The Ministry of National Defense is to ask Apple to lower the resolution of its satellite photographs of major military facilities and sensitive locations, a ministry spokesman said yesterday.
Major General David Lo (羅紹和) was responding to questions about media reports that Apple’s iOS6 software clearly shows the air force’s long-range early warning radar installations in its satellite photos.
There is no law governing the content of commercial satellite photos at present, Luo said, but he said the ministry will ask Apple to follow Google’s practice and limit the resolution of the photos.
Since the launch of Google Maps, fixed military installations — such as radar stations and airfields — have not been able to avoid the attention of satellites, Lo said, a problem faced not only by the Republic of China, but also the US, Russia, China and others.
“We will ask Apple to follow the pattern previously adopted by Google and reduce the resolution of satellite photos showing the military’s major facilities and sensitive installations or use other ways to properly shield our targets to reduce the threat to security,” Lo said.
The military is to also step up efforts to camouflage major facilities to cover up recognizable features and adopt protective measures to ensure the security of military bases, Lo said.
Asked whether military secrets could be exposed by the photos, Lo said sensitive sites exist inside rather than outside military facilities.
“How to manage the insides of military facilities well is the major issue,” he said.
Lieutenant General Wu Wan-chiao (吳萬教), director of the Department of Political Warfare, said that when Google launched its mapping software, the military also expressed the hope that the photos would not be that clear. Now, when Google Maps focuses in on military bases near Dazhi (大直) in Taipei, for example, a large blank area is shown, he said.
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