Taiwan News Forum on Human Rights

Taiwan News, a useful resource that provides links to Taiwan-related news stories, offered a very interesting forum discussion on human rights, Liberalism and Recent Human Rights Controversies, that is well worth a read (discussion in English and Chinese). One of the panelists notes:

It was in early 1998 when Vincent Siew served as premier. Chen Jen-ran, Ho Jan-ming, Liu Ching-yi, Chuang Tyng-ruey and other friends discovered that a task force in the Research, Development, and Evaluation Commission under the Executive Yuan was in the process of discussing a contract with a business group led by the Rebar Group. The goal was to have Rebar execute a plan for turning national ID cards into computer readable IC cards.

Just how frightening was this plan? First, according to the secret "outline of the contract discussions," which was later leaked out, the national IC cards were to collect every type of personal information imaginable; there was nothing left out. The data included household registration, land registration, police administration, national health insurance card, stored value card, ATM card, credit card, and even the NHI black list, access control for big buildings, traffic violations, and it did of course not lack the fingerprints that we are concerned about today. The national information that this plan wanted to collect and enter did not leave out any detail. During that time an opposition alliance formed by civic groups once made a joke in an action drama: afterwards you won't even have to write a diary anymore, because there will be record of everything you did on a certain day at a certain time such as which bus you rode, which buildings you entered and left, whom you called on the phone, how much you bought etc. Moreover, all of it would be stored on this national IC card.

This plan was defeated. There's quite a bit of discussion on the current fingerprinting plan and other recent issues.

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