THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Undaunted by criticism of privacy breach, the police have decided to go ahead with the plan to retrieve Call Detail Record (CDR) of Covid patients to trace their primary and secondary contacts. The department have already wrote to the nodal officers of all telecom operators seeking their cooperation in the wake of reports that certain companies were delaying handing over the details.
The hi-tech cell and the Cyberdome were tasked to collect CDRs, while owing to the increase in number of Covid cases, the district cyber wings have also been allowed to exercise their right.Brushing aside the allegations of data privacy breach, a senior police officer, who is part of the cyber operations said, the CDR of 10 days before being tested positive is taken currently. Since the situation warrants swift action, the CDR is obtained within 30 minutes of filing the request with the nodal officers,the officer added.
He claimed the content of the conversation will not be available in CDR as some think. Only the geographical location of the patients will be used for Covid prevention operation.
“Basic intention behind obtaining CDR is to find the places that the infected persons had visited. If a person had gone to several places in the recent days, he may not be able to remember all those visits. The CDR will be used to plug this gap. It will play an important role in preparing the route map of the patients,” said the officer.
However, the rise in number of cases might derail the exercise using CDRs as the operators might be reluctant to share such a huge volume of data, the officer added.