Leaked Ministry of National Defense documents are available in China on online file-sharing systems, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiang Lien-fu (江連福) said yesterday.
Showing the media copies of documents he said he had downloaded, Chiang said he was able to find information related to the annual Han Kuang military drill online.
The documents, which are written in simplified Chinese characters and have file names such as “chemical drill,” “political warfare drill” and “intelligence drill,” included descriptions of the missions of brigade heads and analyses of each drill scenario, Chiang said.
Chiang said the leak could have provided the Chinese Liberation Army with “the best possible attack model,” since names of important locations and military bases in northern Taiwan, targets and how the military would deal with contingencies were clearly specified in the documents.
“Such documents have been leaked to Web sites based in China. Anyone can easily download them. The safety of the Taiwanese people has been compromised,” Chiang said.
“I wonder if information about the Yushan drill and this year’s Han Kuang drill in June have also been leaked,” Chiang said.
Major-General Chai Hui-chen (柴惠珍), division chief for the ministry’s Communications and Electronics Department, said certain documents had been leaked because some staffers had been using a Taiwanese peer-to-peer file transfer program called Foxy.
She said the ministry had found the personnel responsible for the leak and would punish them for compromising information security.
Lo Hsien-cher (羅賢哲), division chief of the Army’s Communications and Electronics Department, downplayed the impact of the leak.
Lo said the leaked documents were teaching materials, not confidential information.
“Actual tactics used during wars will definitely differ from these documents. Therefore, they are not considered confidential material,” Lo said.
Army Command Headquarters said yesterday that information security was still intact, and that any “leaked” documents claiming to concern the Yushan military drill were bound to be inaccurate.
A press release said that, although there had been a leak last year that made public the military’s strategies for last year’s major military exercises, the military had suffered no further leaks as stricter security mechanisms were now in force.
“Our investigations confirmed that the information leak has nothing to do with this year’s Yushan military drill or the annual Han Kuang military exercise,” the press release said.
Additional reporting by Jimmy Chuang
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