The Taipei City Government yesterday vowed to ensure all municipal devices are provided by secure sources, after city councilors alleged that 19 municipal offices used attendance machines which were made or assembled in China and Thailand, and had fingerprint collection and facial recognition capabilities.
Eight agencies procured Chinese-made machines, while 11 agencies bought machines that were assembled in Thailand, but are mainly made of components produced in China, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City Councilor Lin Yen-feng (林延鳳) told a news conference at Taipei City Hall.
The city’s use of those attendance machines is a breach of the cybersecurity guidelines issued by the central government, she said, adding that the Thai machines were on a blacklist on the National Communications Commission’s Web site.
Photo: Yang Hsin-hui, Taipei Times
Forty Taipei City Government offices and agencies bought new biometric attendance machines after the municipality ordered measures to be taken to stop city employees from cheating by having colleagues clock in for them, she added.
Although the municipal government said the machines were connected to the agencies’ internal network and likely did not pose a cybersecurity threat, Lin said she disagreed with this assessment.
The central government’s guidelines had urged public bureaucratic organizations to be cautious when ordering digital products and services, she added.
The failure of the Taipei City Government to follow cybersecurity standards called into question the security of city residents’ personal information in municipal systems, DPP Taipei City Councilor Yen Juo-fang (顏若芳) said.
The city’s procurement process must be reviewed to weed out Chinese-made technology products assembled in a third country and all biometric attendance systems should be checked for their place of origin, Yen said.
A representative of the Taipei Department of Information Technology at the news conference did not dispute the city councilor’s allegations.
The agency would intensify its efforts on supervising city offices’ compliance with regulations, the representative said.
City agencies would submit all procurement plans to the department for evaluation and approval to help avoid the problem, they added.
A representative of the Taipei Public Works Department said the machines might have slipped through the cracks, as the city government did not require subordinate offices to write contracts for small-volume purchases.
The Taipei Department of Information Technology is launching a probe into any potential harm to cybersecurity caused by the attendance machines, department commissioner Chao Shih-lung (趙式隆) said.
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
The Civil Aviation Administration yesterday said that it is considering punishments for China Airlines (CAL) and Starlux Airlines for making hard landings and overworking their cabin crew when the nation was hit by Typhoon Kong-rey in October last year. The civil aviation authority launched an investigation after media reported that many airlines were forced to divert their flights to different airports or go around after failing to land when the typhoon affected the nation on Oct. 30 and 31 last year. The agency reviewed 503 flights dispatched by Taiwanese airlines during those two days, as well as weather data, flight hours
Three people have had their citizenship revoked after authorities confirmed that they hold Chinese ID cards, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said yesterday. Two of the three people were featured in a recent video about Beijing’s “united front” tactics by YouTuber Pa Chiung (八炯) and Taiwanese rapper Chen Po-yuan (陳柏源), including Su Shi-en (蘇士恩), who displayed a Chinese ID card in the video, and taekwondo athlete Lee Tung-hsien (李東憲), who mentioned he had obtained a Chinese ID card in a telephone call with Chen, Liang told the council’s weekly news conference. Lee, who reportedly worked in
A relatively large earthquake may strike within the next two weeks, following a magnitude 5.2 temblor that shook Taitung County this morning, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. An earthquake struck at 8:18am today 10.2km west of Taitung County Hall in Taitung City at a relatively shallow depth of 6.5km, CWA data showed. The largest intensity of 4 was felt in Taitung and Pingtung counties, which received an alert notice, while areas north of Taichung did not feel any shaking, the CWA said. The earthquake was the result of the collision between the Philippine Plate and the Eurasian Plate, the agency said, adding
RSS