The police are using call data records (CDR) of COVID-19 patients only to identify their tower location details and assist such persons in recollecting their activities/movements of the past few days to identify their primary and secondary contacts, a statement filed by the government in the Kerala High Court on Thursday said.
The government pointed out that the CDR of only 14 days prior to the date on which a person had become positive was taken. After identifying the places, the CDR was destroyed. The persons to whom a positive person may have had telephonic contact were not looked at.
The statement was filed in response to a public interest litigation filed by Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala challenging the State Police Chief’s order on collection of CDR of COVID patients.
The statement filed by senior government pleader Suman Chakravarthy said the CDR was maintained confidentially for the limited purpose of identifying the tower locations and once the places were identified, it was immediately destroyed. There was no breach of confidentiality in the matter of collection of CDR.
The government submitted that the CDR was stored by the police and not by any third party or ‘unknown agency’. All possible measures had been taken by the police to ensure that it was not accessed by any third party.
