1. On 16 Oct. 2015 the 22nd Collegiate Court on civil cases in Seoul Central District Court made a ruling partly in favor of human rights activists and civil society who filed against Google Inc. and Google Korea demanding disclosure of information (whether it provided their data to a third party).
We, the undersigned, are international human rights and transparency groups based around the world. We are writing in opposition to Twitter’s recent decision to revoke the ability of the tool Politwoops and similar tools to utilize Twitter’s Application Programming Interface, or API. We believe Twitter’s decision holds grave consequences for free expression and transparency around the world.
The ‘Urgent Action Network against Cyber Surveillance’ (Urgent Action Network), which is composed of 19 groups including human rights organization, labor party and labor unions, held the press conference to submit the petition for legislation of so-called ‘cyber surveillance prohibition act’, actually a revised bill of ‘Protection of Communications Secrets Act’(PCSA), in the national assembly on April 20, 2015. The petition, in which 2,910 people have signed, will be introduced and proposed in the national assembly.
The ‘Urgent Action Network against Cyber Surveillance’, which is composed of 19 groups including human rights organization, labor party and labor unions, held the ‘joint assembly of cyber surveillance victims :prologue for counterattack’ in the Korean Buddhism history and culture memorial hall on March 1, 2015. , and declared ‘the Declaration of Independence from Cyber Surveillance State’.
This research on NN in S.Korea was submitted to global NN coalition.
ICTs and Human Rights January 2013,National Human Rights Commission of Korea
* 원문 : http://bestbits.net/itu-plenipot-notes/ Executive Summary
Considering that the purpose of the constitution and international human rights law is to protect private life, personal information, and the privacy and freedom of communication from any governmental surveillance, the present legal system in South Korea, such as PCSA and the Data Protection Act, means that the government is infringing on these human rights.
It is the government’s duty to protect its citizens; therefore, there is little justification for the government to prioritise administrative efficiency over the rights of the socially disadvantaged. As a short-term goal, relevant laws must be amended so that female victims of violence can minimise exposure of their personal information. Of course, in the long term, legislators should consider gender-specific needs prior to making all policies in order to prevent such trial and error.
We are concerned that, in the socio-political context, there is a high possibility for IT to be misused to carry out state surveillance and commit violations of the right to privacy. We welcome the UN General Assembly resolution and the report of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on the right to privacy in the digital age, and we emphasize the urgent need for these recommendations to be implemented by the RoK.
