As far as the control on cyberspace is concerned, Korea appears to fall into the category of a police state, according to a biannual research of the world’s primary Web search engine Google.
Google disclosed its Transparency Report last week, which showed the number of government inquires for information about users and requests for the entity to take down or censor content during the first half of 2010.
The report demonstrated that the Seoul administration asked the U.S.-based entity to remove content 38 times for a total of 8,549 items and inquired about information on users 170 times during a six-month period.
The number of removal requests is the largest in Asia, and sixth overall in the world. The figure for data requests is second to India’s 1,430 in Asia. The statistics for China was not available for some reason.
Korea’s removal requests were non-court orders involving Google’s Internet search, keyword advertisements or blogging services and 100 percent of them were fully or partially complied with.
The Korean government may complain that it is being falsely accused of the cyber censorship because many of the requests are simple ones regarding the country’s unique resident registration numbers (RRNs).
They are widely used to identify customers and confirm age for adult material here. But the system has generated concerns on identity theft as it contains too much data on any individual ― their date of birth, gender, registration region and registration order.
Google also admits, ``In Korea, many of our requests come from one government agency that requests removal of search results that contain RRNs, which is the Korean equivalent of a Social Security number,’’ the outfit said on its Web site.
``The majority of the more than 8,000 individual uniform resource locators (URLs) that Korean government agencies sought to be removed in the first half of 2010 fell in this category.’’
However, the nation is still coming under fire that Asia’s fourth-largest economy interferes with the services of Internet firms too frequently, not only for global search engines but also domestic Web service providers.
Cyber censorship has been a hot issue in Korea where boisterous Internet users are evaluated to showcase both the extreme cases of the Internet’s advantages and drawbacks.
Google started to come up with the Transparency Report early this year for the latter part of 2009 and promised to update it every six months.
``We hope this step toward greater transparency will help in ongoing discussions about the appropriate scope and authority of government requests,’’ Google’s Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond said at the firm’s official blog.
Yet, Google did not disclose details on China, saying that ``Chinese officials consider censorship demands to be state secrets, so we cannot disclose that information at this time.’’
한국, 사이버 경찰 국가로 전락?
우리 정부가 인터넷 서치 엔진 구글에 올해 상반기 요청한 개인정보 조회 및 데이터 삭제 건수가 아시아 최고 수준인 것으로 들어났다. 일각에서는 한국이 사이버 경찰 국가로 전락하는 것이 아닌가 하는 우려가 제기되고 있다.
구글은 지난 주 ‘투명성 보고서’를 통해 각 국가별로 구글과 유튜브, 텍스트큐브 등 관련 서비스 사이트에 올라온 데이터에 대한 삭제 요청과 개인정보 요구 건수를 공개했다.
올해 상반기 한국의 컨텐츠 삭제 요청은 38건으로 아시아에서 제일 많았고 전세계적으로는 여섯 번째에 랭크되었다. 개인정보 요청은 170건으로 아시아에서 인도 다음으로 두 번째로 많았다.
한국의 요청은 법원과 무관하게 행정기관을 통한 요청이었으며 구글은 모든 요청에 대해 전적으로 혹은 부분적으로 수용했다고 밝혔다.
한국 정부는 삭제 요청의 대부분은 주민등록 번호에 관한 것이라고 항변했고 구글도 인정했다. 하지만 한국 정부의 삭제 요청과 정보 요구가 여전히 도를 넘어서고 있다는 지적이 끊이지 않고 있다.
한편 중국의 자료는 공개되지 않았다. 구글은 중국 측에서 검열을 국가 기밀로 보는 바 이에 따라 이번에는 자료를 공개하지 않기로 했다고 밝혔다.
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