Despite strong opposition from human rights groups, the Cabinet will forge ahead with the establishment of a national fingerprint bank when it renews national identification cards next year -- if the legislature gives the plan the go-ahead, Premier Yu Shyi-kun said yesterday.
"Our stance on the matter is clear: We're strongly against the idea of fingerprinting people, because we believe such an archive would violate human rights. However, we will do everything in accordance with the law if the legislature decides to support the establishment of the personal image database and fingerprint bank," Yu said.
The Cabinet sent draft amendments to the Household Registration Law (
While the last renewal of identification cards was supposed to take place in 1996, Yu said that it is imperative to carry out the renewal as soon as possible.
Yu made the remarks yesterday morning on the train to Wuchieh township in Ilan County, where the two-day orientation program for new Cabinet officials was held at the National Center for Traditional Arts.
Amendments to the Household Registration Law that were passed in 1997 require all citizens over the age of 14 to submit prints of all 10 fingers upon receipt of their ID. The amendments created an uproar among human rights groups, who said compulsory fingerprinting was a violation of human rights.
As a result, a new amendment to abolish the stipulation regarding fingerprints has been submitted to the Legislative Yuan, but it has not yet been passed.
However, Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan (
"The idea of adding thumbprints to identification cards and passports is different from that of establishing a national fingerprint bank," Chen said.
"The move would help prevent theft of the documents in addition to helping identify their owners," he said.
If human rights groups feel the move to add fingerprints to ID cards and passports violates their personal privacy, Chen said, he wonders why they do not complain about photographs appearing on the cards.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
RSS