Case: 25 Million NAVER Accounts Breached using
Stolen Data
Description: NAVER is South Korea's
largest web portal, which was hacked by hacker named 'Seo', who bought private
information including names, residential number, Internet IDs and password of
25 million people from an Anonymous Korean-Chinese. He developed the hacking
program that automatically enter users' IDs and passwords. He sent spam
messages and other illicit emails to the Naver account holders to rake in
illegal profit of some 160 million won ($148,000). Company's officials said, “the best preventive measure for now would be for users to change
their passwords on a regular basis so that even if someone should access their
accounts the impact would be minimal.” Further, he stressed that
Naver was not at fault regarding the incident, adding that a bigger problem was
that it was too easy for people to get their hands on the personal information
of others. Similarly,
earlier, 20 Million Credit Cards in South Korea were stolen in the country of
50 million population, which is approx. 40% population of the country.
Moral Reasoning: Is the right to privacy –
the right to be left alone and to control one’s personal information – really a
right? Is privacy just a privilege that can be revoked any time it conflicts
with other more important needs, like the need to protect our security? Who has
the right to infringe upon our privacy and for what purposes? Selling or Buying
someone's private information is not right at any condition. Using their
accounts and sending spam messages and making profit is totally illegal and
strict action must be taken. Attempt by 'Seo' is totally wrong and arrest of
hacker 'Hong' is not right at some point because he didn't develop the program
for this type of hacking. 'Seo' used his software to hack Naver's accounts. The
program was not intentionally made for this purpose by Hong.
On
the other hand, how can someone buy or sell someone’s private information, if
there are some laws related to that. Government should be more aware of
protecting their citizen’s privacy. It is important for Government to
understand and make strict rules that no internet providers should not rent or
sell user’s information to anyone, for any reason. And users also need to pay attention,
one must not put their private information on any website. And if someone’s account
gets hacked, only he/she is responsible for that.
For
example, Take a look at this scenario:
“Suppose
you want to steal your neighbor’s Car. Now obviously, for this you will need to
make a duplicate key of his car, to unlock it. The duplicate Key can be made
only if you get a chance to trace the original key. And this is possible only
if your neighbor is careless and can be easily manipulated.”
The
same scenario can be interpreted in the context of email hacking. when your
Account gets hacked, that’s only because of your carelessness. Believe it. Now
a days hackers are targeting social networking profiles like Facebook, twitter,
etc. rather than email accounts. Same thing is focused in the case where South
Korea’s social networking is hacked.
Contextualize: I want to use quote from William Parent’s article “Privacy,
Morality, and the Law” from Philosophy & Public Affairs. Vol. 12, No. 4
“Privacy
is the condition of not having undocumented personal knowledge about one
possessed by others. A person’s privacy is diminished exactly to the degree
that other posses this kind of knowledge about him. I want to stress that what I
am defining is the condition of privacy, not the right to privacy. I will talk
about the latter shortly. My definition is new, and I believe it to be superior
to all of the other conceptions ……………..”
Parent
explains that he proposes to defend a view of privacy that is consistent with
ordinary language and does not overlap or confuse the basic meanings of other
fundamental terms. He defines privacy as the condition of not having
undocumented personal information known or possessed by others. Parent stresses
that he is defining the condition of privacy, as a moral value for people who
prize individuality and freedom, and not a moral or legal right to privacy.
Personal information is characterized by Parent as factual and these are facts
that most persons choose not to reveal about themselves, such as facts about
health, salary, weight, sexual orientation, etc. Personal information is
documented, on Parent's view, only when it belongs to the public record, that
is, in newspapers, court records, or other public documents. Thus, once
information becomes part of a public record, there is no privacy invasion in
future releases of the information, even years later or to a wide audience, nor
does snooping or surveillance intrude on privacy if no undocumented information
is gained.
Furthermore,
what has been described above as the constitutional right to privacy, is viewed
by Parent as better understood as an interest in liberty, not privacy. In sum,
there is a loss of privacy on Parent's view, only when others acquire
undocumented personal information about an individual.
Bibliography
Parent,
W., 1983, “Privacy, Morality and the Law”, Philosophy and Public Affairs,
12: 269–88
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