On the Net, your history lingers

Suppose your resident’s registration number and name were posted without your approval on an Internet site that everyone had access to? No doubt you would say that was an outright invasion of privacy, and indeed you would have the right to request that the Webmaster of the site remove the offending data immediately. If the Webmaster refused to accept that demand, you could contact the National Information Security Agency for further help. But the persistence of information in cyberspace and the ease of calling it up ― compared, for example, to going to a library and looking up back issues of periodicals ― raises another question. What if you want to remove or change your identity in cyberspace where the references are neither libelous nor a violation of law? A lawyer and former judge, who did not want his name used (because it would, he believes, simply perpetuate the misidentification he is trying to shake off), started a sideline business two years ago to offer education and career counseling to students and salary earners. He was confident that the new business would be lucrative, and publicized it as heavily as he could, including making himself available for interviews by newspapers. One in particular, in a leading Korean daily, helped establish his professional image as a career counselor. But the business lasted only a year, when he closed it after becoming convinced that career consulting was in less demand in Korea than it was in other developed countries. This man wants to return full-time to his legal work, but says he is still hounded by his Web-based persona. “Every time my name is entered in search engines or on a newspaper Web site, what pops up is mostly information about my previous job, not the present one,” he said in a telephone interview. As a lawyer, he knew that asking the newspaper’s Web site to delete the story about him would get him nowhere: The press has the right to run stories that do not contain actionable content. But he thought he might have a chance of persuading Naver, Korea’s most-visited portal site and search engine, to remove the career-counselor posts and “blog” references to him as a job counselor. Naver turned him down. “They said that unless news articles infringe on one’s human rights or have an apparent fallacy, no legal basis exists for banning them from public access,” he said ruefully. Kim Hyun-chul, a researcher at the Korea Information Security Agency, a Ministry of Information and Communication body, said, “People around him may identify him from the news, but it is hard to say that third parties would know who he is just by his name and occupation. There are many people with the same name and same occupation in this country.” Mr. Kim added that there was a question of the public’s right to know involved, and pointed out that the lawyer had agreed to the interview that he welcomed then but now finds offensive. Ending his interview with the JoongAng Daily, the lawyer sighed and said, “I found out that once my image was established on the Web, it was almost impossible to take control of it. It’s hard to accept, but I have no choice.” Lee Hyung-gyu, a professor of law at Hanyang University, said there was no real solution for people in the lawyer’s position. “Under the current legal system, Web operators should get agreement from any parties involved when they collect and distribute personal information. Internet users whose private data were incorrect or changed have a legal right to request a correction.” But he added that it would be impossible, as a practical matter, for Web sites to process requests for changes to the site by hundreds or thousands of persons for as just as many different personal reasons. Mr. Kim at the information security agency added the story of a Korean beauty contest winner who was preparing to sue a Web portal site, and refused to be interviewed by this newspaper or to allow her name to be used. She claims that a photograph that she posted on her personal Web page had been reposted on a portal site and that some Internet news outlets ran stories about her that included that photograph. The portal is responsible for making that photograph available, she claimed. But Mr. Kim disagrees. “She posted the picture on her personal home page that everybody can visit,” he said, which means she partially agreed to the distribution of the picture.” She apparently lost the copyright to the photo under the terms of service of the site where she originally posted it, although that could not be conclusively determined, and the woman in question refused to comment. Lee Chang-bum, the chief of a dispute mediation committee at the information security agency, agreed that problems could arise and perhaps lead to irreparable problems, but added that Internet posters should think about such matters before they put information about themselves into cyberspace. “It is not right to pass the buck to society for something that is obviously their responsibility,” Mr. Lee said. Korean law does protect those whose private information, particularly the link of a name with a resident registration number, address or cell phone number, is posted on the Internet. Indeed, that protection is much more complete in Korea than in many other countries because the Korean Constitution’s specific references to personal privacy. Those legal differences have resulted in journalistic circumlocutions such as “a man identified only as Park” that are irritating to Western readers of English-language publications here. But the Internet age has magnified the problems of Koreans who find that their expectations of personal privacy are being undermined. But like their counterparts in other countries, Koreans also find themselves the victims of invasions of privacy that anyone else would agree are serious. But part of that is the common Korean practice, which many Westerners would find horrifying and foreigners living here find irritating, of requiring people who want to register at a site ― to post messages or use e-mail services, for example ― to enter their names and resident registration numbers. Yahoo Korea, for example, requires that information to set up a free e-mail account, although Microsoft and Daum do not for their e-mail services. The information security agency here has gotten complaints from a small but increasing number of Koreans that that information is leaking onto the public Internet where search engines can find it and make it available. The number of such complaints, 37 in 2002, rose to 212 last year and to 183 in the first half of this year. In a broad reading of the Constitution, “private information” includes not only resident registration numbers, date of birth and banking and medical information, but also the region of birth, political inclinations and religion. Lee Chang-bum, with the mediation committee, said it is difficult to say that some of that information, if merely posted on the Web and not used for commercial or illegal purposes, in actionable. “Suppose a person posts something about another person in a personal blog, and the third party feels badly about it. The dispute should be settled between the two parties and the law can do nothing about it.” “The legal system as it is applied to violators of privacy policy in cyberspace is stricter here than in other countries,” Mr. Lee of Hanyang University said. “But there are many people who have yet to realize how serious it could be to expose another ‘s personal information,” He added that Koreans are also well equipped, because of the easy availability of high-speed Internet service, to such invasive posting. Mr. Lee, the mediator, agrees. “Koreans have this dual attitude toward privacy issues,” he said. “They want their privacy protected,” but complain when regulations inevitably get complicated and restrict their ability to post things about other people. “We should make efforts to protect ourselves in the first place before complaining about other individuals, marketers and the government,” he concluded. The Personal Information Dispute Mediation Committee Web site is at www.kopico.or.kr. It can order Internet sites to change their content or punish malicious Web site operators. In some cases, victims can seek financial compensation. by Seo Ji-eun