Penalties for businesses and individuals leaking personal information will be toughened as the Cabinet is set to approve draft amendments to a data-protection rule.
"While we're aware of legislators' concerns, we thought it would be a better idea to stick with our own draft amendments to the Computer-Processed Personal Data Protection Law (
Liu was referring to another draft proposed by DPP lawmakers Tsai Huang-liang (
The trio have called for a broader application of the law and for heavier punishment for people caught selling sensitive information following a furor over fraud cases reported in March this year.
Capping a one-year investigation, the Kaohsiung District Prosecutor's Office in May brought a criminal case against 32 civil servants and civilians for their role in leaking 2 million entries of illegally obtained personal information.
Prosecutors found that an organized crime syndicate headed by Hsiao Ron-hsiung (
Hsiao then sold the illegally obtained information to other crime rings and individuals, including lawmakers, police officers and employees of credit information offices.
After learning that civil servants were believed to be involved in the case, Premier Yu Shyi-kun requested government agencies concerned to map out pre-emptive measures and beef up efforts to strengthen the internal audits of telecom service providers.
Yu also requested legal revisions to existing rules to curb similar occurrences in the future.
One of the laws that needs to be revamped is the Computer-Processed Personal Data Protection Law.
Under the Cabinet's draft, the law would cover all kinds of personal information which could be deemed private and deserved protection.
The law presently protects only personal information which is managed, processed, stored or distributed by computers.
The punishment for those who release personal information for commercial purposes would also be increased.
While the current maximum sentence is a two-year jail term or a NT$40,000 fine, the draft would increase this to up to five years imprisonment or a maximum fine of NT$1 million.
The three DPP lawmakers, however, proposed to increase this to seven years imprisonment and/or a maximum fine of NT$1 million, claiming that heavier punishments always serve as a more effective deterrent.
In addition, groups enjoying the prerogative to obtain personal information would have that privilege revoked.
Under current rules, workers in eight professional fields are allowed to collect personal information for business purposes. These eight professions are: Private detective agencies, banks, hospitals, schools, telecom and Internet service providers, insurance companies, the media and stock-exchange companies.
According to an official personal information protection review, conducted by the Directorate General of Telecommunications (DGT), Taiwan Cellular Corp (台灣大) and Mobitai Communications Co Ltd (東信電訊) were ranked as the leaders in protecting customer personal information from their peers.
The two mobile operators were followed in sequence by First International Telecom (
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching