Lawmakers across party lines yesterday rejected a request by the Ministry of Justice that a telephone number used as a switchboard operator in the legislature be tapped as a test to help it clarify doubts over a case in which the Special Investigation Division (SID) of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office is accused of conducting telephone surveillance on the legislature.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lu Hsueh-chang (呂學樟) condemned the ministry for making the “absurd” request.
“How is it not different from the ministry actually tapping the legislature’s telephone?” Lu said.
Lu said that lawmakers of all parties unanimously rejected the request after they first heard about it at a cross-party negotiation meeting.
The ministry sent a document to the legislature on Monday seeking its assistance, because the investigation into the wiretapping of telephone number 0972-630-235, one of seven lines used by the legislature as switchboard operators, is underway.
In response to the allegation made by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) that the SID had monitored all inbound and outbound telephone calls placed through that switchboard number for four months, the SID has claimed that it had failed to record any conversations from tapping the line because it was a telephony cost-saving system.
Ker has questioned the SID’s claim, saying the press release issued by the SID on Sept. 6 regarding its charge that Ker was involved in improper influence-peddling to have his legal case dropped has disproved the SID’s statement.
The transcript of the wiretapped telephone conversations between Ker and his aid surnamed Hu showed that when Ker answered a telephone call made by Hu on June 26, the telephone number Hu used was 0972-630-235, rather than the legislature’s official switchboard number — (02) 2358-58 58.
According to the legislature, outgoing calls placed through all the legislature’s switchboard operators showed the number as (02) 2358-58 58, Ker said. Therefore, if the SID had not tapped the line 0972-630-235, that number would not have showed when Hu made a telephone call to him, he added.
DPP Legislator You Mei-nu (尤美女) said yesterday that the ministry should have demanded an explanation from the SID about the wiretapping instead of asking the legislature to assist its investigation into the case.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,