On Friday, while receiving a group of foreign academics attending an international conference on information technology, President Chen Shui-bian (
Chen's remark came in a backdrop of a series of controversial disclosure and leaks of personal information, prompting discussions about the role of personal privacy in a democracy and explosion in the amount of free information available, thanks to the Internet.
The Ministry of Interior was severely criticized last week for making land-registration information accessible on the Internet to the general public. The fact that the information available includes the personal identification numbers and birthdate of land owners -- information that could be used by unscrupulous people to forge ID cards or apply for credit cards, cash cards and cellphone numbers. Such information could also be of interest to criminals looking for kidnapping victims.
The ministry's decision to remove such sensitive information from public access is a step in the right direction. However, it may not be enough. It is also imperative for the government to establish more effective mechanisms to trace individuals who might have accessed such data.
Only a few days earlier, there were news reports that information submitted by 2,000 people who had applied for Citibank credit cards via the Internet had been accessible to anyone over the Internet for more than three months.
With democratization, a heighten sense of individualism, which had been suppressed during the martial law era, has grown rapidly. With this rising sense of individualism has come a growing demand for the right to privacy.
The rapid evolution of technology, however, has also led to a rapid increase in the amount of information readily available as well as making it easier to exchange such data. While these changes have brought many positive things such as improved efficiency, convenience and cost-savings, the loss of personal privacy is a negative side-effect that should not be ignored.
Maintaining a proper balance between all these things is imperative. Among the distinguishing characteristics of totalitarianism are the lack of transparency in government policies, decision-making and activities, lack of public monitoring and supervision and extreme violation of personal privacy such as the personal, mail and phone surveillance of political dissidents.
The reverse should be true in a democracy such as Taiwan. Government transparency, as well as the transparency of officials' public conduct are essential. In contrast, the personal privacy of the average citizen must be protected as much as possible.
The importance of protecting personal privacy is evident from the fact that it is on the list of human rights protected under both the human-right protection bill being drafted by the Presidential Office and the UN's International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. How to establish a mechanism to protect this right is an especially important task for the Democratic Progressive Party, which has proclaimed human-rights protection to be the core of its administration and campaign platforms.
Wherever one looks, the United States is ceding ground to China. From foreign aid to foreign trade, and from reorganizations to organizational guidance, the Trump administration has embarked on a stunning effort to hobble itself in grappling with what his own secretary of state calls “the most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary this nation has ever confronted.” The problems start at the Department of State. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has asserted that “it’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power” and that the world has returned to multipolarity, with “multi-great powers in different parts of the
President William Lai (賴清德) recently attended an event in Taipei marking the end of World War II in Europe, emphasizing in his speech: “Using force to invade another country is an unjust act and will ultimately fail.” In just a few words, he captured the core values of the postwar international order and reminded us again: History is not just for reflection, but serves as a warning for the present. From a broad historical perspective, his statement carries weight. For centuries, international relations operated under the law of the jungle — where the strong dominated and the weak were constrained. That
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
The Legislative Yuan passed an amendment on Friday last week to add four national holidays and make Workers’ Day a national holiday for all sectors — a move referred to as “four plus one.” The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who used their combined legislative majority to push the bill through its third reading, claim the holidays were chosen based on their inherent significance and social relevance. However, in passing the amendment, they have stuck to the traditional mindset of taking a holiday just for the sake of it, failing to make good use of
RSS