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.
"Since the resident register network gives a number to every citizen and, in addition, distributes those numbers via computer networks, it is a highly dangerous system that can invade privacy," said Tohru Motobayashi, president of the association. Prior to the launch of the system, laws to protect private information are needed and as long as the bills proposing those laws are yet to pass, the system should not be started, he argued.
The reaction from privacy advocates is perhaps expected but the refusal of some cities to join Juki-Net has come as an embarrassment to the government, which sees the system as a key part of its E-Japan scheme. E-Japan is an ambitious program that sets to make Japan the world's most advanced IT nation by 2005 and has the online delivery of many government services as one of its key goals, a service for which a centralized database of people living in Japan would be essential.
The government, through the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs and Posts and Telecommunications (MPHPT), which crafted the system, hit back at its critics and said there is little to worry about, although it admitted that the existence of data privacy laws would be favorable.
"The resident register network system has a complete structure to protect personal data, " said Toranosuke Katayama, the Minister of MPHPT at a news conference on July 19. "Of course, it is better to have separate personal data protection laws (as a base), but even though there aren't such laws, it doesn't mean that personal data will be leaked from the resident register network system."
Still, even the passing of data protection laws won't silence some critics.
The real problem is in numbering each individual, said Mitsuru Kuroda, a specialist researching local governments' information policies, who is one of the most outspoken critics of the system.
The proposed law does forbid the use of the identification numbers by the private sector and imposes duties on civil servants to keep information confidential and prevent information leakage to outside sources. However, there is still a loophole that may enable private sectors to use the numbers, and the law allows the government to expand the use of the identification numbers into other areas, Kuroda said.
"Why does the government still push the resident register network system, although everyone is opposed and it is clearly dangerous? Obviously, the government wants to use the code numbers to control the nation for other purposes," he said. "Just because the computerized-network system is convenient, the government should not have started it by taking risks, it needs to be approved by the nation first. Particularly in Japan, people are not so aware of privacy protection, that is why we haven't had laws to protect personal privacy until now. First of all, the nation itself needs to be more conscious about protecting privacy."
"When a problem occurs with the system, there will be more local governments that disconnect from the network. And if that happens, (Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro) Koizumi's cabinet will have to take responsibility," Kuroda said.
