A Constitutional Study on the Protection and Restriction on Communication Secrets - Focused on the Wiretapping -
While the nation has gone through a rapid development of Information and Communications Technology(ICT), information from many diverse f...
A Constitutional Study on the Protection and Restriction on Communication Secrets - Focused on the Wiretapping -
While the nation has gone through a rapid development of Information and Communications Technology(ICT), information from many diverse fields is collecting, exchanging and affecting our daily lives much in various ways. Under these circumstances, a term which is called `Information-oriented society,' became general. Especially in these days, the popularization of telephone and Internet causes a communication environment upheaval, and electronic devices like smart-phone and mobile computing atmosphere lead its explosive changes once again.
According to the progress of information and communication society, the number of newly evolved crimes are increasing and its techniques tend to became more diverse. Furthermore, a terrorism and serious levels of organized crimes are proliferating as utilizing information technology in these days. Each nation provides institutional strategies for crimes or terrorism prevention; as seeking some kinds of legal mechanism that protect associated problems like privacy or personal information damages. Consequently, there are some new methods for the criminal investigation to handle prompt changes of social phenomena or its crime trends and the power or authority of investigation agencies tend to become more strengthen.
However, all the state institutions cannot infringe upon its substance and cannot exceed the limit of restriction in the fundamental rights which are guaranteed to be in the Constitution. For these reasons, there should be some kind of sufficient control systems to prevent investigation agencies by abusing or misusing the criminal investigation methods and to guarantee the people's fundamental human rights; moreover, those control systems should work practically and precisely. However, the underlay of maintenance law and a legislation system are not yet sufficient, active enough to improve.
The wiretapping has been accepted by an inevitable method for criminal investigations or crime prevention when other methods are not qualified enough to use. Korea had conducted the extensive wiretapping for crime prevention or national security by intelligence agencies or investigation agencies without any clear legal basis or proper control systems.
The protection of Communications Secrets Act is a law which created on a basis of unsavory experiences of our society happened in Analog Communication Era. The Act not only includes self-reflection on the illegal interception committed secretly but also considers practical demands for the necessity of wiretapping for the intelligence and criminal investigation for national interest. The wiretapping on the telecommunication has lawfully practiced following enactment of the Protection of Communications Secrets Act 1994.
However, now the Act needs to have an overall reappraisal because it still has anachronistic contents. Due to the evolving of technologies and its crucial reality, ensuring the fundamental rights of the communications secrets getting harder and harder to protect as it is guaranteed in the Constitution. This harsh fact is the current address of Korea, as known as `Digital Powered Nation'. A series of events happened in last two years, revealed specific loopholes in the Protection of Communications Secrets Act, mainly in regard of the Internet wiretapping. For instance, it does not only search and confiscate e-mail storage in a hard disk but also monitoring the Internet line in real time which is a new technique, so-called `Deep Packet Inspection', emerged as a serious and contradictory problem of the Protection of Communications Secrets Act. The Protection of Communications Secrets Act was amended after all, then completed telecommunication followed the Criminal Procedure Act to find digital evidences.
Moreover, the Criminal Procedure Act was also amended by including enhanced requirements of e-mail search and seizure. To sum up, all affairs and issues related to the Protection of Communications Secrets Act, targets and techniques of wiretapping are evolving from the traditional analogue methods to the digital environments. However, Korean legislation of law could not reflect this actuality to a real case.
First, the existing of traditional wiretapping like an eavesdropping is reproducing its way; gradually tapping the Internet connection of a targeted line and the telecommunication service provider's cooperation wholly conduct to inspect and collect all the information and recombine all the necessary information. Thus, the Protection of Communications Secrets Act does not overcome an essential difference between the analogue technology and the digital technology, which cannot be coped with the new digital technology environments.
Secondly, under current control of Protection of Communications Secrets Act, its dichotomous structure of wiretapping and confiscation does not mean very much in the digital communications' era. The criteria of analogue division has become meaningless in the digital communication environments because of its technical properties which makes no difference between the tapping and the confiscating. In addition, there are no differences between the data collected through wiretapping or search and confiscation under the non-volatile digital communication environments. In other words, there are no essential differences about corresponding a discriminatory control on the digital communications via wiretapping and search and confiscation.
However, identical legislation were applied to completely different digital communication environments in the analogue communications' era and it can easily jeopardize the safety of the fundamental rights. Drastic changes in communication environments and emerging communication medium such as Social Network Service(SNS) and web and mobile messaging services are obviously showing the limit of the Protection of Communications Secrets Act. Therefore, the statutes should be urgently amended as a reflection of this convergence and integration era based on the digital technologies.
This treatise is primarily composed social issues and its legal factors to overcome the Protection of Communications Secrets Act's defects in analogue environmental limits and properly reflected newly developed features of digital technologies. Especially, the problems of environmental changes which are mainly formed with the Internet like digital communications are mainly discussed. This may propose the measures to improve and apply the Protection of Communications Secrets Act, constitutionally under the constant developing technology environments.