SKT, LG blamed for location data law breach
By Yoon Sung-won
SK Telecom and LG Uplus have failed to follow a law on reporting to the National Assembly about sharing of user location information with government agencies, according to an opposition lawmaker Thursday.
Rep. Kim Sung-soo of the Minjoo Party of Korea said the location information law stipulates that all businesses handling location information are obliged to report to the National Assembly’s Science, ICT, Future Planning, Broadcasting and Communications Committee every six months about when and how they have provided the authorities with location information. Kim pointed out that the two telecom companies have never submitted any such reports.
“SK Telecom and LG Uplus have clearly violated the current law,” the lawmaker said in a statement.
“Even if the provided location information is used only for emergency rescue operations, the telecom companies have broken the minimum regulation made to prevent abuse of personal information by government agencies such as the police,” he said. “This has shown that the telecom companies are still careless about information security.”
KT, on the other hand, has reported to the committee on 371,002 cases of providing user location information to the police in the latter half of 2015 alone, Kim said.
Both SK Telecom and LG Uplus admitted their fault.
“The government regulations say that we need to report both to the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) and the National Assembly’s Science, ICT, Future Planning, Broadcasting and Communications Committee. But we have reported only to the KCC,” an SK Telecom spokesman said. “We will make sure that this will not happen again in the future.”
An LG Uplus spokeswoman said, “This happened because we did not recognize the process clearly. We did not miss the report on purpose. We pledge to fulfill the duty in the future.”
The National Emergency Management Agency, Korea Coast Guard and the police are allowed to tap into user location data, detected by the location information businesses, to save lives from imminent danger, Kim said.
Among the three authorities, the police acquired access to personal location information after earning recognition as an emergency service agency from the National Assembly’s Legislation and Judiciary Committee and related government institutions. At that time, some pointed out that the decision may cause abuse of private information and urged the National Assembly to oblige the police to win approval after they use such information. But the argument was dismissed for the sake of efficiency in emergency rescue operations.
The two telecom companies’ breach of the location information law is expected to be reiterated during an Assembly inspection slated for next week.
The two companies are not expected to be subject to any legal punishment for the breach under the current law.
“We need to consider preparing for backgrounds to make telecom companies take legal responsibility should they fail to fulfill their obligation to report,” Kim said.