개인정보 보호법 제18조 제2항 제4호, 비식별화, 비재산적 손해 - 이른바 약학정보원 사건을 계기로 - (Art.18, Sec.2(4) of the Personal Information Protection Act, De-identification, and Non-pecuniary Loss)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국정보법학회
· 수록지 정보 : 정보법학 / 21권 / 3호 / 253 ~ 284페이지
· 저자명 : 이동진

초록

최근 제1심 판결이 선고된 이른바 약학정보원 사건은 우리 개인정보 보호법에서 개인정보의 보호와 활용 사이의 균형, 특히 그 유력한 해결방법의 하나인 비식별화에대하여 우리 법원이 다루게 될 최초의 사건이라는 점에서 매우 중요하다. 이 글에서는 제1심 판결을 소재로 개인정보 보호법상 비식별화의 법적 근거와 기준, 쟁점, 그리고 동의 없는 제3자이용의 허용사유 중 하나로서 학술 및 통계목적의 적용요건을 분석하고, 나아가 개인정보 유출로 인하여 별도의 손해가 발생하지 아니한 경우 개인정보 유출이 그 자체 비재산적 손해를 발생시키는가, 그 요건과 한계는 무엇인가 하는점에 대하여 비판적으로 검토하였다.

영어초록

The Korea Pharmaceutical Information Center (hereinafter, KPIC), an independent foundation established by the Korean Pharmaceutical Association (hereinafter, KPA), collected the prescription information without the consents of the prescribing physicians and the prescribed patients, encrypted, and transmitted it to IMS Health Korea, Inc. (hereinafter, IMS) for value. IMS, a company to produce analysis report and provide consulting service on the global and regional pharmaceutical markets and industries, utilized this information to perform statistical analysis and make up report on Korean pharmaceutical market and industry. After this fact was revealed by some incidents, physicians and patients alleged the violation of the Personal Information Protection Act, and sued for damages against KPA, KPIC, and IMS.
Recently, Seoul Central District Court ruled for all the dependents, KPA, KPIC, and IMS (case no. 2014Gahap508066, 538302). Although it is merely the first instance decision, it is still the first case the court announced its position to the condition and the effect of de-identification of personally identifiable data in Korea, and thus very important.
According to the court’s ruling, those data de-identified, i.e. made no longer attributable to a certain person, does not make personally identifiable information in the meaning of the Personal Information Protection Act, so that it is not subject to the regulations of the same act. In deciding whether a data is de-identified, not only the allegedly de-identified data itself, other data which can be combined to the allegedly de-identified data and utilized to re-identify the data subject, and the analytic skill of the data processor itself as well as of the possible intruders, but also the data management regime are relevant. Moreover, even when some part of encryption was not enough to relieve the encrypted data of the regulations of the Personal Information Protection Act, non-pecuniary loss does not exist if the encrypted data was utilized only for statistical analysis on Korean pharmaceutical market and industry without any attempt to re-identify the data subject and after that all the data was erased. Most of the rulings are agreeable, though some of them like the ruling to apply art. 18, sec. 2(4) of the Personal Information Protection Act, which allows further processing without consent for statistical or scientifical research, not to still identifiable information but to already de-identified information and the ruling to allow non-pecuniary damages where the risk of re-identification is neither substantiated nor cleared.

참고자료

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