Power over phone taps to be transferred to justices

The power to authorize surveillance warrants for telephone conversations should be transferred from prosecutors to judges, Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan (陳定南) said yesterday.

At a press conference yesterday, Chen said that to protect human rights and make prosecutors' work easier, the ministry will draft amendments to the Communications Safeguards and Supervision Law (通訊保障及監察法) within a year and send it to the Legislative Yuan for approval.

Only prosecutors are currently authorized to approve warrant requests filed by police officers or investigators.

"In the past, a lot of people accused prosecutors of abusing the right to authorize surveillance warrants over phone calls of suspects and said that prosecutors were violating human rights," Chen said. "To protect human rights, we will let judges do the job in the future from a fairer, third-person's viewpoint."

According to Chen, police officers, investigators and prosecutors will have to file a request to judges at district courts for surveillance warrants.

According to the Ministry of Justice, 7,250 requests for such warrants were filed last year, 7,217 of which were approved.

Tsai Pi-yu (蔡碧玉), director of the ministry's prosecutorial affairs department, said that many surveillance warrants were requested for drug or firearms smuggling cases.

Usually, Tsai said, investigators have to monitor the phone calls of suspects in such cases over a long period to track down the highest-level criminals. However, a surveillance warrant is only good for 30 days.

Law enforcement officers, therefore, frequently have to apply for more than one warrant for the same person, Tsai said.

"Most prosecutors did not think too much when they approved these warrants," she said. "All they were thinking about was finding the bad guys as soon as possible. However, they were also being blamed for violating human rights."

The legislature welcomed Chen's proposal.

PFP lawmaker Shen Chih-hwei (沈智慧), chairwoman of the legislature's Judicial Committee (司法委員會), said that lawmakers had already considered the idea.

"Many of my colleagues at the committee agree with what Chen has in mind," Shen said. "It will definitely protect human rights when the authorization of surveillance warrants becomes the job of judges."

DPP lawmaker Liu Chun-hsiung (劉俊雄) said that he believed some prosecutors were violating human rights by abusing their right to authorize the warrants.

"I will endorse Chen's proposal," he said. "It will make prosecutors' work easier and let the judge make a fairer decision whether it's necessary to follow up a suspect by monitoring his phone calls."