There is no evidence that three current and former employees stole data amid a probe launched by prosecutors into the National Health Insurance (NHI) system, the National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) said yesterday.
The suspects — an NHIA division chief surnamed Hsieh (謝), an NHIA employee surnamed Lee (李) and a retired NHIA chief secretary surnamed Yeh (葉) — are being investigated for allegedly collecting and leaking the personal data of government officials responsible for national security affairs.
Due to the nature of their work, Hsieh and Lee have used their clearance to search and look for the personal data of multiple people stored on the NHI system for more than a decade, the administration said.
Photo: Lin Hui-chin, Taipei Times
During this period, records show that the two logged into the system to search for 133,000 and 35,000 entries respectively, but no evidence was found that indicated they collected and leaked such data, it said.
Yeh never had access to the system when he was employed at the NHIA and therefore there is no record of him searching any data, it said, following an internal administrative inquiry launched separately by the NHIA in the wake of the probe.
All three were brought to the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office for questioning early last week in relation to alleged breaches of the National Intelligence Services Act (國家情報工作法).
The investigation was initiated after prosecutors received a tip-off that Hsieh and Lee allegedly used their clearance as NHIA employees to collect and leak the personal data of government officials responsible for national security affairs from 2009 to last year.
Yeh is alleged to have instructed the other two to steal the information over a 13-year period, prosecutors said.
A preliminary investigation by prosecutors found that Lee logged into the NHI system on multiple occasions to look for personal data belonging to officials from the Criminal Investigation Bureau of the National Police Agency and intelligence officers in national security agencies.
Hsieh searched about 100,000 personal entries of people stored in the NHI system between Aug. 3 and Aug. 8 in 2018, said Tsai Hsiu-ching (蔡秀卿), director of the NHIA’s ethics office.
However, the NHIA was aware of Hsieh’s activity during this period, likely for the purpose of statistical analysis, and not deliberately targeting officers working in national security agencies, Tsai said.
There is no evidence that these data were copied onto an external storage drive, she said, adding that the information gathered would be provided to prosecutors to aid their investigation.
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