Legitimate Rights for Privacy--What Policies Are Necessary?

摘要

In a widely publicized move to mend "moral hazards of the affluent few," the Korean tax authorities recently announced that they would investigate some 150 wealthy Koreans suspected of having evaded taxes among those who owned luxury foreign cars, had made more than 30 overseas golf tours during the previous years, and filed little or no income at all. Quite expectedly, the public reaction to the government move was overwhelmingly applause. What the public failed to see in that episode, however, was the process by which the 150 people had been singled out and its privacy implications. Apparently, the list was drawn bychecking state automobile registration records and customs records against tax records for the purpose of locating individuals who owned expensive cars and frequently traveled abroad with their golf clubs, but reported small incomes. In a country like Korea, such a computer matching can only be a painless routine, because every citizen, 17 years of age and older, has to submit a resident registration number in the conduct of every day-to-day business, the records of which are kept in large databases, and these databases with unrelated purposes are cross-checked for consistency by means of the individual ID number.