[Editorial] Court Decides Search and Seizure of KakaoTalk Was Illegal, Showing the Dangers of the Terrorism Prevention Act

The court ruled that a search and seizure of the conversations of some KakaoTalk users carried out by the prosecutors and the police without informing the relevant party was illegal. On Wednesday, the Seoul Central District Court canceled the search and seizure of a college student who proposed a silent demonstration titled, "Stay Put" in connection to the Sewol tragedy in May 2014. The bench said that not informing the party in question and taking the contents of all the KakaoTalk conversations during a certain period by just sending a copy of the warrant through fax to the portal employee could not be seen as a fair execution of the warrant. The Criminal Procedure Act stipulates that they must guarantee the participation of the suspect and legal representative at the time of the search and that they must notify the date and place unless the situation is urgent. The latest court decision is a natural one that confirmed the illegality of a search, which did not follow basic prosecution procedures.

Leaving such procedural issues aside, we need to point out the problems in the prosecutors' investigation itself. A college student's silent protest to criticize the state's incompetence and irresponsibility concerning the Sewol tragedy, which shocked and angered the entire public, cannot be considered a felony that requires such an urgent and indiscriminate search and seizure. Yet the prosecutors made an embarrassing excuse that they did not take the trouble to notify the person in question because it was a matter of urgency during the trial. The 88-page long conversation, which the prosecutors seized, included a group chat which the person was simply invited to and private conversations such as the one where he asked his younger sibling to "do the laundry." Eventually, the prosecutors did not submit the conversations that they seized as evidence. In other words, they just invaded one's privacy under the guise of a criminal investigation.

The problem is that the search and seizure by the prosecutors and the police is carried out extensively targeting a random mass and not a certain individual. Daum Kakao had announced that the number of user accounts that had been searched by an investigative or intelligence agency last year amounted to 507,124. Among them, the government agencies seized the information on the chatting rooms of 290,000 accounts. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the entire public is helplessly exposed to the police and prosecutors' illegal monitoring of communications without even being aware of it.

Such a reality where illegal searches are rampant further highlight the risks of the anti-terrorism bill. What would happen if the lawmakers passed the Terrorism Prevention Act and the National Intelligence Service had the authority to look into the private lives of the citizens without a warrant? It is obvious that this would lead to a routine surveillance of the people and violations of basic rights. Yet President Park Geun-hye pounded her desk and burst in anger at the filibuster carried out by opposition lawmakers to block the National Assembly from passing the anti-terrorism bill. President Park should not forget that her most important duty is to guarantee the people's fundamental rights and to control state power in a democratic fashion.