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
A tropical depression east of the Philippines became a tropical storm early yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, less than a week after a typhoon barreled across the nation. The agency issued an advisory at 3:30am stating that the 22nd tropical storm, named Yinxing, of the Pacific typhoon season formed at 2am. As of 8am, the storm was 1,730km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost point, with a 100km radius. It was moving west-northwest at 32kph, with maximum sustained winds of 83kph and gusts of up to 108kph. Based on its current path, the storm is not expected to hit Taiwan, CWA
Commuters in Taipei picked their way through debris and navigated disrupted transit schedules this morning on their way to work and school, as the city was still working to clear the streets in the aftermath of Typhoon Kong-rey. By 11pm yesterday, there were estimated 2,000 trees down in the city, as well as 390 reports of infrastructure damage, 318 reports of building damage and 307 reports of fallen signs, the Taipei Public Works Department said. Workers were mobilized late last night to clear the debris as soon as possible, the department said. However, as of this morning, many people were leaving messages
A Canadian dental assistant was recently indicted by prosecutors after she was caught in August trying to smuggle 32kg of marijuana into Taiwan, the Aviation Police Bureau said on Wednesday. The 30-year-old was arrested on Aug. 4 after arriving on a flight to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, Chang Tsung-lung (張驄瀧), a squad chief in the Aviation Police Bureau’s Criminal Investigation Division, told reporters. Customs officials noticed irregularities when the woman’s two suitcases passed through X-ray baggage scanners, Chang said. Upon searching them, officers discovered 32.61kg of marijuana, which local media outlets estimated to have a market value of more than NT$50 million (US$1.56
FATALITIES: The storm claimed at least two lives — a female passenger in a truck that was struck by a falling tree and a man who was hit by a utility pole Workers cleared fallen trees and shop owners swept up debris yesterday after one of the biggest typhoons to hit the nation in decades claimed at least two lives. Typhoon Kong-rey was packing winds of 184kph when it slammed into eastern Taiwan on Thursday, uprooting trees, triggering floods and landslides, and knocking out power as it swept across the nation. A 56-year-old female foreign national died from her injuries after the small truck she was in was struck by a falling tree on Provincial Highway 14A early on Thursday. The second death was reported at 8pm in Taipei on Thursday after a 48-year-old man
RSS