In an entry on the micro-blogging service Plurk on Monday, Plurk founder Alvin Woon said the social networking site had recently received letters from the police and prosecutors seeking personal information on, and the IP addresses of, Plurkers.
In his entry, Woon wondered about due process and privacy laws in Taiwan.
After the news broke, some people quickly came to the government’s defense, saying the incident had nothing to do with the erosion of democracy that some of the government’s detractors claim has occurred since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) came into office.
The group criticized those who took the report seriously, saying they were blowing the incident out of proportion in a naked attempt to turn an otherwise non-political matter into a political one.
Indeed, the matter should not be seen in terms of “blue” or “green,” but rather as “white,” which suggests intimidation. Both pan-blue and pan-green supporters would be intimidated if Netizens’ right to privacy is not respected.
Failure to treat the incident with the seriousness that it deserves could blind people to the fact that it may be a precursor of the shape of things to come — a new “white terror” in which freedom of speech comes under assault.
The case of Chinese journalist Shih Tao (師濤) is a vivid reminder of the need for vigilance in these times of uncertainty. Shih was sentenced to 10 years in prison after Beijing asked Yahoo to provide personal information on dissidents.
To be fair, combating online crime could be a valid reason for police and prosecutors to make inquiries with Internet service providers. However, with police refusing to provide any information on the case or justification as to why IP addresses were needed, one can speculate that the government, shaken by recent instances of Netizens using aggressive language to vent their dissatisfaction with the political situation in Taiwan, may have decided to act — even if this entails intruding on Web users’ privacy.
This has echoes of an incident in April last year, in which the Taipei City Government’s police department dispatched officers to a private gathering organized by the Taiwan Blogger Association. The officers asked the participants to show their IDs and provide cellphone numbers, and inquired as to what they were doing and who else was taking part in the gathering.
That incident sparked much public criticism, forcing the director of the department to apologize and assure that “any personnel found guilty of misconduct would be disciplined accordingly.”
Undermining Netizens’ privacy is a serious offense in a democracy. Until police and prosecutors provide a sound explanation as to why they needed personal information about Plurk users, it will be the responsibility of each and every one of us to make as much noise as possible to show that we will not allow our freedoms and liberties to be undermined illegally.
In too many instances the world over, people looked the other way while their freedoms were being gradually eroded by governments that thought they could get away with it. Isolated incidents may be just that, but when they are repeated one begins to see a pattern emerging. When that happens, alarms should go off, because such patterns often indicate intent.
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