The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) yesterday said it would pursue legal action against people who allegedly fabricated and disseminated a recording of TPP Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) commenting on Vice President William Lai’s (賴清德) stopovers in the US.
Some media outlets on Wednesday evening received an e-mail with a 36-second audio recording purporting to show “Ko expose the inside story of Lai’s visits to the US.”
In the recording, someone who sounds like Ko, the TPP’s presidential candidate, criticizes Lai, the DPP’s presidential candidate, for his stopovers in New York and San Francisco this month, as he visited Paraguay, and alleges that each person could receive NT$800 for attending Lai’s events.
Photo courtesy of the Taiwan People’s Party
The e-mail said that the recording was made during an internal TPP meeting in the first week of this month.
At a news conference yesterday, TPP spokesman Adam Lee (李頂立) said the voice in the recording was “clearly not Ko.”
The TPP would pursue legal action, but is first investigating who made the recording, how it was made and who disseminated it, he said.
It is also hoped that campaigning would “go back to being clean and transparent,” as people are “sick of mud-slinging,” Lee added.
Lee said that the recording was clearly intended to defame Ko and mislead the public.
Asked about the recording, Ko yesterday, during a visit to Taiwan Cement Corp in Hualien County, said that strange stories are becoming more frequent as the election nears and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) that can imitate people’s voices and appearance makes things worse.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) deputy secretary-general Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) said the party hopes the recording was fabricated as the TPP claimed and urged Ko’s office to file a lawsuit against the perpetrators as soon as possible.
If investigated through legal channels, it would show that all political parties — not just the one in power — are affected by misinformation, he said.
By uniting against misinformation and Chinese aggression, the parties can protect the democracy and security that Taiwanese hold dear, he said.
This is not just a case of fake news, but “the beginning of cyberterrorism,” DPP caucus director Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) said.
AI-generated and altered media are to become more common, posing an enormous challenge to Taiwan’s democratic society, she said.
Everyone must work to counter misinformation to ensure the stability of elections, Liu added.
Additional reporting by Chen Cheng-yu and Hua Meng-ching
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
RSS