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Updated Friday, August 29, 2008 0:00 am TWN, CNA

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Lawmaker urges stiffer penalties on personal data leaks

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- A lawmaker has called for stiffer punishments for public and private organizations that leak local citizens’ information to fraud rings after the police busted the country’s largest personal data theft case earlier this week.

The ruling and opposition political parties should soon reach an agreement on a draft amendment to the Computer Processed Personal Data Protection Act, opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wong Chin-chu said in a news release Wednesday.

Under the amendment, the total compensation amount offered by government agencies and companies to individuals for failing to protect their personal data would be increased to NT$50 million (US$1.6 million) from the current NT$20 million, Wong said.

In addition, agency or company employees who sell personal data will face five year prison terms, rather than the current two year terms, Wong said.

Even those who leak personal data for motives other than profit will no longer be free of punishment, but will face sentences of two years or less, she noted.

Wong said that leaking personal data to fraud rings has seriously breached personal privacy and has a serious impact on social order.

Wong recalled that earlier this year, a local textbook publisher allegedly leaked the personal data of 310,000 national high school exam takers.

Moreover, she added that on Tuesday, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) busted a ring that stole more than 50 million pieces of personal data from government agencies and telecom companies.

The police found that Chinese hackers also were involved in the case and have requested the assistance of Chinese police through a joint crime-combating channel between Taiwan and China.

The police began investigating the ring after state-run Chunghwa Post Co. reported last April that a group of hackers stole more than NT$3 million from the savings of postal company’s clients.

The police later discovered that the ring hacked into the databases of the Bureau of National Health Insurance, the Ministry of Education and local telecom companies.

The ring collected the information and set up a database containing the information on government officials, business people and the general public, the police disclosed.

The police said that they arrested the main suspect,a 32-year-old with the surname Chen, and five other accomplices on Tuesday in Taipei City and Taipei County in northern Taiwan.

The suspects also sold the data to other rings for NT$300 per inquiry on each piece of personal data, the police said.

Employees and dealers in the telecom companies have been found to have collaborated with the ring, the police revealed, adding that they are still searching for other accomplices.

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