The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) would propose a centralized surveillance agency in the Taiwan High Court to prevent illegal and political wiretapping in the future, the DPP caucus said yesterday.
The court would be the single institution in charge of coordinating national wiretap assignments, taking over the function from a range of agencies across government, including the Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Justice (MJIB) and the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) of the National Police Agency, DPP Legislator Wu Yi-chen (吳宜臻) told a press conference.
The proposal stems from the administrative branch’s abuse of wiretaps on the legislature, prosecutors and private citizens, Wu said.
Other proposals would be to prohibit information obtained from wiretaps from being used outside criminal investigation purposes and demand the destruction of information unrelated to the original purpose, DPP Legislator Wu Ping-jui (吳秉叡) said.
The DPP proposes a special court to review wiretap applications, as well as stricter standards on extensions, he added.
Public servants who use information beyond the original surveillance purpose would be subject to a prison term of up to three years, Wu said.
Proposals to amend the Communication Security and Surveillance Act (通訊保障及監察法), the Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法) and the organic acts for the courts, the MJIB and the CIB are to be submitted to the Legislative Yuan’s Conference Department today, caucus convener Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) told the press conference.
“Hopefully the proposals will be sent to respective committees in the plenary session on Friday,” he said.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus said it respected the proposal.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday condemned Chinese and Russian authorities for escalating regional tensions, citing Chinese warplanes crossing the Taiwan Strait’s median line and joint China-Russia military activities breaching South Korea’s air defense identification zone (KADIZ) over the past two days. A total of 30 Chinese warplanes crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait on Thursday and Friday, entering Taiwan’s northern and southwestern airspace in coordination with 15 naval vessels and three high-altitude balloons, the MAC said in a statement. The Chinese military also carried out another “joint combat readiness patrol” targeting Taiwan on Thursday evening, the MAC said. On
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