Call records of COVID-19 patients not required: Kerala govt tells High Court

The Kerala High Court

In what looks like a sudden volte-face, the Kerala government told the High Court on Wednesday that it required just the tower location of COVID positive patients and not the other call details of a more personal nature.

This clarification was provided when the Court considered a petition moved by opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala challenging the constitutionality of the government's decision to collect call details record (CDR) of COVID patients and those in quarantine.

The court was also told that CDRs were not being collected at the moment. Only the tower location of the patients during the 14 days before confirmation of the infection was being sought, the government submitted.

If tower location alone was required, the court said it was not an issue. The case will be taken up again on August 21.

Though the government has now informed the court that call details were not being collected, it was on August 12 that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the collection of CDRs had been going on for "some months".

The police, in the name of contact tracing, have been asked to collect the CDRs of all the infected. State Police Chief Loknath Behera, in a circular issued on August 11, had asked the ADGP (Intelligence) to take up with BSNL the matter of releasing the CDRs of COVID patients. Behra also hinted that he was miffed with Vodafone because the private service provider was, in Behra's words, "delaying the sending of the CDRs".

Top BSNL officials, on the condition of anonymity, told Onmanorama that the government's statement offers clarity on the issue. "The CDR and tower location are two different sets of data. While CDR is related to billing, the other is location specific. Tower location details, which would not reveal any other call detail of the customer, can be easily provided," the official said.

The CDR will include all data related to a phone call except the content: the phone number of the caller, the number of the receiver, the call duration, time of the call, the equipment type and call type (whether it was a call or SMS).

Chennithala had argued that the state government had no powers to collect the CDRs of COVID patients under any laws in the statute books. Not under the Indian Telegraph Act or under the Criminal Procedure Code, he said. "COVID patients are not criminals for the government to insist on getting their CDRs," Chennithala said. He said that tower location would suffice if contact tracing was the objective.

The opposition leader also doubted whether this was a sinister means to leak the phone details of those criticising the government.

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