Personal Records Leaked In Name of Security

-No private life any more

Mr. Bae, aged 35, who handles case-sensitive and important information for his company, is reluctant to use his cellular phone these days. Information about Mr. Bae that his close friend heard from someone working at an investigation agency was proven to be exactly right. That person has known every single thing about the dates and times that he telephoned and the dialogue that he made with the other side of the phone in detail. “The reference of communication records by national agencies, such as the recent case of its inquiry into a telephone call made by a journalist from Kookmin Daily by the National Intelligence Service, is not another person’s story any more,” he revealed.

Last year it was not just the 15 key communication industries like KT, Hanaro communication and SK Telecom, but also a few value-added network services and subsidiary communication companies such as Neowiz, Yahoo Korea and Korea dot.com that have cooperated with investigation agencies’ telephone record tracking. Almost all the communication companies, totaling around 70, have been involved in providing their subscribers’ information to investigation agencies.

-‘Digital traces do not disappear’

Lately, a terminal that has a built-in GPS chip has been released to the public and makes it possible to track a cell phone subscriber’s whereabouts within 5 meters. Shockingly enough, especially for location searches, the management of its security is so loose that anyone can utilize it, not only the national authorities.

A typical case centered on a group involving a staff member of SK Telecom that recently received money from external client and give information on the whereabouts of a subscriber. The offenders allegedly exposed the location of the subscriber to a third party by abusing the “cellular phone GPS (global positioning system) service” without permission. It is more than astounding that a reproduced terminal which the ESN of the subscriber’s terminal was brought and used for it during the process.

-Is Violation of communication privacy legal?

Article 13 of the law of Communication Privacy Protection reads: “Prosecutors and police officers have to get approval from their supervisors in case of requesting the records of communication facts.” There is also an exception clause that reads: “The head of information agency can request the reference of communication records if it has to do with national safety and security. However, they are accessible to the records once they receive the signature of supervisors because there is no standard ‘national security issue.” The journalist’s case was the same.

Civil groups and related experts point out that as information technology (IT) is developing, personal records remain everywhere but the public can’t escape from “regular monitoring status” due to neglectful reference check procedures.

Due to this, some affluent companies tend to invest considerable amounts of money in communication security. A president of Korea Communication Security Ahn Kyo-seung said that “industries reinforce communication network security as a prevention against rival companies or industrial spies. But what is likely the true reason of doing that is in how they consider wiretapping or reference checks of records by national agencies.”

7. BBC, NK Conducted Living Body Experiment In Concentration Camp

On February 9 (local time), the British government-run broadcasting provider, the BBC, will telecast a documentary that contains information that North Korea has carried out live human experiments for testing of its chemical and biological weapons on children, women and political criminals who are in custody in a concentration camp.

“The Access to Evil,” part of the BBC’s series of “This World” programs, will divulge that North Korea has established gas cells and carried out chemical and biological experiments to murder political criminals and their family members, reported the BBC’s Internet edition on February 1.

The BBC has produced this program based on official top-secret North Korean government documents and the statements of Kwon Hyuck (pseudonym), who took charge in 1993 of the 22nd concentration camp in North Korea, just next to the Russian boundaries. The BBC has disclosed that Kwon drew a picture of the gas cell and testified as follows:

“It is customary for them to carry out the experiments on an entire family. I have personally seen the gas experiment conducted. Until the last moment, the parents were trying to breathe into to their children’s mouths in order to save their lives, even as they were throwing up and dying. The scientists were looking at the scene through the transparent window,” Kwon disclosed, adding, “At that time, thinking of them as a criminals of the country, I couldn’t have any compassion for them. The wardens have been enjoying the torture for the first three years since they took the job.”

A woman named Lee Sun-ok, who was detained in the concentration camp and appears on this program revealed, “One warder accosted me, giving wet soaked Chinese cabbage. He ordered me to distribute it to 50 healthy women. 50 women who ate part of the cabbage screamed for help and died within twenty minutes.” This documentary is scheduled to disclose a government document that reads, “We make use of political criminals as tools for live human experiments and biological weapons manufacture.”

The journalist of BBC who appeared on this program remarked, “I have seen the North Korean documents that stated ‘Deliver the prisoners for liquid gas experiments that are to be conducted for the use of chemical weapons manufacture.’ ”