The Cabinet is this week to publish guidelines governing a ban on the use of Chinese information technology (IT) products by central and local government offices, an Executive Yuan official who declined to be named said yesterday.
Entitled “Guidelines for Utilization of Mainland Area-Made Information Technology Products by Public Agencies” (各公務機關使用陸資產品處理原則), the executive order would apply broadly to any foreign-made product deemed to pose a security risk, the official said.
The guidelines cover mobile devices, security cameras and server components among others, and Chinese companies affected by the ban could include Huawei Technologies Co, Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co and ZTE Corp, the official said.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
The Executive Yuan believes it has the legal authority to impose the guidelines on local government offices, the official added.
Executive Yuan spokeswoman Kolas Yotaka said that the guidelines are nearly complete and they are to affect government offices and public employees, not private citizens or enterprises.
The Executive Yuan is nearly finished with drafting the order and Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) is expected to approve the guidelines in the coming days, when it becomes a publicly available document, she said.
In related news, industry sources said that many of the public and private buses use Huawei products to provide passengers with free Wi-Fi services.
Zhinan Bus Co, which operates in Taipei and New Taipei City, said that about 400 of its buses use Huawei products to provide riders with free Wi-Fi.
In New Taipei City, Zhinan buses have been using routers made by MikroTik in Latvia that are coupled with Huawei-made 4G network cards to provide Wi-Fi services.
Huawei network cards are costly, but offer superior stability and connection speed, while the Chinese company’s business agents had also been more helpful during installation, Zhinan said, adding that it has not received any customer complaints regarding information security.
Capital Bus Co general manager Lee Chien-wen (李建文) said his company tried to stick with Taiwanese cards, but had to purchase 20 Huawei-made cards after some of the Taiwanese products repeatedly broke down.
“We are a private business and we receive no public subsidies for purchases,” he said.
“The paperwork for those purchases are in order and our business follows the law scrupulously,” he said.
However, the use of Huawei components anywhere in the circuit of a hotspot device, Wi-Fi router or network base station could open data to backdoor exploits, former National Applied Science Laboratories vice president Lin Ying-dar (林盈達) said.
“Since most free Wi-Fi networks are not protected by passwords or encryption, the browsing data are vulnerable to sniffing or interception by hackers,” said Lin, who teaches computer science at National Chiao Tung University.
“In many airports around the world, public Wi-Fi is known to be intercepted by hackers, as well as government agencies,” he said. “My advice is to use it as little as possible, or surf through an encrypted VPN [virtual private network].”
Taiwan would benefit from more integrated military strategies and deployments if the US and its allies treat the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea as a “single theater of operations,” a Taiwanese military expert said yesterday. Shen Ming-shih (沈明室), a researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said he made the assessment after two Japanese military experts warned of emerging threats from China based on a drill conducted this month by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Eastern Theater Command. Japan Institute for National Fundamentals researcher Maki Nakagawa said the drill differed from the
‘WORSE THAN COMMUNISTS’: President William Lai has cracked down on his political enemies and has attempted to exterminate all opposition forces, the chairman said The legislature would motion for a presidential recall after May 20, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday at a protest themed “against green communists and dictatorship” in Taipei. Taiwan is supposed to be a peaceful homeland where people are united, but President William Lai (賴清德) has been polarizing and tearing apart society since his inauguration, Chu said. Lai must show his commitment to his job, otherwise a referendum could be initiated to recall him, he said. Democracy means the rule of the people, not the rule of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), but Lai has failed to fulfill his
A rally held by opposition parties yesterday demonstrates that Taiwan is a democratic country, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday, adding that if opposition parties really want to fight dictatorship, they should fight it on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) held a protest with the theme “against green communists and dictatorship,” and was joined by the Taiwan People’s Party. Lai said the opposition parties are against what they called the “green communists,” but do not fight against the “Chinese communists,” adding that if they really want to fight dictatorship, they should go to the right place and face
A 79-year-old woman died today after being struck by a train at a level crossing in Taoyuan, police said. The woman, identified by her surname Wang (王), crossed the tracks even though the barriers were down in Jhongli District’s (中壢) Neili (內壢) area, the Taoyuan Branch of the Railway Police Bureau said. Surveillance footage showed that the railway barriers were lowered when Wang entered the crossing, but why she ventured onto the track remains under investigation, the police said. Police said they received a report of an incident at 6:41am involving local train No. 2133 that was heading from Keelung to Chiayi City. Investigators
RSS