Police, Prosecutors to Be Limited to Personal Information Access

The investigative authorities will soon be required to notify individuals of their use of personal information for investigative purposes if they intends to access personal data stored at government agencies. Government organizations will not be allowed to share collected personal information with each other arbitrarily.

The Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs (MOGAHA) said on June 13 that it has decided to draft a revision of `the privacy protection law` governing use of personal information by government agencies. It plans to consult with related ministries before putting up the proposal at the National Assembly by the end of this year.

The mandatory notification will be applied to any government organization seeking to provide personal information to other bodies including investigative agencies. Notification to individuals will be made either right after the use of information or regularly at certain times of the year.

Investigative bodies such as the Prosecutors` Office and the police agency are presently allowed to access personal information kept by the National Tax Service, including tax payment records, for investigative purposes. They are not required, however, to notify individuals or their using personal information.

“It has long been suspected that the police and prosecutors abuse their right to secure personal information,” said an official at MOGAHA. “Once the law revised, however, we believe such worries will be addressed.”

▽Access to Personal Information Limited

MOGAHA plans to revise the law to allow government organizations to only refer to information kept by other organizations. If they want to keep the information, they will have to seek approval by Minister of Government Administration and Home Affairs.

For instance, if a government agency uses car administration data kept at the Ministry of Construction and Transportation and resident records at MOGAHA, it will not be allowed to store the used data in its own system.

Presently, agencies are free to use and store personal information collected by other organizations provided that they inform head of MOGAHA of the storage.

“We decided to revise the law to prevent a single agency from securing unnecessarily much personal information and using it for other purposes than intended,” said an official at MOGAHA. “If the proposal is passed, concerns by the Korea Teachers and Education Workers Union that the new students database system NEIS is vulnerable to abuse of private information will be addressed.”

▽Revision of Similar Laws Required

To prevent abuse of personal information, however, it is pointed out that information provided by non-governmental entities such as financial service firms and telecoms carriers must also be subject to the new privacy protection standard.

Under the existing law, 13 government agencies such as the Prosecutors` Office, the National Tax Service and the Fair Trade Commission are allowed to ask financial service firms for customer transactions data for investigative or taxation purposes.

Then financial service firms need to inform customers of provision of financial information in less than 10 days after the cooperation. When asked by government agencies, however, they can delay notification by up to 12 months, leaving individuals uninformed for almost a year.

Telecoms carriers even do not inform subscribers of provision of personal phone records data. If phone conversation is wiretapped by investigators, however, they must inform individual of the interference within 30 days.

“We need to revise the related laws so that individuals are notified immediately of provision of their personal financial or phone record data to investigators if any,” said an official at MOGAHA.

Hyun-Doo Lee ruchi@donga.com