Japan national ID system raises privacy concerns

Local governments across Japan began feeding basic information on their citizens into a central database Monday as part of a new resident registration network, despite complaints about the system raised by privacy advocates and the refusal by some municipalities to take part.

Under the new system, everybody who lives in Japan will be issued an 11-digit identification number that can be used in many of their dealings with their local government. It replaces a system under which people had to produce resident certificates to prove where they lived each time they dealt with local government and which required people to go through time-consuming procedures each time they moved.

Information including the person's name, date of birth, sex and address will be included in each person's file and all data will be stored on a centrally-run government server. The system is intended to make life easier for both citizens and the local municipalities and goes under the name Jumin Kihon Daicho Network, or Juki-Net for short. City halls all over Japan will have access, making dealing with the government as simple as turning up with your ID number.

However, this ease of access that is ringing alarm bells across Japan.

When the Juki-Net idea was first floated in 1999, the government promised that new data privacy and protection legislation would be in place by the time the system went into operation. However, some of the bills associated with this are still in the Diet, Japan's parliament. As one bill wound its way through Japan's political system, additions were tacked on that sought to restrict the ability of journalists to chase certain people for interviews. This caused uproar in the local press and a subsequent media campaign against the bill.

As a result, some local municipalities are refusing to connect to the system fearing the privacy of their citizens may be at risk. To date, these number just a handful of towns and cities, but include the Tokyo ward of Suginami and Kokubunji, a city to the west of central Tokyo. In addition, Japan's second largest city of Yokohama said it will send information on each of its 3.5 million residents only with their permission.

"In order to protect our residents' privacy, we decided not to participate in the resident register network system until the (data protection law) is enacted," said Nobuo Hoshino, mayor of Kokubunji, in a statement on Aug. 2. Other local government heads who said they will not participate stated similar reasons.

Other municipalities have connected, but said they would withdraw from the system at the first report of information leakage.

Privacy advocates too have hit out at the system and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations also expressed its reservations in a statement issued on May 24.

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