The National Election Commission held a Cyber Investigation Policy Advisory Committee meeting on April 17 to discuss how to spread a sound cyber culture and how to effectively prevent and regulate cyber election offences for the upcoming local elections.

The Cyber Investigation Policy Advisory Committee consists of 12 professionals in the area of digital forensic, data analysis and the Internet from academia, research institutes, etc. to respond to the rapidly changing cyber environment and collect professional opinions in the process of making decisions on preventive and regulatory policies.

The following was mainly discussed at the meeting:

Ÿ   How to take cyber preventive action to create a sound cyber election culture;

Ÿ   How to deal with new types of cyber election offences;

Ÿ   How to develop an effective digital forensic system, etc.

The committee members stressed the significance of preventive actions and PR activities while arguing that regulatory actions should be taken in the way the public’s freedom of political expression is guaranteed to the greatest extent possible. They also made suggestions that the number of experts in the investigation area should be increased and that cooperative relations with the relevant agencies should be expanded.

The committee members also strongly suggested that given Korea’s world’s highest Internet penetration rate the proper function of cyber election campaign should be guaranteed while illegal election campaigns on the Internet should be strictly dealt with. Cyber election campaigns, when properly functioned, enable candidates to effectively promote themselves at a low cost and allow voters to exchange various political views.

The NEC showed its determination that it would actively review various suggestions from the meeting and reflect them in the future regulatory activities and policies. This is to guarantee the public’s freedom of political expression to the greatest extent possible and take more strict action against the malicious spread of false information and candidate defamation and organized illegal involvement in election.

With the local election ahead, the NEC has earlier established the ‘Response Center against Cyber Election Offences’ and introduced the digital data collection/analysis techniques.