Revelations by former US National Security Agency (NSA) employee Edward Snowden about the NSA’s clandestine surveillance have stirred up heated discussion in the US. The government in Washington is now reviewing the program.
Interestingly, US liberals have not subjected the government to heavy criticism over the affair. This is partly because they want to shield US President Barack Obama’s shortcomings and also because, while Snowden has caused the US a great deal of embarrassment, he has not said anything new. Meanwhile, the conservative camp is divided over Snowden’s revelations, wavering between the issues of national security and individual privacy.
What Snowden’s actions highlight are the loopholes in US government departments. Considering his academic and work background, it is hard to imagine how Snowden was assigned information with national security implications and how he could download the data so easily. That is what mainstream opinion in the US is really concerned about.
Reactions to the Snowden affair in Taiwan are quite odd. It is fair enough if critics pillory the US government from an idealist standpoint for using technology to delve into the lives of its citizens. However, some people have been aligning themselves with China’s viewpoint by mocking the US, while ignoring China’s construction of a new iron curtain to control the Internet and spy on dissidents. Such an attitude is confused in the extreme.
Before people criticize the NSA’s program based on surface values, they should be asking what attitude the Taiwanese government has toward network security and online freedom.
Netizens recently got upset over a government proposal to make local Internet service providers block overseas Web sites infringing copyrights. These planned amendments to the Radio and Television Act (廣播電視法) would immediately reveal sensitive data about Taiwan’s telecommunications infrastructure, throwing the door to the nation’s network security wide open. Not surprisingly, officials think it is a bad idea.
At the same time, the law in its proposed new form would impact on freedom of speech, since it would authorize government departments to obtain user information from service providers without recourse to legal procedures. Bureaucrats could make their own subjective judgements on whether online content was harmful to society and then remove or block it accordingly. That power, and the threat posed to Internet users, is many times greater than that of the NSA, which is strictly limited to combating terrorism. It amounts to a revival of the Taiwan Garrison Command that operated during the Martial Law era. How is this any different from the control that China’s public security apparatus wields over the Internet?
Taiwan has a Personal Information Protection Act (個人資料保護法) whose protections go too far, perhaps, with a bunch of untrustworthy people handling sensitive information. Part of the problem is it is out of the hands of commercial providers. Moreover, a crowd of conceited and frivolous personnel are endowed with the right to spy on, record and track anybody, from the president down to ordinary citizens, and over whom the public has no control.
Should Taiwanese rejoice that everyone is treated equally in the fight against crime, or should they worry that one day Taiwan will have its own Snowden who, tormented by the imbalance between his own powers and duties, runs off clutching a record of the president’s communications and connections, accusing Taiwan of being a police state?
Li Chung-chih is a professor at Illinois State University’s School of Information Technology.
Translated by Julian Clegg
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
The past few months have seen tremendous strides in India’s journey to develop a vibrant semiconductor and electronics ecosystem. The nation’s established prowess in information technology (IT) has earned it much-needed revenue and prestige across the globe. Now, through the convergence of engineering talent, supportive government policies, an expanding market and technologically adaptive entrepreneurship, India is striving to become part of global electronics and semiconductor supply chains. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Vision of “Make in India” and “Design in India” has been the guiding force behind the government’s incentive schemes that span skilling, design, fabrication, assembly, testing and packaging, and