[Editorial] If there’s a reason for snooping, the NIS should say so

Posted on : 2016-03-15 11:52 KST Modified on : 2016-03-15 11:52 KST
The document Minjoo Party of Korea lawmaker Jang Ha-na received from SK Telecom after she requested information on SK’s provision of her phone records to the National Intelligence Service.
The document Minjoo Party of Korea lawmaker Jang Ha-na received from SK Telecom after she requested information on SK’s provision of her phone records to the National Intelligence Service.

The same investigative agencies that spied into vast amounts of communication data are now stonewalling the public that is trying to find out their reasons for doing so. When Hankyoreh reporters who discovered their data had been given to the National Intelligence Service (NIS), prosecutors and police inquired into the reason for the requests, the institutions refused to give one, each saying they had no legal obligation to comply. Even the telecom companies declined to share the contents of the agencies’ data requests - perhaps for fear of stepping on the wrong toes.

Even if the agencies collected personal communications information for legitimate purposes, there should be no reason they wouldn’t explain why. It was a legislative misstep in the first place to have the current Telecommunications Business Act allow investigative agencies to be furnished with personal communications data without a court warrant or notification to the person in question. When authorities are collecting personal information, it stands to reason that minimal safeguards should be in place. It’s an issue of basic civil rights, since intrusions into personal information, big or small, can have an effect on the person. Take judicial controls and notifications out of the equation, and we have no way of knowing what else the authorities will do. If the argument is that we don‘t need to know about the collection - and shouldn’t ask the reason - because it‘s just a matter of simple personal details, that’s as good as a promise by the authorities to wield their surveillance powers without any kinds of checks or controls.

As reasons for refusing to share their reasons for collecting information, the agencies are citing “investigative necessity” and “national security.” But even in those cases, other laws require at least after-the-fact notification to the individual. The Act on Reporting and Use of Certain Financial Transaction Information (Financial Information Use Act) requires that individuals be notified in writing within ten days of the “content of information provided, purposes of its use, and individuals provided with it” when their financial transaction information is given to investigative bodies. Even when notification is postponed for investigation purposes, it still must be given within six months, or up to a year with additional postponement. There’s no reason such notification and disclosure shouldn’t be given for personal communications data either. If notification procedures aren’t prescribed in the relevant laws, then we need to either amend the laws or make new ones by social consensus.

Yet a legal amendment that would fix these problems remains adrift in the National Assembly, having failed to even pass the relevant Standing Committee. To make matters worse, now the administration is attempting to enact a cyber-terror prevention law that would allow investigative agencies to gather communications data and information even more easily than they’re already doing. It’s hard not to think the aim is to peer even more closely into the public’s lives.

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