A petition was filed in the Kerala High Court by Balu Gopalakrishnan of Thiruvananthapuram through advocate Jaykar K S regarding the sharing of data of Corona Virus affected patients to US based Company Sprinklr without the permission of patients.The petition was heard by division bench consisting on honourable justice Devan Ramachandran and Justice T R Ravi.Additional advocate general K K Ravindranath appeared for the state. After a session of very heated arguments from both sides, the Kerala High Court said that it cannot agree with the Government's saying that the information related to covid affected and suspected patients are not sensitive.The High Court referred the judgement delivered by Puttuswamy that medical data comes under sensitive and privilaged data.
The hearing began with the additional advocate general submitting that the data that is being stored in Third party servers are neither privileged nor sensitive.The Honourable justice replied that it cannot be contented that medical data of an individual is not sensitive,referring it as a dangerous submission.
Also the court asked the state,the need of engaging a third party Saas provider to which the additional advocate general responded that it was a very timely intervention by the State Government of Kerala.The bench after giving the appreciation for their timely intervention and act asked about the protection of data and its safety.The additional advocate submitted the response next day with permission from the bench that said that privacy is very well protected in Sprinklr.The report says that according to terms and condition clauses and non disclosure agreements signed by U S Based Sprinklr with state Government make sure that the sensitive medical data of all the covid 19 suspected and affected patients are very well protected and thereby their right to privacy is also safeguarded.The report also said that the Privacy policy of Sprinklr ensured very high confidentiality.The breach of any clauses in Contract will be punishable under sec 75 of Information Technology Act in India.
The Court then asked whether the data is still being uploaded.And also Court asked to stop the uploading until there is assurance of the privacy of the data and guaranteeing confidentiality.
The Additional advocate general said that the data is stored on Amazon cloud Service which is the service provided by Central Government. The court then gave the State Government the warning that it is its duty to ensure that no breach happens.If any breach happens from the company,any citizen will be able to sue the State Government for the violation of Right to Privacy.The court also said that ”We'll make it very clear to you. We'll hold the State personally responsible, the officers will be personally responsible, whoever, if at all, is found guilty later on.”
