The Ministry of Digital Affairs has been in operation for a year. Before the anniversary of its launch, Minister of Digital Affairs Audrey Tang (唐鳳) held a news conference to recount the ministry’s achievements.
The fundamental principle of governance is to govern with the citizens’ best interests at heart. Today, fraud is one of the main issues faced by Taiwanese. It is with us on a daily basis: We receive fraudulent phone calls day in and day out; Facebook fan pages are replete with fake ads and there are so many Line groups set up by scammers. If the ministry can eliminate all of them, Taiwanese will sing its praises and applaud its work.
The ministry said that it will pilot the government short code SMS “111,” so official agencies will be able to send messages through the three-digit code. The risk of falling victim to scams could be reduced, given that the public will be able to differentiate messages sent by a government entity from fakes. Yet the truth is that communication fraud has been conducted and disseminated through messages, phone calls and many other means. SMS scams purporting to be official government messages are just one kind. The specific and dedicated government short code “111” might not be as effective as expected.
Another thing that should be eradicated is Facebook groups about stock investing, which feature fake endorsements by celebrities. Recently, the name of Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) was appropriated by scammers. If someone joins a Facebook fraud group, they will be enticed to join a more exclusive Line group, in which scammers and their collaborators encourage group members to invest more in commodities with high interest rates. As soon as someone falls victim to the scams, either the victim will be kicked out of the group or the group itself will disappear immediately.
Facebook and Line have been benefiting from those scam ads. Should social media companies not be responsible for those activities? Should the ministry not handle the situation more attentively? Even though it might be nearly impossible for Facebook and Line to examine all the content on their platforms due to the nature of the Internet, government agencies can at least require companies to enhance their reporting mechanisms. A “one-click report” function might be able to improve the situation.
Indeed, some might report the ads either randomly or out of retaliation, but we can utilize artificial intelligence and judge whether the report is valid or not. Along with the reporting system, a punishment mechanism for false reporting can be implemented.
The ministry has another important task: refine the digital environment through which news reports are circulated. The public reads the news mostly through social media platforms such as Line Today, Facebook and Google. Some of the reports are posted with their sources, but others only show the platform names (eg, Line Today). In this sense, it is difficult for the news business to earn profits from advertisements or traffic. This is not a fair arrangement. To govern the commercial relationships between news businesses and digital platforms, the government should refer to Australia’s News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code.
Whether a country can operate successfully depends on its handling of information security and Internet safety. The Administration for Cyber Security and the National Institute of Cyber Security, both part of the ministry, pay great attention to these issues. Yet recently, quite a few information security incidents have occurred, such as equipment mismanagement, inefficient investigation of data leaks and attacks from hackers. However, the two ministry agencies have remained silent. Confronted by such serious incidents, the ministry should have explained what has happened and whether the problems have been solved, so as to prevent the same hacking attacks from happening again.
Chang Ruay-shiung is a former president of National Taipei University of Business.
Translated by Emma Liu
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