Lawmakers on the legislature’s Transportation Committee yesterday urged the government to address what they called a Web threat from China and protect the privacy of mobile app users.
The committee yesterday asked National Communication Commission and other government agencies to brief legislators on how the government aims to prevent China from infiltrating Taiwan’s broadcasting industry and threatening domestic information security.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Kuo-cheng (林國正) said that the nation receives about 1,000 e-mails from China per month in attacks on government agencies — mainly those handling national defense, diplomacy or the economy.
Lin said the US spent NT$113.8 billion (US$3.61 billion) building its so-called “Internet army” last year, which has recruited about 5,000 individuals. The UK and Japan respectively spent NT$37.4 billion and NT$4.4 billion in funding cybersecurity, Lin added.
China, on the other hand, has about 180,000 people in its Web army, although it is unknown how much the Chinese government has spent funding such a large of people, Lin said.
By comparison, Taiwan spent from NT$370 million to NT$430 million last year on information security agencies, supporting from 94 to 120 individuals.
Lin said that the government must increase the resources and funding dedicated to national security, adding that cybersecurity team members must also receive national security training.
Meanwhile, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) took issue with the privacy policies of mobile device apps.
Tsai said that some apps lack full disclosure of developers’ privacy policies, while others either did not ask users to read privacy policies before downloading them, or the policies contain many legal terms that are difficult to understand.
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