly sent to the TDP leaders who have used it to gain unlawfully during the elections held in 2019. The TDP leaders have misused the data. There was large-scale deletion of voters’ names before the election,” said Mr. Karunkara Reddy.
He said the committee was informed that the AP Computer Security Operations Centre (APCSOC) monitors the servers and network devices in the SDC and logs were provided for a detailed analysis and the Police (Intelligence) Department reviewed the logs as part of their investigation and submitted a preliminary report of their findings along with a list of annexures. The Intelligence Department provided information about where the data was transmitted.
The statement by Mr. Reddy prompted angry reactions by the TDP members who said the complete report was not provided to them.
