The Legislative Yuan’s Internal Affairs Committee yesterday resolved to freeze NT$400 million (US$13.9 million) of the Ministry of the Interior’s budget for the issuance of new electronic identification cards (eIDs).
During the meeting, several legislators issued proposals to freeze a portion of the ministry’s budget for the eIDs, ranging from 10 to 50 percent. The ministry had initially budgeted NT$867.96 million for the cards.
“Since 2012 there have been information security concerns over plans for an electronic ID. These concerns are important. Once electronic ID cards are issued, there is no going back,” Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) said, proposing that the committee first freeze half of the budget for the eIDs pending a detailed report on the cards.
DPP Legislator Huang Shih-chieh (黃世杰) said that issues related to information security handled by the Executive Yuan’s Department of Cyber Security would eventually become the responsibility of the planned Ministry of Digital Development.
The government should wait until this transition is enacted, rather than leave it to the Ministry of the Interior or the Department of Household Registration to deal with eID-related information security issues, he said.
“Legislators in every party have doubts about the new eIDs, and funds budgeted for the cards this year were frozen and never released. The ministry needs to present the committee with a detailed report for its approval,” DPP Legislator Shen Fa-hui (沈發惠) said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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