Four service members who last week uploaded videos to TikTok of themselves dancing in their barracks at an army base in northern Taiwan have been discharged, a Ministry of National Defense official said on Monday.
The soldiers had been with the Guandu Regional Command of the Sixth Army Corps, Lu Chien-chung (盧建中), deputy chief of the general staff for communication, electronics and information, told a legislative committee hearing in Taipei.
The video, filmed on a smartphone and uploaded on Wednesday last week to the social media platform TikTok, quickly went viral. It showed a soldier smoking an e-cigarette, while two others danced.
The Sixth Army Corps later confirmed the incident, saying it was reviewing the situation to see if the soldiers involved had contravened information-security regulations, local media reported on Friday.
The military has “zero tolerance” for breaches of information-security protocols, said Lu, who was asked about the unit’s apparent lack of information-security discipline.
During the hearing, Lu was also questioned about two military photographs that have been posted on TikTok. One was a picture of a target, and the other showed a soldier posing at a shooting range at a military base.
Lu said the pictures were probably taken by students who attended a target practice organized by the military for civilians.
He said that the uploading of the photos breached security regulations, and the ministry would deal with the matter accordingly.
To counter unauthorized Internet use at military sites, the government has acquired sensors for use at military commands and bases that can detect WiFi connections and Bluetooth within a 100m range, he said.
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