Legislators hold landmark hearing on digital privacy after a report shows authorities sought data from social networks and communications companies for almost 70,000 clients

South China Morning Post 
Date: 09 September, 2018
By: Lawrence Chung

Big Brother is everywhere. And Taiwan, which claims to be a staunch advocate of personal privacy in stark contrast to the mainland, is no exception.

According to a recent report by the Taiwan Association for Human Rights (TAHR), the self-ruled island has violated digital human rights by quietly conducting communications surveillance over the past few years to obtain social networking content and metadata, ostensibly to help investigate crimes.

In the 2015-16 period covered by the report, government authorities – mostly security and police units – made close to 70,000 demands for social networking and digital service providers to reveal the content and parties involved in the communications, as well as the location tracking and personal information of their clients – all without the clients’ knowledge.

In addition to criminal investigations, the authorities said the surveillance was needed to counter the growing threat from mainland China, which has been staging military drills and flipping several of the island’s diplomatic allies.

Even so, critics remain concerned about the infringement on citizens’ privacy.
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