Penalties for businesses and individuals leaking personal information will be toughened as the Cabinet is set to approve draft amendments to a data-protection rule.
"While we're aware of legislators' concerns, we thought it would be a better idea to stick with our own draft amendments to the Computer-Processed Personal Data Protection Law (
Liu was referring to another draft proposed by DPP lawmakers Tsai Huang-liang (
The trio have called for a broader application of the law and for heavier punishment for people caught selling sensitive information following a furor over fraud cases reported in March this year.
Capping a one-year investigation, the Kaohsiung District Prosecutor's Office in May brought a criminal case against 32 civil servants and civilians for their role in leaking 2 million entries of illegally obtained personal information.
Prosecutors found that an organized crime syndicate headed by Hsiao Ron-hsiung (
Hsiao then sold the illegally obtained information to other crime rings and individuals, including lawmakers, police officers and employees of credit information offices.
After learning that civil servants were believed to be involved in the case, Premier Yu Shyi-kun requested government agencies concerned to map out pre-emptive measures and beef up efforts to strengthen the internal audits of telecom service providers.
Yu also requested legal revisions to existing rules to curb similar occurrences in the future.
One of the laws that needs to be revamped is the Computer-Processed Personal Data Protection Law.
Under the Cabinet's draft, the law would cover all kinds of personal information which could be deemed private and deserved protection.
The law presently protects only personal information which is managed, processed, stored or distributed by computers.
The punishment for those who release personal information for commercial purposes would also be increased.
While the current maximum sentence is a two-year jail term or a NT$40,000 fine, the draft would increase this to up to five years imprisonment or a maximum fine of NT$1 million.
The three DPP lawmakers, however, proposed to increase this to seven years imprisonment and/or a maximum fine of NT$1 million, claiming that heavier punishments always serve as a more effective deterrent.
In addition, groups enjoying the prerogative to obtain personal information would have that privilege revoked.
Under current rules, workers in eight professional fields are allowed to collect personal information for business purposes. These eight professions are: Private detective agencies, banks, hospitals, schools, telecom and Internet service providers, insurance companies, the media and stock-exchange companies.
According to an official personal information protection review, conducted by the Directorate General of Telecommunications (DGT), Taiwan Cellular Corp (台灣大) and Mobitai Communications Co Ltd (東信電訊) were ranked as the leaders in protecting customer personal information from their peers.
The two mobile operators were followed in sequence by First International Telecom (
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