The Armed Forces Police Command (AFPC) has categorically denied the presence of any wiretapping center in the basement of its headquarters in Taipei as reported by the local news media.
Media reports said that in addition to the wiretapping center at the Military Intelligence Bureau, military intelligence authorities have another electronic eavesdropping stronghold which has never been exposed before.
According to the reports, the maximum-security wiretapping center is located in the basement of the AFPC's Taipei headquarters.
"The reports are not true," the AFPC said in a press statement, adding that the command has never in its history installed a wiretapping center.
The statement said a group of lawmakers from the Legislative Yuan's National Defense Committee made an inspection tour of the command last year to check whether it had a wiretapping center and found that it did not, the statement added.
The statement came a day after Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Huang Chien-hui (黃劍輝) complained -- at a meeting of the legislature's Judiciary Committee -- about what he called local prosecutors' abuse of their power to authorize wiretaps.
Quoting official tallies, Huang said prosecutors had approved more than 19,000 wiretap applications last year, almost two times the number authorized in the US.
"Is this reasonable?" Huang asked. "The United States has a population of more than 200 million, while Taiwan has only 23 million people. It seems to me that the number of our authorized wiretaps has gone out of proportion to our population and indicates that our prosecution authorities do not respect local people's privacy and human rights."
During the same committee meeting, Minister of Justice Shih Mao-lin (
Shih and Wu promised to demand that prosecutors tighten screening of wiretap requests. They also promised to study the feasibility of delegating the power of wiretap authorization to judges. Prosecutors currently have the power to authorize wiretaps.
According to statistics compiled by the State Public Prosecutor General's Office, a total of 19,485 wiretap applications were approved in 2004, marking a whopping increase from about 3,000 recorded in 2000.
More than 70 percent of the authorized wiretaps were related to drug trafficking and firearm trading investigations, and less than 10 percent were related to corruption probes, Wu said, adding that the wiretapping periods for some cases lasted more than a year.
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) today issued a sea warning for Typhoon Fung-wong effective from 5:30pm, while local governments canceled school and work for tomorrow. A land warning is expected to be issued tomorrow morning before it is expected to make landfall on Wednesday, the agency said. Taoyuan, and well as Yilan, Hualien and Penghu counties canceled work and school for tomorrow, as well as mountainous district of Taipei and New Taipei City. For updated information on closures, please visit the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration Web site. As of 5pm today, Fung-wong was about 490km south-southwest of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan's southernmost point.
A magnitude 5.3 earthquake struck Kaohsiung at 1pm today, the Central Weather Administration said. The epicenter was in Jiasian District (甲仙), 72.1km north-northeast of Kaohsiung City Hall, at a depth of 7.8km, agency data showed. There were no immediate reports of damage. The earthquake's intensity, which gauges the actual effects of a temblor, was highest in Kaohsiung and Tainan, where it measured a 4 on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale. It also measured a 3 in parts of Chiayi City, as well as Pingtung, Yunlin and Hualien counties, data showed.
Nearly 5 million people have signed up to receive the government’s NT$10,000 (US$322) universal cash handout since registration opened on Wednesday last week, with deposits expected to begin tomorrow, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. After a staggered sign-up last week — based on the final digit of the applicant’s national ID or Alien Resident Certificate number — online registration is open to all eligible Taiwanese nationals, foreign permanent residents and spouses of Taiwanese nationals. Banks are expected to start issuing deposits from 6pm today, the ministry said. Those who completed registration by yesterday are expected to receive their NT$10,000 tomorrow, National Treasury
Taiwan next year plans to launch its first nationwide census on elderly people living independently to identify the estimated 700,000 seniors to strengthen community-based healthcare and long-term care services, the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) said yesterday. Minister of Health and Welfare Shih Chung-liang (石崇良) said on the sidelines of a healthcare seminar that the nation’s rapidly aging population and declining birthrate have made the issue of elderly people living alone increasingly pressing. The survey, to be jointly conducted by the MOHW and the Ministry of the Interior, aims to establish baseline data and better allocate care resources, he
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