The Chennai Municipal Corporation’s website now lets anyone search for birth and death certificates, only requiring them to fill in gender and one other criterion from registration number, person’s name, date of birth, place of birth or mother and father’s name to display the birth or death certificates of Chennai residents or those born there. (H/T: St_Hill, NDTV reported it originally.)
It is not clear since when the corporation let anybody search for these details, but the online birth and death certificates seem to have existed from 2008 (!!), when one could verify and print their birth and death certificates online.
It’s as simple as it sounds. No login, no validation, no OTP, nothing. Essentially, anyone can download anyone’s birth certificate
— St_Hill (@St_Hill) December 23, 2015
@St_Hill You are also one of the reason for letting our privacy out by tweeting this loophole in a public forum. Please be responsible. — மாரா♣ (@maaraaji) December 23, 2015
A quick search for other metros like Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Hyderabad revealed that only Kolkata and Delhi do not list an online process for birth and death certificate search, whereas for Mumbai and Hyderabad, users could use registration number and year, ward, gender, DOB (somewhat safer alternative); and DOB and gender to avail certificates.
The public relations officer of the Chennai Corporation told MediaNama that users could obtain birth and death certificates only of Chennai residents, starting from 1990 to date, but on the website, users can access certificates right from 1910 to date. What’s worse is that the user looking for someone else’s birth or death certificate can also print the downloaded PDF file.
@St_Hill I informed it to Public Health Department contact mentioned in that site and they said they will be taking action soon to fix it.
— மாரா♣ (@maaraaji) December 23, 2015
A random search for birth certificates with DOB 4 Jan 2002 gave us more than a 100 results. Readers would also like to note that the website search takes into consideration the birthplace (home or hospital), so it basically does not matter where you were born, your certificate is bound to be found online. Moreover, the website notes that
“This certificate is computer generated and does not require any Seal/Signature. The authenticity of this certificate can be verified here. The Registration Number is unique to each birth.”
A tweet from user Knowsnotmuch reveals the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969 as stating that any user can ask the Registrar for an entry in the register of births and deaths, and obtain an extract from it, provided that the cause of death is not disclosed.
@St_Hill Don’t need to even do that, the PDF urls are sequential – https://t.co/zXMavDExJUhttps://t.co/nkqTk5WHh2https://t.co/cvGbIexOze
— Karthik Balakrishnan (@karthikb351) December 23, 2015
@St_Hill now at least it has captcha, tho useless. Back in 2010 zilch. I was shocked when passport office directed me to use this website
— Tarun (@tarun22b) December 23, 2015
Previous privacy violations:
– In May this year, as part of its initiative to encourage LPG users to pay market price and not avail the LPG subsidy provided by the government, Bharatgas put up a list of customers who opted out on its website.
– In April, the TRAI released the email IDs of everyone who replied to its consultation paper on net neutrality, providing another glaring example of how lightly online privacy is treated in India.
@St_Hill All Salute Amma for this fantastic effort of digitization. I have already begun the process of creating an alternate ID for me. 🙂 — Abhijit Bera (@abhibera) December 23, 2015
India has seen it’s own share of privacy nightmares this year: the TRAI wants a definitive date to make GPS mandatory, a draft encryption policy which weakened personal and business security but was later pulled due to an outcry (lest we forget the porn ban and the moral un-policing); but the rest of the world is not far behind. A Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT for 2015-16 is also looking into digital privacy after the Government said that Indians do not have a fundamental right to privacy.
MediaNama’s take:
We’ve said it before, we need a privacy law. If you’re a Chennai or Hyderabad resident or were born there, one of your most important national identity papers is online for the world to see and print, and might we add, take advantage of. Digitisation is great, but not at the risk of individual privacy.
Also read:
– Is there a fundamental right to privacy in the digital age? Notes from the SFLC.in debate
– MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar pushes for a Privacy Law, says IT Ministry’s response in Parliament was “misleading”
– Aadhaar and the Waiver of the Right to Privacy
– The privacy nightmare that no one in India talks about
– Which countries are better at protecting privacy? (BBC, 2013)
Our Privacy and Right to privacy coverage.
Image Credit: Josh Hallett
