DPP'S COUNTERINTELLIGENCE BILL MAY LIMIT PRESS FREEDOM|國安VS.侵犯人權 綠委推"反滲透法"規範假新聞

Following the Investigation Bureau's draft counterintelligence bill which provoked controversy, a number of DPP legislators proposed a different anti-infiltration act, which sanctions fake news which may affect national security and internal policy. The KMT legislative caucus criticized this new proposal as being no different from the previous draft counterintelligence bill, which violates human rights and the freedom of press. Last week, the draft counterintelligence bill which was characterized by some as a return to the martial law era and suspected of violating human rights, was rejected by the Cabinet. On Mar. 13, at a Legislative Yuan interpellative session, Administrative Deputy Minister of Justice Chen Ming-tang said the counterintelligence bill was to prevent officials leaking information and he would continue to push for the bill and communicate to resolve misconceptions about it. ==CHEN MING-TANG Administrative Deputy Minister of Justice == Currently we don't have a scheduled date for this, but we will revisit it. From 2006 to 2016 there have been 55 cases of espionage. On Mar. 13, DPP legislators decided to propose another counterintelligence bill, which includes legislative oversight to safeguard national security, and protect human rights. ==CHEN MING-WEN DPP legislator== Now we need to have an awareness of danger and most advanced countries, whether the US or the UK have similar legislation for counterintelligence. However, Chen also mentioned he believes there is a lot of "fake news" which affects government policy and he felt the counterintelligence law should deal with this. This prompted the KMT caucus to say that the counterintelligence bill not only breached human rights but also damaged press freedom. ==WANG YU-MIN Sec-Gen. KMT legislative caucus== We can see DPP legislators are not giving up on this easily, they think that by changing the name they can fool the public, whether it's called a national security bill or a counterintelligence bill, it's a violation of human rights and may damage freedom of the press. == CHEN MING-WEN DPP legislator== Currently there is no inclusion of "fake news" (in national defense legislation), so we should properly regulate that as well, because it affects Taiwan internal policy and we should tackle these sorts of problems, I'm just taking this as an example. The Presidential Office and the Executive Yuan said it would respect the legislative committees' rights to propose bills and the government would not limit citizens' freedom and national security. It emphasized that the government would research legislation or other measures to deal with "fake news" which affected national security. TRANSLATED BY：CLARE LEAR