Kerala: Opposition slams privacy breach after CM reveals 'CDR of COVID patients traced'

In yet another controversial move, Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan, on Wednesday admitted that the Kerala police have been tracking 'call detail records (CDR)' of COVID-19 patients for contact tracing in the past few months. He added that the data was being used only for 'contact tracing', assuring that there was no privacy breach. The move has been criticized by Leader of Opposition (LOP) Ramish Chennithala alleging Vijayan was turning Kerala into a 'surveillance state'.

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Kerala police trace CDR for COVID contact-tracing

Addressing a press conference, Vijayan said,  "(CDRs) were being used by police in the state as part of adopting innovative and scientific methods for effective contact tracing. The details would not be used for any other purpose and there would be no intrusion into the privacy of the patient". The police have stated that CDRs were the easiest way to draw up routes of COVID patients.

Reports state that Kerala Police chief Loknath Behara issued a circular instructing ADGPs to get in touch with telecom operators Vodafone and BSNL to procure CDRs. Several other reports state that service providers were hesitant to share CDRs. As per the law, CDRs are retrieved for matters of national security or criminal investigations.

'Police to collect call record details of COVID patients,' says Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan

Opposition slams privacy breach

Slamming the LDF government's admission to tracking CDRs, Leader of Opposition (LOP) Ramish Chennithala said it was a blatant infringement of Article 21 - Right to personal liberty. He also questioned if this move was sanctioned by the Chief Secretary, the number of people whose details were collected. He also stated that they will not let the LDF government encroach the privacy & lives of Keralites.

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Kerala-Sprinklr privacy breach

Earlier in March, the Kerala government used Sprinklr, a SaaS (Software as a Service) company to aide grassroots health workers to compile data on people about their symptoms and health conditions. The company had reportedly developed a tool to assist doctors and medical officials to choose if a particular citizen needed hospitalisation, based on their inputs. Chennithala had alleged that the government had allowed the US firm to access health data of around 1.75 lakh people under quarantine without taking their consent, but the government defended its move.

Sprinklr adheres to Kerala HC order on citizen health data, claims 'back-up data deleted'

On April 24, upholding COVID-19 patients' privacy, the Kerala High Court directed the state government to anonymize all data collected and collated so far and allow US-firm Sprinklr to access data only after anonymization is completed while hearing pleas challenging the Kerala govt- Sprinklr deal. Subsequently, the Kerala government assured that 'Sprinklr' deleted all back-up data on COVID-19 patients shared with it. Kerala has 13,096 actives cases and 24,922 recoveries and 126 deaths.