The Taiwan Association for Human Rights (TAHR) yesterday accused the presidential election frontrunners of ignoring potential personal privacy and security breach issues surrounding a new national electronic identification card (eID) scheme.
The association gave zero points to President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) candidate, for not responding to the questionnaire on the new eID scheme it sent out in September to their political parties and campaign offices.
“We received answers from the DPP, the New Power Party, the Social Democratic Party and the Green Party, but there was no response from the KMT,” TAHR secretary-general Chiu Ee-ling (邱伊翎) told a news conference in Taipei.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
“We regret to report that both Han and Tsai ignored it,” Chiu said.
“Our questions about eID and related rights violations are very important to voters, yet both Tsai and Han chose not to express their views and refused to give their stance on these vital issues,” she said.
“We think they are treating the public like fools, and this is unacceptable,” she said. “We are very concerned that people have no idea where the two presidential candidates and their parties are leading Taiwan on these important human rights issues.”
The Ministry of the Interior in the past year has moved ahead with plans to replace all national ID cards with eIDs starting in October next year, with a NT$3.3 billion (US$108.66 million) tender reportedly under way.
Critics have said the eIDs, with an embedded chip to store data about their owner, could become a tool for the government to track all aspects of people’s daily lives and allow for pervasive monitoring of society.
Some critics have called it a “Trojan horse” that would undermine people’s right to privacy, and would also pose a national security risk if eID databases were hacked or information leaked to foreign agents.
TAHR digital rights manager Ho Ming-hsuan (何明諠) said the questionnaire found that political parties agree that the nation’s laws are insufficient to protect personal information and online data.
“All the parties, except for the DPP, were adamant in demanding the postponement of the eID scheme and for a complete reassessment of this policy,” he said.
“However, despite all the concerns, the DPP still wants to go through with it, as it said the relevant laws can be amended after the eID policy is implemented,” he added.
The DPP government is “going backward against democracy” and in the process, “it will ravage the rights to personal privacy of all our citizens by burying it… We do not understand why the DPP sees no need to review and reconsider the new eID scheme,” Ho said.
TAHR has been sending out monthly questionnaires to all the parties and presidential candidates as a part of its effort to provide checks and balances, and to raise public awareness of rights violations, Chiu said.
Next month it would focus on the right of public assembly for protests, housing rights and Taiwan’s adherence to the two international human rights covenants, Chiu added.
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