By Steven Denney
Leaked documents suggest Korea’s NIS was trying to spy on its own citizens via the Kakao Talk app.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) is once again the object of unwanted attention. It is alleged, based on leaked information, that in 2012 the NIS purchased spyware from the Italian firm Hacking Team with the intent to spy on its own citizens by hacking Kakao Talk, an messaging app that allows users to text or call each other. Hacking Team, a Milan-based ICT company, sells “offensive intrusion and surveillance capabilities to governments, law enforcement agencies, and corporations,” according to one description.
States instinctively want to know more, because, as students learn in Foucault 101, there is immense power in knowledge. Through various state apparatuses, typically an intelligence or security organization, information is gathered under the guise of keeping citizens safe and free. Seen from the perspective of the state, it is both reasonable and expected that information will be culled, curated, and analyzed. But there is a line, and many feel the NIS has crossed it, again.
Recently leaked files, released following — ironically — a hack of Hacking Team, shows that South Korea’s “5163 Army Division” was among its foreign clients who had purchased Remote Control System (RCS) spyware. It is suspected the 5163 Army Division (no such division actually exists in South Korea’s army) is a name used by the NIS; the mailing address for the South Korea-based client “matches the address of the NIS civil service department,” according to the Korea Times.
Read the full story at The Diplomat