HC restrains sharing of Aarogya Setu app data without consent from users
BENGALURU: The Karnataka high court on Monday issued orders restraining the Union government and other agencies from sharing data of the Aarogya Setu application without obtaining informed consent of its users.
A division bench of Karnataka chief justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice Vishwajith Shetty issued the interim orders that stated: “Till further orders, we hereby restrain the Government of India and National Informatics Centre, the eighth and seventh respondents respectively from sharing the response data by applying the provisions of the Aarogya Setu Data Access and Knowledge Sharing Protocol, 2020..”
The court, emphasising on privacy in its 50 page order issued on Monday, said that it, prima facie hold that there is no informed consent of users taken for sharing of response data as provided in the Aarogya Setu Data Access and Knowledge Sharing Protocol, 2020.
“This is to an extent of issuing an interim injunction and the court has not yet decided on the merits of the case,” said one advocate aware of the developments, requesting not to be named.
“The interim relief is only confined to the data sharing protocol,” the advocate added.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Union government in April last year launched Aarogya Setu to track Covid-19 infections.
But the app, which has been downloaded over 100 million times from the Google play store, had raised apprehensions on issues of privacy of the data collected by government authorities.
Another advocate of one of the respondents said that the order is that the Union government is directed that they cannot share the data with any private agencies unless there is consent from the user.
“The interim order to the extent that sharing of data with other agencies is concerned is stayed,” the second person cited above said.
The National Informatics Centre (NIC), which designs government websites, in September last year said that it had no information on who or how the app was created, lending to more concerns from activists.
“After filing of an affidavit and the documents as aforesaid, it will be open for the said respondents to apply for vacating the limited interim relief granted as above,” the court added.
The petition was filed in Karnataka high court on 2 June last year.
The Karnataka high court (HC) also recorded the assurance of the union government that it would not deny any benefit or services to a citizen only on the ground that they had not installed the Aarogya Setu app.