Tanvi Sinha
The Karnataka HC passed an interim order against the Centre and the NIC from sharing personal details of individuals through the Aarogya Setu app that was built to track Covid-19 individuals.
A division bench of Chief justice AS Oka and Justice Vishwajith Shetty passed the order after noting prima facie that there was no informed consent taken of the users while sharing their data via the app.
The order comes after Cyber Security activist Anivar Aravind challenged the imposition of the app on citizens on grounds of violation to the right to privacy.
The bench mentioned that there is a reference to the protocol for informed consent of sharing response data in the Aarogya Setu Data Access and Knowledge Sharing Protocol, 2020.
The bench also noted that informed consent of users of the app was taken in a privacy policy, but the data retained in this is limited to whatever is provided in the privacy policy only.
The bench took cognizance, however, the Centre’s assurances of no services were denied to people who did not download the app.
The court stated that while they were not giving any relief for the privacy policy, they were barring the government from sharing data of the users of the app temporarily.
The government has contended that it does not violate any privacy laws because the app is built to track coronavirus amongst people. Much earlier in South Korea, which was one of the leading countries to start a coronavirus tracking apps, issues of privacy were similarly dismissed on grounds of necessarily removing the virus.
