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DPP concerned about
hacking, phone tapping
PLAGIARISM OR PARANOIA? DPP officials are using
secure mobile phones after the party questioned how the KMT seemed to have prior
knowledge of its election campaign
By Chris Wang / Staff Reporter, in Greater Taichung
Democratic Progressive Party
Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen smiles as she holds a fan she was presented with
outside Jhueifen station in Greater Taichung yesterday.
Photo: CNA
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)
Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday urged President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九)
administration to explain whether it has tapped the mobile phones of key DPP
officials to gain campaign information.
“This has been a concern for us for a long time, as we suspect that our e-mail
accounts have been hacked and our mobile phones have been tapped,” DPP
presidential candidate Tsai said in Greater Tai-chung’s Jhueifen District (追分)
in the middle of her 11-day campaign trip along the nation’s west coast.
DPP officials, including Tsai and her running mate, Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全), started
using secured mobile phones yesterday after Tsai’s campaign team questioned how
its rival — the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — seemed to have knowledge of
confidential information about the DPP’s campaign that allowed it to
“counterstrike” instantly.
Ma is seeking re-election in January
His campaign team presented a policy on farmers’ subsidies one day before Tsai
said in Yunlin County, one of the nation’s most important agricultural areas, on
Tuesday that she would initiate a similar subsidy. Both sides also talked about
the regeneration of agricultural land at almost the same time.
The Ma administration should offer an explanation as to why it had aroused
suspicion and forced the opposition campaign team to take precautions and extra
security measures during the election campaign, Tsai said.
The DPP said in August that hackers from China and Taiwan had accessed the
e-mail accounts of officials and senior staff at the party’s presidential
campaign office, stealing confidential campaign information.
The e-mail accounts were accessed by IP addresses in China and Taiwan, with an
IP address of the Beijing bureau of China’s state-controlled Xinhua news agency
making an attack via Australia and Xinhua’s Malaysian bureau, the DPP said.
An attack was traced to a domestic IP address belonging to the Executive Yuan’s
Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, the party said at the time.
The commission subsequently denied the accusation.
A DPP meeting on Tuesday concluded that the mobile phones of key party and
campaign officials had been tapped.
Chief campaign manager Wu Nai-jen (吳乃仁) said the countermeasure to tapping was
to apply for new mobile phone numbers under the names of people unrelated to the
DPP.
Ten new mobile phones with new numbers have now been distributed to DPP
officials.
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