CMO Bulk Messaging Issue: Kerala High Court Reserves Verdict, State's Plea To Send 'Thank You' Messages Also To Be Decided

The Kerala High Court on Thursday (March 5) reserved its verdict in the plea alleging violation of privacy of government employees and judges by the State by sending bulk messages to their phone numbers, which was illegally accessed from SPARK [Service Pay Roll Administrative Repository for Kerala].Justice Bechu Kurian Thomas heard detailed arguments advanced by the Advocate General Gopalakrishna Kurup appearing for the State government. The Advocate General stressed upon the arguments advanced yesterday, particularly that there is nothing illegal or illegitimate regarding the messages sent by the KSTIM using the centre ID of the Chief Minister's office since there is no law or regulation being violated. He also pointed out that prior this instance of Whatsapp messages, the communication was through SMS mode provided by the KSITM and it was just an infrastructural change.The AG then told the Court that once consent is given by a Data Principal for storing data in SPARK, which is facilitated by KSITM, the State, including the Chief Minister becomes custodian of the data. He also brought to the Court's attention that not just any person is able to access the data, only a person authorised by a two-step process alone can access the platform and send messages.Yesterday, a petition was moved by the State seeking permission of the Court to send 'Thank You' messages to the persons who had contributed to the Chief Minister's Disaster Relief Fund (CMDRF). The petitioners in the plea had objected to the same saying that acknowledgment receipts were already issued at the time when the donations were made and there is no need for new messages at this point of time. They also told that an objection would be filed and the acknowledge receipt would be produced today. Addressing this, the AG submitted that at the time when donations are made, any person outside SPARK has to give some details before making the payment, which in turn are given to the CM's office."Because, transfer of money to CMDRF can only be possible after giving these. While treasury takes these payments, they will transfer all the data. All data is available with CMDRF. Using these data only we have sought," he added.The Court also interacted with Sri. Sabarish, one of the head of e-governance, KSITM (Kerala State IT Mission), who had appeared before the Bench pursuant to its oral direction yesterday.The officer told the Court that there is a move to enhance SPARK and to build a Human Resource portal as part of the Digital Kerala Initiative. It was part of this that the Director of IT Mission sent letter to give updated list of employees in SPARK and only details like mobile phone and name was sought, which was transferred to IT mission through an official channel. He assured the Court that no AI based information can be accessed from SPARK. "So if the Chief Minister wants to send a message, how does this data get transferred? To Chief Minister's account? How does it happen?," Justice Bechu enquired.Explaining the entire process, the officer replied: "It is not the Chief Minister's account. I'll explain the process, sir. The Meta has got two products: Facebook and Whatsapp. Earlier, when people used to get SMS message, they cannot validate whether it was from the same source or not. They used to get lots of messages. Lots of cyber crimes were happening, so we need to put in a source which can be validated. For that Facebook has got a Meta business account. As an individual, I can create a central ID. Chief Minister or PMO something like that is called the central ID. If I try to create a central ID like that, what Meta does is, it will talk to the concerned account, say PMO's account, and it will talk to the administrator of that account whether I am an authorised guy and, unless and otherwise he gets an authorisation, it will be treated as free channel. They don't allow that central ID to be done. Here, what has happened is, IT mission has earlier developed a platform for sending SMS but it was passive and not that active. So, we created a new platform for sending through Whatsapp. For each message to be sent, we need to have a central ID. At that point of time, the only central ID, which was validated and available was the Chief Minister's. We plan to have more centre IDs like Government of Kerala, SPARK and even department-wise central IDs, which has to undergo the process of validation and verification by the Meta team to enable it."Justice Bechu then asked, "It was validated much earlier or only for this?"Answering the query, the officer clarified that it happened much earlier and all the CMDRF messages and IMPRD related messages were going through the CM's central ID. This was integrated to the platform by the IT mission and there is one designated nodal officer exclusively for this purpose, who alone can access the platform using multi-factor authentication. At the click of a button, he can send all these messages but only those approved, the...

CMO Bulk Messaging Issue: Kerala High Court Reserves Verdict, State's Plea To Send 'Thank You' Messages Also To Be Decided

K. Salma Jennath

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