There have been reports that the Taiwan Telecommunication Industry Development Association has issued a letter to the Judicial Yuan, Control Yuan, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of National Defense and the Cabinet’s National Audit Office, saying that it would scrap the free-of-charge policy for providing communication records to judicial agencies, with fees to be implemented next year.
This runs counter to the trend of corporate governance that promotes corporate social responsibility.
When judges and prosecutors handle cases, they try to piece together information so that final verdicts are not made rashly based on insufficient evidence.
That being so, they sometimes have to request footage from public or private security cameras, and transaction details from financial institutions, as well as medical and communications records.
In particular, when investigating fraud or drugs cases, which has been the focus of a Cabinet crime-prevention project, they frequently need to check communications logs to clarify the movements and interpersonal networks of members of organized crime rings.
Public and private institutions have taken corporate social responsibility into consideration when providing communications records without charge.
District prosecutors’ offices have also followed the principle that the judiciary is for the people and never profited by pursuing of fees when working on criminal cases.
In other words, by placing social responsibility over personal gain, agencies have worked together, sharing resources to create a selfless judicial system.
If telecommunications companies begin to charge government agencies for communications records, then financial and medical institutions, convenience stores and land administration offices might follow suit. If that happens, judicial organs would have two options: Increase budgeting or make fewer such requests.
Even if they were to increase budgeting, if the funds for such services were spent by October, would that mean they would not be able to request communications logs for the rest of the year? If footage from a security camera were erased while an agency waited on funds, who should be responsible for the absence of evidence from a trial?
It is clear that competition in the telecommunications sector is high, but judicial interests are part of corporate social responsibility. It would not be wise to “kill the hen to get the eggs,” sacrificing judicial integrity for a tiny profit.
Who knows, the telecom association’s letter might mean that the response to a prosecutor’s request for communications records would be: “Please first pay the NT$1,000 fee at the cashier’s desk.”
In a free market, nobody should criticize a business for seeking a profit, but a business that also pursues sustainable management has the long-term vision of true entrepreneurship.
Chuang Chia-wei is a Changhua district prosecutor.
Translated by Eddy Chang
China has successfully held its Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, with 53 of 55 countries from the African Union (AU) participating. The two countries that did not participate were Eswatini and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, which have no diplomatic relations with China. Twenty-four leaders were reported to have participated. Despite African countries complaining about summit fatigue, with recent summits held with Russia, Italy, South Korea, the US and Indonesia, as well as Japan next month, they still turned up in large numbers in Beijing. China’s ability to attract most of the African leaders to a summit demonstrates that it is still being
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) on Thursday was handcuffed and escorted by police to the Taipei Detention Center, after the Taipei District Court ordered that he be detained and held incommunicado for suspected corruption during his tenure as Taipei mayor. The ruling reversed an earlier decision by the same court on Monday last week that ordered Ko’s release without bail. That decision was appealed by prosecutors on Wednesday, leading the High Court to conclude that Ko had been “actively involved” in the alleged corruption and it ordered the district court to hold a second detention hearing. Video clips
The Russian city of Vladivostok lies approximately 45km from the Sino-Russian border on the Sea of Japan. The area was not always Russian territory: It was once the site of a Chinese settlement. The settlement would later be known as Yongmingcheng (永明城), the “city of eternal light,” during the Yuan Dynasty. That light was extinguished in 1858 when a large area of land was ceded by the Qing Dynasty to the Russian Empire with the signing of the Treaty of Aigun. The People’s Republic of China founded by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has never ruled Taiwan. Taiwan was governed by the
The Japanese-language Nikkei Shimbun on Friday published a full-page story calling for Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) leadership hopefuls to be aware of and to prepare for a potential crisis in the Taiwan Strait. The candidates of the LDP leadership race must have a “vision” in case of a Chinese invasion in Taiwan, the article said, adding that whether the prospective president of the LDP and the future prime minister of Japan have the ability to lead the public and private sectors under this circumstance would be examined in the coming election. The “2027 Theory” of a Taiwan contingency is becoming increasingly
RSS