New Delhi: Once again in the news, Cambridge Analytica, a firm based in UK, gets notice from Indian Government.  The firm is political consulting firm which works to provide help for political parties by combining data mining, data brokerage and data analysis with strategic communication for the election process. The firm was recently accused of Facebook user’s data breach. The Indian Government had asked the firm to provide details in a report of whether it was engaged in any assignment to benefit from the data of Indians, which was made available, due to the data breach.

The firm was recently in the news for wrong reasons. If had been accused of harvesting data of about 50 million users of Facebook without obtaining permission and utilized the data to help politicos in the United States and United Kindom.

The questionnaire by the Indian Government consisted of six points for the online data analytics company to answer. It is first such a step taken by the government due to the data breach which has triggered a political debate in the country.

The company has been given a deadline to respond with answers by next weekend, that is 31 March. The announcement by the government did not elaborate the details of whether the notice that has been issued comes under any law.

The minister for information technology and law, Ravi Shankar Prasad, has been continuously accusing the opposition party of having dealt with the UK-based consulting firm to which the minister described as a “rogue data analysis firm”. But Congress party quickly replied to counter the charges leveled against it and underlined that the minister was dishing out blatant lies to be successful in diverting the country’s attention.

Mr Prasad also said that the government has got the powers to be able to summon Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in case it needs. But the official statement of the government did not seek any type of answers from Facebook Company. It took the notice of Mark Zuckerberg for tendering apology “for the mistakes his company had made in handling data belonging to its users, and has promised tougher steps to restrict access to such information.”

Facebook has also pulled out its usage policy pertaining third party apps which also include the login process so that there is very limited access to user information.

The Government seems to be focused on the firm, Cambridge Analytica, which is seen to be the main culprit in the whole case. The firm specializes in using online data to create voter personality profiles in order to target them with political messages.

We will be able to get updates regarding the notice as soon as the firm replies to the question posed by the Indian Government.

It asked the firm whether the data of Indians accessed due to the data breach has been utilized and also how it was possible for them to get access for the data and for what purpose the data was used. Another question that was put up was to elaborate if any profiling was done over the basis of such data.

You May Also Read: With Elections In View, Oil Companies Defer Loan Recovery For Cooking Gas Scheme