The police have to pay to access the communications when handling cases, but prosecutors do not. (Photo by reporter Wang Guanren)
The police and prosecutors access communications in order to fight crime, but the prices are different, which makes many prosecutors puzzled and confused. Colleagues in the police believe that the suspect has already paid the telecommunications company for using his mobile phone number. The police will make another profit by accessing Tonglian Telecom, and the money will be paid by the people. Nowadays, the government is vigorously cracking down on fraud. Have you ever heard of financial institutions asking the police to pay before they cooperate? Questioning the unfairness of telecom companies charging police for access calls.
A lawyer who was a former prosecutor said that in 2018, the Taiwan Telecommunications Industry Development Association, on behalf of telecom operators, sent a letter to the judicial authorities, claiming that long-term free cooperation with judicial authorities in accessing communications was overwhelmed, and threatened that telecom companies would start charging judges and prosecutors the following year. As soon as the news came out, it caused an uproar in the society. After consultations between the Ministry of Justice and other units and the telecom operators, in the end, only the police had to pay.
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After this incident, many prosecutors wrote to the media one after another. Most of them believed that telecommunications companies had made a lot of profits by collecting tens of millions of yuan in communication fees from various police agencies every year. However, compared with the police, the cases sponsored by the prosecutors had longer handling periods and more people to pursue. If the prosecutors also had to pay, they would probably overwhelm the various local prosecutors' offices.
However, telecommunications is a licensed industry and should be highly regulated by the government. It must also shoulder social corporate responsibilities. Just like the current government's strong crackdown on fraud, if a financial institution in the licensed industry announced another day that it would withdraw 100 yuan for a cash flow and freeze an account for 50 yuan, how would it fight against fraud?
Some colleagues in the police community also said that private enterprises should not only think about making profits, but also shoulder social corporate responsibilities. Nowadays, many fraud syndicates send passbooks and debit cards through supermarkets to sell goods. When the supermarkets face the police accessing relevant information such as the monitors in the supermarkets, have they ever asked the police to pay?
A retired prosecutor pointed out that based on practical experience, when the police investigated cases in the past, there were many cases where the contacts they reviewed had nothing to do with the case. He believes that the prosecutors are relatively rigorous in handling cases and will not neglect relevant procedures because of the rush to pursue suspects or the pressure to solve cases. In reviewing communications, the prosecutors can more or less play the role of "gatekeepers." This time, Chen Guanliang, the investigation captain of the Beijing Municipal Criminal Division, was discovered by prosecutors when he reviewed communications.
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