BANGALORE - The Kerala government's decision to collect the phone call records of Covid-19 patients in the state has evoked concerns in India about breaches of privacy becoming routine during the pandemic.

On Aug 13, Mr Pinarayi Vijayan, the Chief Minister of the southern state, said that the police were using call details to determine how many people had come in contact with Covid-19 patients. Kerala's opposition parties said it "infringes on patient privacy."

The police in many states collaborate with health and municipality workers to trace contacts, enforce social distancing and quarantine rules, and manage containment zones. But state officials now admit that the police may also be accessing Covid-19 patients' call records.

Call records reveal a person's location, numbers called, calls received and missed, and the date, time and duration of calls. They also have the numbers of sent and received messages. While they do not have the content of the calls and messages, officials said a patient's social interactions could be inferred from the number, frequency and duration of calls.

Senior officers in law enforcement agencies can legally demand a person's call records from mobile service providers only during an investigation, to protect the security of the country or to prevent an offence, and in some instances, under court orders.

Kerala police justified using call records by maintaining that the contents of telephone calls are not being accessed in the data collection. "For the same reason, the section 5 (2) of the Indian Telegraph Act is not applicable here."

Kerala is not the only state using phone records to trace whereabouts. In late July, a 30-year-old in the Davanagere district of Karnataka, was awaiting his Covid-19 test results, when friends he frequently spoke to on the phone called him to say that state officials had informed them he had tested positive. A Davanagere district official confirmed this: "We get the call data from the police department of all the patients. We call the people on the list to trace the contacts."

The first known instance of call records being accessed in India for the Covid-19 response was when the Andhra Pradesh government used it to trace participants of a Tablighi Jamaat religious meeting in Delhi in March. Officials collected call details of all phones that were in Delhi's Nizamuddin neighbourhood during the meeting, and traced over 13,000 people who may have been exposed throughout the country.

"The Tablighi incident seems to have set the pattern to treat patients like criminals, and do contact tracing through any means," said Mr T. Sundararaman, India convenor of the People's Health Movement.

Officials in four states told The Straits Times accessing call data records was a necessary and accepted method of contact tracing.

A Chhattisgarh state official who was in charge of Covid response said: "We initially used call records to find the Tablighi Jamaat people. But later we used it for other persons as well, when people misguided us about their whereabouts."

The Uttar Pradesh police has been accessing call records for months in the capital Lucknow, as well as Noida and Ghaziabad districts. A senior policeman in the state said: "There is no formal or general order about taking call data, but if somebody has evaded quarantine or run away, it is tantamount to a crime under the Epidemic Diseases Act. In that case, police collect call records."

Dr Amar Fettle, Kerala's nodal officer for Covid efforts, said that Pathanamthitta district officials had used call records as early as in March to trace contacts of a family that had returned from Italy but had not revealed vital information about their movements.

"Initially, the health department collected this call data. But later, the government gave the task to the police. The feeling seems to be that people won't reveal their details properly to doctors and nurses and they will be more scared of a person in uniform," said Dr Fettle.

Privacy is a fundamental right in India, but the government has not yet passed a law to protect it.

Mr Apar Gupta, executive director of digital rights group the Internet Freedom Foundation, said using call records for contact tracing was worrying. "It is operationalised through police departments rather than health government offices… It lacks safeguards such as purpose limitations, and due to lack of any oversight, has the potential for being used for extraneous purposes," said Mr Gupta.

However, Indian and state governments have regularly accessed call records even before the Covid-19 crisis.

On Feb 12, the Cellular Operators Association of India, a lobby of telecommunication companies, had complained in a letter to the federal department of telecommunications that various state units from at least nine states were seeking "ad hoc, bulk", and voluminous detail on a regular basis without adhering to the standard operating procedure, such as furnishing reasons and not using the data received for any other purpose.

The pandemic may have only widened and legitimised the practice.