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Government prioritizes Chinese interests
By Lin Hsin-jung 林欣蓉
Calls for more transparency about the underground oil and gas pipelines in Greater Kaohsiung have intensified. Government officials said that the Bureau of Energy has the information, but that it is only available to government agencies. Newly appointed Minister of Economic Affairs Woody Duh (杜紫軍) added that information about “the pipelines involves national and public security.”
However, when asked about allegations that Chinese smartphone vendor Xiaomi has been stealing users’ private data to give to the Chinese government, officials merely say it is “beyond [the government’s] control.” Also, reports on the recent firepower drills on Kinmen said they were reduced in scale. The government is becoming increasingly soft when it comes to Beijing, and increasingly recalcitrant when it comes to its own people.
One example of this was seen in the conflict over the review of the cross-strait service trade agreement in March. One reason people vehemently opposed the pact was the provision that Chinese investors could enter Taiwan’s telecommunications service sector, providing store and forward network and store and retrieve network services, as well as data exchange and frame relay services. This prompted more than 200 industry insiders and experts to sign a joint petition warning the government of the need for caution to protect national security and data security for individual users.
At the time, the National Communications Commission (NCC) said that deregulation of this secondary telecommunications sector would not be a threat to national security, as part of the legal requirements call for interested parties to provide data and telecommunications security protection, monitoring self-assessment reports and attendant documents such as information management security qualifications. Yet given what people know about the competence and level of expertise of the NCC management, whose document reviews are notoriously cursory at best, they should perhaps be worried.
Countries such as the US, Canada, Australia and Indonesia have already prohibited cooperation with Chinese telecommunications equipment producers such as Huawei Technologies Co or ZTE Corp, and yet the government is still intent on opening up the nation’s secondary telecommunications service sector to Chinese investment. Is it even remotely conceivable that the Taiwanese government is better equipped when it comes to data security protection than the governments of those other countries? Nobody but a government official would have the audacity to claim with such assurance that the concerns raised involved “no threat” to national security.
It is a shame that the government is so intent on putting obstacles in people’s way, citing national and public security issues, when all they want is information. Other more advanced countries such as the US and France make comprehensive pipeline maps accessible to the public. The US Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, for example, has even established a national pipeline mapping system. These countries do not operate lower standards of national and public security than in Taiwan, and yet they still manage to guarantee people’s right to know.
When Beijing wants certain sectors opened up, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is generous, but gets all tight-fisted when people ask for information pertinent to their individual rights. The Ma administration has one way to deal with Beijing and another to deal with Taiwanese: It is just one more example of the government’s skewed logic and double standards.
Lin Hsin-jung is a Democratic Progressive Party specialist working in the Internet development department.
Translated by Paul Cooper
source: Taipei Times
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