The Presidential Office has come under fire from netizens for declining to view a clip on the video Web site YouTube attached to a petition sent via e-mail. The presidential office said the “unknown” Web site could cause harm to its computer system.
In an e-mail sent to the Presidential Office earlier this month, an Internet user with the pseudonym “an angry citizen” asked President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to watch a video clip posted on YouTube that shows how excavators dispatched by the Miaoli County Government and escorted by police rode into rice paddies and dug up farmland despite protests from local farmers at the scene.
The Miaoli County Government has taken over more than 28 hectares of land in Dapu Borough (大埔), Jhunan Township (竹南), Miaoli County, to make way for an expansion project of the Jhunan Science Park.
“If you still are a man of conscience, please take a look at the attached video link to see how Miaoli County commissioner Liu Cheng-hung [劉政鴻] is destroying farmland,” the user wrote to Ma. “This couldn’t be carried out with your tacit approval, now could it?”
The response by the Presidential Office came as a surprise to “angry citizen” and many netizens.
“Because of frequent and innovative attacks by malicious hackers and viruses, we have a policy to restrict access to unknown Web sites to maintain normal operations and security of our computer systems,” the Presidential Office said in its reply. “Hence, we are unable to browse the Web address that you have provided.”
The angry response from Internet users was immediate.
“The Presidential Office calls YouTube an ‘unknown’ Web site, but the stupid lie is busted by the Presidential Office’s very own Web site” — recently upgraded, at a cost of NT$7 million [US$218,000] — “since there are links to YouTube on it,” blogger “pfge” wrote in a personal entry. “This proves that the government doesn’t care about what the public thinks.”
The Presidential Office uses the YouTube Web site on a regular basis, as it posts the president’s weekly video chat on it.
“I don’t know which genius came up with this response, I don’t know whether to be mad or to laugh,” said Mira Chen, a member of the online social networking service Plurk.com. “So these are the people who are governing this country!”
Presidential Office spokesman Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) said that for security purposes, it had been policy since the Democratic Progressive Party was in power not to access links attached in e-mails.
“If the public thinks we should change the policy, we will look more into it before making a decision,” he said.
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
RSS