The Taipei District Court found former top-ranking public relations official Lo Chih-hao (
Lo, who had been in charge of media relations while serving as secretary to the director of the Civil Aeronautics Administration (民航局), was convicted of passing confidential information on three international air negotiations to two newspaper reporters between March 1998 and February 1999.
Lo told reporters outside the courtroom yesterday that he will definitely appeal his conviction, saying he had only been doing his job as an official public relations person in passing the information on to the media.
"If the ruling that it's a crime for me to pass the information to the media is sustained, I could be guilty of committing crimes every day," Lo said.
"And if the decision is upheld, it would become impossible for the media to get information from any public officials."
Taipei District Prosecutor Lee Liang-chung (
Lee had originally charged Lo with stealing and leaking a total of 19 items of secret information relating international air negotiations, a BOT (build-operate-transfer) bidding project for CKS Airport air cargo terminals and a duplicate transcript of the recordings of the black boxes from a China Airlines plane that crashed in February 1998, killing a total of 202 people.
The court found Lo guilty of leaking information on Taiwan's air negotiations with Thailand and Cambodia as well as the BOT project, but dismissed the other charges.
The judge found that Lo had leaked secret information on Taiwan-Cambodia and Taiwan-Thailand air negotiations between 1998 and 1999 to Chen Ju-chiao (
The court also found that Lo had passed secret information on the BOT bidding, then still in process, to another reporter with the China Times Group, Chung Ke-hsing (鄭克?), in September 1998.
Judge Ho Shui-shen (
"[Lo] used confidential information to court reporters to serve his personal interest, regardless of national and public interests. And that's exactly what his conviction is based upon," Ho said.
During his trial, Lo argued he did not leak any "secrets" as the information in question had already been published in a number of news reports before he passed it to the reporters.
The judge, however, dismissed Lo's argument and pointed out that Lo had crossed a line of which any public official should be aware.
Ho said that what had appeared in previous reporting was only "fragmentary" information based on journalists' interviews with officials -- and this was different from the "complete" information that Lo had given to the reporters.
"It's fine for a public official to hint to the media about sensitive government information. But it's definitely a crime when the official provides the media with complete copies of the information," Ho said.
The case, which received widespread news coverage in late July, has sparked heated rows over press freedom, as the media itself became the subject of search and seizures by law-enforcement officials.
The journalistic community strongly criticized law enforcement officials over the searches of one magazine office and the homes of the two reporters allegedly involved in the case.
Law-enforcement officials were also blasted when it was disclosed that they had tapped reporters' phones while trying to collect evidence against Lo.
Ho said his decision in this high-profile case does not have a direct impact on press freedom, but admitted it would probably affect news sources, especially public officials' willingness to provide information to reporters.
Chen Tseng-chih (3紡W芝), secretary-general of the Association of Taiwan Journalists (台灣記者協會), said yesterday that the association agrees that it was a reasonable requirement for public officials to keep sensitive information concerning national interest a secret.
However, she said the government should make it clear what information is available to the general public and what is not.
"It is not acceptable for the government to want to keep every piece of information confidential. The gray areas have to be cleared up and that's exactly why it's so urgent for legislation to be passed on freedom of information," Chen said.
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