Korea Expands Porn Ban, Using New Online Eavesdropping Technology

The government of South Korea already bans porn, but the country’s online censors have long found it impossible to completely block access to online adult sites. In the tech-savvy country of just over 50 million people, at least 90 percent of homes have high-speed internet access, while nearly as many own smartphones, and South Koreans have generally found ways to search out and find their favorite porn sites. But starting on February 22, the site Torrent Freak reports, the government will put new technology in place that will allow censors the ability to “eavesdrop” on secured internet connections, blocking even more sites. The government announced that it plans to cut off South Koreans’ access to 895 overseas sites that it was previously unable to fully block, including hundreds of porn sites, among them Pornhub, according to The Korea Times newspaper.  The new ban also extends to gambling sites, and other sites with content that the South Korean government has deemed “harmful.” But the “eavesdropping” technology lets the government see the contents of user data packets that would otherwise be securely encrypted, which opponents of the new measure say will lead to “China-style” full-scale internet censorship. “The idea of opening up user data packets is not desirable and could invade privacy even though most information is encrypted,"  Lee Gwan-hoo, an information technology professor at American University's Kogod School of Business, told the Korea Times. “The reason is that once the packet is open, even the encrypted information could be decrypted if the government finds out the 'private key.'" South Korea has been suffering an epidemic of “revenge porn” and other types of non-consensual porn, such as "upskirt" and "spy cam" videos, in recent years, as AVN.com has reported, leading to calls from women’s groups for further government crackdowns. But the country has seen protests in the last week against the new government porn-blocking measures, including a petition posted on the official presidential website with 200,000 signatures, protesting South Korea’s porn ban, according to The Korea Bizwire. In response, the government has issued a statement pledging not to use the new “eavesdropping” technology to conduct surveillance of private individuals. But those assurances have done little to comfort the critics of the porn ban. Laws in South Korea call for a year’s imprisonment and a fine of about $9,000 for a conviction of distributing pornography. But there are no laws against viewing porn and legal experts say that blocking online sites amounts to a punishment for an act which is not illegal, according to Bizwire. Photo By Matthew Bowden / Wikimedia Commons