KMT legislators break ranks on agenda

KMT legislators break ranks on agenda

 

DISAGREEMENT: The KMT still defeated proposals demanding Shih-ming Huang’s resignation and establishing a legislative commission to investigate illegal wiretaps

 

A number of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers yesterday did not toe the party line during several rounds of votes to determine the agenda for the legislature’s plenary session on Tuesday.

 

However, that did not prevent the KMT from blocking proposals initiated by the opposition, including one demanding the resignation of Prosecutor-General Shih-ming Huang (黃世銘).

 

KMT Legislator Ken-te Chen (陳根德) voted in support of a motion proposed by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) that Huang step down following recent controversies, including allegations of illegal wiretapping and his handling of a case involving the use of undue influence that has evolved into the current political turmoil.

 

The DPP and the TSU proposed that the motion be placed on Tuesday’s agenda, but they were outvoted by the KMT, which still came up with 54 votes from its 64 lawmakers.

 

In another DPP-TSU motion proposing that the legislature establish an investigation commission to probe alleged wiretapping of the legislature’s telephone line, three KMT lawmakers abstained — Ken-te Chen, Ming-tsai Lo (羅明才) and Hui-mei Wang (王惠美).

 

Nonetheless, the motion was defeated by a vote of 42 to 56.

 

The KMT also voted down other DPP-TSU motions that suggested the legislature deliberate a proposal to halt construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City (新北市), reverse power rate hikes and review amendments to the Labor Insurance Act (勞工保險條例) regarding operation of the Labor Insurance Fund.

 

The lawmakers did agree to include a DPP proposal that the legislature’s Discipline Committee investigate allegations of improper use of influence, in which DPP caucus whip Chien-ming Ker (柯建銘) was accused of asking Legislative Speaker Jin-pyng Wang (王金平) to persuade prosecutors against appealing a not-guilty verdict in a breach-of-trust case.

 

Late last month, Ker took the initiative to ask that the committee investigate the allegations and that the committee hearings be made public, so he could clear his name.

 

Lawmakers also agreed to prioritize deliberations on a proposal addressing recent food scare incidents, ratification of an economic cooperation agreement with New Zealand and an amendment to the Foreign Trade Act (貿易法) related to the trade accord on Tuesday.

 

(TAIPEI TIMES, 26 Saturday October 2013 The Roman)

 

Teenager hacked Web sites globally

Teenager hacked Web sites globally

 

WORRYING TREND: Police said they are apprehending ever-younger hackers who break the law, and said sites must be kept safe or they can also break the law if hacked

 

New Taipei City (新北市) police on Tuesday arrested a 16-year-old high-school student who allegedly hacked more than 1,237 Web sites across the globe and was ranked 19th in the world on the Global Hack Website Statistics site.

 

According to the police department’s criminal investigation division, the teenager, surnamed Hsu (許), who uses the online name “XerL9meI,” began hacking Web sites in July this year and had hacked into the Web sites of Kinmen County’s education bureau, National Central University, Tamkang University and private corporations, as well as government agencies in China and India.

 

Hsu was quoted by police as saying that he learned how to hack Web sites by reading books and buying certain computer programs, and he thought his IP address could not be traced.

 

The police said they were able to trace him to his IP address through messages he left on the Web sites he had hacked.

 

According to police, Hsu looked for loopholes in Web sites’ SQL coding language and used them to bypass firewalls and obtain administrator privileges by cracking the passwords.

 

He then uploaded his trademark message, which read: “You got hacked by XerLme9,” along with a warning that the Web site was unsafe.

 

While Hsu was quoted by police as admitting to hacking the Web sites, which would be a violation of Article 358 of the Criminal Code if prosecutors decided to press charges — punishable by three years in prison, detention or more than NT$100,000 (US$3,400) in fines — he said he was only a “gray hat hacker” who wished to remind the corporations he had hacked that their Web sites’ information security had loopholes.

 

Head of the criminal investigation division Yue-cheng Lu (呂岳城) said that though Hsu’s actions — having hacked the national land resources Web site of the Ruzhou city government in China’s Henan Province — could be considered an anti-United Front (統戰) act, it was nonetheless illegal.

 

The police had released Hsu into the custody of his grandparents, who are his legal guardians because Hsu’s parents had separated when he was very young and his father is in a vegetative state after a car accident last year.

 

Hsu’s grandparents said Hsu did not do well in school and often cloistered himself in his room, adding that they did not really know what he was up to.

 

“We would like to thank the police for nipping the flower in the bud, so to speak,” they said, adding that they would keep an eye on Hsu and try not to let him sink any deeper into the world of hacking.

 

As the arrest had been the second of a teenaged hacker in Taiwan, after the arrest of a 14-year-old youth in Taoyuan County last year, the New Taipei City police department’s criminal investigation division expressed concern about the trend of ever-younger hackers being apprehended.

 

The youths might glorify other hackers, or may simply want to prove themselves or have something to brag about, the police department said, adding that in the information age, access to hacking-related books and computer programs was too easy.

 

“We fear that more juvenile hackers would start to try their hand at hacking in the future,” police officers said, issuing a call for governmental and private organizations to reinforce their Web sites’ information security.

 

Police said that if members of the public’s personal data were extracted by hackers from organizations’ data banks, the organizations would be held complicit for violating the Personal Information Protection Act (個人資料保護法).

 

(TAIPEI TIMES, 18 Friday October 2013 The Roman)

(Edited: R.S.F. toshiki speed news press, Agence France-Presse, 8 Friday October 2013 The Roman)