By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
Making the telephone records of Prosecutor-General Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) available to a Legislative Yuan task force probing a wiretapping controversy would require Huang’s consent due to their private nature, Minister of Justice Lo Ying-shay (羅瑩雪) said yesterday.
Responding to a media inquiry at the legislature in Taipei, Lo said that the task force under the Legislative Yuan’s Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee could not request Huang’s records from his phone company without Huang’s agreement because a telephone record is a personal asset.
“[The request] involves Huang’s rights, the Constitution and the Personal Information Protection Act (個人資料保護法), so I will not comment further. If [Huang] agrees, I think the request would then be legal,” Lo said.
The committee on Wednesday passed a resolution authorizing the task force, which was formed to investigate a wiretapping controversy, to examine Huang’s telephone records and records of when he visited the Presidential Office and President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) residence to report on the improper lobbying allegations involving Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘).
Huang has said that he would not agree to provide the records.
DPP lawmakers were angry at Huang’s refusal, with Ker saying that the task force would not be able to carry out its investigation without the records, which are believed to contain crucial evidence that Ma and Huang conspired to oust Wang from his position.
If the telephone records show that Huang and Ma had telephone conversations before Aug. 31, the day that both said they met for the first time to discuss Wang’s misconduct, the opposition might be able to prove that Ma, Huang and Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) have been lying to the public about the controversy.
However, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus opposed the document request, saying that if Huang’s telephone records were made public, Ma’s telephone records would inevitably be disclosed as well, which would be a violation of the Constitution.