개인신용정보의 유통과 프라이버시의 보호

Abstract

This article sets out to examine the possibility to find out balance between protection of personal credit information and promotion of its use with some movement of revision of the Use and Protection of Credit Information Act in Korea. The matter of protection of personal credit information should be approached with constitutional perspective to protect privacy which is guaranteed as a basic right under the article 17 of Korean Constitution. There is a strong conflict between protection of personal credit information and its circulation to promote credit information business. Nonetheless this conflict the desirable way to deal with the problem is not to make a hasty decision to select one over the other but to search for alternatives through the constitutional principle of proportion. The current Use and Protection of Credit Information Act has lots problems both to protect personal credit information efficiently and to promote the credit business sufficiently. It should be revised to reflect the principles of personal information established and developed by United Nations or other famous international organizations. The revision should comply with eight generally accepted principles of Collection Limitation, Date Quality, Purpose Specification, Use Limitation, Security Safeguards, Openness, Individual Participation and Accountability. Various detailed suggestions are pointed out and reviewed to assist the revision work in this paper. It is necessary to justify substantially the limitation of the protection of privacy according to the constitutional principle of proportion. While we have to do our best to find balance between protection of personal credit information and promotion of its use, we should keep in mind that protection of privacy has in principle a priority to use of personal information.