Wiretapping Everyone: Taiwan's Global Unique Phenomenon

Taking the execution of judicial wiretapping (national security wiretapping is not discussed in this article) as an example, according to official data released by Taiwan, the United States, and Japan, over the past five years, for every 1 Taiwanese person wiretapped by prosecutors and police, it is equivalent to only 1 person being wiretapped for every 50 Americans, or every 2,000 Japanese.

Everyone must be wondering, how did this come to be?

The key lies in the fact that the practices of executing wiretaps in the US and Japan are fundamentally different from ours.

Conducting "Record-Everything" in Secret Rooms

They are not allowed to indiscriminately record communication contents from start to finish without distinction after tapping the line; they can only choose to excerpt contents relevant to the specific case being investigated, a requirement aimed at avoiding harm to the privacy of innocent people. In Japan, the strict requirement that a third party must be present during wiretapping is also to protect the communication contents of unrelated persons from being arbitrarily excerpted.

Most importantly, they both must hold a wiretap warrant signed by a judge and go to the telecommunications operators' switchrooms to tap the lines on-site, unlike our Investigation Bureau and Criminal Investigation Bureau, which each set up their own dedicated "Telecommunications Surveillance Centers" to conduct a "record-everything" style of wiretapping—unique among rule-of-law countries globally—inside secret rooms under their own control.

As a result, not only are personnel costs extremely low, but as long as the machine is left recording, everyone can be monitored without restriction. Moreover, since the work site is within a switchroom controlled by themselves, the possibility of oversight is virtually non-existent. With such convenience, the abusive application for wiretaps by investigative personnel is an inevitable outcome.

What is fatal is that this globally unique "wiretapping switchroom" is written in black and white into the Communication Security and Surveillance Act. All telecommunications operators are "by law" required to set up dedicated lines to the aforementioned two "Telecommunications Surveillance Centers," leaving investigators free to intercept everyone's phone calls, text messages, emails, and communication contents transmitted via 3G networks. Such a fact tells us that the freedom of private communication guaranteed by the Constitution has long since ceased to exist.

Taking Away the Pacifier of Unconstitutional Investigation

More than ten years ago, based on the rationale of protecting human rights, the search powers originally held by prosecutors were transferred so that only judges had the ultimate decision-making power. At that time, although most scholars supported such a change, some prosecutors and police officers standing on the opposing side spoke out one after another against it, believing that as a result, investigations would lose a sharp tool to preempt the enemy, causing irreparable damage to criminal investigation.

Years later, the initial backlash has vanished without a trace. Investigative personnel have long since grown accustomed to the necessity of obtaining a judge's approval before initiating a search, and the facts have proven that public order has not deteriorated as a result, while human rights protections have become even more solidly realized.

The reform of searches is like this, and so is the reform requiring a judge's approval for the detention of defendants. The reform process ensuring that prosecutors and police record and videotape the interrogation of defendants from beginning to end to prevent torture has walked the exact same path.

The method of reform is not difficult: it is to abolish the unconstitutional "Telecommunications Surveillance Center," return to the right track of a constitutional state, and take away the investigative pacifier of arbitrary wiretapping. Being unaccustomed and inconvenient is inevitable. At the same time, the freedom of private communication guaranteed by the Constitution is solidly secured.