The Executive Yuan is drafting regulations to tighten rules and protocols restricting the use of China-made telecom hardware and software by government agencies that could undermine national security, sources said.
For Taiwanese missions in countries where there is no alternative other than to use China-made products, the proposed measures would require that the agencies first pass two security checks — one by the government agency’s information security section head and a second by a higher level agency’s information security head, the sources said.
They would then have to file an application for approval by the Ministry of Digital Affairs, stating their reasons and conditions for using such products, with the information fed into a database on government special procurement programs for monitoring, the sources said.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
The additional safeguards are aimed at enhancing scrutiny to alert information security heads and patch vulnerabilities to prevent leaks and Chinese cyberattacks, they said.
During US House of Representatives Speaker Pelosi’s visit in early August, malicious messages against Pelosi were run on a southern Taiwan railway station’s digital billboard, which was rented to a contractor whose China-made operating software was hacked, prompting the Executive Yuan to undertake remedial action to patch the vulnerability.
The digital ministry, as the agency in charge of information security, has proposed stronger restrictions and enforcement of rules against the use of China-made telecom hardware and software by amending the “Principles on limiting the use by government agencies of products that harm national information security.”
Photo: Reuters
The proposed restrictions would include digital billboards and video displays rented to private contractors of Taiwanese railways and other state-affiliated enterprises and public sector agencies.
The ministry has posted a preview of the proposed amendments, now under review by the Executive Yuan’s Legal Affairs Committee, before the Executive Yuan is to officially issue an administrative order for their enforcement.
The main articles include an explicit ban against the use of China-made telecom products, including surveillance cameras, by government agencies and their contracted public-use sites, and would be incorporated into business agreement for companies renting the sites for use.
In related news, in response to allegations that a contractor from which Taiwan’s armed forces purchased bulletproof vests in 2018 might have used fabric from China instead of Taiwan, Tung Chung-hsing (董中興), deputy head of the Ministry of National Defense’s Department of Resource Planning, yesterday said that the armed forces had terminated the contract and handed the case over to the judiciary.
The armed forces are conducting checks on other contractors to see whether they have any links to China or Chinese funding, Tung said, adding that the fabric used in making bulletproof vests would be listed as one of the regulated military materials.
Additional reporting by Aaron Tu and Jason Pan
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