Innholdsfortegnelse for October 12, 2020 i India Today

While the nation was transfixed by the soap opera of the investigation into the suspicious death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput, a collateral issue started playing out simultaneously. Besides the personal interrogations, most of the evidence in the case is in the form of WhatsApp chats of persons close to Rajput and a chain of others on the issue of the consumption and supply of drugs. Regrettably, the enforcement agencies chose to leak these conversations selectively to the media, which, in turn, built a whole narrative of lawbreaking with partial evidence even before the case is registered. This was not an isolated incident. Last month in Delhi, chat transcripts of 15 persons charged by the police for organising the Delhi riots in February this year were again leaked to the…

In 2015, Akhilesh Yadav, the then chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, had launched a ‘Samajwadi Shravan Yatra’ scheme meant to fund the pilgrimage of senior citizens. The scheme, though, was a non-starter and didn’t benefit Akhilesh electorally. The Yogi Adityanath government now is considering a similar scheme that will fund the religious trips of the 150 million registered labourers in the state. There is no estimate of costs yet, but it will likely be launched on November 10, as part of the birth centenary celebrations of RSS ideologue Dattopant Thengadi.…

WhatsApp messages, both sent and received, are stored in the phone memory. Even if a specific chat is deleted in the app, messages could still be retrieved by hackers who have either remote or physical access to your phone. There are some caveats—if the phone memory is full, older messages get overwritten and deleted, and if the phone is physically destroyed, the data cannot be accessed. However, messages might still be accessible on the phone of whoever you have been communicating with Accessing the chat backups saved to cloud storage or external hard drives is also fairly easy. For instance, chat backups stored in decrypted form on Google Drive or iCloud can be accessed by simply using a copy of the original SIM card while installing WhatsApp on a new…

WHATSAPP PROS Chat encryption is enabled by default—messages in transit cannot be read by third parties Messages are not stored on WhatsApp servers CONS Backups, whether on cloud storage or hard drives, are not encrypted Metadata (sender and receiver IDs, call timestamps, etc) is not encrypted TELEGRAM PROS Telegram’s ‘secret chat’ option prevents backups being stored on the phone or on cloud storage/ hard drives Can be set up so that messages are automatically deleted after a specified period of time CONS Encryption is not enabled by default. Only ‘secret chats’ are encrypted Can access ‘non-secret’ chats Group chats do not support end-to-end encryption SIGNAL PROS Chats and meta-data are encrypted by default. The ‘sealed sender’ setting prevents anyone—even Signal—from identifying a sender No contact data is saved on the…

On August 15, Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled the ambitious National Digital Health Mission (NDHM), under which every Indian will be entitled to a national health identity card to access medical services. “This will work as a health account for every Indian. It will bring a revolution in India’s health sector and it will help reduce problems in getting treatment with the help of technology,” he declared. The health account will contain details of every test, disease, doctor visits, medicines prescribed and diagnosis. In the long term, all health-related data, including medical records of every individual, will be stored in a digital reservoir that can be accessed when a person checks in for treatment. Doctors will have the patient’s medical history on record to take the best possible decision. When…

There are few things more pleasing to a borrower than low interest rates. This is especially true for those who have taken home loans—for a majority of such borrowers, this is the largest liability they will take on in their lives, and any fall in interest rates brings substantial savings. Owing to the pandemic and subsequent economic restrictions, the interest rate in India has touched a historic low. The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) repo rate—the benchmark used to fix other interest rates—touched 4 per cent in May 2020, the lowest level since 2001. This has led to home loan rates falling as well, with the lowest rates on offer at around 6.7 per cent. Besides helping in creating an appreciating asset at a lower cost, home loans also offer…

For all the talk around how the gaming industry has been booming in India as others crumbled during the Covid pandemic, some of the biggest developments in the Indian gaming industry actually occurred in August, just as the lockdown began to ease. The biggest of these was no doubt Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s public endorsement of game development in India. Even though it came as part of a larger focus on growing India’s toy industry, it was the first time that gaming had become part of the national conversation. Then there was the news that sent shock-waves through India’s fledgling gaming scene—the banning of PUBG Mobile as part of a large wave of bans affecting Chinese-developed games and apps. Bigger gaming companies are beginning to looking at Indian development talent…

Sept. 14, 2020 A 19-year-old Dalit girl is gang-raped and tortured, allegedly by four upper caste men, in Boolgadhi village of Hathras district in UP Sept. 14 The girl is admitted to the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College Hospital in Aligarh with a severely damaged spinal cord and fractures Sept. 19 Police record the girl’s statement and arrest a youth from her village Sept. 22 Police file a case of gang-rape and attempt to murder against the youth and three others from the village. Arrests follow over the next four days Sept. 25 The SHO of Chandpa police station, under which the village falls, is transferred Sept. 28 The girl’s condition worsens and she is shifted to Safdarjung Hospital in New Delhi Sept. 29 The family is informed about the girl’s…

Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar has been in a sulk. The NCP leader was recently asked by uncle and party chief Sharad Pawar, who continues to have the final say in all party-related matters, to take down a tweet. Ajit had tweeted a tribute to BJP ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyaya on his birth anniversary on September 25. The tweet, however, was deleted within an hour after Pawar Sr called him to express his displeasure. Interestingly, a few years ago, Ajit had said that one should not take advice from anyone over the age of 50. The rule, though, clearly doesn’t apply to him.…

I was greatly saddened to hear of the demise of Jaswant Singh. He was a valued colleague, both in government and the party to which we both belonged and of which he was a founding member. A thorough gentleman and an upright army officer, Jaswant Singh was also an astute diplomat and a superb administrator. He was a great parliamentarian who acquitted himself with great distinction. When I joined public life, he was already in politics, but we were in two different parties. Our names were phonetically similar, which often created confusion and comic situations. In fact, on the day of his demise, a journalist from a news channel called me and said that “Jaswant Sinha” had expired and wanted me to record a message of condolence. There were others…

Under Section 5 of the Telegraph Act, 1885, A Union homse secrtary or a home secretary of a state can order the interception of phone conversations to protect the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states or public order, or to prevent incitement to the commission of an offence. In exceptional situations, an officer (not below the rank of joint secretary), who has been authorised to do so by the Union home secretary or a state home secretary, can also issue such an order. Interceptions cannot last longer than 180 days. The order for an interception must contain a justification for doing so, and a copy of the order must be sent to the review committee within seven working days. The review…

Don’t use messaging services to communicate information that could get you in trouble/ leave you vulnerable Turn off auto-backups unless you really need them. Avoid saving backups on storage services that you do not directly control (like cloud storage) Be careful when downloading files onto your phone, even from known contacts—their phones may be compromised without them being aware of it When installing an app, note the permissions it asks for—access to contacts, the camera and mic, etc—and deny all permissions that are unessential Regularly update apps and your phone’s operating system—updates often patch newly discovered security vulnerabilities Use unique passwords for each app and activate two-factor authentication (which adds a second layer of security). This might decrease ease of use, but significantly improves security Don’t leave your phone unattended,…

Digital health records are only a small fraction of a larger digital stack--usually called Hospital Information Management Systems. For the past 20 years, public and private hospitals across the country have been implementing disparate digitisation solutions. Most of these have been failures for various reasons. It takes a long time to train staff in a new hospital information system and there is a steep learning curve for doctors to adopt a new electronic health record (EHR). Electronic medical record (EMR) fatigue is the leading cause of physician burnout in the United States. US doctors have to spend as much time on data entry as they do with their patients. “Though EHRs have been widely implemented over the past two decades and more so in the past decade at a huge…

• Interest rates are at a historic low—banks are offering loans at 6.7% • With tax savings, the effective rate could fall below 5% for those in higher tax brackets • The best rates are offered to those with the highest credit scores—check your score before taking a loan to make sure you get a good deal • Businessmen with high fund turnover benefit from smart saver loans • Existing borrowers could transfer their loans to a new lender if paying high interest • If you need a personal loan for home improvement, get a home loan top-up instead—this offers a cheaper rate…

Umbrella Academy 2 Netflix In 1989, 43 women across the globe spontaneously give birth despite not being pregnant. The children all have superpowers—time travelling, super strength, ability to talk to the dead—and seven wind up being adopted by ‘eccentric billionaire’ Reginald Hargreeves, who sets up a superhero school—the Umbrella Academy—where all but one are trained to become crime-fighters. At the beginning of season one, Hargreeves has been dead for some days and his seven wards find themselves battling to save the world Cargo Netflix Cargo, which debuted on Netflix on September 9, is an Indian indie-drama about dying in the modern era. Vikrant Massey plays a rakshas (demon)named Prahastha serving as an “immigration officer in outer space”, preparing the souls of the recently departed for reincarnation aboard the Pushpak 634A,…

As a private chat forum, WhatsApp has no equal—not in India, not in the world. Globally, the American freeware, cross-platform messaging service, owned by Facebook, boasts 2 billion users across 180 countries. With an estimated 65 billion messages being transmitted daily apart from 2 billion minutes of voice and video calls being made every day in 2018, it is undoubtedly the world’s most popular messaging service. In India, its user base of 400 million makes the country WhatsApp’s largest market. Besides being free, WhatsApp is simple to use, allows one to send text, audio and video messages and documents. But, most of all, it promises privacy and secrecy of communication, assuring every user that “messages and calls are end-to-end encrypted. No one outside of this chat, not even WhatsApp, can…

No messaging service is 100 per cent secure The most vulnerable point is the phone itself. If someone gains access to your handset—either by hacking it or by physically stealing it—all the data stored on it can be accessed A phone infected with spyware can even be monitored by hackers in real time. Though software vulnerabilities are frequently patched, spyware is also constantly evolving Even if chats are deleted from an app, they can still be retrieved from the phone’s memory. The only way to prevent this happening is to physically destroy the phone Messages are stored in multiple locations—the sender’s and receiver’s phones, on cloud storage systems (if data is backed up), etc. Even if one’s phone is destroyed, the other locations remain points of vulnerability Messaging service providers…

The regular leaking of private WhatsApp messages recovered from various phones during the CBI’s probe into actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s death and the NCB’s inquiry into an alleged drug angle—which led to actor Deepika Padukone being questioned—has brought into question the legality of such practices. While there has been no official admission either from the police or the media about the source of these leaked messages, affected individuals, including Rhea Chakraborty and Padukone, can take the police and media houses to court in accordance with Sections 43A and 72A of the IT Act for compensation.…

›› Data theft occurs when records are stolen and sold unlawfully. To safeguard against data theft, data must be stored in parts across different locations and brought together as and when necessary. This ensures no data is lost and any data breach can be contained. The hacking could be at the behest of a competing service provider or country or sundry unscrupulous malicious agents ›› Unlawful data-sharing occurs when people who have access misuse it. This is hard to trace. A blockchain-enabled transaction ledger, where every step of the transaction is documented and missing gaps can be precisely identified, is one way of preventing it. But blockchains work better in a digital-only environment. A rogue employee selling data to a pharma or health research company is one such dreadful prospect…

Q. There were rumours that you would be on Bigg Boss, which invited a lot of trolling. Were you considering it? No, not right now. I don’t follow the show regularly, but do binge-watch it if I have to make a video on it. Also, let’s be honest, everyone is a self-proclaimed troll today and everyone seems to have an opinion. Q. As the most subscribed individual YouTuber in Asia, is there pressure to deliver? It’s a huge accomplishment and sometimes it hurts when people are critical without knowing my back story. And while what I do appears to be the most fun job on the planet, there are a lot of shortcomings. It’s not enough to simply generate great content. The audience expects consistency if you want to stand…