VPNs with servers in Taiwan

The 2025 amendments, promulgated on 2 July 2025, oblige providers of internet access service to register as telecommunications enterprises (art. 5), on pain of a fine of NT$100,000 to 1,000,000 (art. 79). Whether a VPN operator is an internet access provider, or a telecommunications enterprise at all, is not established.

Networks of operators designated for communications surveillance must carry the supervisory functions the Communication Security and Surveillance Act prescribes (TMA art. 22), and telecom providers must assist in carrying surveillance out (art. 14 of that Act).

Article 42 of the Fraud Crime Hazard Prevention Act lets the competent authority or the judicial police, in an emergency arising from fraud, order internet service providers to suspend domain-name resolution or restrict access to fraudulent websites. In December 2025 the Ministry of the Interior used it to suspend resolution for the domains of one foreign social platform for a provisional year, enforced by the Taiwan Network Information Center through a DNS response-policy zone.

The Criminal Code punishes public insult (art. 309) with short-term imprisonment or a fine, and threats to life, body, freedom, reputation or property endangering safety (art. 305) with up to two years. Defamation by spoken or disseminated words (art. 310(1)) carries up to one year; by a circulated writing or drawing (art. 310(2)), up to two years. Truth is a defence unless the fact concerns private life and is of no public concern (art. 310(3)).

To identify an account holder, an interception warrant under article 5 of the Communication Security and Surveillance Act is available for listed serious offences; the court must reply to a prosecutor’s application within 48 hours.

Criminal interception is tied to a judge. In Interpretation No. 631 of 20 July 2007 the Grand Justices held article 5, paragraph 2 of the earlier surveillance statute unconstitutional because it left prosecutors and police to decide on surveillance themselves, and declared it void no later than the revised article 5 took effect. Under the current Act the agency must report at least every 15 days, and prosecutors or the court supervise (arts. 5, 16).

Intelligence surveillance follows another path (art. 7): the head of the national intelligence authority issues the warrant, but for a person with a registered permanent address in Taiwan a designated high court judge must approve, except in an emergency, when approval must follow within 48 hours. The intelligence authority itself supervises this surveillance (art. 16). The order of the rows is the security score, and a server’s location is not a recommendation.