China’s new travel passes are less effective at tracking Taiwanese visitors than mobile phones, an expert at the government-sponsored Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) said.
Tu Tze-chen (杜紫宸), head of the institute’s Knowledge-based Economy and Competitiveness Center, said that the National Security Bureau and the Criminal Investigation Bureau had run tests on a new electronic entry card China is issuing to Taiwanese visitors during the card’s trial run.
The bureaus did not find any radio frequency identification (RFID) tags — tiny microchips that can automatically transmit all of the information about the holder to a special scanner — embedded in the cards as previously reported, nor other more advanced microchips, Tu said.
It would be too costly to embed more advanced and less detectable chips in millions of copies of the card, he said.
Most countries, including China, are monitoring foreign visitors for national security purposes, and they should use the most effective tools currently available, which are mobile phones, Tu said, adding that tracking Taiwanese visitors with an RFID-based electronic entry card would be “an unnecessary move.”
According to Tu, RFID can work in a 2m range in ordinary applications, but this can be extended to between 10m and 20m with enhanced readers. This means the technology will not work in a long-range natural environment that is full of electromagnetic interference, he said.
Tu was responding to a Facebook post by a professor of electrical engineering at National Cheng Kung University, who claimed that China’s new travel pass is embedded with RFID tags for tracking purposes.
Citing the results of an analysis by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) said in his special report to the Legislative Yuan on Friday that the new electronic entry card is equipped with no more than 0.1Mb of storage capacity and cannot store biometric details of their holders.
Mao’s report was delivered at the request of the legislature amid suspicions that the new card is designed to downgrade Taiwan’s status to that of Hong Kong and Macau and concerns that it might cause information security breaches.
Mao has also expressed the government’s “extreme dissatisfaction” over the lack of prior discussion with Taiwan about Beijing’s plans to start issuing the cards.
After starting a trial run in July, China began the full implementation of the new credit card-sized travel pass last Monday.
The cards have replaced the passport-style document that Taiwanese had previously used to enter China.
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Credit departments of farmers’ and fishers’ associations blocked a total of more than NT$180 million (US$6.01 million) from being lost to scams last year, National Police Agency (NPA) data showed. The Agricultural Finance Agency (AFA) said last week that staff of farmers’ and fishers’ associations’ credit departments are required to implement fraud prevention measures when they serve clients at the counter. They would ask clients about personal financial management activities whenever they suspect there might be a fraud situation, and would immediately report the incident to local authorities, which would send police officers to the site to help, it said. NPA data showed
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The Taipei MRT is to begin accepting mobile payment services in the fall, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said on Saturday. When the company finishes the installation of new payment units at ticketing gates in October, MRT passengers can use credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay, the operator said. In addition, the MRT would also provide QR payment codes — which would be compatible with Line Pay, Jkopay, iPass Money, PXPay Plus, EasyWallet, iCash Pay, Taiwan Pay and Taishin Pay — to access the railway system. Currently, passengers can access the Taipei MRT by buying a single-journey token or using EasyCard,
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