Taiwan could become an Orwellian society with no privacy from a Big Brother government able to monitor every aspect of citizens’ daily lives if the government goes ahead with an electronic national identification card (eID) without first establishing protection measures and a regulatory body, cybersecurity experts and academics said yesterday.
Lu Chung-chin (呂忠津), a professor at National Tsing Hua University’s College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science who researches digital communications, said there are inherent risks of security breaches with the “one card for all” scheme, given that the eID’s chip would store the carrier’s personal information.
The Ministry of the Interior plans to have the eID incorporate all the data on national ID cards, Citizen Digital Certificates, National Health Insurance cards and driver’s licenses, and it was scheduled to roll out the program in October, but the start date has been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Photo: CNA
“It is inconceivable that our government has ignored opposing voices and is going to push the plan through to force people to accept an eID. Under this scheme, there are few controls and no limitations on collecting each citizen’s electronic data and digital footprint, as all the eggs would now be in one basket,” Lu said at the briefing in Taipei held by the Taiwan Association of University Professors.
“This will lead to an Orwellian society, allowing government agencies to monitor every citizen and control everyone’s privacy and their personal information,” Lu said.
Citizens’ right to protect their personal information is guaranteed under the Constitution, and therefore legislation must be enacted first to allow for collection via the eID system, and an independent agency must be established for oversight, Lu said.
“The public must also have the choice to use existing IDs, those of cards in paper form. This is what our government should do to defend our democracy, and protect our individual rights and freedom,” Lu added.
Liao I-en (廖宜恩), a professor of computer science at National Chung Hsing University, said the ministry’s entire planning process for the eID scheme from its initiation to its tender was questionable and possibly illegal.
A new regulation on issuing eIDs to replace existing ID cards was only announced on March 19, yet the implementation date for the scheme was retroactively set to Jan. 1 last year, Liao said.
“This was to cover up that an illegal tender process for the eIDs was already under way last year, and won by contractors who had already been working on the scheme,” Liao said.
“We need government officials to open up this process and communicate with the public in a transparent manner, but we did not have that. Instead, when questioned, interior ministry officials just kept on saying that ‘the eID is guaranteed to be safe,’ and rejected concerns raised by the public, civic groups and cybersecurity experts,” he said.
“This is such an important matter — protecting personal privacy and the dangers of digital data breaches relating to national security — but there was no platform for dialogue with government, for people to express their opinions,” he said.
“I am very disturbed and feel very sad, because some government officials still have this ‘we know what is best for you’ mindset on the eID scheme, and look down on the public,” he added.
Costa Rica sent a group of intelligence officials to Taiwan for a short-term training program, the first time the Central American country has done so since the countries ended official diplomatic relations in 2007, a Costa Rican media outlet reported last week. Five officials from the Costa Rican Directorate of Intelligence and Security last month spent 23 days in Taipei undergoing a series of training sessions focused on national security, La Nacion reported on Friday, quoting unnamed sources. The Costa Rican government has not confirmed the report. The Chinese embassy in Costa Rica protested the news, saying in a statement issued the same
Taiwan’s Liu Ming-i, right, who also goes by the name Ray Liu, poses with a Chinese Taipei flag after winning the gold medal in the men’s physique 170cm competition at the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation Asian Championship in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, yesterday.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
RSS