A number of groups yesterday questioned whether the government had postponed the rollout of new electronic identification cards (eID) as it said it had, after Minister Without Portfolio Audrey Tang (唐鳳) said that preparations were ongoing.
Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) on Monday last week reportedly told Democratic Progressive Party lawmakers at a luncheon that the government had agreed to postpone the rollout of the cards and tasked Vice Premier Shen Jong-chin (沈榮津) with instructing Cabinet agencies to hold off until security, legal and other issues are resolved.
However, Tang on Friday said in an interview that with the increased use of the National Health Insurance app and My Health Bank service during the COVID-19 pandemic, the government had begun legal, security and user experience preparations for the eID system.
Photo: screen grab from the Internet
The Taiwan Association for Human Rights, Judicial Reform Foundation, Open Culture Foundation and other groups yesterday asked whether officials’ statements to media constituted a formal decision, or were merely reflecting a “rolling review” as the government revises its policy.
In light of the confusion, the groups issued several demands.
First, official government policy should not be announced through unofficial channels such as luncheons or interviews, they said.
If the government had decided to postpone the eID rollout, it should have held a formal meeting and news conference to fully explain its reasoning, the groups said.
Furthermore, the government should provide a timeline to explain what it plans to accomplish during the delay, they said.
The scope and specifics of legal considerations should be detailed, as well as the meaning of “security and user experience preparations,” they added.
Saying that the Executive Yuan should “start over,” the groups called for the rollout plan and new regulations on personal data to be thrown out.
New eID policy should from the outset ensure privacy and data autonomy, they said.
The policy involves a wide array of concerns, but lacks a formal legal basis, relying only on specialized regulations and agencies, they said, urging the Cabinet to completely review the issues and invite citizen participation.
The entire “one person, one number” system needs to be thoroughly reconsidered, while preserving the option to have a separate ID and Digital Citizen Certificate, the groups added.
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