Thu, May 02, 2024 page3

• NSB finds up to 30,000 false posts weekly

  TRAVEL ADVISORY: The Mainland Affairs Council again asked Taiwanese to refrain from unnecessary travel to China, as new legislation there puts them at greater risk

  • By Kayleigh Madjar / Staff writer, with CNA and AFP
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  The National Security Bureau (NSB) identifies up to 30,000 online posts containing false information every week, sending the most notable items to the National Security Council to review, it said yesterday.

  At a hearing of the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hsu Chiao-hsin (徐巧芯) asked NSB Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) how the bureau addresses false information online.

  As an example, Hsu asked about a rumor circulating online in January that then-vice presidential candidate Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) had a secret boyfriend.

  

  National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai Ming-yen speaks at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee in Taipei yesterday.

  Photo:Chien-jun, Taipei Times

  Tsai said that NSB staff and automated systems keep records of controversial content, including the rumor about Hsiao.

  The agency has collected about 1.3 million controversial posts since last year, from which it has identified 20,000 to 30,000 posts containing false information every week, he said.

  After fact-checking, it reports about 5,000 to 6,000 posts every week to the council and Executive Yuan, which then decide whether and how to respond, he added.

  Pressed about how the bureau handles false claims, Tsai said that its role is simply to collect and report, and it is the responsibility of other agencies to respond.

  In other security news, Taiwan has raised the alarm about the growing risks Taiwanese could face when visiting China, pointing to an expanded state secrets law that took effect yesterday.

  Chinese lawmakers in February passed the revised Law on Guarding State Secrets, expanding the definition of such sensitive information to include a new category known as “work secrets,” state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

  For Taiwanese, the expanded law means the risk of visiting China is likely to “increase significantly,” the Mainland Affairs Council said in a statement on Tuesday.

  Under the updated law, the “work secrets” category is defined as information that is “not state secrets, but will cause certain adverse effects if leaked,” the council said.

  The expanded legislation was “highly vague and may cause people to break the law at any time,” it added.

  At the time of the law’s passage, Xinhua said the legislation stressed “the importance of upholding the CCP’s [Chinese Communist Party’s] leadership over work to guard state secrets.”

  The council criticized Beijing for “continuously using legislations” to strictly monitor overseas visitors to China, saying that cases of “fabricated crimes” being leveled against Taiwanese and foreigners “are not uncommon.”

  “We would like to once again remind the public to refrain from going to China for the time being unless necessary,” it said.

  Among the most high-profile Taiwanese arrested in China was democracy advocate Lee Ming-che (李明哲) in 2017. He was jailed for five years on a national security conviction and released in 2022.

  Last year, a Taiwanese man who is vice chair of a minor political party that advocates for Taiwanese independence was arrested in China and charged with “secession.”
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