The Report on Human Rights Situation in the Republic of Korea
C) Direction to Improve the Communications Data Provision System Under
the [Telecommunications Business Act]
The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution “Right to Privacy in the Digital
Age” in 2013, and this resolution emphasized the need to strictly protect not only
the contents of the communications, but also the personal information (meta data)
of the communicating parties by stating that “certain types of metadata, when
aggregated, can reveal personal information that can be no less sensitive than the
actual content of communications and give an insight into an individual’s
behaviour, social relationships, private preferences and identity.”53)
Under the current system of providing the telecommunications data, the
investigating agencies can acquire the personal information of the telecommunications subscribers, without consent, but lacks any legal regulatory function
before or after. This is the reason for frequent question into an invasion of privacy
and highly likely to violate the right to the self-determination of personal
information. The UN HRC, in the 4th Country Report in 2015, showed concern over
the fact that the government can request user information, without warrant, to all
telecommunications business operators for investigation purposes pursuant to
Article 83(3) of the [Telecommunications Business Act].
Therefore, it is necessary to allow a request to be provided with communications
data under Article 83(3) of the [Telecommunications Business Act] only when
applicable under the supplementary and exception cases by reducing the reasons
for allowing the provision. For example, it is necessary to consider the means of
specifying the reason for the request, similar to that of Article 215 of the [Criminal
Procedure Act] ‘when there are circumstances where a criminal suspect is
suspected of having committed a crime and the articles or persons to be seized,
searched, or inspected are deemed to be connected with the relevant case.’
53) UN Human Rights Council, “The right to privacy in the digital age”(A/HRC/27/37), 2014.
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